Bat Man Versions 4

"Bat Man was born in back of a grove in the shady side of Memphis."
- The Downtrodden Saint

Bat Man Versions 3

"Bat Man will rest like a drowned bat upon my shoulder."
- Elizabeth Bishop

Bat Man Versions 2

"Bat Man knows a nice long blues."
- Ibrahim Ferrer

Bat Man Versions 1

"The telluric shocks cleared the way for Bat Man."
- Italo Calvino

Bat Man / Human Behavior

"Bat Man possesses remarkable insights into the way human beings behave."
- R.D. Laing

Bat Men Earth

"Bat Men are always seeking the earth again." -Auden

Bat Blood

"Beneath all the statistics, there is a drop of Bat Man's blood." - Lorca

No Depression

The family atomic & me, we spent the past week at Pawley's Island, S.C. and are now back in "The I.C.," mowing the lawn, preparing for our move to Goosetown, and generally trying to take it easy before another week(s) of Working Man's Blues kicks in.

Vacations are cool. Especially vacations down South, and even more especially if that's where you're from. You play yr guitar on the beach, sip some moonlit tequila with your friends, squeeze yr sweet thang and compose a fried catfish villanelle - end up feelin' like Otis Redding maybe didn't die frigid, in vain, after all. And then, on the way home, the grandfatherly Blue Ridges stake you back down to terra firma, call you "boy," and make you weep for grandpa (deceased).

On a Southerly road trip, everything is cool as can be, sweeps you in and enfolds your kin. Then suddenly you're on yr way back to the midwest, realizing you're a middling 37, with impressionable children at a Cracker Barrel at the Kentucky-Indiana border and a 17 yr old wearing a thick wooden cross around his neck is asking if you want biscuits or corn muffins with your chicken.

Maybe you cringe a little inside. And then again maybe you laugh and jig a li'l spiritual rag top for the batty-assed dreaminess of it all. If you were to ask me, I'd say that to be "regional," in any sense, is a blessing anytime, anywhere, but most especially in the midst of the Kali Yuga.

Pepper

Eleanor is growing a chili pepper! Here it is, safe in its pot, along with various other finds. This pot stays on our kitchen window sill, a wee meditation on struggle, survival, and sustenance that quivers during an evening downpour.

Dime Piece BatMan Hammerin' Hank

"I never smile when I have a bat in my hands. That's when you've got to be serious." - Hank Aaron

BatMan Dream Song 63

Bats have no bankers and they do not drink
and cannot be arrested and pay no tax
and, in general, bats have it made.
Henry for joining the human race is bats,
known to be so, by few them who think,
out of the cave.

Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark,
ur-moist his cousins hang in hundreds or swerve
with personal radar,
crisisless, kid. Instead of the cave? I serve,
inside, my blind term. Filthy four-foot lights
reflect on the whites of our eyes.

He then salutes for sixty years of it
just now a one of valor and insights,
a theatrical man,
O scholar & Legionnaire who as quickly might
have killed as cast you. Olè. Stormed with years
he tranquil commands and appears.

- John Berryman (Dream Song 63)