Traveling Outside

Truth is eight times old
And this car goes three minutes per hour.
I can’t write a poem called Man Alone.
Bright city lights won’t let me,
And my craft is headed back to earth.
My shields are deeper within
Than they are wide
On the outside.
I’m widening my search,
And I haven’t found anything of which
A Time Traveler wouldn’t approve.
So I go back to the past
And wear my best clothes.
Shifts in space
Make my corpse full of surprises.
I step into it
And make everything happen.

Sahara By A Nile

Make mistakes and get kicked,
make something good
to keep out of the cubicle.
Cook everything,
cook a freaking duck head
or a man’s big hand.
Cook a recurring nightmare.
Cook a story out
from under your bed.

A green man comes
from in his head
to meet you up
the street.
You can laugh
or cook
or kiss him.
Whichever you choose,
there are two good things in it.

Lips of smoke and whiskey:
Bring ’em.
We’ll shuffle things up,
Will to Wanderlust.

The Definition of Love

by Andrew Marvell

MY Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'r have flown
But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended Soul is fixt,
But Fate does Iron wedges drive,
And alwaies crouds it self betwixt.

For Fate with jealous Eye does see
Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruine be,
And her Tyrannick pow'r depose.

And therefore her Decrees of Steel
Us as the distant Poles have plac'd,
(Though Loves whole World on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac'd.

Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new Convulsion tear;
And, us to joyn, the World should all
Be cramp'd into a Planisphere.

As Lines so Loves oblique may well
Themselves in every Angle greet:
But ours so truly Paralel,
Though infinite can never meet.

Therefore the Love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debarrs,
Is the Conjunction of the Mind,
And Opposition of the Stars.

I Am The Son Of The Cemetery

I am the son of the cemetery,
the cremation ground,
and the trip to the sky.

Killer, turn from me,
gnaw on my liver and lungs,
but leave me this ticking light
in my empty hand.

Charles Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart"

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

***

And you can hear (and see) Tom Waits read it:

John The Revelator

Here's the song "John The Revelator," sung by Curtis Stigers and the Forest Rangers and arranged by Bob Thiele for the TV show "Sons of Anarchy":



To hear a MUCH older version, sung by Blind Willie Johnson, listen to this one:


And here is a pure vocal version (no instrumentation), by the Blues Legend, Son House:


To learn more about this intriguing and historical American song, click this link.

Variation On A Meme By Andrew Marvell

Light from the first city,
the tea garden,
like grass under clouds,
is predictable.
What happens is not.
How the New Year moves,
what it swings toward,
or away from,
is everybody’s guess.
With tides,
with fog,
with a movement of hands
and shouting down cans
on long strings,
I call you in words.
Each hearer hears
her own hearing,
but perhaps a bit more.
This year is drawing to its close,
and cold rains beckon.
Thus, let us find an umbrella,
walk long on the sand,
and see what transpires
under willing soles.

"Stolen Car" by Beth Orton

You walked into my house last night.
I couldn't help but notice
A light that was long gone still burning strong.
You were sitting,
Your fingers like fuses,
Your eyes were cinnamon.

You said you stand for every known abuse
That was ever threatened to anyone but you.
And why should I know better by now
When I'm old enough not to?

While every line speaks the language of love
It never held the meaning I was thinking of.
And I can't decide over right or wrong.
I guess sometimes you need the place where you belong.

Some may sing the wrong words to the wrong melodies.
It's little things like this that matter to me.
Others feel that you should stand
For every known abuse to hand
And all the things that they could never see.

You said you stood
For every known abuse that was ever promised to anyone like you.
Don't you wish you knew better by now
When you're old enough not to?

When every line speaks the language of love,
It never held the meaning I was thinking of.
And I can't decide over right or wrong.
You left the feeling that I just do not belong.

Do not belong...

One drink too many
And a joke gone too far
I see a face drive like a stolen car.
Gets harder to hide
When you're hitching a ride
Harder to hide what you really saw.

Oh, yeah, you stand
For every known abuse that Ive ever seen my way through.
Don't I wish I knew better by now?
Well I think I'm starting to.

When every line speaks the language of love
It never held the meaning I was thinking of.
And I've lost the line between right or wrong.
I just want to find the place where I belong.

Why should you know better by now,
When you're old enough not to?
I wish I knew better by now,
When I'm old enough not to.

Cornershop Boys' "Norwegian Wood"

"Let X=X" By Laurie Anderson

When you feel like you are in a burning building and you gotta go, let x=x.

An Old Electricity

I am an instance of the effect, the cataract of fire and the midnight of time. I go rummaging today, via and voilà, an intruder in snow shadow. I contain accents, establish verbs, and drive forward into a ditch without submitting. Seriously, we should talk about anything at all.

All the paying customers are abed. Some long dead emperor counts the shadows that move beneath his high dome, tosses down leaves, alarms his subjects. Last night I sensed an old electricity, said so, and sent out warmth from my hands. My last entreaty will be silent.

Once met, well met. Eerie hello-women peer at us through wet sheets. Distant dogs and distant trains. A cork in the floor comes loose.

To make is to be. In this manner, an artist knows storm essence.

"Space is nearer."

--From Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead."

