today i discover ben folds, of all f***ing things.



songs are postcards from god(dess).

Greetings From Friday

this was my eulogy for decades, until i discovered wendell berry:

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
>From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

 

-again, Frost

To Earthward

waiting on a train

i chill.

 

i learned early on to put back the garnet ring
try and keep the table clean
beta tested bedroom mirror
hiding a broken wing
theres always other garnet elsewhere
books to pile upon the bed
finally finding some space and quiet
to hear me
the incessant gnawing sun shroud
scuttling creature of shipwrecks
bottomfeeder
and the light bolting through the water
and the wide and quiet
and
all the time these lovesongs have been to myself
but spoken to other
because i could not speak to myself
i had been betrayed.
there on the edge of the great quiet
smelling of pine resin cut hay and loam
a shadow plays in puddles of shade
and i know her name.

Quid Pro Quo #2
(barbers adagio for strings)

crawl through into the skin the smell of your heart what love tastes like.

a dense wall of mind trying to catch a glimpse of itself in a telescope.

the night has been full of faraway stars thin dreaming

everything is what i would ask for

A Meeting

She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.

The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.

She leans her long neck and tongues it
between breaths slack with exhaustion

and after a while it rises and becomes a creature
like her, but much smaller.

So now there are two. And they walk together
like a dream under the trees.

In early June, at the edge of a field
thick with pink and yellow flowers

I meet them.
I can only stare.

She is the most beautiful woman
I have ever seen.

Her child leaps among the flowers,
the blue of the sky falls over me

like silk, the flowers burn, and I want
to live my life all over again, to begin again,

to be utterly
wild. 

 

-Mary Oliver

page one half.  what i do.  trying to find a brian eno song and theyre all too ethereal when i want to roll around in the smell of you.  hungry.  famished.  this feeling.  the planet shifts and so in me a shift.  something deep and true and traveling between the dark and the light.  i open the books.  i open to energy.  the high tide lifts my boat.

 i have no oars.  i have a picnic hamper and hope in my heart.  things coming to a crisis:  danger and opportunity.  the cone of light tight down on my fused skull like a drill the light makes everything okay.
the first wish in the wishing cup.

i cock my head to the song inside, i catch rags of it when the wind is right.  i take my cocktail and try to write it down.  this shift.  certain as noon.  and a broken clocks right twice a day.

hes a grail knight.  and that knight chooses to put the grail before him.

i dont want believe any of the rest of it all.

another man id be happy to get snowed in with

the damned ache.  

The northern winds have found their home
High above the timberline
But you and I were born to roam
To wander through the whistling pine

Once the summer evening dies
Our love will be of yesterday
One more glance into your eyes
Then we can laugh our love away

Someday youll find out who you are
Someday youll be more than just a shooting star

The road has claimed you for its own
To put your damage on display
With a steel guitar and a microphone
I hope that youll find your way
Someday youll find out who you are
Someday youll be more than just a shooting star

But you wouldnt know it
cause no ones ever showed it, nobody showed it to you
but that doesnt mean it isnt true

Someday youll find out who you are
Someday youll be more than just a shooting star
And maybe then youll realize just how much you meant to me
And maybe someday 

You will be free

                                                                         -Harper Simon

snow.  pins against the window.  i remind myself to keep supple, to bend so as not to break.

the snow is stiff heavy and wet

the round shard of pottery from a kiln dump in china happy in my pocket at last

amulet of peace and healing

fill the space with light

faith
a clock on the dresser following the sun
the first thing you see when you rise
elephant memory tusks dancing
hearts and flowers
miss you.
faith.

out of the air, Dz. asks what 5 names id name babies, were i to have more.  there seems to be a vibe here...
and now in light of a recent lark, i wonder at the jest

strange strange current of things unfolding

i am

Quid Pro Quo Series #1

you are like a hurricane is playing. you go out and look at the sky. the sky is filled with cold angels. the northern front skims through you a knife in water. you put the song on again. anticipation and ennui. someones fingers drumming somewhere above their head fly cold angels. the sound is cold feet to the frozen street late in the afternoon when the sky goes out. hands in pockets lonesome head to heart falling forward into slick gloom. the lights come on in other peoples houses. cold death of the Earth you huddle near the hearthfire smoke breathed out into the room like a woman with a cigarette. kuala lampur in monsoon. breathing dense and sickly scented. your skin grooved like a brain. the sky unfamiliar colors pulsing and flowing through you. the birds should be getting suet soon, bring wood in to warm before burning. deep inside something stirs.

Atom Heart Mother

 miss you.

waiting for the meds to kick in mindless omen playtime.

