Recent Quintain Poems by Mike Garofalo

Quintain Poems by Mike Garofalo

Quintain Poetry Research

Pentastich Poetry

25 Steps and Beyond
The Collected Works of Mike Garofalo

 

740.

Reading Ted Berrigan's Sonnets
from 1964— a brainy Bore.
Muddled random tiny thoughts
absent of meaningfulness
scattered around on clumsy round floors.

Ideas popping like green popcorn
on the twisted streets of hip New York
pointless lines on pills of speed
running round dead orange olive trees
bizarre concoctions of decoying imagery.

In some ways silly FUN, like listening
to the confused chatter of a drugged insane
Prophet of impossible dry rain
mumbling inanities before the Cisco Kid.
Berrigan clearly not a clear Billy Collins.

 

741.

Sleepless in Sunset Suburbs

my mind working overtime:
a speeding bike without brakes
a rolling rock tumbling down
a super-alert consciousness drained
a can't-quit-motor speeding on

 

742.

Iran Bombed into Itself

Listening to the News
about the war in Iran:
Israel demolished the
Shi'a Regime's military, the
USA bombed it's nuclear sites.

I'm not upset to see Iranian
proxies and the Iranian Shi'a
Regime dismantled. Proxy
terrorists like Hamas, Hezbollah,
Levant, Baathists, [Sunni-Isis-Al-Qaeda]

Have openly stated their aims
to terrorize and destroy
Israel, the USA, and other Nations.
Good Riddance!
Likewise, our own Christian Nationalists

Seek to Rule us Secular Woke Folks.
But we don't need or want
More religious zealots In Charge;
Favoring a separation of Church and State,
Religions are often a violent disgrace.

700.

Common Sense
often not so common
and makes no sense—
the least common denominator
of stupidity simplified

    Used to justify
magically the dumbest
meanest cruelest acts
useless false opinions
selfish stupidity and lies

    Worshiped by self-righteous
solipsists bereft of any sense
of a real world bigger than 'I'.
Full of 'truths' empty of facts,
    willing to Kill to keep
their Fictions alive.

 

Cisco Kid Was a Friend of Mine

Poetry Workshop, Lesson 6/9/2025

Prompt: Write a poem about a favorite television program.

 

Title: Cisco Kid Was a Friend of Mine
By Mike Garofalo, 6/8/2024

 

Cisco Kid and Pancho
like the Lone Ranger and Tonto
like Hans Solo and Chewbacca,
helping the helpless,
fighting injustice faithfully
on horseback or in a Falcon spaceship,
showing up at the crime
always just on time
to save the downtrodden in a bind.

In 1953, growing up in ELA,
my neighborhood chums and I
watched the Cisco Kid on Saturday
on KTLA, channel 5.

Two cowboy vaqueros, Mexican caballeros,
at the edge of The Law, always moving on,
quasi-heroes like Robin Hood and his Merry Men,
admired by us in the
Bandini Barrio Hood.

They chased bad guy gringos,
corralled crooked cops,
and always came up on top.

Pancho rode Loco, Cisco rode Diablo,
loyal steeds,
carrying our anti-heroes
down dusty trails to do good deeds.
Horses, before Low Riders,
carried Southwestern Riders,
chewing grass not gas,
galloping bumbling Poncho
by cool Chico’s side.

One of the first TV series, in 1956,
in color on our tiny TV screens;
we saw our Mexican heroes shine.
Huge white sombrero hats to block the sun,
Chico in studded decorated ornate coats in black;
Pancho in checkered brown shirts and pants,
shiny leather holsters,
black pistoles,
dirty leather boots stomping in the sand.

Like Wild Bill and Jingles,
like Roy Rodgers and Brady on that
Nellie-Belle jeep;
Cisco and Pancho, especially Pancho
(Leo Carillo) made us laugh.
These jovial sidekicks
were essential to balance
the serious straight lead’s act.
Stereotypical Sidekick stumblers,
scatter-brained at times,
slow to get the drift,
loyal amigos in the mix.
They made us smile,
despite their mental limp.

We’d go on their adventures
glued to the boob tube,
until the final sendoff
by the two caballero dudes:

“Oh, Pancho.”
“Oh, Cisco, lets’ went.”

Poetry Workshop, Lesson 6/9/2025

Prompt: Write a poem about syntax.

