The Different Madonna's

My wife is nice.

I like her.

She doesn't ask for much.

So when she does, I like to make it so.

Recently she became engrossed in a conversation with my daughter (while we were visiting the kid in Omaha) and the 2 began talking about how fun it would be to see the Madonna concert in November.

I knew as my wife and daughter discussed this that it would never happen.....the reason being that they are...how do I say this nicely?

They are both kinda cheap.

Sure they really wanted to go, b-u-t....perhaps it wasn't practical.

Anyways, I went down to the Excel Center box office and the "ticket guy" kinda chuckled when I said I wanted to tix for the Madonna show.

He wasn't a complete dick about it, he was just kinda surprised.

So I get the tickets, slide them into my pocket, and as I walked outside I thought to myself.......

Doesn't Finley have a wonder column about Madonna?

Well maybe not the same Madonna but...............

Submitted for your enjoyment....


"Bathtub Madonna"

by Michael Finley

Computer User Columnist

I noticed the other day that a neighbor had removed his statue of the Madonna from his bathtub shrine.

If you do not know what a bathtub shrine is, it is a shrine, generally Catholic, in which a statue, usually of Mary, sits in an alcove created by an old clawfoot bathtub sunk about half its length in dirt.

The impression one gets, looking at a bathtub shrine, is of the beatific statuette surrounded by an elliptical white aura, made of hard porcelain, hopefully without an etched gray ring.

In this case, it seemed to me that the statue might have been taken in for the winter. Ceramics crack easily in subzero temperatures, and nothing is less edifying than a holy figure exploded across an arctic lawn.

At the same time, seeing the shrine empty left me feeling empty -- that our intercessor had been taken in for the duration, and we would have to fend for ourselves until spring. Some intercessor, that can't withstand a little cold.

I know something about Mary, because I attended a minor seminary in 1963-64, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, the Kennedy assassination, and the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan. Every morning we rose at 5:30 to pray on hard kneelers before a statue of Mary. Our school was run by the Society of Mary, or Marists. I was 13 years old.

But even there, I would not rate the cult of Mary as being very intense, except among a couple of the prefects, who were awfully Italian and had that shiny-cheeked expression of fervent mama's boys. We said the rosary, and we honored her as the mother of the savior, but it was not a passion, as I imagine she would have to be to sink a 500-pound bathtub into your lawn.

It is common practice to make fun of things like this. I read my "Golden Bough." I know Mary is just a continuation of various nature queens, holdovers from pagan times. And I remember Tom Lehrer's song in the 1960s, "The Vatican Rag." It summed up for the secular mind the stupidity of the bric-a-brac, the "outer signs" of religion, dashboard Jesuses and clattering beads.

I, being guilty of intellectual pride from an early age, scorned all that stuff. It seemed to me that public, graven images were never as good as the images the mind privately gives rise to, much as television can't be as vivid as radio.

It becomes especially tough when the icons in question are cheesy -- like the pictures I see of Christ in religious bookstores, depicting him as a kind of beneficent white rock star, with a Miami Vice growth of beard and a quarterback's chiseled demeanor. What if Jesus was a little goofy-looking? What if he had a lazy eye or a snorting laugh?

I ask that not to be irreverent, but to overcome the obstacle that reverence imposes. Jesus shouldn’t have to look like George Clooney to be persuasive.

One thing I learned after I lost my child's faith, late in my 20s, was that it is possible to have excremental taste and still be a good person. In fact, I believe it gives you an edge -- because it is evidence you aren’t trying to impress with your air of Gnostic cool. The kindest, best-hearted people you know are always kind of cubist.

Another thing I have learned is that people need strings around their fingers. The reason we clip little nostrums and doggerel to refrigerators is because we accept that part of our condition is amnesia. Everything sweet and true to us seems to want to escape from our mental grasp. And being smarter doesn't make us the slightest bit smarter, really.

The point of an icon or talisman is to physically remind us of something. It is a form of magical learning. It asks us to see beyond the current array of bright crap to what is deeper and darker and more meaningful.

And if you are sunk perpetually in crap, you might never unclench that figure in your fist. Because its portent is potent: it's a nutty world, and the last, least person could tell the joke that saves us all.

Of course God loves us, which is to say, of course we are lovable, and good. So why don’t we believe that? Why don't we really believe that?

Why do we need to keep relearning it, week after week, and year after year?