*****needs attention too
*****needs to lose 20 pounds
*****needs to hurry up and give birth
*****needs to finish her latest novel, and make it very good
*****needs a lifeboat, but this is largely her own doing

*****is a headcase (!)
*****is pregnant
*****is happy!
*****is having a girl
*****is flaking out on scientific notation!

*****will be heading back to fill the jeweled shoes once more
*****will be bigger
*****will move to south reno
*****will live on
*****will try to be "more positive"


(this last one for nod xoxo)



(aw shucks, this one too..."i dont go too fast but i go pretty far...")

a shout out to a personal demigod for all things IT/RX. 

a boon request:  would you be so kind as to sketch out the seitan bbq recipe and send it along to blackcaribou at live dot com?  most excellent and again thank you, i am.

Happy Birthday to the Man Who Brought Us

i heard someone recently describe his voice as having been "soaked in a vat of bourbon hung in a smokehouse then run over by a car."
id like to personally thank limpy for introducing me to him.

3am "you are required to something only if you do it voluntarily."

guerrilla art project #67 operation angeldust

infiltrating the post with glitter

headed south and east

a million billion packets of light touched by my love for

zuzu and the puppetman

it is a pilgrimage of sorts.  of being blessed amid constraints, of finding beauty in a broken world

thats the best we can do

let our light

shine

down the coast ill cast my light
sketched out gluestick packing tape east coast mementos
trailing back toward home
kites of love
with tales of ink and pigment
lovesongs scratched out at redlight badcoffee crossroads
ill draw the horizon
the truckstop
the song in my head
i promise.

if i ever had another child, or a band, i would call it 

"ponder the folly."

an open letter to the president:

it occurs to me:  how well did the surge work for us when we applied it to people who had no real pressing beef with us?

with all due respect, sir, we had our maximus handed to us.  how well do you suppose itll go over when applied to people who have sincerely committed to our annihilation? i think thats what i tried to say in my first email.  its throwing good money after bad, except our money is blood.

i knew afghanistan would be a bramble hydra hedge for you before we crowned you.

but you creamed my frontal cortex in optimism

let the light shine through stained-glass windows onto my broken little heart.

this nation has already overpaid for one mans hubris.
may peace sing open the coffers of love we have hoarded in our fear.

most respectfully,

an Earthling

.

"herd animals who do not comply will be eaten."

it was perfect clear cold outside quiet silent orion thin air a million ways to wear this hat i wear.

from outside i can hear miles and i smile grey groovy house in the

valley of chimneys breathing songs to winters cold

a globe of smoke a goblets belly painted red

salamanders sylphs prickpinning the night to the morning

grey horses haunt waking edges

their strong breath and good smell in the valley of dreaming

the breathing gets to be like water and you know youre going

the water breaks light into splinters a course of winging swans into the orchestra

the silver ribbon shes pulling from the wishbone says something crucial you cant remember

when you open your eyes.

the moon a low egg opening the night a rose monsoon

my face is open and many times laughing under the sky a flannel left long in the creekwater

i invest in secret projections youre between rainbow and transcendent resolution and tarot rainfall and time i am no empress but priestess one after the mage i am threshold angel gatekeeper
artemis mary hekate changing woman
something keeps me up these nights craving cold earth smell cheeks glowing with moon and tomorrow
i send sage breath and circle light to you
to you.

play cypress play something with no words at all the rest i leave unsaid

i look for you in the lists and youre not there.

cold blue dusk december eve 2am vertigo clouds its warm naked water warm my hands open trying to catch signals.  crows low above the road the light a bright cream smudge at the ridgeline last rain on bulbs buried for resurrection.   many people looked at me and smiled i wish i knew why it would make all this easier.

desert sunset candle and white sage red wine again unicorn asylum in a raintree while pricking demons pull up rail ties and sever telegraph cord.  when sentries are set at the perimeters, my crossed crusaders appear deep within the infrastructure.  the wooshing helps me remember my meds.  i cant believe anything nice theyd have to say, except maybe from you.

 

dear mr. earle.

tonight i heard your take on townes' dont you take it too bad and its as fine and pretty a song as ive ever heard, however lonesome.

ive got me a heartache tonight and i dont know for what, so im sure you empathize.

i was the one still standing in the upstate newyork crowd this summer when you opened and the girl said you ate with her daddy and liked the ribs.  or maybe you were just being polite.

i stood there like it was revival and the man in the shirt said i had to sit down and all those people talking into their plastic personalities through the set and my hand all in the air and i was blocking their view the shirt said.  and i started to cry cause if i didnt sit down hed make me go.

so i stood in the back and cried and my hand was raised and thank you.

  pink martini gallows pole dickey betts dogs barking and the woman that always makes me cry.

dTb will not tour in 2010.  bread and cheese and shes still with me.

another apt gem for the cowboy from miss edwards.

