Visions of Sugar Plums



Christmas went off extremely well...babes very happy with gifts...mom scores! My living room is still looks like Christmas morning though. No place to store all the goodies. I'm thinking lots of shelving in the bedroom is the solution...Jr.? Come help me put it up! I'm going to a poetry party in Harlem tonight. Can't think what I'm going to wear as I'm the size of a small planet and everything I have makes me look fat. New Year's resolution: join Weight Watchers and stop eating chocolate at 3:00 a.m. Oh yes, and find a new job that doesn't pay slave wages. Went out with colleagues after work to say goodbye to Eugene who we all love and who is destined for greener pastures. Eugene was the first person I saw when I came in every morning and always had a cheery greeting. I am going to miss that boy; and not just because he was a fount of legal knowledge and everybody's go to guy. People are leaving Binder in droves. I'm the last person left from my training session last year. MUST GET OUT!! Even the lawyers are trying to escape. As Eugene loved Johnny Cash, this post is for him:

Folsom Prison Blues

I hear the train a comin'
It's rolling round the bend
And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when,
I'm stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin' on
But that train keeps a rollin' on down to San Antone..
When I was just a baby my mama told me. Son,
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die
When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry..

I bet there's rich folks eating in a fancy dining car
They're probably drinkin' coffee and smoking big cigars.
Well I know I had it coming, I know I can't be free
But those people keep a movin'
And that's what tortures me...

Well if they freed me from this prison,
If that railroad train was mine
I bet I'd move it on a little farther down the line
Far from Folsom prison, that's where I want to stay
And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away.....

Christmas is Coming!



Holiday cheer to all! Reasons to feel festive: I am not at work; I finished Xmas shopping after running around like a crazed animal Friday night and yesterday; I got a very cool Zombie Guide to Zen from my buddy Jamie at work; subversive secret Santa went off without me getting caught out by the Binder Nazi Management (I was the ringleader and we had been forbidden to engage in Secret Santa); my daughter put Lindor Truffles on her Christmas list (she's ten); and Jr. and I just reminisced about when she decorated me as a Christmas tree and took a picture in 1978. I love Christmas! Special thanks to Jogi for sending me a Santa finger puppet to decorate my mangled finger with.

Last weekend was little mama's birthday sleep-over and it went off very well. Heard whispering in the middle of the night, "eat more candy so you don't fall asleep." Pinata was especially fun in our little apt., it broke off it's plastic ring and fell off the mop handle I was dangling it from so I let the girls do a mob attack and then dive on candy and little monster finger puppets to jam into their Enchanted loot bags. We had seen Enchanted earlier and I was pleasantly surprised; it was clever and funny.

I'm trying to think of a Christmas poem other than The Night Before Christmas to post here. I think I will search around and put some good ones below...Joni Mitchell comes immediately to mind...Noel Noel!

River

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Oh, I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby say goodbye

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Joni Mitchell


Back

We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again

like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home.

I can find my way back. I know
I will recognize the store
where I used to buy milk and gas.

I remember the house and barn,
the rake, the blue cups and plates,
the Russian novels I loved so much,

and the black silk nightgown
that he once thrust
into the toe of my Christmas stocking.

Jane Kenyon


Napping on the Greyhound

It's Christmas Eve in Texas.
Your bored self is outside the bus
running barefoot on the red shale.
The bus wheezes with the slushy road.
Sage and collapsed yucca, snow snagged
on the barbed-wire fences;
you close one eye.
Outside leaping over boulders,
your bored self stares in at itself sleeping.
The big-headed yucca, helpless as fresh born,
are uncovered in the blizzard.
They are quiet as happy birds.
"Inscrutable inhabitants," say shy visitors
from Planet Zizz. "Very tasteful antennae."

Ruth Stone


Christmas Card to Grace Hartigan


There's no holly, but there is

the glass and granite towers

and the white stone lions

and the pale violet clouds. And

the great tree of balls in

Rockefeller Plaza is public.


Christmas is green and general

like all great works of the

imagination, swelling from minute

private sentiments in the desert,

a wreath around our intimacy

like children's voices in a park.


For red there is our blood

which, like your smile, must be

protected from spilling into

generality by secret meanings,

the lipstick of life hidden

in a handbag against violations.

Christmas is the time of cold air

but in our hearts flames flicker

answeringly, as on old-fashioned

trees. I would rather the house

burn down than our flames go out.


Frank O'Hara

Happy Birthday Emily and Other Stuff



Help! The cable is out and the children are entertaining themselves with rousing choruses of the Poo Poo Pee Pee Sandwich song. over and over and over and over. Only 8:30, bed time a million hours away. Must remain calm.

Christmas time is closing in...tree up and decorated and much shopping to still do. And Missy K's sleep over birthday party is Saturday. Game plan: pick up girls, take for pizza, take girls to see Enchanted (oh boy), take girls back to house for sleep over...birthday cake, candy, DVDs, and some species of party game. Party favors this year are reindeer antler headbands with Christmas bells. Are you guys bored yet? Must also find place for The Boy to stay while girly party is in full swing. Hopefully Jr. will come and help her sister entertain kiddies...makeovers and manicures again.

Okay, enough of that. I am boring myself now. What else is going on? Yesterday was Emily Dickinson's birthday. A man in England faked his own death and tried to plead amnesia five years after his supposed drowning. Despite the cleverness of this plan, he was arrested. A woman at work is from St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida) and we have been discussing Russian poets. We both love Ahkmatova. She used to have a summer home near Ahkmatova's grave. One of the new writers is from England, Yorkshire I think. Nice guy who hates Binder like all right thinking employees do. He used to be a cop in London.

I'm out of practice here. Mr. Jack needs to check his homework on the school website (which he tells me now at 8:53 pm), so I'm off.

Always Mine!


839

Always Mine!
No more Vacation!
Term of Light this Day begun!
Failless as the fair rotation
Of the Seasons and the Sun.

Old the Grace, but new the Subjects—
Old, indeed, the East,
Yet upon His Purple Programme
Every Dawn, is first.

Emily Dickinson