 

Title: Syntactical-Semantical Diversions

By Mike Garofalo, 6/8/2024

 

Spanish can trick you:
adjectives after nouns,
pronouns and tenses
in complex verb endings
but consistent simple phonetic sounds.

 

He showed him trucks her
Ford red one favorited ran
Roads Saskatchewan on by slid
Syntax up messing not Rules
Ideas the get we somehow mind by

Object verb noun pronoun around twisted
blunders syntactical conflicted
like spellengs increct gve wey
tu menings implied toooo sey…
Yet, we figure it out in some way.

 

Double Negatives sometime don’t flounder
‘The pilot can’t find no place to land.’
‘I didn’t yell at nobody.’
Double Positives seldom work in English,
except maybe to express snide negatives
as in ‘Yeah. Right!’

 

Syntax facilitates semantics,
phonemes sing rhymes,
spelling correctly enhances meaning,
languages evolve over time.

 

I’m a hyper-texter by Trade,
sending words to other places of words,
to expand semantical contexts…
a new kind of syntax?

   The noun asked the adjective,
"Why do you speak of superficialities?"
    The adjective replied,
"Because your not very interesting
as a mere noun, unqualified."

 

    Streams of incoherence
Rivers of incomprehensibility
Oceans of meaninglessness—
    Occasional glimpses
of fools-gold in the poems.

 

Befuddled by
some poet's words
repeating rereads
increased the blur.
No pearl in the oyster.

Consumerist Identites

 

Consumerist Identities

By Mike Garofalo

I enjoyed days and days
studying the 'New York School' poets
like Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery
so carefully that
suddenly realized
not watched TV for a week
missing, regretfully, hours
of commercial advertising:

for new hair from Dr. Bosley
for drugs to end pain in the knees
for cars driving on empty streets
for fresh French fries from Burger King
for expensive jewelry for a wedding ring

and cuisine delivered in plastic pans
and cheap airline flights to Japan
and fun family adventures in Disneyland
and for cruise ship travel to old Holland

or upcoming sitcoms filled with laughs
or fertilizer sold by Irishmen for green grass
or young men to replace your car's broken glass
or free hospital services for children handicapped

some grocery deals from a Fred Meyer's store
some maids to hire to clean dirty floors
some dogs to save from abusive horrors
some promos about Trump the Savior

or pills to save me from dizzy spells
or new dresses worn by skinny girls
or new movies with walking dead ghouls
or churches selling band-aids to sorry souls.

Geeezzz! To think
about what I missed.
To buy, and buy, and buy
till my wallet's empty
and my edited mind
was hypnotized till blind.

The average American
watches 30 hours of TV per week,
that means watching 900 commercials
to rattle your dulled brain.
Add 24 hours of Internet surfing
per week, enough ads to
fry you fingers and your eyes.

Consumerism is now America's Identity.

But business is business,
a sales a sale, work is work, man to man,
a rocks a rock
::: tautologies:::

Turn the TV off!
Be Free!

25 Steps and Beyond: The Collected Works
By Mike Garofalo

The Sorry-Go-Round Goes Round (1951) and Round (2020)

The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety.  

By Alan Watts. (1915-1973)
Vintage, 1951, 153 pages.  

I first read this short collection of essays in 1962, then in 2000, and again in 2020.  His ideas and recommendations in this short book, and many other books and recorded lectures by Alan Watts, influenced me greatly in high school, college, and my adult life.  I heard him lecture while in college and I remember just laughing a lot with the young audience, and somehow being lifted up into intellectual sophistication.  His use of metaphors, analogies, examples, and humor is quite clever.  He is full of pithy, wise, and accurate observations; and, his thoughts are relevant in 2022.  His popular explanation of various philosophical and religious views sometimes wavers, falters, and misses the mark; however, he hits the mark more often than not.  

The main thrust of the book is that our lived experience, always in the present, does not provide us with evidence for an enduring self or soul.  That ideas and concepts are useful, but are not to be confused with the reality of our current experience.  That thinking and language can separate us from our existential body-mind.  That memories of past experiences or anticipation of future experiences may be misleading us about our true identity.  That since we cannot loose what we never had (an eternal, enduring, essential self/soul); our anxiety and insecurity should be dissolved by awareness of our actual experiences.  That science and technology are indeed useful, but may condition us in ways that cause more stress and anxiety.  That the fact that uncertainty and death are real, and how we should abandon hope in life being otherwise and being fundamentally insecure.  That American society is stumbling towards insecurity and unhappiness.  

