Month: October 2023

My All-Time Top-Ten Favorite Albums, Until I Decide Differently

As of 10/22/23

1.) The Beatles — Revolver
2.) The Anthology of American Folk Music
3.) Yes — Fragile
4.)Siouxsie and the Banshees — Juju
5.) The Beatles — s/t (The White Album)
6.) Sex Pistols — Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
7,) George Harrison — All Things Must Pass
8.) John Lennon — Plastic Ono Band
9.) Yes — Tales From Topographic Oceans
10.) Buzzcocks — Another Music in a Different Kitchen

Honorable Mention:
Pink Floyd — Saucerful of Secrets
Paul and Linda McCartney — Ram

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This is me trying to give my life-long top ten. I’m still exploring, so this is still subject to change. So many Beatles thingies on this list…

I am in a proggy phase right now, hence all the Beatles and the Yes stuff. Maybe at some point I will post an all-time favorite Prog albums, which I think the Beatles may not appear on (well, maybe Revolver will show up, because I think that is the original prog album!)

Thoughts, 10/16/23

Somewhere in the distance,
The sound of thunder
Shakes the ground
Banishing the snakes
Under what could soon be
Israel’s newest neighborhood.

Last week,
Hamas took 200 hostages.
It still has them.
They killed 1400 Israelis.
In response,
The Israelis have killed
2750 Palestinians
As of yesterday.

There’s always tomorrow.
Except for the children of Gaza.
What does their tomorrow look like?
Terror breeds terror.

MSNBC has three Muslim anchors:
Their greatest experts on this ongoing conflict
They’ve taken all three off the air.

A Florida Congressman, Brian Mast
Turned up on the house floor
Wearing an IDF uniform.

Maybe that’s him giving cover
To Rashida Tlaib’s Palestinian flag
Which stands outside her office door.

I saw a cockroach
In an editorial cartoon
With a Palestinian face;
A big brown boot
Hovered above it
With the letters
“IDF”
Emblazoned across it.

Truth is the first casualty.

But here is something true:
Israel operates an open-air prison
With over 2 million inmates
–Half of them children–
Which it is now bombing
Again, an action
An Israeli security expert has called
“Mowing the grass.”

This is the exact
Opposite sentiment
Of Whitman’s use
Of this same metaphor.

Grass as life.

Outside my window
A fog is hanging thickly
Above my home’s
Beautiful lawn.

We have been
Letting it become
A meadow.
I have been letting
The grass become long,
Luxurious, and uncontrolled.

There are snakes out there.
I’ve seen them.

Snakes strike when cornered.
Shall we destroy snakes?

But the snakes in my meadow
Are not my enemies.
They do what snakes do.
Catch insects.
Sun themselves.
Make holes in my yard.

But if I had rattlesnakes,
Or cottonmouths,
Or cobras in my yard,
I would only want to rid myself
Of that which is venomous.
Not the bunnies.
Not even the skunks.

But in the fenced-in yard
Called Gaza,
White phosphorus rains down
On the innocent,
And the tractors that will
Mow that lawn
Idle at the ready.

Again:
For the children of Gaza
What will tomorrow look like?