I'd Like to Have a Silver Hat Please

• A colleague gave birth earlier this week and the baby died hours later and the news broke my fugue, sounds horrible, is true
• Earthgirl knit a hat in non-gendered colors, bright red with orange ears, for Colleague's new baby since my Colleague and spouse chose (as should you) not to know, two nights ago I texted a photo of the hat to my Colleague not knowing the baby had already died
• She texted back condolences for my new urns but did not mention her born child that died
• Also true: Earthgirl knit a hat for Richard and Aimee's child, the hat orange with bright red ears, years ago
• Richard sent photo of baby in orange hat at angle that obscured the red ears
• Earthgirl, shown photo, like, where are the red ears
• Richard, friend and good guy, sent funny barb back (more than once), photo proving he had not in fact de-eared the hat Earthgirl knit for his child
• I sent photo of hat Earthgirl knit for Colleague's baby to Colleague, hat rolled up and set on a PC left speaker like the hats my Colleague wears and also too what me and Colleague talk about other than work, music
• Colleague thanked me and asked me to thank Earthgirl after Colleague's just born child had died but I didn't know, I showed photo and thank you to Earthgirl, why did I roll the hat up, she asked
• Anyway
• Richard emailed me last night out of the blue, first time in months, a year
• Serendipity
• holyfuck
• broke my fugue

 


 

• Why do we get sad when robots die?
• Civilization v Barbarism
• A new Middle East?
• Motherfucking Christers
• Trump's collaborators
• Motherfucking crackers
• History of American nazi-punching 
• Motherfucking Democrats
• Motherfucking NPR
• I saw and heard a clip of Trump's new Crazy Bernie farts, I am telling you three times internal polling at both the Yankees and Red Sox front offices more pro-Bernie than anyone willing to say out loud
• Avedon Carol's occasional links 
• There have always been gangs in poetry
• I purposely do not have a tag *Serendipity* because jinx
• Poets in the age of surveillance
• I never minded when someone (most likely Elric) put on Rush but never put on Rush myself, but RIP Neil Peart 
• I need type the words *Richard Youngs* here and add the tag *Richard Youngs* to the post's tags since searching *Richard Youngs* on blog brings up none of all the songs I've posted

PERSONAL POEM

Frank O'Hara

Now when I walk around at lunchtime

I have only two charms in my pocket

an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me

and a bolt-head that broke off a packing case

when I was in Madrid the others never

brought me too much luck though they did

help keep me in New York against coercion

but now I'm happy for a time and interested

  

I walk through the luminous humidity

passing the House of Seagram with its wet

and its loungers and the construction to

the left that closed the sidewalk if

I ever get to be a construction worker

I'd like to have a silver hat please

and get to Moriarty's where I wait for

LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and

shaker the last five years my batting average

is .016 that's that, and LeRoi comes in

and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12

times last night outside birdland by a cop

a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible

disease but we don't give her one we

don't like terrible diseases, then

   

we go eat some fish and some ale it's

cool but crowded we don't like Lionel Trilling

we decide, we like Don Allen we don't like

Henry James so much we like Herman Melville

we don't want to be in the poets' walk in

San Francisco even we just want to be rich

and walk on girders in our silver hats

I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is

thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi

and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go

back to work happy at the thought possibly so