Good-bye, Poetry Month, 04-30-2023

 It's the last day of poetry month, so I offer this tanka:

I miss my nightly wine

but it’s clear that I must 

be my own savior,

change it to water 

most evenings.

Robert Loomis, 09-09-2022

Keepin' On

Poetry Month is winding down, so here's a prose poem. I hope you enjoy it!

Keepin' On

It all came out better than might've been expected, blessed really, considering the constant squirming and mental chaffing against the reins of common sense. Could've been much worse. Now I pray for even more time outside the rat race. Vague guilt. What should I do to repay this sumptuous repast, this feast at life's vast table, this gathering of angels lost and found, this beast of all possible worlds, this many-versed blues ballad, this epiphany of joy and sorrow? Keep on singing, keep on playing, just keep on keepin' on!

By Bob Loomis, 2023

Poetry Month #2: Fan Man

Fan Man is a reference to a William Kotzwinkle novel that was very popular in the 1970s. More about that after this:

FAN MAN
By Bob Loomis
04-17-2023

I had a
good one
late
last night but
I let
it
get away.
Why do
I always
let ‘em get
away? OK
I confess:
a big streak
of yellow
do-nothingness
has always been
the spinal lack
in my
having done
so
little.
I tend to
drift away
into sleep
right when
The Muse
begins to whisper
in my ear.
I’m a regular
Fan Man
when it comes
to staying awake
long enough
to make
dream
reality.

From Wikipedia: The Fan Man is a cult comic novel published in 1974 by the American writer William Kotzwinkle. It is told in stream-of-consciousness style by the narrator, Horse Badorties (the titular "fan man"), a down-at-the-heels hippie living a life of drug-fueled befuddlement in New York City c. 1970. The book is written in a colorful, vernacular "hippie-speak" and tells the story of the main character's hapless attempts to put together a benefit concert featuring his own hand-picked choir of 15-year-old girls.

Horse is a somewhat tragic, though humorous, character with echoes of other famous characters in popular culture such as Reverend Jim Ignatowski of Taxi fame. In his inability to follow anything through to completion he displays symptoms of attention-deficit disorder though this could equally be drug-induced. His defining characteristic is his joy in renting or commandeering apartments which he fills with street-scavenged junk articles until, full to bursting, he moves on to his next "pad". The name "fan man" is a reference to another of his traits; the collecting and selling of fans of all shapes and sizes. The book's most memorably absurd section is the chapter titled "Dorky Day" which features the repetitive statement of the word "dorky" by Horse as a cathartic mantra to dispel the ennui of a dead-end day.

Poetry Month: My Tanka/Prose Piece

It's Poetry Month, so the following is my tanka/prose piece published in the Winter 2023 issue of Ribbons, the Tanka Society of America's quarterly magazine. I hope you enjoy it. And here's a link to information about Ribbons and TSA:

https://www.tankasocietyofamerica.org/home

Saturday's Child Redux: The Oregon Coast And You

This is a redo of one of my Saturday's Child songs originally written in 2013. The chorus and a verse came to me while we were in Cannon Beach, OR. I hope you enjoy it!
https://soundcloud.com/bob-loomis/the-oregon-coast-and-you