His critiques of American social views and practices are very insightful, and still quite relevant:

     "Thus the "brainy" [over-emphasis of thinking over immediate direct experience] economy designed to produce this happiness is a fantastic vicious circle which must either manufacture more and more pleasures or collapse- providing a constant titillation of the ears, eyes, and nerve ends with incessant streams of almost inescapable noise and visual distractions.  The perfect "subject" [viewer, customer] for the aims of this economy is the person who continuously itches his ears with the radio, preferably using the portable kinds which can go with him at all hours and in all places [smartphones in 2020].  His eyes flit without rest from television screen, to newspaper, [to Internet], to magazine, keeping him in a sort of orgasm-without-release through a series of teasing glimpses of shiny automobiles, shiny female bodies, and other sensuous surfaces, interspersed with such restorers of sensitivity - shock treatments - as "human interest" shots of criminals, mangled bodies, wrecked airplanes, prize fights and burning buildings.  The literature or discourse that goes along with this is similarly manufactured to tease without satisfaction, to replace every partial gratification with a new desire.
     For this stream of stimulants is designed to produce cravings for more and more of the same, though louder and faster, and these cravings drive us to do work which is of no interest save for the money it pays - to buy more lavish radios, sleeker automobiles, glossier magazines, and better television sets, all which will conspire to persuade us that happiness lies just around the corner if we will buy one more."
The Wisdom of Insecurity, p. 62.  

Sitting Becomes Tiresome

A typical American watches and average of 34 hours of television each week.  A few people don’t watch television and, of course, many people watch television more than 40 hours a week.  Neilsen surveys report that children aged 2-11 watch over 24 hours of TV per week, while adults aged 35-49 watch more than 33 hours a week. The average American watches more than five hours of television every day. Once we pass 65, the typical person watches more than seven hours a day.

 

Sitting and watching television for seven hours each day?? ... how tiresome.  And, sitting for long periods is very bad for your health.  Even more, most television programs and their incessant commercials are, for me, just boring, repetitious, and tiresome. 

So, a secret revealed:  You will get, on the average, 21 hours of “free” time every week by not sitting and watching more than 2 hours of television each day.  Even better, turn off your television for a month and you will get 136 hours of free time in that month.  And, another benefit is that by not sitting you will improve your health. 

"A monk asked Hsiang Lin, "What is the meaning of the Patriarch's coming from the West?"
Hsiang Lin said, "Sitting for a long time becomes tiresome."

-  The Blue Cliff Record, Case 17, Translated by Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary, 2005, p 110


Standing Meditation

Walking Meditation

Gardening

Taijiquan Moving Meditation

Paul Allen Smith

 We have enjoyed watching P. Allen Smith's many television programs that he has hosted.  Many are available on UTube.  There are Facebook and Instagram channels.   

"Paul Allen Smith, Jr. (born March 12, 1960)^[1] is an American television host, garden designer, conservationist, and lifestyle expert. He is the host of three television programs. P. Allen Smith's Garden Home and P. Allen Smith's Garden to Table are distributed to public television by American Public Television.^[2][3] His 30-minute show Garden Style is syndicated by The Television Syndication Company.^[4] Smith is one of America's most recognized gardening and design experts, providing ideas and guidance through multiple media venues. He is the author of the Garden Home series of books published by Clarkson Potter/Random House, including Bringing the Garden Indoors: Container, Crafts and Bouquets for Every Room and the cookbook, Seasonal Recipes from the Garden, inspired by the abundance of food from his farm and a family of cooks. In 2014, Smith's television shows were successful at the Taste Awards with Smith returning to Little Rock with four Taste Awards. In 2015, Smith was inducted into the Taste Hall of Fame for his significant impact in the world of taste and broadcast entertainment.^[5] Garden Home won a 2017 Taste Award for "Best Green or Organic Program".^[6]" 

^{- Wikipedia}

Harvest Blessings to All this Thanksgiving Day!

Interesting Documentaries

I enjoy watching documentaries on the Netflix channel.  Recently, I enjoyed watching three documentaries.

Inside Bill's Brain  The Mind and Projects of Bill Gates

Abdus Salam  Noble Prize physicist from Pakistan.