Maybe the guy with the bathtub forgets it less often.

Happy Endings

Lately, I've been working on poems that have been influenced by Russia.

I'll end up telling you more about this in the future, i'm sure.....

But not too long ago I was writing a poem about the famous Muttnik Laika.

On one of my last days in Moscow, i saw on the news that they had made a statue of the 13 pound furball and placed it in a place of honor by one of their goverment buildings.

It was kind of a big deal.

The Russians very-very much hold a reverence for Laika, after all....she is the only living creature that has been sent into space with no hope of returning.

Many Americans and Brits have pointed fingers in the face of Russians as a whole, feeling that the sacrifice was barbaric and unwarrented.

Truth be told.....most of the Russian science team and project workers would agree.

THEY DID NOT WANT TO SHOOT THAT MUTT INTO SPACE.

But we live in a world with countries, religions and politics.

These components can almost always gaurentee sorrow.

The bottom line is after Sputnik #1 made the first space flight.....Nikita Khrushchev refused to take his foot off the pedal.

Khrushchev was hell bent on seeing if the Russians space craft could house a beating heart.

The scientists worked around the clock to slap together some Jimmy Rigged space contraption, but with a limited window of time, they didn't have anyway to put together a ship that could resurface into the atmosphere safely.

The scientics were sick about this. They loved Laika and the other Mutts they recruited from the Moscow dog pounds, often times they referred to them as their voiceless children.

Anyways, it was really important to me to capture the sorrow of the Russians who were forced into this horrible situation.

So like so many other hacks.....I too wrote a Laika poem.

I wrestled that poem like the Arch Angel Michael wrestled against God.

But finally I had my poem finished and sent it straight over to Finley.

I don't recall exactly what he said, but let me loosely paraphrase......

"Well.....well, it's pretty entry level for many reasons. Number one....if you are going to write about a historic event, just remember....we already know the story. We already know the outcome. so you have to approach common themes from uniques angles. Also, how did you end it? didn't you have the dog burning alive in a tin can? You never want to close a poem by putting your reader in a position of suffering. Don't make them regret that they invested the couple minutes they did to read your piece.

Instead, be clever, be curious. This is a big topic, but If I were writing it, I'd end the poem with the children laying out on the driveway or back yard hugging and petting the mutt."

WOW......I mean it, what genius.

Closing with explosions, death or suffocating hope in not only uncool, it's entry level.

I took Finleys suggestion, rewrote the piece, and within weeks it was published in a national poetry magizine.

This would have never happened if I didn't take Mike's strong advice.

So with that said, sit back...relax and enjoy -

MUTTNIK

Laika heard the children laughing
From what appeared to be a distant room
The most beautiful sound she ever woke to

When Victor brought her home from work last night
And took her straight to bed
It seemed natural to assume they were alone

Fraternizing was considered unprofessional
But this secret would remain safe
By this time tomorrow she would be gone

Boarded onto a tin can
Filled with rocket fuel and no parachute
All the more reason to break protocol

This is why the entire science team
And the launching crew
Held their tongues and looked away

While Victor escorted her
Off the project site
So her last day of freedom

Could be spent outdoors
Getting belly rubs
From his daughter

THE END

Avoiding the Finley Stick

When somebody has wisdom in a topic that is of interest to you, if you are anything like me, you try to tap every last ounce of it, down to the marrow.

But then there is always certain variables attached, right?

Variables like disagreeing, perception, lack of clarity.......

If there is one thing I have learned from Finley, just one thing....

It would have to be that if I want to be a good poet, I have to keep boiling excess off my poems.

Bad poets use too many words -

Bad poets get in the way of their message -

Bad poets don't understand the value in simplicity -

Bad poets roll in their emotional paint -

Anytime, everytime I try to get artsy with a poem, it's like Finley will stare at it (or any poets work that infuses extra drama for that matter) and shake his head while reminding me to "Cut the fat off and use words that people use in everyday conversation."

I gotta tell ya a secret, but you can't tell Mike, because if he finds out....he'll hunt me down and "WHACK" me with a tree brach, but sometimes I like words twisted together that don't make "Nut's and Bolt's" sense, but somehow evoke a mood.

A couple days ago I read a poem by Carl Sandburg that I don't understand. I really can't even decipher the jist, but somehow it makes me feel good and I don't know why.

Is this one of those zodiac deals?