"Creation is a mammoth affair spread over many venues and taking a huge amount of time."

champagne (cork in the mail...ephemera!) waterglass drinkingourd

hilltop and on comes innagaddadavida

Oh, Great Vibrating Column of Air! 

heal this hi-fi stereophonic equipment!

we beseech thee!

collaborative unstructured project #42

 

"Each fractal impaction, each differentiation of what is already integralized, is a deepening of the carbuncle whereby phenomenology is wrapped into a mummy-like figurine in a blue-oceaned luminous world."

juggling helps

its showerstall epiphanies and thruway wandering while

your hands are dancing.

my juggling tip!

  start with one.  back and forth staring into middledistance back and forth not moving your hands unless to calibrate back and forth all it is is back and forth not moving your hands with more than one.

self portrait the shield of venus

i wrestle with paint angels in

the burgeoning palimpsest

"several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a pict."

(and the wind cried mary)

i hold my head up to make it easier to breathe

pushing through on the canvas

a bound mouth a sigil mr.t.

then the fullness of itself

what it is.

"YOU CANT GET TO WHERE YOURE GOING UNLESS YOU START WHERE YOU ARE."

miranda july is richard grossingers daughter.


"For cats, the great existential question is:  How did they get all the catfood?  And why them?"

Lynda Barry! 

"Life to morning outside the empire!" 

this ones for tom the bomb

to wiggle my toes deeper into the holiday mire i pull out the cigarboxes.

throwing away the greenman was a step closer to you

i can see that now.

death rebirth space filling make the space make the space for it it will fill

with roses and hello

hello

hearken ye, unto the crucified oracle

but i still wish i had it.

a redpaper heart and wire flower

florist tape.

i think i composted it.

party of one

"Empathy is outright essential to our evolution...The glacier of our being would thaw toward what it must become."

wednesday night this morning in a glass phonebooth panting into a mask.

i panicked at the small pops and witholding.

small strands again tonight, the loosends sweeping

itchy insubstantial fingers across the ceiling

a battle on all fronts, the whoosh of a sword before me

turning and turning everything stretched

theres a point you get to when the

external motion is saturated enough to

create a dead center

the eye

"There is unlimited, untapped power in the world already, but we are addicted to only its crudest, most concrete forms...Calyces and calypsos are unfolding of themselves, without human agency, out of sheer light."

in my dream i replaced the marge piercy poem taped to the kitchen cupboard with one of my own.  in t's dream the beaten boys bathroom was under the graveyard and the children had no toys.

kalimba djembe shanti om

(scribble scribble scribble)

tonight theres a hurdle im not strong enough to cross.  this dead blank thats squatted behind my eyes for a few days now, entirely uninvested, absentminded, elsewhere ether on cheesecloth my head is on the ground, tipping blankly on my shoe.  not panic nor resignation nor dread but  acloud against the infinite deception of sky giving and taking itself in an endless cycle we are mostly water.

watch the clouds.

"The truth is...The neocons don't stand against North Korea;  they would like to make their own North Korea.  That is, they dig the sanctitude, the suppresion of heresy, the well-drilled standing army, in the service of the Idea.  They just don't want it playing for another team."

1.  breath

2.  my popcorn bowl

3.  the truth

4.  this book

5.  acrylic paint and glue stick

6.  i can still play

7.  the concept of a  post office

8.  this song
9.  old photographs

10.  one for ruadh

tonight is the second time in two years i craved a cigarette

something i found on my friend sd's blog.  inspiring.

"You better not hold your hand over your ass until you come up with thinking that makes a difference, that's all I can say."

 

rakish in my gardenhat to drain the glare a leather masquerade a tune from way before when the world was fence and fairytale

(tip #76:  remember the gardenhat)

these labyrinthine canyons of familydynamic.  slipping back into my skin is draining water from the bath

 i laugh into a hole but theres pierogies and greek yogurt and dogs.

todolist: 

locate and secure green hat  

walk the bluedog   

beeswax candles

food books and silver bangles and sometimes its enough just to open the bag of marshmallows and smell.  the drinking glass the blue bowl

printedmatter soymilk breakfastcereal castironpans

november cold air a flute i lick ivorypaint off my fingers absentmindedly

greasy fingers and wood on the stove a bed quietly waiting and some peace in my heart.

"It's time to take stock, I thought, which is hard to do when you are bare naked and far from home."

 

these bird pictures are my favorite, so far.

the pierogies cut through the gauzy miasma of a wine high like butter through a knife

i wasnt lonely til i met you.

