by Rick Young | May 31, 2019 | Poem
Is the dandelion a flower, herb or weed?
The answer could be strictly in the beholder’s eye.
One thing that’s for sure, it’s got a light and fuzzy seed.
Windy days can see a haze of dandies in the sky.
They’re natives of Eurasia, though they’ve made homes everywhere.
Unlike some other plants, they’re not invasive.
They work against erosion, mine for gold, give ground some air.
And one need only look: they’re not evasive.
They’ll just stand there in the grass when young and brightly yellow.
I observed my father dig them up and make them gone.
Seeing them pop up in spring would surely kill his mellow.
Though it wasn’t big, he thought the world of his damned lawn.
I especially liked it when they aged enough to fly,
would blow the seeds off, chanting them away.
In that respect, I guess, it was first plant to get me high.
The first of many, I can hear some say.
by Rick Young | May 30, 2019 | List
A Frank Blair (1915) hologram
bleakly announces the death of Sun Ra (’93).
So opens the new Howard Hawks (1896) film,
a bizarre new take on the murder of Joan of Arc in 1431,
starring Keir Dullea (1936) and Michael J. Pollard (1936)
as a conjoined-twins version of the heroine, voiced by Mel Blanc (1908),
whose last vision is of Jimi Hendrix at Berkeley (1970),
the great lefty axeman portrayed by Stepin Fetchit (1892)
in a marvel of editing. An uncredited walk on by Clint Walker (1927)
as Turk Lown (1924) relieves tension and leads to the final gasp
as Gayle Sayers (1943) and Lydell Mitchell (1949) arise from the pyre
as Joan’s conjoined souls and are transplanted into the bodies of
Mike Sadek (1946) and Mike LaCoss (1956) as life’s eternal battery.
Somewhere in the mix, Max Carey dies (’76).
He is played, with lifelike precision, by John Felske (1942).
Joan’s song vocals by Idina Menzel (1971).
“Hymn To Sun Ra” by Ceelo Green (1974).
The movie is dedicated to the memory of Claude Pepper (d. ’89).
by Rick Young | May 29, 2019 | Song
I got a canker in Sri Lanka.
I got a blister on K-2.
I thought I might go mad
in old Islamabad.
But I never got sick of you.
You could insult me for an hour,
then make me laugh for two.
You’d join me in the shower
if I wore one shoe.
I got a thousand itches
and I hate me some bitches.
There’s one I really loathe in Timbuktu.
You served me whey and curds
and made me eat my words.
But I never got sick of you.
You put me through my paces,
hooked me up with braces,
made both bad and good dreams
all come true.
It busted up my pride
and made me hot inside.
But I never got sick of you.
by Rick Young | May 28, 2019 | Poem
I moved my king two squares
and he fell off the world.
The queen did scream, of course.
She’d just had her hair curled.
It was a shocking scene of gravity,
a startling moment of depravity.
Bishops, knights in castles,
all pleaded with their pawns:
keep attackers off the middle,
manicure the lawns.
Of late I’ve seen no mate
and must assume a draw.
The board is square.
It is not fair.
Roundness should be law.
by Rick Young | May 27, 2019 | Poem
The small window had a curtain
made of checkered blue pajamas.
Outside, in the verdant hills,
there lingered packs of llamas.
It might be South America,
it might be Mexico.
Judging by our only view,
perhaps we’d never know.
Day and night, from overhead,
we’d hear the airplanes roar.
We’d certainly run out to see them
if we had a door.
Inside were boxes of stored food
and other life provisions.
We kept time upon the wall
by making small incisions.
For days on end we stared out
at the land beyond the bars.
Never saw a sign of people,
buildings, roads or cars.
We had two cots, two chairs,
and one small bucket for our loo.
Our life came down to staring at
that square of checkered blue.
