The Ballad of Old Sparky

Thou shalt not live within thy means

Nor on plain water and raw greens.

     If thou must choose

Between the chances, choose the odd;

Read The New Yorker, trust in God;

     And take short views.

—W. H. Auden, “Under Which Lyre: A Reactionary Tract for the Times” (1946)

Life is like a pomegranate.

Eat it out of hand you should not,

     But have no fear,

Disassembly, the usual key,

Is easily done with industry,

     And it’s right there.

For starters, ditch those mouthy ways.

Never in a month of Tuesdays

     Will you succeed

In winning the prize that you desire

Stoking the pyre with pants on fire.

     And there’s no need!

Second, why not suck it up?

Let acceptance grease your cup.

     Enjoy that sip.

Worried by the corrupt “deep state”?

Winning’s surely not that great!

     Let go your grip!

Vengeance, saith the Lord, is mine.

Human bitching ends in time

     And fades real fast.

Time to retire the cool blue suit;

That orange outfit sure is cute.

     It's sure to last!

It never is much use whining.

Hot Hand Daddy in Ossining?

     Don’t want to bore:

There’d be a movie, sure as shit,

You'd play yourself—that genius bit!

Quoth Sparky,* “Nevermore?”

*See https://youtu.be/f-4Z5igKBAs?feature=shared. He was a bad conductor.

New Light on the Secret of Life

The chief product of the biosphere— life’s mighty sea

—is feeling. Manufacturing this GDP

leaves us humans stunned. No quantum computer

will, in an eternity, “learn” to feel, and we

pathetic creatures are faced with a cruel deal:

in our forebrains, sly anticipations lurk,

which great far-sighted Pain will one day put to work.

There are, of course, other monies—butterflies, bees,

birds, flowers, trees, children’s smiles, Mozart’s symphonies,

Cole Porter’s songs … and love—but suffering’s the reserve

currency everywhere accepted; as deferred

payments’ common scrip, it cannot be rejected.

Hurt though "to get it over with" is consumed too

soon (a sage argued that it feeds the sickle moon);

pain’s always needed and has to be devisèd,

our great human skill is how to realize it!

The trick is pay no heed to what you know you lack,

take one step boldly forward; then, take two back:

in wartime, peace, romance, and sexual congress,

this fatal little dance will speedily depress;

humans are born, bred up, and skilled in grievous gain,

we charge stuff till it hurts, in slow or faster lane.

There’s no denying this, my fair befuddled mutts.

Go on, then, kick those Others’ sorry butts!

Note: Georges Gurdjieff was the sage who said that suffering “goes to feed the moon.” See https://nickoller.com/work/food-for-the-moon.php.

No Big Deal on Voukourestiou Street

No Big Deal on Voukourestiou Street

For the usual suspects: I soliti ignoti

Spring 1967

Tanks treading the broad avenue below

Lykavittos Hill, home that we then knew,

I woke to marches on the radio:

I’d slept clean through the wretched Colonels' coup!

Quel drag! Our plans left little more to do:

bags packed, Akdeniz anchored in the Bay—

but conscripts’ fixed bayonets now bluntly blocked our way.

“You go back to your country;[1] we must stay,”

said Mr. T, my Spartan landlord, whom a railroad

had once hired (then pensioned) in the USA.

He kept his Yankee passport snugly stowed,

so that its thin blue line discreetly showed,

in the top pocket of his shirt—and got . . .

sought, I imagine, to convey . . . but perhaps not.

Returned once more from Sicily, I’d gone

to a movie downtown and chanced to see

film of USS Forrestal at Phaleron,

with Pattakos,[2] the Junta’s bald Telly

Savalas double (“Kojak” of the NYPD?),

shaking hands, amid faked grins à gogo,                                   

with the admiral, Jack K. Beling, U.S. supremo.[3]

From the movie house, a great sigh arose.

America’s blessing dished out that way,

one could no more hopefully suppose

that the “Colonels” might “just go away.”

They’d clearly lucked into a lengthy stay!

We all in unison sighed in our rows.

What price the Cold War contumacy of “us” and “they”?

And now the gathering fog of mayhem!

I’d once been a guest on that carrier too,

and not presuming any “us” or “them,”

I asked Mac, a pilot I’d met, who knew

—he’d flown an A-4 Skyhawk in Vietnam:

“What’s it like, then, when you’re in combat?”

Grinning, a Rolling Thunder Cheshire cat,

he reached for the right words: “What can I say? It’s fun!”

After the news, L'armata Brancaleone,

“Lion Paw’s Army,” the main distraction,

if cocked-up commedia dell’arte scarcely

saved by il Mattatore,[4] had more traction

than double-speaking Pentagon jaw-jaw.

The movie itself’s no big deal—only

its chorus sticks in my memory’s craw,

Englished: “Lion, Lion, Lion! Paw, Paw, Paw.[5]

[1] South Africa.

[2] Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos, one of the three principal figures in the Junta that came to power in the 1967 coup (and later expelled Peter Dreyer and Jon Cloud van Leuven, editors of the Mediterranean review Omphalos, from Greece). Long Imprisoned for treason after the fall of the Junta in 1974, Pattakos died in 2016 aged 104.

[3] Captain John Kingsman Beling (to give him his rank on that occasion) was a second-generation Sinhalese Burgher American and may have been discriminated against as such. After being promoted to rear admiral in 1968, and put in command a carrier battle group, his orders were cancelled by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and he was sidelined to command of a naval air station in Iceland.

[4]  The film’s protagonist Vittorio Gassman, known in Italy as il Mattatore (“the Matador,” or starring performer).

[5] The Italian chant in Mario Monicelli's 1966 film L'armata Brancaleone (“Lion Paw's Army”) and its sequel, Brancaleone alle Crociate (“Lion Paw the Crusader”) runs: “Branca, Branca, Branca! Leone, Leone, Leone!” L'armata Brancaleone  was screened at the historic Pallas Theatre, Odos Voukourestiou 5.