 

 "...her butt hitting the keys in a nice way like the lost chord.  We did it right there which wasn't easy...and by the time she fully awoke she was making yodeling sounds like Judy Canova on the Louisiana Hayride program."

how is a writer like a windsock?

ballast, but i didnt really want any.  less bathwater.  an omen in the residue.

somewhere back there i made a connection between migra and milagra.  geese flying negative space in the palms of my hands i thought of miracles and migration.  typhoo with honeyandsoymilk to steady me its still early and theres puttering to be done.  the time someone said to gibbons, "scribble scribble scribble."

still chewing on the golden wishbone dream. this is me on the phone.

the terrible pressure of event horizon where at the very last moment we believe we can fly november a story with no words illustrated by arthur rackham behind the yellow light of the windows in the thin valley

you are one valley over, you are closer, you are too far away.

something from bloodonthetracks and that mango in the shingledhouse the empty reading room nights wasted aluminum foil and vinegar ive lost my taste for it at last.

i sand the roof of my mouth with my tongue while i am sleeping he watched wallace & grommit while i wrestled with angels crouching between pages at the bottom of the back of my head the roof of my mouth is a mossy stone under cold creekwater something stuck in my throat.  its maddening and will not be ignored.

 

"a picnic, a class reunion, a funeral with no corpse."

what else?  a pair of shoes a moonstone ring this night of rut and go in the morning this night of bones and fires burns' gory pinion i couldnt do it after all the one thing he was right about i couldnt ever do it.  ive done enough death in my life im full up the world opens wider as the slick settles just below the brain.

(tip #37: the water plays tricks but the light is always true)

ironic food scours the mossy stone this stuffed goose is fomenting a revolution.  party of one.

my people are mongols and viking bead wearers braid weavers boot for horses

keep eating

the creatures take to chairs and space before the corner hearth we walked for centuries down the bustling pike reading rocks and waterfountains the town pump and glorious

as long as i keep eating the shredded skin inside my mouth doesnt bother me

god forgive me ive gone to ken wilber and a book written by a man who would not abandon the children and walked with them onto the train to Treblinka.  lithium for medea, etc.

tonight its like knitting with little strands of yarn

gessoed some pages killed a bottle of cabernet

younger comes up and lures me with david attenborough

goodnight, bravehearts

.

 

"...a great deal of time in solitude tended to blur the peripheries.  Reality is perceptual and consensual and after thirty days alone you could forget where your skin left off and the world began.  Then you emerged for supplies and forgot how to behave partly because you never really knew how in the first place."

"mom!  in the game theres a chicken named leia and shes a lot like you."

"In the name of the sacred coyote, get the fuck out of here, demons."

 what wonders wraught for the price of breathing these.  one boy in a gang asked me if i was taking pictures of dog turds.

apply the alchemy of mindfulness and Time and you would have to admit.

("'...and I'll pay for the headstone,' he said.")

i boogie out with american prayer

("...columbus' groin got filled with green death..."he said.)

saffron robes ike & tina dalai lama driver eight ear to the belly if you listen you can hear the ocean wombshell

boots braids beads i should have been a rawhide at the racetrack

preparing entirely in the psychic realm for the great migration at the tipping of the earth

art supplies knit a scapular for my classic choices i need to make before they may not be made

look.  this is what theyve done.

 

"The first step is to pee and make coffee, which I can deal with, and after that what happens is not in firm hands."

jimmy page, generally.

ok.

i dedicate this my offering to you.

su.

the plants need a bahth theres too much light sometimes i need welding goggles to tone it down.

this new rap is like what it must feel like to twitter

here a series of postcards that i would otherwise not send

 

"...but it was comforting to have furniture that was all worn out by crazy people."

"You'd be surprised what people pay for a porthole, even though they got no use for it."

 "Certain dogs are so ornery they can't learn from their first porcupine experience.  He washed Sam's mouth out with whiskey and water, then the dog jumped in the truck and went to sleep, so we had a dog...We buried Sam with the chicken still in his mouth."

a lot of thoughts.  perfect beautiful waxing crescent way over the ridge now suddenly veiled in cloud.  a walk with the mamadog in unfamiliar territory the surprise energy of highendcityhouses but on the edge of a farm.  there were so many messages today walking on a sidewalk in late november that i didnt know and all the trees had boneflowers and burningleaves.

boneflowers and burningleaves.

  

"If you're hoeing raspberries for thirty cents an hour in the hot sun what you want is secret powers."

cutting it close.  more and more i see how craft comes into everything craft or mindfulness initiate an alchemy of human energy into what is now refered to as prayer.  the shakers said labor is truly made worship in the abecedarius i bought in a bookshop on park when my older was wee.  head hand heart the fingertips extraordinary shoreline that moves through innumerable matrix waves.

(tip#17:   try taking the out)

always now the purplehandprint green and brown now last purple really the eggplant tarp for olderwithin with green suede clogs and ate krautdogs from the man at the bigutility. that was the year kurt cobain died.

 

"It was somewhere between watercress and a rock you pick out of a river, way up near the top along with wild violets and muskmelon."

lessons will be learned, no matter how long it takes.

i woke this morning to the sound of musket guns sharp and diffuse and later the sound of sirens.

later i dance around my livingroom hips and wrists to just like tom thumb's blues.  theres dogs and wine and pixie lights.  i have one regret.