The Cloud in Trousers Poetry by Vladimir Mayakovsky

Rummaging through the basement I found this book of poetry given to me by my first girl friend, Trudy York.


Your thought,
nursing on a sodden brain
like a bloated lackey on a greasy couch
I'll taunt with a bloody morsel of heart;
and satiate my insolent, caustic contempt.

No gray hairs streak my soul,
no grandfatherly fondness there!
I shake the world with the might of my voice,
and walk - handsome,
twentytwoyearold.

Tender souls!
You play your love on a fiddle,
and the crude club their love on a drum.
But you cannot turn yourselves inside out,
like me, and be just bare lips!

Come and be lessoned -
prim officiates of the angelic league,
lisping in drawing-room cambric.

You, too, who leaf your lips like a cook
turns the pages of a cookery book.

If you wish,
I shall rage on raw meat:
or, as the sky changes its hue,
if you wish,
I shall grow irreproachably tender:
not a man, but a cloud in trousers!

Me and Forest Gump

A few years ago I was siting in the dining hall at Jackson's Mill (nation's first state 4-H camp) describing a few of my political adventures in the 60's and 70's.   One of the listeners said, "you're like Forest Gump...you were everywhere in the 60's!"   So just for purposes of listing, (not intending to drop names, but just list the people I met and places I was at:

1. Chicago Democratic Convention Demonstration (mentioned anonymously as urban guerilla in Chicago Tribune)
2. Woodstock (produced and printed poliltical newspaper decrying corporate cooptation of rock & roll.
3. Filmore East
4. Hitchhiked across country twice
5.Levitation of the Pentagon
6. 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice (Martin Luther King I have a dream speech)
7. 1965 March on Washington where SDS' Carl Ogeslby identified imperialism as the enemy.
8.Many concerts at Filmore East
9. Madison Wisconsin the summer Army Math Research Center blown up with unfortunate death....I was briefly held by FBI and questioned.
10. Arrested in Philadelphia 1967 demonstration by black students in Philadelphia over treatment of blacks in Phila. schools.   (Tough cop Frank Rizzo set the police loose on the demonstrators.)
11. Arrested at April 1969 Mobilization for Peace Rally in Central Park
12. Took Muddy Waters and his band for Mammer Jammers in Philadelphia 1968
13. As a goof, attended Young Americans for Freedom Rally in Madison Square Garden, 1964.   They were mostly responsible for nomination of Barry Goldwater for Pres.
14. Took over NYU printing presses during student strike.
15. Present on day after riots on streets in lower east side....holiday atmosphere of folks trading "liberated" goods.
16. Peace Press member in Los Angeles, 1971-4
17. Worked on Pentagon Papers defense producing weekly newspaper with Daniel Elsberg andTony Russo.
18. Worked on Elaine Brown (Black Panther Party) electoral campaigns in Oakland CA



People:
Abbie Hoffman
Jane Fonda
Dorothy Healey
Mario Savio
Muddy Waters
Otis Spann
Mike Bloomfield
Marge Piercy
Michael Harrington
Cornel West
Barbara Ehrenreich

I'll add to this as I remember more.

Who would you have put in the Cabinet?

I was recently bemoaning to a friend Obama's appointment of Lawrence Summers, Roahm Emanuel and others of their ilk as his leadership team.   The friend asked, "Who else knew how to deal with the crisis."  Seems like a reasonable question which I was not knowledgeable enough to answer.   I do remember that during the campaign Austan Goolsby was Obama's economic spokesman.   He would have made a great sec'y of treasury>

Whom do you think Obama should have nominated?

Garden Song ...Dave Mallett

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
'Til the rain comes tumbling down

Pulling weeds and pickin' stones
Man is made from dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
'Cause the time is close at hand
Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature's chain
To my body and my brain
To the music from the land

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
'Til the rain comes tumbling down

Plant your rows straight and long
Thicker than with pray'r and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her love and care
Old crow watchin' hungrily
From his perch in yonder tree
In my garden I'm as free
As that feathered thief up there

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless the seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
'Til the rain comes tumbling down

'Til the rain comes tumbling down

Boys Will be Cowboys

In my LA political activist days (not to say activism has ceased) I met several times with Jane Fonda because of her work in the Indochina Peace Campaign. It's a long time ago, so I hope I'm getting this story right that she told:

Her father used to play poker with some of the other cowboy actors:   John Wayne, John Ford, Ronald Reagan.   Apparently they would dress up in full cowboy gear and toy guns when they played.  

When I first heard this story I thought,  "How Ridiculous!"   Now that I've indulged my own male poker ritual in Morgantown for nearly 20 years, I have a softer view of.. ..."kinda' sounds like fun."

General Store

A recent NY Times article described the decline of the child's picture books.   Expense to produce is one side, but more importantly is parents' presumption that pushing kids to read is important for their future (despite evidence of the importance of picture books to childrens' developmental progress.)

I recall vividly spending literally hours staring at some of my childrens' picture books.   My Golden Book of Childrens' poems was wonderfully illustrated.  I recall one picture of Ogen Nash's poem about Belinda and the "cowardly" dragon.  Another from the same  book was the illustration for the Owl and the Pussycat...all sea green and sparkly.

The picture I spent the most time looking at was of a poem about a general store.   The picture was full of so many objects.   I kept going over it identifying and naming and thinking about each item in the picture:  tools, clothes, candy, dishes, all in rich Norman Rockwell style realism and colors.  The picture was so rich with different "things"  that I could occupy myself focusing on one at a time, thinking about its purpose and uses.   But most of all marveling at the richness and splendor of so many things all in one place!   So much to see!   And if I were in the store, so much to touch!

For the time I spent with that picture,  I inhabited that world.  While words could take me on a journey, the journey is not as sensual as that of these pictures.  The picture world became surrounding with color and light.   I hope kids never lose that experience.    And video games don't get it either, because the imagination does not need to work.