The Sunday Paper...

The Sunday Paper... 

We were watching the Sunday Morning show on CBS,

A Sunday tradition of ours,

Her passing comment took me back decades;

"Like in the Sunday Paper..."

I remember a time when you were lucky,

Maybe a single gas station in town was open,

Family and friends home together.

The expanded comics section was in color rather than black and white,

"The funny papers" some called them.

The arts and theater for the week listed in all their glory,

Reviews and previews.

The local community section with local accomplishments and festivals,

Who won the bake-off,

The local boy who my officer,

College and high school graduations and weddings,

Honorees,

Exotic vacations townspeople were taking.

Himtan interests were the best,

How to keep blacksmithy alive,

Or cutting ice on the river fifty years ago,

Maybe how a new museum was being planned.

Of course there was a gossip section too.

The best days of another era.

AquarianM

© 09/29/2019

By: Daniel A. Stafford

The Pits...

The Pits... 

As my Mother used to say,

"Sometimes in life you get cherries,

Other times it's just the pits."

What was never mentioned;

Sometimes those small hard things might just crack a tooth,

Yet with a little effort and a lot of luck...

Well,

Cherry trees are large,

Fruitful,

Beautiful in bloom.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 09/27/2019

The Scent Of The Grind...

The Scent Of The Grind... 

The beans spill into the hopper,

As I spin the handle in and antique tradition,

The scent washes over me,

Serenity and satisfaction falling,

Ground down and landing in a brown paper bag,

Old-school air freshener,

That rich brown,

Percolator-bound brown gold.

For a few days,

I have the best-smelling garage on the planet.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 09/25/2017

Tarash Sparau...

Tarash Sparau...

There is an ancient name,
They say it was sung by the last summer winds,
In chorus with the stormy gales of autumn,
Tarash Sparau,
The Song In The Breeze,
A magical creature of a season's moment,
The essence of the edge of summer and fall,
She wears a cloak of many colors,
It's vista is that of summer flowers,
Dancing with the turning leaves,
As the season turns all tawny and fire,
Last vestiges of soft pastel and brilliant riots,
Tarash Sparau's cool laughter in grey clouds,
Billowing pillows in the vast sky dimming,
There when mortals are not seeing the wood for the trees,
With their leaves of flaming crimson and yellow gold,
As the leaves broadcast the sunset of the season,
Tarash Sparau bears the horn of plenty,
Carrying it to now hale Autumn,
And Tarash Sparau's fine cloak of colors,
Whipping and flapping in changing breezes,
Resembles owls in the woods,
Or sometimes flocks of blackbirds upon the wing,
And this year Tarash Sparau cries crystal tears,
Raining from her pale sunset eyes,
For her sweet sister Summer is stained crimson,
And Angels with Soul Catchers surround her abed,
Dark eyed and solemn as they await a winter of the spirit,
Their halos of golden light offset by black feathered wings,
Their eyes all a mist for the duty they bear,
For again men's souls have taken the chill of Winter,
Haughty and cold and bringing endings with no remorse,
They have become minions of the Ice Queen,
Their souls puppets on strings in a frozen celestial lair,
And sweet Summer has wept herself to sleep,
Verde, Summer, buenos notches, y vaya con Dios,
Sleep in the arms of God,
Your sweet sister Primavera,
Oh angelic Spring and her gentle blue eyes,
Had no ill winds sweeping through her wild blown hair,
No, Tarash Sparau is bade by Autumn,
"Carry the prayers of men to the council of angels,
Let God's own ear hear the plight and wailing voices."
As an angel cups palms 'round every lit candle,
Tarash Sparau sings her tearful message,
Begging for kindness upon the ears of all,
Or at least all with a heart to hear.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A.Stafford
(C) 09/25/2001

Author's Comments:
I feel a sadness in the passing of summer, even more
than in so many years before, because this year,
winter took hearts and froze them still so long before
their time should ever have come, and those chill
hearts that have lost all mercy and caring wish to bring
more death into the world. I wish their eyes could see
visions of the summer's sweetness instead.

American Corn...

American Corn...

Cheesey,

Embellished,

Kitschy,

Ticky-tacky knic-knac,

I love all these roadsides,

Waving brash history's hat,

It's all fascinating,

The stories of bygone days,

The glories of our bric-a-brac.

