Viagra for the Brain

Without exercise, a pump or surgery,

Here's an amazing, rock hard discovery:

Stronger, thicker, and improved performance

Will give your step a frisky bounce.

If you want to be better and have more stamina

And seek a 100% success rate without stress,

This will make you a star, like a benevolent tsarina:

Read a book and your brain will be blest.

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle 

Received from a Friend Called Felicity

During that summer
When unicorns were still possible;
When the purpose of knees
Was to be skinned;
When shiny horse chestnuts
    (Hollowed out
    Fitted with straws
    Crammed with tobacco
    Stolen from butts
    In family ashtrays)
Were puffed in green lizard silence
While straddling thick branches
Far above and away
From the softening effects
Of civilization;

During that summer--
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was--
Watermelons ruled.

Thick imperial slices
Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues
Dribbling from chins;
Leaving the best part,
The black bullet seeds,
To be spit out in rapid fire
Against the wall
Against the wind
Against each other;

And when the ammunition was spent,
There was always another bite:
It was a summer of limitless bites,
Of hungers quickly felt
And quickly forgotten
With the next careless gorging.

The bites are fewer now.
Each one is savored lingeringly,
Swallowed reluctantly.

But in a jar put up by Felicity,
The summer which maybe never was
Has been captured and preserved.
And when we unscrew the lid
And slice off a piece
And let it linger on our tongue:
Unicorns become possible again.

John Tobias

Prof. Ward Goodenough

1. Benjamin Blount said,

   June 17, 2013 @ 9:30 am
   Although I did not know Ward Goodenough personally, having met him only once at an American Anthropological Association meeting, his work on applying linguistics to anthropology strongly influenced a generation of anthropologists, beginning in the 1960s. Along with several other anthropologists, including Kim Romney, Roy D'Andrade, and Charles Frake, he redirected cultural anthropology from 50 years of culture-trait definitions to a linguistic-cognitive one, stating that culture is what one has to know in order to behave meaningfully within a society. It's still used, even by anthropologists who may not know its origin. The reference is: Goodenough, W. H. (1957). Cultural anthropology and linguistics. In P. Garvin (ed.), Report of the Seventh annual Round Table on Linguistics and Language Study. Georgetown University Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics, 9. Washington, DC: Georgetown University.

New Poem 6/14/13

     The waterfall you saw

The waterfall you saw today is gone
And wont cascade again. Come dawn
Tomorrow it’ll be morphed into a rill
Following a rocky route downhill,
Entering a lake or maybe a river.

The memorable bit of your leisure

Is only a photo. Not to worry, though;
If you should return tomorrow
There'll be another waterfall
At the same place. It will enthrall
Hikers tomorrow who rest in awe
Since the waterfall’s beauty has no flaws.

The cascade of water they admire
Will flow on, to the adjoining shire
To become an unidentifiable part
Of the same lake or river where your

Waterfall went yesterday. That’s where

And how beauty passes away here.