Birding   Flyways in Texas and Mexico.

I don't normally watch television fantasy shows about ghost hunting, zombies, tracking Big Foot monsters, aliens, etc.  I avoid programs about crime, drugs, criminal life, action-adventure killing films, WWE wrestling, game shows, lifestyles of backwoods "survivalists" driving four wheel drive vehicles, dirty duck and alligator good old boys, gun and hunting shows, religious services, outlandish conspiracies, and the endless political discussion programs and social talk shows, etc.

Crazy Killers with Arsenals

Another disheartening tragedy in Las Vegas!  The senseless mass murder of 59 people, and the injuring of over 500 people at an outdoor country music concert.  Distressing, unfathomable, horrific, evil, shameful.  A deep sorrow for all affected and concerned.  A very sad day!  

I've written numerous times about these terrible incidents and my response to them.  For Example, Prepping for the Kill in 2015.  

How many guns did the wealthy heartless killer Stephen Paddock own?  Police found 42, 19 at the crime scene.  Seriously, 42 rifles and guns.  The cruel diversions of some rich men are disgusting.  

I realize that even with strict gun control, like that found in more peaceful countries without frequent mass murders, this will not prevent some murder.  However, maybe NOT the murder of 59 persons and injuring over 500 people in one unforgettable night.  

Stand Up and Move

A typical American watches and average of 34 hours of television each week.  A few people don’t watch television and, of course, many people watch television more than 40 hours a week.  It has been reported that children aged 2-11 watch over 24 hours of TV per week, while adults aged 35-49 watch more than 33 hours a week. The average American watches more than five hours of television every day. Once we pass 65, the typical person watches more than seven hours a day.

 

Sitting and watching television for five to seven hours each day?? ... how tiresome.  And, sitting for long periods is very bad for your health.  Even more, most television programs and their incessant commercials are, for me, just boring, repetitious, and tiresome. 

So, a secret revealed:  You will get, on the average, 21 hours of “free” time every week by not sitting and watching more than 2 hours of television each day.  Even better, turn off your television for a month and you will get 136 hours of free time in that month.  And, another benefit is that by not sitting you will improve your health. 

"A monk asked Hsiang Lin, "What is the meaning of the Patriarch's coming from the West?"
Hsiang Lin said, "Sitting for a long time becomes tiresome."

-  The Blue Cliff Record, Case 17, Translated by Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary, 2005, p 110




Standing Meditation

Walking Meditation

Gardening

Ways of Walking

Taijiquan Moving Meditation

The "Cosmos" Televison Series Returns

 
The National Geographic Television Channel (FOX) is now presenting a new 2014 version of the famous "Cosmos" series each Sunday.  It is now narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

Last Sunday, the NGTC (FOX) ran all the old "Cosmos" 1980 series episodes, narrated by Carl Sagan.  I recorded each episode and rewatched the original series. 

Cosmos  By Carl Sagan (1934-1996).  Introduction by Ann Druyan, and Foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Reprinted by Ballantine Books in 2013.  Originally published by Random House in 1980.  Index, recommended reading, notes, 432 pages. ISBN: 9780345539435.  VSCL.  The most popular science book of the last 50 years.  The TV series, Cosmos (1980), has been viewed by over 500 million people. 

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark  By Carl Sagan.  New York, Ballantine Books, 1996.  Index, references, 457 pages.  ISBN: 9780345409461.  VSCL.  A thorough investigation of pseudo-science in contemporary life.  

I am rereading both Cosmos and The Demon Haunted World.  

Instead of Cosmos a person could watch, instead, one or more of the many current television "programs" featuring zombies, bigfoot, mediums, vampires, super-heroes with magical powers, ghost hunting, demons, psychics, preachers of the supernatural, UFO hunters, magicians, fabricated crime dramas, wizards, Bible myths, aliens, witches, angels, paranormal phenomena, prophets, religious relics, cults and many other topics of questionable value to the scientifically and practically minded.  How have these topics contributed one iota to our progress in medicine, agriculture, technology, tools, homemaking, better communities, or practical living?  Unquestionably, to my mind, in America, our tolerance for bunk, stupidity, spooky fictions, fringe rarities, bogus ideas, trivia and nonsense knows no limit on television.  Television is now worse that in 1990 when Professor Sagan tried to enlighten us about the dangers of pseudo-science.