Polish up the bullhorn,

Paint up a new sign,

Print it in the paper,

Blogs and social media,

Everywhere you can think and find,

Radio and TV,

Podcast and YouTube,

It's all very well.

Bring out the children,

Animals and local celebrities,

Old coaches and whistling trains.

From the world's largest ketchup bottle,

To castles in death valley,

Mining caves and ghost towns,

Cotton candy and carnivals,

Snap crackle and pop,

I love American Corn.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 09/22/2019

Author's Note:

Inspired by adventures with my wife, remembered through Huell Howser.

https://www.kcet.org/shows/californias-gold-with-huell-howser/episodes/wedding-of-the-waters

The Great Spinning...

The Great Spinning... 

To cover our nakedness,

The first cloth was long-ago spun.

All of life is made up of vortices,

Perhaps everything in the Great All must spin.

Every galaxy in the universe has been spinning since the beginning of time,

Just as do the planets around the Sun,

Jupiter's great Red Spot,

Saturn's majestic rings.

Water down a drain mirrors currents in the seas,

Winds and waves swirling and twirling,

So too tornadoes and hurricanes.

Sound waves spin the air,

Like pressure sculptures invisible.

Love is a vortex always reaching for our center,

Epic whet a brief tornado,

Endless jet stream,

Or brief Summer zephyr,

Leaving us forever changed.

Lies must also be spun,

Like a spider's web,

They are sticky and difficult to maintain,

Anchoring their author in time and place,

Often destroyed by larger forces.

Just as maple seed and Autumn leaves spin to the ground,

So too I imagine the breath in our lungs,

The blood in our veins.

Even electrons and atomic particles spin,

Made up of spinning quarks and magnetic fields.

I imagine other universes spin in dimensions we cannot see,

Perhaps meeting at the center of black holes.

The seasons and our lives exist because things spin,

Even rays of light and snowflakes wind their ways to their destinations.

Perhaps that's why I wrote this in cursive,

My pen spinning to the Muse's lovely tune.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 09/22/2019

Did They Bury Candyo In A Car?

Did They Bury Candyo In A Car? 

So the music died again this week,

Another splinter universe created,

A place of fewer songs.

If all the Earth is salted,

Are there still places for a Muse to land,

Ears not too tired to hear a subtle whisper on the wind?

The guitars are dusty,

And I have to go back to work tomorrow.

My soul says "Let's go."

AquarianM

© 09/15/2019

By: Daniel A. Stafford

Author's Note:

I just got word of Ric from The Cars passing away this evening.

I Hear A River...

I Hear A River... 

It is easy to imagine sound as a river,

With all its twists,

Changes in pitch,

Gentle or fierce.

I hear silence as the river.

Bounded by banks of sound,

Silence flows deep or shallow,

Shaping and giving meaning to the landscape of sound.

It is the silence at the end of our course that returns to an ocean of void,

Carrying the dust of our ending into the depths of eternal quiet.

When the silence evaporates,

We are found back upon its river,

Recycled once again.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 02/10/2019

Dream Visions...

Dream Visions is an antique book of sheet music that I purchased many years ago. It's a series of waltzes. I love the cover art.

I scanned the cover many years ago:

I love the idea of using this with a poem at some point.

Dan

Antiquity Went Green...

Antiquity Went Green... 

In the verdant springtime of mankind,

The world was lush and rich with life,

Varied of color and shape,

Wealthy with the force of life.

Then the coins came,

Were swallowed by peasants and bankers,

The wee folk loved shiny objects,

Lusted for bread without labor,

A trick of magic.

Nobility was crafted out of gold cloth,

Inedible,

Inexorable.

A masterful game of death and darkness,

Playing charades of light and glitter,

A Mardi Gras masquerade,

Unleashing softly-covered breasts and treasures,

Of every description and nature,

A trick of light and sorcery,

Woven into the fabric of language.

What a dark psychic poison it is.

Sloth begets a lust for shiny baubles,

The most ancient of psyops,

Infowars from the infancy of Humanity.

Can you imagine life without the language of the bank?

How much of every tongue would require excision,

How much mental space would need vacation?

I can easily see a green new deal,

It existed before we did.

