DREAM HEADLINE

 Newspaper headline in a dream last night:

7 INCHES OF SNOW EXPECTED IN BURBANK

MORE MEMORIES

 
There're no photos of my mother (the class of the clan who I adored) and me without one or more of my siblings around. Here's a good example c. 1954. Me in Hawaiin shirt with my three brothers to my right, Franciscan friar Father Campion (Tommy) behind our mother, music teacher Buddy (James), his wife Catherine with their baby Cathy down in front, and cop Robert, leaning over his wife Sis (Marie).

In front of me is my Grandma Dempsey, my mother's mother who lived with us, and my sisters Irene and Joan (with pixie haircut), our dad sitting on the arm of our couch. I grew up in a crowd. 

JUNE 1ST EVENT

 i don’t do poetry readings in person any more

or even go to them or other public events,

there’s too many challenges, physical (weak voice

and tightening jaw, muddling pronunciation,

urgent unexpected needs, etc.) and mental

(anxiety, confusion etc.) from parkinson’s

and that 2009 brain operation for the tapeworm

that got into my brain and died and they had to

go in and cut out (which I never explicitly named

to not put that image in my youngest’s child’s

and grandchildren’s heads, or other loved ones,

but now, with the kennedy revelation it’s in

everyone’s heads, so i can name it)

but

i was asked to take part in an event with my oldest son Miles

so

I’ll be doing my best to read some poetry of mine

(and  to make it more of a challenge)

with improvised music by Sound For

(featuring Wes Buckley, Brian Kantor, and Miles Lally)

Saturday June 1st at 5pm

at

Familiar Trees 

80 Railroad St.

Great Barrington, MA

01230

if you’re in or around the berkshires then

i’d love to see you there

MEMORIES

 
The way members of my clan watched our new thirteen inch black-and-white TV when I was a kid. That's me in front, my sister Joan behind me, my next door cousin Marylynn in white with our down-the-street cousin Micki behind her, and our next town (Orange) cousin Rosemary behind Micki, and on the couch my mom and Aunt Rose, a widowed single parent to Rosemary (Rose had a day job so Rosemary spent most of her time with us), and my brother Robert. There's also my mother's mother who lived with us and more siblings and cousins out of frame.

PAUL AUSTER R.I.P.

 

We met in 1970s NYC, and discovered we grew up in the same town in Jersey but on different sides of it, and at slightly different times (he's five years younger). Despite my sometimes arrogant persona, he seemed always friendly and tolerant and a little amused by my relentless attempts to share the truth I thought only I could decipher.

I liked him, his writing, and like everyone else, his sexy smokey eyes. My favorite book is his INVENTION OF SOLITUDE, maybe because he writes about the town that made us homeboys of sorts, but with two distinctly different perspectives. Grateful to have known him. Condolences to his family, friends, and many fans.

BREATH CONTROL 12/80

So grateful that John Newt sent me this recording of me in my prime (1980, at 38) reading some of my poems and a story, demonstrating the breath control I learned from studying Frank Sinatra's and John Coltrane's techniques. 

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HERITAGE UPDATE

My maternal grandfather, Tom Dempsey, died when I was a little boy, but I remember him. I knew he was known as "the silver thrush" for his singing and that he had owned a tavern in Newark where he and my grandma Dempsey lived until she was widowed and moved in with us. 

But I never realized he was actually a vaudeville headliner back in the 1800s until my niece Lisa shared scrapbooks handed down to her mother, my sister Irene, and I saw these programs. What a delight to now picture my grandfather when watching classic movies with vaudeville scenes, like YANKEE DOODLE DANDY or GYPSY et al.