Donna Pescow was born today.
Annette: Ain't ya gonna ask me to sit down? Tony Manero: No, 'cause you would do it. Annette: Bet you'd ask me to lay down.
Tennessee Williams was born today.
It is the responsibility of the writer to put his experience as a being into work that refines it and elevates it and that makes of it an essence that a wide audience can somehow manage to feel in themselves: "This is true."
Billy Corgan was born today.
It's 1991 and your boyfriend's old friend from high school -- the one his mother thought was trouble -- sends a homemade cassette of his new band from Chicago. On the front he's written Gish in red letters. He doesn't know he's about to be fired for another guy named Jim. Your own friends are still in the dorm hallway playing along to "Wish You Were Here." Holding the tape makes you feel present on the verge of something.
Speak to me in a language I can use.
Philip Levine was born today.
Once you wrote a poem about a tadpole and brought it to workshop with Phil Levine. The poem said the tadpole, once transformed, wishes back another way of breathing. Someone asked, "why can't it just welcome the new way?" And Phil, clearly annoyed, cut him off: "Because she's not talking about a tadpole, is she? She's talking about us. About how change hurts, about how we have to endure it anyway. Because it's necessary." You can see that he's written, at the bottom of your poem: "falls apart at the end." He never had to like something to understand it.
Earth is eating trees, fence posts, Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones, "Come home, Come home!"
Lucinda Williams was born today.
There's a voice you have inside that no one ever hears. It sounds like it's been dragged over gravel. It's shredded, and the blood's just beginning to dry. It's your voice when badly hurt, but staggering up. You're on a road trip, singing loudly from the driver's seat. You're going to survive.
You got no right to take my joy. I want it back.
Let us then simplify and assert that since the only test of truth is length of life, and since words survive the chops and changes of time longer than any other substance, therefore they are the truest. Buildings fall; even the earth perishes. What was yesterday a cornfield is today a bungalow. But words, if properly used, seem able to live for ever.
from "Craftsmanship"
Mary Lou Retton was born today. It's 1984 and everything seems to be happening at once. Macintosh release, Beirut withdrawal, AIDS discovery. Gretsky. Ocean Rain, Purple Rain, Born in the USA. Everyone's making a statement. Orwell presides. It's a leap year, and Earth's transit blocks the sun from observers on Mars. Reagan is playing the hero, but our hero is a little girl.
Perfection, twice in a row.
Rutger Hauer was born today.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those...moments...will be lost. In time. Like...tears. In rain.
it is necessary from time to time
Joel was born today. from a small, poem-strewn room in Montreal, where some French chick is singing "Il Faut de Temps en Temps," I am imagining this photo I have of you looking back at me from the front seat of Stephanie's blue Hyundai, in which you are driving us down to Atlantic City. it is early spring, a long time ago, and we are on our way to chase birds on an empty beach with a borrowed dog. the car is in a rest stop parking lot, you are wearing a black velvet cat mask, the family in the car next to us is terrified, and we know we will never get old.
Laugh and cry at the same time.
New Jersey was born today. Oak trees, light bulb, hair spray, Meadowlands, train tracks, boardwalk, Jungleland, drive-in, blueberries, cedar water, postcard.
Come See For Yourself.
"Stairway to Heaven" was born today. Ulster Hall, Belfast. Audience unimpressed. If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now.
Robyn Hitchcock was born today. Likes architecture, geraniums, things you can see through. Often dreams of trains heading for paradise. Just like you.
Being underrated can make you free.
Glenn Miller was born today.
John Turturro was born today.
Nancy Spungen was born today. She was born blue. It was just an optical illusion, of course, the same one that makes us think the sky is blue. But this was in her skin, and she believed it.
The end is written into the beginning.
Johnny Cash was born today. Once, he was arrested for picking flowers. Once, he was beaten up by a kicking ostrich. Once, he had visions of heaven on an operating table. Once, he was reborn in a cave.
Have several lives.