It's why we are,

Likely to be why we were,

Failing a recognition of the dream as the nightmare.

Rasputin was legend,

Mesmer fabled.

They pale under the gleam of gold and silver,

The ringing song of coin and register.

Wake up,

Make a bed of swaying boughs,

The singing rustle of leaves,

The swaying of flowers and buzzing of bees,

The rise and set of the Sun.

Go back to the green and bury the gold.

May Day, May Day, May Day!

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 05/01/2019

Battle Cry...

Battle Cry... 

It used to shriek and ding,

Now it softly groans om,

The drumbeat of sleepy feet,

Never truly rested,

Off again to be tested.

Pet the cats,

Slip on slippers,

Start the coffee,

Set out clean clothes,

Brush and shower,

Master the comb.

Dress and button,

Zip and tie,

Pour the pot,

Kiss on the fly,

Hop in the truck,

Turn the key.

Flip on the radio,

Start up Maps,

She reads me directions,

Where the traffic is at.

Tick-tock-tick,

I'm racing away,

I won't slow down,

Not 'til the end of the day.

Every which way,

My attention is split,

In fours and threes,

There's never enough of me,

Slap and dash,

Fire of the moment,

A job truly well-done,

That's way back in history.

Produce with the least,

That's the new American battle cry!

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 04/24/2019

Wistful Thinking - Columbia...

Wistful Thinking - Columbia... 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(name)

The people's goddess,

Part caricature,

Lady Liberty's elder sister,

Protector in spirit of the Underdog,

She is wrapped in an archaic and tattered flag,

Threadbare and mud-stained,

With blood at her feet.

What happens when goddesses are all but forgotten?

Rot, 

Decay,

Withered trunk,

Yellowed laurel leaves,

Yet with life under the soil,

Roots precariously alive.

She walks limping with a cane,

Sleeping under bridges,

A thousand purple hearts jangling her tattered pockets,

Thousands more littering ditches and landfills.

All for a lack of unity,

A missing depth of compassion,

The carnival barkers' auctioning of the great society.

Ghostly tears wash through tracks of concrete dust,

The bridges and railroads crumbling about her head,

A cloudy wreath for a dull halo.

The empty towns her feet have trudged,

Lifeless soil and vanished insects,

Frankencrops tended by robotic tractors,

Flaming faucets in delapidated farm houses,

The empty backyard swings rusting to nothing.

There used to be promise and honesty in a plow,

Eggs on tables and fish in creeks,

A land of an abundant future.

Columbia is humbled by the seashore,

Microplastic tatters falling from her dishevelled raiments,

Waiting for us all to look up from our screens,

Actually see our neighbors and our world.

Long ago it was said all that glitters is not gold,

But I think everyone has forgotten.

United we stand,

Out of many are one,

So it was said.

We were all once American,

And Columbia was our darling.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 04/14/2019

Melodic Nostalgia...

Melodic Nostalgia... 

Sometimes they come to me,

An ear-worm in a box frame of faded memory,

Playing over and over in my head,

Bringing me to the haunting days of youth,

An iridescent shimmer tinged with yellowed age,

Seen through misty rose-colored glasses.

I wonder who will sing these songs in ages to come,

As snippets slip from my lips in moments of early-morning reverie.

I thought many were forgotten,

Now I know there are hidden corners in my head,

Treasure boxes faded with time,

Priceless and ephemeral.

There are rose gardens tucked away in Southwestern ghost towns,

Rose rustlers occasionally visit for lost treasures,

Forgotten flowers from long ago.

Are we all the rose rustlers of musical history?

Break the burning silence of sunrise,

Perhaps you'll know,

Especially if the tune is light and easy to carry.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 04/12/2019

Old Songs And Karaoke...

Old Songs And Karaoke...

I was told as an early teenager that I sang like a frog,

Of course that crack made me jump back in the pond,

Not so much as a croak for decades,

Young egos are like silly putty,

Soft and pliable,

Unless I was alone in the car.

As a young child I loved Elvis movies,

So did my brother and sister,

Pretty melodies,

Pretty girls,

Pretty cars and boats,

Wide-eyed poet child with open ears.

My childhood hero faded,

We moved,

Other music was everywhere,

So were books,

Along with pre-teen angst,

That longing to fit in,

Somewhere,

Somehow.