Why My Breakfast Calls Me Billy I Don't Know

We’re not ignoring Big Billy Chuckface anymore. He’s so overjoyed and free of regret we just don’t feel we have to fuck with him. He’s towering over a pier, knocking it down with the edge of his hand. He’s got amnesia. He loves us. He loves us still. Drunken, we hit him with a hammer while he slept and he didn’t see any tragedy in that. His fortune is pure, liberated from worry about art and production. His death is not fearful to him. He is sixty feet tall. He is about welcoming, about feeling messianic towards us, about being beneficent and illogical, shining a sweet happy gift-giving light on all little sisters, kids and oldies. Look at the way his face beams. Old Billy. Old and Sweet and intestinally packed with nutritious gala events, we bow to him. We are The Eggs, We are The Cornbread. We rode all the rides at the Abusement Park and Unchuckable Billy nurtured us, salved our blistering bruises. Flies gather at the corner of our eyes and he knocks them away, harmoniously, without anger. He is the Jim-Dandy Crisis, the Apotheosis of Image. An apocalypse of voice, his Omega pops our dogma boil. We met him in the city. He took us to his country of Unloathing. Next to him, in him, we become an Us, an I. He makes us feel capital, just tops. Bueno. Biggo. Guillermo. Guillaume. He’s taking us into his food tube. We become His stuff.

The Buddhist Philosophy of the Real

Question.

Who are the Tunnel Birds? Where are The Pills? Which is The Pavement That Glistens? The night got torn and grabs at morning. Knife to Spoon: someone listens. It’s this cave, packed with rats and bats, and people artifacts. We, the people. We, the facts. “It’s,” as it appears above, is memory. No, not memory. It’s the space between thought and action. Call it your sañña, your perception. Call it what you like, but call it into question.

Wilbur's "First Snow in Alsace" and my Homolinguistic Translation

First Snow in Alsace

The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.

Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.

As if it did not know they'd changed,
Snow smoothly clasps the roofs of homes
Fear-gutted, trustless and estranged.

The ration stacks are milky domes;
Across the ammunition pile
The snow has climbed in sparkling combs.

You think: beyond the town a mile
Or two, this snowfall fills the eyes
Of soldiers dead a little while.

Persons and persons in disguise,
Walking the new air white and fine,
Trade glances quick with shared surprise.

At children's windows, heaped, benign,
As always, winter shines the most,
And frost makes marvelous designs.

The night guard coming from his post,
Ten first-snows back in thought, walks slow
And warms him with a boyish boast:

He was the first to see the snow.


***


Worst Blow In All Space
(Homolinguistic Translation)

The whole blamed frown dashes light eyeballs,
Turns on the spoon. In hell will yawn
A mother’s gown in dimpled draughts.

A resolute crow’s cries crumble dawn,
Catch walpurgisknackered glands and strains;
Pentangled whales eat red-assed prawns.

Indifferent blows, gray chains,
Glow loosely, rattling tools and tomes,
Beer-gutted hussies kicking frames.

The ashen tracks, war kilt and bones,
Agnostic yams on fishstick trial,
Grow fat inside the hearts of gnomes.

A wink, the pond, are down the pipe:
The flue, half full with pills and pies
Rubs boulders wet with tripping wire.

Versions of turbans swim under thighs,
Stalking the blue bear’s hide through time,
While manxome dances lick her mind.

Quill pens wallow, steeped in brine,
Pressed in hallways thin with ghosts,
A cross of snakes and husky pines.

The bright shard’s roaming over toast
And burst globes clap in local shows:
Warm worms entombed with overcoats,

And knees in dirt with feet that know.

Three For Your Friday

"Despite What You've Been Told" by Two Gallants:



and

"Meet Me In The City" by The Black Keys:



und

"All This & Nothing" by a little Arizona band, The Beating (which may be defunct):

I Haven't Been Comfortable Enough To Take Anyone For Granted In Years

Just McCorkel. Old rusty McCheswick. Eye stand, deer stand, shadow. You happier, you buy and wide. You stalk a grey tree. But I’m glad, because you’re Canadian, and my boyfriend wears your shirts. He never mixed with my parents, or really even tried. Myrtle Beach had to do. You can, you know, Canadian. You mix parts of your life, can you bring parrots? Have you met who we just hired, the participles? There’s farming and using an axe. Do you have a problem with chicken? The yams. The two ways we should work together, the pants, the dysfunction of this. The lesson I take from this is that a guy like your dad is what he does. On TV, even when they kick you out, they don’t really mean it. I love that.

Twin Poem #1

for the Schall twins, Jackson Maxwell and Winston Jasper

In connection of floor and head, worries go way. In correction of storeroom and memoir, whole house goes slipping, cliffdown, sluice of time, slip of untangle, untension, unmake of torn world. Torque and tango all go roaming, all go strumming a teeny gweetar. Garlic singing, gaslight seeming, no gnashing, no wringing. Tumble down twins, poembottom, side-glance courts a swing. Porch and boards, dart and fly, grip with a whole house, howsabout. Twilight for tired, plaster for canvas, vibrato for differentiation. Who does country sweets? Hem with a grin, with a child in mind, with two stony stones. Try and easy do it, shoes could stay a double sting. Inside brain always a belly, always a core. Say it’s an old year, almost done, together for a honey bit. Should plunge be an oar, it’ll be a door. Two for two or so we do.

Kings Of Leon: "Manhattan"

I couldn't decide which of their songs/videos to post, because they're nearly all my favorite. Here's one of the most unstoppable: