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.

a poem i painted to say hello

is on its way

close on the heels of another

something like it

home again pixie lights white sage a little boy what loves me.

unwind the cattlewire from around the hickory stick and breathe.  my facial cavities arid harboring absent days small dog arafat i stood in the forties institutional food arena and swore allegiance to the Prol.

black and white has always meant some tough mother prols, no?

 

squaretoe boots mingle here have a little dogbone candlestub punchline.

its all beneath you puppetman didnt know you were here were old now and lightyears i remember oranges.  these hard lessons i chose to learn the nixon mask of my ignorant yesterday but ive shriven read atonement but since then it hasnt had me it never come no more. 

all i can think now is i only lived so long so as to be old and so closer to lesson learned be old and knobbygnarly cool smooth clutch at your shirtsleeve my bright eyes twinkling.

i will laugh because there is no time to tell.

one day i will be old and i wont care for forgiveness.

some glorious stick stirs the muck of my puddlefloor.  a lightningbolt in dark disintegration.  something like mica catches light my eye smells the ocean. 

i put it away the old box dryedge split with neglect recycled desert air.

the books i guess a map for someones hindsight.

tomorrow is cars and pancakes somewhere away from waiting the strong bones of what i left behind beside me singing.

ten for today:

1. 
2.  cabernet
3.  women
4.  night
5.  home
6.  poems
7.  hello
8.  symbol
9.  magick
10.  pancakes 

"mama raised me on riddles and trances fat back channel cat lily white lies"

"all dressed up in gimcrack fancy.  i never met papa i never asked why"

kokle pronounced ko'wak-le.  koks is trees.  similar to the kantele of lands northmore.  i played one as a kid, a blonder, fancier type.  the one here is probably more true to is ancestors.  im looking for someone who trafficks in obscure baltic stringed instruments perchance to renew my mesmerized love for the kokle.

i have speakers, but theyre not THE speakers, but theyre my fathers, still.

feeling ungainly today, a loose ball.

"beetle eyed jokers hick town princes rhinestone rubies rubber cigars"

slept and painted this weekend, played purrs on cats and danced with dogs.  i came home today and there was coffee,  mint chip and cookies.  there were dogs and music the hearthfire burning.
nels cline and the woman at the ford the woman at the ford.  the fluorescent glare of work a million impalements the thick alien air for november i couldnt breathe my thoughts spit out in blinking gasps i said the word retarded a lot i felt like my father before the first drink.

"wrassled me a gator in omaha city done me another down in new orleans"

so jiggety jig pixie lights the light didnt hurt my skin i gave out biscuits boiled water mixtapes for bornagains getting signals on the hill sensitive more even now to energy sucks getting my sealegs feeling better and everyone says i look worse.   my aries sucks the oxygen right out of my environment im superaware that hes there and i cant think for myself not supposed to.  between channels but hes upstairs and ssp comes on and after a long in i arrive at great exhale.  #1 son trying for the team so he can wear purple and be jesus.

unmedicated rage.  i fill fill fill to make up for the beauty i live without, i read.

i get supersaturated or faraway and back in the swim of work and family is sometimes more than i can spin.  i need clear firm boundaries like a dog.  today is a steve earle song and something strong.  

 

"ive been sleeping with a stranger in a no-name town thanksgiving dinner at the top hat lounge christmas eve at the fantasy tan"

realized once and for all outloud to myself i dont give a fiddlers foreskin for red letter days.  a benign case of the kidwiththeviciousalcoholicfatherhateschristmas garden variety dysfunctional jaded heartbreak i thought but announced itself full fledged in small town glaring november afternoon as shit on my shoe and for someone like me its liberating to say This Is How I Feel.

and now all this because i wore a black pocketed apron with a ketchup bottle and the muscle memory dragged up the ghostofwaitronpast and i ached for blunt panic and a cigarette the smell of grease and man and the jingle of time in my pocket.

 

"underneath the levee in the cattail thicket down in the shadows of a shady grove"

hen party wine around the world a turtle and the presley cat and im good blood and tattoos.


today at breakfast i breathed different air and she was beautiful.

 

"theres a thatch roof risin' from a poke fence picket and white smoke billows from a coal black stove"

sometimes i have nothing to say but i want to walk down the dark street with you laughing.

 

 "inside the house is a hall of mirrors inside the mirror is the temple of sin inside the temple is the face of mama"

 

"and mama she know where i been"

the cold moon of question and answer

Q:



A:

these books.  these books puppetmaster has one but others years in color on the page.

still waiting for someone.  to see.

making mix tapes paint on my fingers maybe this is as close to life as i get outside the out.

right brain pilates the light contracts and expands.

white sage red wine black night

the stars you can feel their radiant heat from here

where the air thins out and two roads meet

shining eggmoon the hart sniffs the wind for hind white flag waving

my one hand dancing in the air.

 

the universe is "a conditionally perceived shade of beige."

T's trick-or-treat summary for 2009:

"He smelled of cigarettes.  He gave me peppermints."