Anyways, I'll share the poem with you, and if Finley ends up reading this posting, i would be interested in his opinion of 2 things.

#1 - what on Earth was Sandburg talking about here?

#2 - how would Finley have approached this piece?

Remember, as much as I worship Sandburg, he wasn't 1/2 the rebel poet Finley is.


My People

Carl Sandburg

MY people are gray,
Pigeon gray, dawn gray, storm gray.
I call them beautiful,
And I wonder where they are going.

Are Cloud Poems Possible?

Friday night I went with Finley to Mpls to watch some people we knew do a "presentation" at Patrick's Cabaret.

During the intermission, one of the troop told us that we should support this venue because artists performing there had no constraints.

Then our host went on to brag about how one of the previous performances was a dance troop, and rumors started to surface that at one point in this troops upcoming performance, one of the dancers was going to poop on stage.

Upon hearing this, I decided w/o hesitation, that perhaps I just wasn't cut out to be an artist then.

Shoot....if I were in prision, or a P.O.W. camp, I guess I kinda hope I wouldn't need to poop on their floors to make a point.

Anyways, the topic kinda creeped me out so I turned to Finley and stated.....

"Did you notice at the University Club's most recent reading, that 3 of the 7 presenters read about clouds?"

Finley thought about this for a second and stated.....

"Yep, you are correct, and a couple a people wrote about gravity as well."

I understood the "Gravity Poems", afterall....gravity is kinda interesting, and poets haven't been written about this topic thousands of times.

"You know I had a poem written about clouds in Rolling Stone way back in the day right?" Mike reminded me before continuing...

"They were short on copy, and my poem had just the right number of characters to fit and fill the page."

Then he went on to tell me how the poem was about flying on a jet, getting dinner, and after lifting that plastic lid off that covered his plate, he realized that he was being treated to cauliflower, and the cauliflower looked just like the clouds outside his window...yadda-yadda-yadda.

But then I went back to why would 3 of 7 readers choose an identical topic?

These people didn't discuss their body of work prior to the event, and clouds....has anybody ever done a good cloud poem?

Then I was reminded how recently a friend of mine (ours) Tim Nolan had actually placed a poem about clouds on his Facebook wall.

I did like a couple of the lines that Tim crafted, but I certainly wouldn't match that poems against his greatest works.

This comment opened the flood gate to Finley's sage wisdom...........

"I totally get what Nolan, or many of those writers were trying to do at the U-Club. sometimes a poet just wants to get back to the basics, to strip things down and start from scratch.

I give these people credit.

Nothing is harder than reaching a certain level of achievement, and then stepping backwards in the hope that you will eventually move forward again. There really aren't any gaurentees with stuff like that you know."

Finleys comments amused himself, and he began to chuckle while the emcee on the stage stopped talking about body functions so he could introduce 2 women who would dance, while another woman dragged herself across the stage with a walker.

Later Finley told me that I should write a poem about clouds.

I thought about it....for a second, and then I Googled the "C" word to find what past masters have done with this topic.


I wandered lonely as a cloud


I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


William Wordsworth

END OF POEM.......

Really?

If the best Wordsworth can come up with is..............

"Tossing their heads in sprightly dance"?

Maybe I'll just stick with Monkeys, Nuns and Food.

Mike Finley's Launching Pad

If I havent mentioned it, I was raised by a single mother.

A mother who was a hippie.

Like most kids, like most generations...I rebelled.

I swung my pendulem back to the conservitive side.

Truth be told, I always enjoyed anarchy,but I wanted mine to be what I thought was healthy.

I remember when I was a kid, I didn't understand why people wouldn't go to war.

Not only did I think it was unpatriotic, but I think I thought each person had a moral compass in their heart that told them they were wrong for not fighting.

I have no idea where those thoughts came from.

Maybe I just liked opposing my elders.

And to tell you the truth, if I got called, I'm guessing I'd go.

But as I've gotten older, I realize I didn't know anybody who went to war. I was too young.

I never saw first hand the price that was paid.

But like many of you, a stubbornness persisted in my thinking as I got older.

The roots sunk deep and were planted...for life.

When your number was drawn...you had to fight, to the death.

Or so I thought.

Years later, I stumbled into the first written item I had ever viewed by Mike Finley.

I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was standing in my kitchen and I got an envelope in the mail from him.

