GO-slow Party

No longer obfuscating
things done under Dubya,
radical Republicans play
GO-slow Party, saying:

“Let’s do...Nothing!”
about global warming,
about health-care
costing anything.

The less they do now,
the more they block;
the more they block,
the worse things get.


(10 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v4

Life Goes

If allowed to, Life goes on.
Where it goes depends on
much I haven't thot of
but also much I have.
While living my Life, I think
it lives inside & around me.
When I die, I'll find out
if & how my Life goes on...
if my Life goes...where I go...


(06 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v7

Looking for No (now take a deep breath, exhaling) Trouble

A friend of mine has just come back home to S.F. after a stressful year+ of working in the federal appeals court system in Louisville KY, and is now doing zen meditation & Pilates/cardio. Over 70, she's been told by the instructor she already looks 65. Why? Stress-reduction. I think I, too, can finally see the virtuous stress-vanishing point of zen&yoga (as carolin used to say) - "Don't go looking for trouble" but rather instead: Go looking for No (now take a deep-breath, exhaling) Trouble. For the last few years I've written heart-stressing poetry (against the Bad Guys, esp. Cheney&Co.), so maybe it's finally time for me to also learn how to write some heart-healing poetry (for myself, as one of the Good Guys.) My heart & I deserve this life-saving break. "2 stents" (below, post of Thurs Nov. 26 ) is my 1st poem of this type. My therapist has just asked my permission to use it in his practice; I'm glad to hear that I've written a 'healing' poem! Perhaps I can use it to help heal myself!

Short-poem version of above:

Carolin often warned me
not to "go looking for trouble"
& I almost never listened to her;

now, after my heart-attack,
I'm finally looking for No More
(now take a deep breath, exhaling)

Trouble.

(05 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA) 

hunning

When my children Maya & Alex (both now 45) were in grammar-school (in the '70s) in Brookline MA, an upscale town next to Boston, they often used the slang word ‘hunning’ to mean overdoing anything physically: visualize Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the role of Conan the Barbarian, presumably a Dark Age Hunnic tribesman. I finally realize (at 67) that I’ve been mentally & physically 'hunning' since 17; my recent angioplasty & stents have brought me to a sober realization that I can't 'hun' anymore with impunity. I've been told by the cardiologist that did the angioplasty not to overexert myself, & not to lift over 10 lbs (which my Maine 'coon cat' Reggie probably weighs by now). That's a dynamic restriction I never expected to have to observe, so it finally makes me cautious about my long-ingrained habit of 'hunning' as truly dangerous to my heart & life. This may seem banal to some of you reading this, but this serious realization has come late in my life, at an age my father didn't live to see (he died at 64.5 in 1976, of a cerebral haemorrage caused by high BP he had never bothered to have diagosed & treated.) I, however, have been treated for high BP since the '70s (beginning at Harvard Vanguard HMO in Wellesley MA) & I'm still alive to say so. Now my 'hunning' must be confronted & eliminated...in all the usual ways, but this time, by me.

Thanksgiving biochemistry

Turkey’s L-tryptophan
travels in our bloodstream
from our digestive system
to our brain, changing
into serotonin,
calming us down,
helping us sleep.
It only makes us snooze
if eaten w/out amino acids;
but turkey-protein contains
amino acids, so why
do we snooze so?

(01 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v2

2 stents

With 2 stents slid
in2 my heart, my body's
micro-tune's changed:

its tone's different: lay
your head on my chest
& listen...

(27 NOV 09, Thanksgiving Day, Santa Clara CA)v4
"Lay...chest" thanks to Norcal poet Karl Kadie.

cUPPa COCOA

Sipping hot cocoa
after waking in Fall
in lightly chilly Norcal,

all my memories of
New England's chill
evaporate mercifully

abovea cUPPa cocoa.

(19 NOV 09, Santa Clara CA)v7