Decades passed,

A chance vacation with my pretty wife,

An Elvis CD in a rack,

And the King sang to us all the way home.

It all flooded back,

That simple joy.

Soon the King rode with me to work,

And back,

My new voice coach,

My old childhood friend.

A wayward karaoke party,

Elvis in the list,

So the frog hopped back out,

Maybe not a prince,

Maybe more than a croak,

But I still love it,

An old secret passion,

Some right-brain splash on a left-brain world.

Those rusty old pipes still work a little,

Who knew?

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 04/08/2019

Boing-Boing-Bang!

Boing-Boing-Bang!

How I long for the internet of yesteryear,

The simplicity and easy read,

The uncomplicated pages and sweet graphics,

The possibility of depth,

Of unbroken concentration.

Today's American web,

It's like NASCAR on methamphetamine,

Fast,

Likely to crash into the crowd,

So highly unstable.

In the UK they remember the better age,

The worth of a long read,

A slow afternoon and a good story.

I think the Ferenghi have invaded Earth,

Flash boom bah,

Boing boing bang,

Click-bait poison,

And I have to ask now,

Do I still have your attention?

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

(C) 02/08/2019

Touch O' The Night...

Touch O' The Night...

The constellation Orion snapped with a Galaxy S10.

They say space is the final frontier,
I'd have to agree,
Whether it's an innie or an outie,
Thinking about it in the average Jane and Joe's context,
Well that's tantamount to navel-gazing,
But pleasant.

It's the wee hours again,
So here I am playing in the poetic garden,
Dancing with my old friends,
It's not often the gate's left open these days,
But I'll take a sip of dreams when I can get it.

I need that quiet,
That recharge,
The drop in stimuli,
All flight depends upon it.

At least I got to look up for a bit,
Before Monday's alarm sounds,
Cool as it is that I made it play Om.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 03/31/2019

Alien Holiday...

Alien Holiday...

Are elves really green?

I mean,

Like Vulcans in love,

Crazy in a strange and magical way,

Driven to toy-making as a form of exotic release?

Is it a sleigh or a saucer,

And reindeer or Cheshire cats in reindeer suits,

Wearing bells and antigravity boots?

Be it a pipe or a sonic screwdriver,

That bottomless bag of presents,

Well,

From around here,

Not are they.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 12/15/2018

Circular History...

Circular History...

I dream of esoteric knowledge lost to the steel march of Rome,

Of Druids among trees,

Branches burned by empire,

A dusty mirror of Europe lost,

Reflecting still today,

A sullen angle of greed amok.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 01/04/2019

A Tree Of Celebration...

A Tree Of Celebration...

Rooted in the lower world,

Land of spirits and ghosts,

Loved ones from seasons past,

Their stories remembered once again.

Ground beneath blanketed,

With snow and a great sharing,

The bounty of this year given,

With love and joy wished to all.

The stars and spirts circle up to the heavens,

Spinning about the pole star,

All beautiful,

Tucked away in boughs and branches of reality,

Or out at the edges shining.

Past,

Present,

Future,

Mystical and mundane,

All in Spirit are one.

Love rules this Universe,

Vision helps us ride it,

And today we must see and send to all.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 12/24/2018

Nearing Solstice...

Nearing Solstice...

A cool crisp night,

Sharp pretty stars hidden by charcoal clouds,

I sit outside with a jacket,

Shivering out poetry to the scent of a quiet cigar.

I need poems in my life,

I need these quiet moments,

A brief bubble in which my soul can echo,

And commune with those riding this wavelength,

Taking a pen and weaving the frayed threads of life into wonder.

It's here in this space that I can recharge,

Vent the pent-up artistry this world devalues,

Salute my peers,

Distance myself from the dog-eat-dog,

Dream of bourbon and nog.

There are mysteries deeper and deeper,

What is and what lies underneath,

Reconnection to the Universal,

Unformed by the blasphemous treason of human desires,

Simply be and be me in the world I would wish.

Perhaps if I could see it vividly enough,

Write it clearly enough,

A world that values love and compassion might emerge,

A vision of a future of light.

So much we could do,

If only I could somehow share the gift of Thor's hammer,

The electricity of insight,

Meant to build rather than batter.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 12/14/2018