Finley has always been interesting in the way he communicates with people.

If he doesn't know you...often times he'll smile and be brief, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to move into your mind on a full time basis LOL.

The following piece changed me as a man, or how I think more than anything else I have ever read.

Ever......


MEMORIAL DAY

Just the other side of the airport, on a bluff overlooking the Minnesota River, is Fort Snelling National Cemetery. It's a classic military cemetery, with thousands of identical markers laid out like poppies in Flanders fields.

The cemetery abuts the area where I walk my dog, so I walk through there frequently. Few people buried there were killed in battle. If you served in the armed forces, it's your right to be interred here, and your spouse's.

I always pause a moment, when I see on the marker a death date between 1965 and 1972. And think: there but for the grace of God is me.

It takes me back to my experiences with the draft. I'm a little hazy on it. It was 1969, the haziest year of them all.

I was a hippie wannabee, full of contempt for LBJ and General Hershey. I had a dozen plans for my life, and none of them involved rice paddies. I remember toying with the idea of filing as a conscientious objector, but it didn't work for me. They asked you whether you?d attack Ho Chi Minh with a tire iron if you came upon him raping your Aunt Sally, and I had to admit I wasn't too hot on that idea.

When the Selective Service form asked if I wanted to overthrow the United States Government by force or violence, I wrote, "force."

I was what you?d call a nominal draft resister. I attended a few rallies and read everything disrespectful I could get my hands on. I read in Paul Krassner's magazine The Realist that your draft board had to file everything you sent them.

So I sent them a six-pound bonito, a handsome ocean fish I purchased at the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles. The idea was that the draft board would be helpless except to live with the stench of a decaying fish in their file cabinet. Instead — figure this — they drafted me.

I was in the U.S. Army, technically, for a couple of weeks, classified as AWOL. I wasn't even aware I'd been drafted; I was hiking around in Alaska at the time, away without leave, without a thought in my head, and only found out about my induction later.

Then I applied to the nearest college I could find — Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, also known as Pat Boone University — and hid there, cowering, under its ivied protection, until the lottery replaced the draft.

So I never went to Vietnam, and I never missed it. But the war was part of my life anyway. I took my childhood friend, Paul Plato, to his ship in San Pedro when he shipped out.

For a while I knew a couple of actual deserters in Los Angeles. They were a pair of goofy guys who claimed to have escaped from interment at The Presidio. I never believed their stories, but one night they were rousted from their beds and led off by MPs.

At my first high school reunion, I learned that our one fatality was Skeeter Barnes, a sweet kid from the wrong side of the tracks, who stepped on a land mine somewhere and was no more. We played Little League together when we were nine.

It is hard to say who was the coward and who was the hero. Poor Skeeter was no one's idea of a hero; he was just a poor dope who couldn?t work the system like I did. I thought I was an intellectual hero, full of higher ideals than flag and conscription, but I kept myself far from harm's way, didn?t I? One more thing I have in common with George W. Bush.

When I think of 56,000 of my generation tossed out there to die defending our Laugh-In way of life, I get blue. Thirty years later, it still hurts.

But there is one thing I would like to set straight. When the war ended, an urban legend popped up, claiming that our returning soldiers were routinely spat on by those who didn?t go, and called baby-killers. People who spread this awful story must have had an axe to grind: blame the defeat on the hippies and the liberals.

But I swear it never happened. Or if it happened on a couple of bizarre, sick occasions, they were anomalies. Vietnam vets suffered from a host of problems, from post-traumatic stress disorder and Agent Orange to unemployment in the stagflation of the 70s and early 80s. Many wondered where their reward was for the contribution they'd made. Where was their GI Bill?

What a terrible choice our country forced on a generation of boys: be good and die stupidly or be marked for life, or be smart and survive, but feel like a traitor to your own generation.

And I look at these graves at Fort Snelling, row on row on row on row, their gray faces from jet exhaust — and I want to salute.

THE END

Finley on the West Bank

Recently I stopped by Finley's house.

I kinda wanted to see his puppy.

When I got there, I noticed he had some poetry books pulled out for me to read.

The book on top of the pile had multiple pictures of the poet on it and I figured that it must be one of those "Life Work" collections, because 1/2 the pictures displayed this Charles Manson looking guy with long wild hair and a beard that was out of control.

In the other pictures the guy was bald, not completely, but he had one of those Friar Tuck hair horse shoes, and the beard was replaced by a manicured mustache.

