Down and out semi poet who is down and out in the Low Country of South Carolina after living in Atlanta which is not to be confused with the south, the old south or the new south. Atlanta was a global metropolis with all the pluses and minuses that comes with that. The low country, low because it is low, 8 feet above sea level, is not Podunk but once you get to Podunk, turn left. I try to chronicle a small part of all that through my daily haiku for you.
stars of my birthday favor me lucky star born nothing can stop me
Sunrise over Hilton Head Island – July 17, 2025
Come on, superstition, and get my goat I got mascots The stars of my birthday favor me The numbers from one to ten are with me I was born under a lucky star and nothing can stop me The moon was a waxing moon and not a waning moon when I was born Every card in the deck and both of the seven-eleven bones are with me So you hear them tell it and they mean if it works it’s good and if it don’t it costs nothing
From The People, Yes (53) as published in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1950.
According to my drivers license, I was born today … 65 years ago.
Some years back, my Boss had my team work through an exercise where we come up with THEEE word that best described ourselves and my word came up as lazy.
Today, I would choose another word and that word would be lucky.
The stars of my birthday favor me.
Oh so lucky.
I was born under a lucky star and nothing can stop me.
I was born in a big family and never ever knew the fear of want or need or poverty.
I was raised in a home where God and the love of Jesus was just a part of life.
Nothing was pounded into you, it was just accepted and while questions might come and go over the years it was always there as the simple faith of a child and I thank God for it.
I am lucky in life, relationships, work, schooling and the numbers from 1 to 10 are with me.
I don’t understand my luck.
But, Boy Howdy, do I appreciate it.
The moon was a waxing moon and not a waning moon when I was born and have enjoyed my luck.
I can’t explain it, so I don’t try.
Every card in the deck and both of the seven-eleven bones are with me.
Not that I haven’t screwed up, screwed up a lot and often but let me tell, it’s on me that I screwed up and caused my own problems and most of the problems I created for myself would not have existed had I not created them.
So you hear me when I tell it.
I mean if it works it’s good and if it don’t it costs nothing.
Born lucky and still trying to figure out how I got to 65,
accroche-toi ton rêve you see ship go sailing … hold … on tight to your dream
Okay, the line in french is Accroche-toi à ton rêve and I had take out the à or to to fit into my definition of a haiku and I also used ellipsises in within the haiku but that is all part of the fun of writing in the 21st century.
My blog, my rules.
Debate at leisure if you will but there it is though I am hoping for a comment from a French teacher I know in Kansas City for her opinion.
Why am I using a 1981 song, Hold On Tight, sung by the Electric Light Orchestra as the basis of today’s haiku?
(Emphasis/accent on the WHY)
That’s a good question and I’ll ask it again.
Why am I using a 1981 song sung by the Electric Light Orchestra as the basis of today’s haiku?
(Emphasis/accent on the AM)
Not sure that changing the emphasis accent but it makes for an interesting vocal excercise.
I have more songs on my iPhone than I can keep track of or collate so I just set my play list to random.
Somewhere along the line I downloaded a folder of ‘Greatest Songs of the ’80s or was it the 1900’s and dumped them onto my phone.
Driving to work today, the day before I turn 65, crossing over a bridge to an island while it was raining as sun rose out of the Atlantic Ocean to shine in my face and light up the storm clouds, that song was randomly selected and played over the car speakers by my iphone.
Now I can’t get it out of my head.
When I got to work I had to get online to find out what the ELO was singing when they switched over to singing in French, especially as ELO was known for hiding secrets in their music that affected the minds of young college kids, which I would have been back in 1981 when the song was released.
Both relieved and disappointed, I learned that the lyrics in French were just that, the lyrics in French.
Mmm, hold on tight to your dream, yeah Hold on tight to your dream, yeah When you see your ship go sailing When you feel your heart is breaking Hold on tight to your dream
Accroche-toi à ton rêve Accroche-toi à ton rêve Quand tu vois ton bateau partir Quand tu sens ton coeur se briser Accroche-toi à ton rêve
At work early, the vacuums are going, the storm is passing, I am alone in the office for a few hours.
The radio is on and by chance The Bluebird is playing.
And get this, The Bluebird is written by Alexis FFRENCH.
(Don’t know much about Mr. Ffrench, but I plan to.)
All this leads to much introspection and thought.
Maybe too much.
I grew up and live in a world where I don’t worry about where my next drink of cold water is coming from, let alone where my next meal might be or where I might sleep tonight.
I can’t do much about that but I do what I can.
I DO appreciate it.
I DO know how lucky I was to be born when and where I was born.
I DO appreciate it.
What else?
Well …
Mmm, hold on tight to your dream, yeah Hold on tight to your dream, yeah When you see your ship go sailing When you feel your heart is breaking Hold on tight to your dream
Accroche-toi à ton rêve Accroche-toi à ton rêve Quand tu vois ton bateau partir Quand tu sens ton coeur se briser Accroche-toi à ton rêve
Have a good night and hold on tight.
