Backstage "Our Town" Dressed as the dead Emily and wearing the top hat of Sam Craig 

The Daughter of the Erl King in November with her second cousin Chloe 

With the Daughter of the Erl King

Red Rose

A Lecture on Heidegger

Heidegger, laboring late one night
discovered selbtsbegebenheit.
And later, in his lonely room,
beneath his bed, his sinngebung.

And all the lonely years spent fearing
that he'd never find the sacred clearing
where Being waited for Becoming
were healed by his bold hermeneutic.
(A thing he found most therapeutic
along with an obsessive thumbing
of ancient volumes pre-Socratic).

With metaphysics wearing thin
he examined our man Hölderlin.
At a loss for words he didn't panic
relying on his tongue Germanic
to bring his deepest thoughts to light
(und zo he gave us Sein und Zeit).

His ferverent hope that all would see
things phenomenosologically
led him to unceremoniously beg
that it was all still unterweg
sur sprache, that most eloquent sign
and exclusive purview of Dasein.

Zuhandenheit, Vorhandenheit
I really couldn't care.
Besorge and Fursorge!
Always and Everywhere!

Umgang, Ausgang, now we're really rollin'!
At last, but not least, there's gewissenhabenwollen!

Timothy O'Smith

Eisenbahnwagenlebenvirsicherunggeschellschaft.

Eisenbahnwagenlebenvirsicherunggeschellschaft.
Is German for "The Railroad Life Insurance Business"
I don't even want to laugh.
And they are telling US about isness?.
"Arbeit Mach Frei."
Makes me want to lay down and die.
In fact, none of them exterminatin' languages
Has any reason for Being.
Which eliminates most all.
Startin' with the Indo European.
We gotta pick, we gotta, one language to die in.
Maybe Navajo? I choose Hawaian.
Komoniwannalayyou. Ilakalittlenookie.
I might even pay you. I think we could speak Wookie.
Oh, what is that sound I hear of Being and Becoming?
It's only the soldiers dear, the soldiers coming.


The Poet Goethe

The poet Goethe was well hung
He didn't need no Weltanschaung.
Didn't need it since er war ein Kind
Dreaming the far Tamarind.
Or dreaming on the skull of Schiller
Seeming to compose a thriller.
"More light," he cried on his death bed.
"More light is what I need," he said.


Uncle Joe Ignores Hegel

Onto said to Theo
"You just have to believe, oh.
"Theo said to Onto"
Get out of here pronto.
"And my Uncle Joe took a sailor to his room!
Boom a lay Boom a lay Boom a lay Boom!

Onto said "Heidegger."
Theo said "Quite meagre."
And my Uncle Joe took a sailor to his room!
Boom a lay Boom a lay Boom a lay Boom!


Selbstkunst

I love making up them fake German words
Though Eisenbahnwagenlebenvirsicherunggeschellschaft.is real.
Still the word "Selbstkunst" has a certain Teuton appeal.
Like what you would apply to a guy like Eminem
Denied access to the Eternal Feminine
And stuck with the usual ranting
Like Hegeling or Kanting.
Selbstkunst Selbstkunst everywhere
Fair is foul and foul is fair.


Scottish Philosophy

There was a young man from Carlyle
Who was magnificently ept at denial
When leaking his Being
He said I'm just peeing
And offered to all a sad smile.

Wittgenstein bereft of is

Wittgenstein bereft of is
Watched all that isness whiz.
Forlorn, bereft, you know, because
He knew what a wiz that isness was.

He stayed up night after night
And thought about that.
No light! No light!
Meowed Schroedinger's cat.

The Song of the Sledded Polack

"As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.'
Tis strange"

Hamlet Act 1, Scene 1

Our town is "Our Town"
Rescuing Polacks from snowdrifts happens most days.

Poem Written at Twenty Below

The Song of the Sledded Polack

I'm that perseverent Pole. The Yellow Knife drifter.
The poor sledded Polack. I ain't no grifter.
My plan of attack is to keep coming back.
Won't you please? Won't you please? Just give me a lift, sir?

Yes, I'm that very Polack as Shakespeare has written:
That was once on the ice by King Claudius smitten.
Now I'm up here inYellow Knife stuck in a drift.
Won't you please, kind friend, please give me a lift?

Drygulched and fordone by that stinking Dane, Claudius
Yet, heaven forfend, tell me where the party is.
Give me 10 bucks and get me out of this drift.
A poor freezing Polack on the midnight shift.

I'm pure Polanaise. I should be dancing a minuet
Stuck here in Yellow Knife and I'm not very Inuit.
Yes, I'm here now but it's where you gotta go:
A ghost of a ghost alone in the snow.

I'm that perseverent Pole. The Yellow Knife drifter.
The poor sledded Polack. I ain't no grifter.
My plan of attack is to keep coming back.
Won't you please? Won't you please just give me a lift, sir?

The Sledded Polack 

Bell Book and Candle

I always liked Kim Novak
In “Bell Book and Candle”
Curled up on that couch
Which you would describe as
Immensely red but you are wrong
For the colors that show best by candlelight
Are (she tells you) white, carnation and
And a kind of sea water green
And Pyewacket that lucky cat
Curled up next to you green eyes
And a sardonic glance
And you reach for the silver cigarette lighter
Man, you are as shaky as Jimmy Stewart
And it is Christmas! Christmas!
And you know she is a witch and
You want to ask her
Why she well.. has a tree…
Let the roomAbound in light especially
Colored and varied
Or something like that.
Witch? Christmas?
And she gets up and is on
Tiptoes placing the ornament just so
(“oes and spangs as they are of no great cost”)
On the tree and she knows what you are
Looking at.
She knows.
Christmas? But if you ask she’ll say
Something like“The best art is general”
Which, really, you haven’t heard before
And she turns and the doors to the balcony
Open and snow swirls you out and you
Are both on the balcony. Manhattan!
And you know that Gene Kelly is
There somewhere feeling just a bit blue
But will anyway dance his way into
Someone’s heart tonight and snow is
Steepling on the Chrysler Building and
There is giant impossible yellow moon
And she is there and you

Know this poem ain’t going to end the way
You want it to.

That Lucky Cat 

The Ballad of Duane (Actual Photo!)

"I have to go now. I'll call you tomorrow.
When I'll be on the top of Mount Kilamanjaro!"
My wife's eyes became moist. "Oh that was poor Duane."
I put down my pen and said "The poor fellow's insane."
Five years ago when I came on the scene.
She confessed to poor Duane "Oh, I love Joe Green"
The poor guy took it hard and tried to forget he
Ran to the mountains with the yaks and the Yeti.
"I've finished my sonnet." "Oh, I love you, Joe!"
And poor Duane tried to sleep in the wind and the snow.

Poor Fellow 

The Lonliest Ranger

...is glad to be here.