Now he looked like Dr. Phil.

So I ask Finley if the book was just taking up space, or if there was anything particular I should read from it.

Mike said.....

"The guys name is Charles Potts, and back in the day he was a big thing. He came from California. I was holding a poetry event...remember this was years ago, back when I was going through some kind of a Chinese Alter Boy phase where every word that passed my lips had extreme purpose, but yeah....I'll bet I hung 6 or 7 note cards inviting people to attend. I tacked them to telephone poles. Potts saw one of the few people that showed up."

That was the end of the description.

I was forced to dig into the book to learn more.

But somehow Ol' Charlie Potts was going to have to wait.

Instead I just took a moment to picture Finley on the West Bank.

I wondered if this was the same time Bob Dylan was cutting his teeth in that neighborhood.

In a recent poll taken by beautiful people and V.I.P.'s. Mike Finley ranked as the Twins Cities #1 Rebel Poet.....and he's what....in his early 60's?

What was Finley really like when he was in his 20's?

Anyways....the book "The Portable Potts" was interesting. It has some unusual formatting that kept me off balance, but there was one poem in particular that struck a chord with me.

MOM AND DAD

I was raised in a desert by a father who
Believed I was somebody else's child
And a mothers conditional love

My mother had brains
And my father had guts
When I am good I'm using both

My mother was very sociable
Mt father did ten thousand things alone

My mother loved to spend money
My father wanted to invest
I've invested all our money
So there will be more to spend

My mother wanted to have a good time
My father wanted to survive
I survive by having a good time

I'm the predictable result of
The underlying structure of my life

THE END

I could talk about this poem for hours...call me!

Jack Pot Poems - Meet Christopher Title

On rare occasions, a guy gets lucky enough to stumble into a poem that what written about something they know about.

At this very moment, I am supposed to be on my way home from work, I can just envision my dogs sitting on the couch, smoking cigarettes with their legs crossed because they have to pee so bad.

But just when I was ready to shut down my computer for the day, I saw that Christopher Title had posted a poem on Facebook.

Mr. Title in many ways is the "Dark Horse" in the Twin Cities poetry community.

He knows all the players, but he doesn't spend much time trying to climb literary ladders, he doesn't need to, he has his own.

For a few years he has hosted a monthly reading series called The Barbaric Yawp.

This event takes place on Sunday nights in a coffee house in Saint Paul, and Finley swears that this space is the most conducive to such events.

The poets actually get to stand on a stage which is elevated.

When I have been fortunate to present there, the audience must think that there's the animated "Baker Poet" who loves to express himself by swinging his arms around...what they don't know is I'm secretly imagining that I'm some kind of dictator or misunderstood world leader LOL.

But all kidding aside, although the space is really nice, the people who attend each month are even nicer.

In poetry and prose circles, the fan base can be pretty unpredictable and flimsy, but the "YAWP Regulars" really love their leader.

I think I've mentioned Mr. Title in a previous post, in regard to the fact that he is all about Walt Whitman.

Every showcase is led off with Chris offering up several musings from his favorite poet.

Anyway....

So I see this newest poem that Title posted, and it is all about the Como Zoo in Saint Paul.

You can tell from Title's observations and comments that the miracle of these creatures brings him to a almost spiritual place.

But I don't think he q-u-i-t-e gets there until he ties these creatures glory into himself, his family, and the experience they just had.

I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but when my kids were growing up, we went to the site of this poem every other Saturday for years.

After reading this poem a couple of times, I actually kinda chuckled.

This is easily a topic I may have attempted, but now I know longer have to think about it, because I certainly don't have anything better to say about it than what Chris has already shared with us.


Field Trip
by Christopher Title


I think I saw God at the Como Zoo


in the Amur tiger’s greyhound-like hips

and in the ratty flank of Selam,

an old female orangutan from Sumatra.



I think I saw God in the enclosure

of the unconcerned big horn sheep,

among the rip rap dumped in the middle,

and there in the snow leopard’s tiny aquarium.



I think I saw God along with an upside down

table umbrella floating with the harbor seals

and near the single greater kudu hoofing

at the cracked dirt. This was not odd.



I think I saw God because I saw us

at the Como Zoo as we truly are,

an archipelago of stranded animals

without any other options, like sweat bees

living on puddles of melted popsicles.