August 2017 – Remnants of the Ancients

Now for Something Completely Different… Shamisen Edition

Instead of poetry, I thought I would upload a video to YouTube of me playing my version of Kodo by the Yoshida Bros. Now, it’s not perfect and the sound is pretty bad, but it took me so many takes to get that much of it right. As for the sunglass, they make me cool and I also dropped my real glasses in Sky Pond. For those of you who don’t know what the shamisen is, I not only encourage you to watch my video, but check out some of my favorites by much better players:

Kodo as played by Yoshida Bros.
Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi actually made good by Kyle Abbot and friends,
The classic Rokudan as played by Kevin Kmetz (he played some of the shamisen pieces for Kubo and the Two Strings)
A couple of nice ladies kicking ass under some cherry blossoms

And there are plenty of others. Together, we can make shamisen cool.

That’s Gypsy, our cat, in the picture (and briefly in the video at 45 sec or so). She’s not really a fan of shamisen as she tells me every time I play.

Reading at Innisfree

I want to invite anyone in the Boulder CO area to a reading of Remnants of the Ancients at Innisfree Poetry Bookstore and Cafe. The event is Tuesday, September 5th at 6:00 pm. For those who can’t attend, I hope to record the reading and post it.

Devious Little Shit

Devious Little Shit

I stopped believing in the heart

Don’t worry, I don’t

Not since I severed that artery

But sometimes,

I swear I hear it scurry into the bush

On a brutal warm night, or when a cold bitter sun

Spits icicles in my face

Then I can’t think because the discomfort and the pain

Or I can’t breathe because she’s walking past

And her smell wakes it up

And it starts slurping that vile fluid again

Get back in, you vermin!

Or I’ll tear you out for good

And leave you splattered on the roadside

Listen to me go on

Of course, this is just ridiculous since the heart is for blood

And I live in the brain

We All Like Peace Like North Koreans Do (with exception for our great leaders)

I First conceived of this poem when my wife and I went to Germany. Maybe it’s because I’m mostly German, and here I was in the motherland looking at monuments to what my distant kinsmen fought for. I thinks it’s original title was “Cowardice and Narcissism at the thought of Defending the Homeland.” It was a working title.

So to the men and women who do defend the homeland, may you do better than me, and may those who speak for your lives do the same.

I Love Peace Like Everyone Does

Me, an army man?

No, I’m a pacifist, I think

I’m all for MLK, Gandhi, and

Hippies aren’t bad people

I can be a patriot, descent is patriotic

Even if my flag doesn’t fit me

My countrymen don’t really belong to me

So yeah, it’d make me better, tougher

A real disciplined kind of guy:

Soldier boy, soldier boy

Stiff and prim

When he’s shipped home

They will say of him

“He was ever so good

“The best of Corps men.

“He never once ever

“Shifted in his grave.”

Ah, they don’t need me

I’m better off back home

But I know it, one day

I know it in my teeth

They’ll conscript me up

And send me off to some bunk

In some God-damned hole

And I’d like to be brave, I would

But me, I know me

First chance, I’d be gone

Faced with the slaughter, I couldn’t take it

Witness to the ascension of a thousand souls

And me just one

A bit of fun with Math!

Here’s a real sweet one about a couple of lovely functions, real useful. But we physicist and mathematician let them out every once in a while.

The Closeness Felt by f(x) = ln(x) for g(x)=√x on the Interval x∈ [2,8]

Ain’t it just so warm and dandy

Walk’n here like strips of candy

I tell you what, it feels like fate

Here in the park ‘twixt two and eight

You o’er me, indeterminate

Picnic-blanket division cut

We’ll stay together, here as one

Infinity would be our son

About that limit we approach

L`Hôpital is in the coach

Says we zero eventually

We gotta end math’matically

Sure a’nuff, we’ll have to schism

Just like the roots of that log-rhythm

Beyond the path, we go our ways

With independent better days

But darlin’ don’t ya sweat that stuff

Derivatives are close enough

Ge’metric’ly, we sitt’n fine

Our vector-val’a’s got the time

Let’s integrate high in the sky

The gentle slope field float’n by

With no constraints, we are immense

Up to the end square-bracket fence