Blue Puppy.

This is a Soviet cartoon that came out when I was my daughter's age. It is in two parts and entirely in Russian. So watch if you speak it.

Stop!

Stop! and think once in a while

you have no reason to run away

you have nothing to fear but

you fear anyway and they say

that fear for fear's sake is in style

these days again so you're in a rut

and you think that being afraid

like every one else will make you

different somehow and lift you up

above your status but it's hard to do

because, I am sorry to say, I'm afraid

nothing's more common than fear so Stop!

In vino veritas.

They say there is truth in wine

While I don't know if that is true

It would be rude if I'd decline

To share a bottle of red with you

I reach for the past.

I reach for the past

but it does not reach for me

in return because the memory

has faded and is gone at last

It wants nothing to

do with me its buildings lie

in ruins covered by sand and I

have been long gone too

Et si tu n'existais pas.

This is a French song that I really liked when I was a kid. The singer's name, Joe Dassin, seemed strange to me at the time. Recently I learned that he was an American. This is a performance from 1973. Enjoy.

Felicita.

This is a video of Al Bano and Romina Power singing their song Felicita. Italian music was very popular in the Soviet Union when I was growing up. Now I can relive my childhood via YouTube. Enjoy.

I sing the body.

I sing the body eclectic

with all the bits and pieces

that comprise it.

I sing the little metal

gears that move back and

forth keeping time.

I sing the graceful hands

that display the obvious and

the not so obvious.

I sing the golden case

which houses the whole and

the sum of its parts.

I sing the body eclectic

because it is of my body.

I the undersigned.

I, the undersigned, upon running into you at a bookstore

will proceed to bore you with the details of my daily life

to which you are required to listen by the terms of this

rather poetic contract.

Then you, the undersigned, will proceed to regale me with

the details for your latest adventure in some exotic location

which I am required to imagine and envy because of my

inability to take such a trip.

At the conclusion of this transaction, we will depart each

other's company and proceed with our own rituals

carrying a little bit of the other with us.

If W.H. Auden.

If w.h. auden were william butler yeats,

his initials would be W. H. Y.

and who knows what torment

he would pour on the unsuspecting

heads of poor english majors.

Or if yeats were keats,

he would be romantic

and less prone to see

patterns where there are none.

Then he would be changed,

changed utterly and a terrible

beauty'd be born.

What about 2012?

This is a sign on the side of a camper advocating Christianity that is parked by the Bloomsburg Fair. It seems these people aren't familiar with the Mayan calendar.