Wikipedia says that when this MUSIC VIDEO (HA!) was made, it was the single most expensive music video ever recorded … that was in 1981 before the world went a little nuts …
sleep, o gentle sleep, nature’s soft nurse, steep senses in forgetfulness
Adapted from:
O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frightened thee, That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
From Henry IV, Part II, Act III, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare.
Where Big Bill has King wonder where sleep has gone, I manage to haiku it into a short prayer of thankfulness as well as write a sentence where haiku is used as a verb.
Editing Bill and turning haiku into a gerund without making it ‘haikuing’ is a pretty good start for a muggy muggy morning the low country of South Carolina.
Let me say that I have felt hot and cold, dry and wet and all other forms of weather but walking out into a steamy, thick, warm muggy morning a mile from the Atlantic coast is to be hit in the face with a soggy smelly towel, but I digress.
But morning it is and waking up is the issue.
Owen Johnson wrote about waking up in his book, The Prodigious Hickey: A Lawrenceville Story (The Century, 1908) saying:
” … the air with its clamour from the belfry of the old gymnasium, but no one rises. There is half an hour until the gong sounds for breakfast, a long delicious half hour—the best half hour of the day or night to prolong under the covers.”
There is half an hour until the gong sounds for breakfast …
a long delicious half hour …
the best half hour of the day or night to prolong under the covers …
O sleep.
O gentle sleep.
Nature’s soft nurse.
O, how I do hate to get up in the morning.
Weigh my eyelids down.
Steep my senses in forgetfulness.
PS: Anyone who dares quote Hamlet back to me with his whiney To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub … will be shot.
Moya Sarner is an NHS psychotherapist who writes about the terrible things that can happen in people’s lives and how to deal with them.
Her headlines include, I do not need a £100 hairbrush. So why have I spent so long fantasising about one?, Terrible things happen in life – but it is possible to recover from them, Therapy isn’t about life hacks. The best solutions are simpler – and more complex and Life let you down again? Congratulations – you’re growing.
Kind of depressing to just read the headlines.
So why would I waste my time on the one aging?
Somehow, someway I will turn 65 on Thursday and I am kind of happily mystified to find myself here.
Nothing much will change on the next day, Friday morning.
I will continue to work as long as I can because I need to work as long as I can but I got a good job that I enjoying working at as long as I can.
But I will be 65.
So the headline, No, age isn’t just a number – and the sooner we realise that, the happier we will be caught my interest.
Ms. Sarner writes:
Sitting in a cafe recently, I saw a poster advertising a barista training course for young people interested in a career in hot beverages. Things in the NHS being what they are, I enjoyed losing myself in a fantasy future spent standing behind a sleek, shiny machine, having witty exchanges with customers and colleagues as I skilfully poured smooth, foaming milk into silky dark espresso, tipping and turning each cup to create my own unique artworks on the coffee surface.
That was until I read the small print, which included the rather brutal definition of “young people” as aged 18 to 24. I realised, with an internal gasp, that my limited ability to pour liquid without spilling it was not the only obstacle to this career choice. There was a core personal reality here from which I had become totally untethered: the passing of time.
This untethering is bad news for anyone interested in building a better life. A lot of nonsense is spoken and sung and written on plates and pencil cases about how we should all stay young and never grow old. But I’ve discovered as a therapist and as a patient in psychoanalysis that the capacity to anchor yourself in the reality of time passing is fundamental to good mental health, and to the potential for life to get better.
That old one way passage of time.
Gosh.
It made me wonder if Ms. Sarner took the time to watch the people working in the cafe?
I have no doubt I couldn’t do the job.
I also had to stop at that last line.
She points to … the potential for life to get better.
Pretty thin gruel I guess, but if that’s what you got.
Though it makes me feel good about missing Ms. Sarner’s other stories.
Maybe I have read too much history.
May I have thought about that mental game where I say to myself, 15 years before I was born, World War 2 ended.
End of World War2?
Why that was a lifetime before I was born!
For someone born in 2025, 15 years ago it would have been 2010.
2010?
Wasn’t that just yesterday?
I can’t say I embraced the passage of time, but I understood it was passing and I have happily watched the parade as it went by.
I don’t need the protentional for life to get better as life is good.
Got no complaints.
For afterwards I believe in God and the saving grace of Jesus and for the here and now I pray for guidance and I pray for acceptance.
Aside from that I am just me.
Someone once told me that they never understood how someone could ‘be born to be hung’ and then they met me.
Never quite sure what that person met but with hanging being out of favor, I felt empower to just enjoyed life.
As Mr. Twain said, “I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.”
In place of Ms. Sarner’s article I offer Big Bill and poor old Macbeth when it all starts to make sense to that feller and he says:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.
It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
As I said, nothing will change when I wake up on Friday on the other side of 65.
Well, maybe there are some small changes I can make to my life, but you better look hard to spot them.
No Haiku For You 