dear US Airways

i left my socks on your plane
maybe you heard about it

it could have been the lack of sleep
i tried to get comfortable
i listened to the safety instructions and wanted to do it right and didn't inflate my life vest until i deplaned in philadelphia
i didn't know the plane had to crash or you couldn't use it
and wondered why the others didn't follow instructions

the guards were very nice
i did everything they said
and took my shoes off when i walked through that big magnet thing
that's when i saw i had no socks

i don't think anyone took them when i was sleeping
cause i didn't sleep much
they wouldn't let me back aboard to look for them
instead they gave me coffee

i thought i took everything with me when i "deplaned"
my shoes made it home and should fit again in a few days
thank you for the plane ride
i hope you find my socks

edit me?

friends,
i've got to get up in two hours and fly to the o on the ends and high in the middle
these people will take care of you now until i get over my jetblog, i mean jet lag
i'd have links on the right side of my blog, but i can't even remove the junk that is there, like what is that stuff? i need a ten year old computer wiz
my comment on the derby is: in the best interests of all, turn off your tv
there are interesting things coming out of your computer

if you're riding the road on your harley and you look over and see tom, don't ask him for a smoke.

she's been in mexico three quarters of a year and they still haven't named any churches after tanyariffic.

say, isn't that water coming out of the top of your head, giant waiting person?

righting history

fifteen years ago i used the restroom above angelo's coffee bar
with no sign, only regular patrons knew a bathroom was added
in a small room above in the building
that dates from the sixteenth century

to my surprise the stairs and turns and side rooms,
ceilings, walls and floors remained as they were made
i remember having been in awe of the old rooms
so well conserved in their original state

last week i asked to use the bathroom
my primary reason was to visit the space
and then perhaps return again to take photos

to my disappointment it had been modernized
the terra cotta floors replaced, the old wood and walls
painted over in haste
angelo had the money and perhaps a volunteer
and the intention of doing the few clients that go there
the favor of beautification, after all
it was looking quite out of time, hence out of place

unfortunately, what was done made a shabby renewal
this transformation is the fate of much of old roma
good intentions have destroyed the past
because anachronisms are odd

an outside table

a moderately large multitude, though i've seen more
on sunny roman mid-afternoons
its germans and the spanish now
seasons pass so soon

you'd think each country had an appointed time
to take in the sights and weather
for whatever group that next appears
they seem to come together

from a table outside of angelo's
i sipped my wine as they rushed by
numbering thousands by the hour
better them than i

this internet

I.
this internet
the new greatest show on earth
information galore
slimy, quick cheap, down and dirty
pivotal, pointed and prostituted

how much do you want
how much do you need
how much can you take
how much do you care

II.
a blog is something that must be worked
tilled and toiled over
not like paying money
to name a star after yourself

now ready for that
i'd rather stand by the sea
wait for a fish to jump
and say, "that one is jack"
(that one is me)

III.
this little piece of cyber space
i'm going to measure off as mine
then work on it, lay it out
to make it shine, shine, shine, shine, shine

on the streets

on a mission for pistachios
absorbed in filtered exhilaration by the beating heart of the city
i waited for a bus
i had on a black t-shirt
an artists bag over my shoulder

an italian couple approached
"do you have a cigarette?" he asked
i held up mine i was smoking and said, "this one. I'm quitting."
then she asked bus information to via nationale

a couple in a passing car stopped on the busy street to shout over a demand for directions to the termini
i must have looked like the information guy

then a pair of french women in passable italian wanted to know how to get to the coliseum as my bus, seventy, approached
theirs, the eighty-seven, was right behind
"take the eighty-seven" i pointed

the final query of the day came later as
i left the old esquilino market
this from an older unkempt guy holding something, a pamphlet?
i nodded him off when he asked if i was a roman

though i like to talk
what he had to say i didn't need
it is necessary to qualify even the inquisitors
while bearing the necessary resignation of existence
on the streets of roma

old corners

through turning alleys of old roma
weathered angles i know well
old corners repainted
some bearing visible repairs

around me italian faces change
yet remain the same over ages
above church bells chime the hours
rolling below the great river flows

perspective

born in the winter of forty-five
franklin roosevelt was still alive
had a pair of six-guns the day i turned five
that was a long time ago

When I was a kid my friend's grandmother kept her father's old civil war uniform cleaned and pressed, hanging in the closet. The memory got me thinking so I added it up recently and discovered I was born eighty years after Lincoln died. Sixteen years after Wyatt Earp died in 1929.

Now to put it into perspective for you, kid, because someday, someone will say to you "Wow, you were born B.G. Before Google."
Google began in 1996.
Let me hold your arm to steady you.

off-day

passed fontana di trevi and recalled
two weeks ago when friends were here
we were twelve deep from the rail
all the way around the fountain and down below
today you could have driven a large bus through there

a light-sprinkle off-day in roma
is like a cornfield after the first snowfall
the crows go home
to spend the day watching crow television
eating micro-crow popcorn

for tourists a sprinkle
creates a museum day