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.