ad inhaesio
Drunk with passion, ruled by motive.
There is a picture
Of a man in a yellow raincoat
Standing on his capsized dinghy.
One arm covers his eyes
While the other holds
The lantern in the rain.
Indigenous
We paid witness to Venus
In daylight
Shining
By a slivery
Silver moon.
The clouds are different
Around here as though their
Vapor was determined by
Trees and brush or the
Juttin rock.
They absorb the colors of
The ground
For their own beautiful use.
We were disappointed
Big light over the hills
Orange brightness flashing
On and off.
We pass closely by but see nothing.
Then from behind us after a time
A refinery burning
Petroleum and we thought
It might have been a saucer.
Never again for seventy-five
Thousand years yeah
Nice thing to know.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
The Pig
Flights of fancy
A truckload of thought
Packed so nicely
The idea runs !!
Bless the Pig
Symbol of all good.
A truckload of thought
Packed so nicely
The idea runs !!
Bless the Pig
Symbol of all good.
Going West
Halloween
On the road to Denver
Near Boot Hill
Where myth and reality
Converge
The Pig blazes through the
Cellophane membrane
Toward antipathy.
Tontitown, Arkansas,
home of Bessie the
ton o tits cow.
We thought this utterly ridiculous
But we weren't there.
Beginning to see the outline
Of the Delectable Mountains.
Nebraska just seems like a barnyard with
Barren trees and the
Smell of antiseptic restrooms
Icy roads left unsalted.
Denver 248 miles
10:15 a.m.
The road looks like one of
Frankenstein Monsters' neck scars
All stitched up and life-inflicted.
Horses and cattle put
Together in fields
Full of mud huts
Villagers squandered
Left abandoned.
Past the Applegate drain near Paxton Road
Entering Keith County and
Mountain time zone now 9:30 a.m.
Woop Woop !!
South Platte River on Big Mac Drive.
True love ain't hard to see
Now these are hills
The jailbird takes the rap
half a mile from Ovid
The Metamorphosis takes place
And The Pig flies away.
Red Lion Road
Sagebrush troopers
Storming to rainforests
And over deserts.
Iliff and Beaver Crossing
Crook, Sidney, Sterling.
Butch to the rescue
Bad voltage regulator
Can sing some grief and sorrow
Sunday November fifth
On the road to Fort Collins
Debbie Does Donuts topless donut shop
Geraldo show was there.
News items:
Antone Wood, aged 11, the county's youngest inmate
The Ute and the Knight family with Nighthawk lawyer
Boulder tribes looking to reclaim ancestors' bones.
--Fall 1989
On the road to Denver
Near Boot Hill
Where myth and reality
Converge
The Pig blazes through the
Cellophane membrane
Toward antipathy.
Tontitown, Arkansas,
home of Bessie the
ton o tits cow.
We thought this utterly ridiculous
But we weren't there.
Beginning to see the outline
Of the Delectable Mountains.
Nebraska just seems like a barnyard with
Barren trees and the
Smell of antiseptic restrooms
Icy roads left unsalted.
Denver 248 miles
10:15 a.m.
The road looks like one of
Frankenstein Monsters' neck scars
All stitched up and life-inflicted.
Horses and cattle put
Together in fields
Full of mud huts
Villagers squandered
Left abandoned.
Past the Applegate drain near Paxton Road
Entering Keith County and
Mountain time zone now 9:30 a.m.
Woop Woop !!
South Platte River on Big Mac Drive.
True love ain't hard to see
Now these are hills
The jailbird takes the rap
half a mile from Ovid
The Metamorphosis takes place
And The Pig flies away.
Red Lion Road
Sagebrush troopers
Storming to rainforests
And over deserts.
Iliff and Beaver Crossing
Crook, Sidney, Sterling.
Butch to the rescue
Bad voltage regulator
Can sing some grief and sorrow
Sunday November fifth
On the road to Fort Collins
Debbie Does Donuts topless donut shop
Geraldo show was there.
News items:
Antone Wood, aged 11, the county's youngest inmate
The Ute and the Knight family with Nighthawk lawyer
Boulder tribes looking to reclaim ancestors' bones.
--Fall 1989
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Czeslaw
I am so sorry Czeslaw
I know you won the prize.
Someone stuck a feather
deep inside your
road-side dog.
But it was a gift for me
Probably from a Lady I'll never see.
It was in the space between
Salvation and the damnation and
Pursuing a goal.
In a funny way
Czeslaw
Things started meshing together.
The feather, your words, the song of death
And so I crossed myself with
the feather and
examined its silvery spine in
The light of my lamp.
I know you won the prize.
Someone stuck a feather
deep inside your
road-side dog.
But it was a gift for me
Probably from a Lady I'll never see.
It was in the space between
Salvation and the damnation and
Pursuing a goal.
In a funny way
Czeslaw
Things started meshing together.
The feather, your words, the song of death
And so I crossed myself with
the feather and
examined its silvery spine in
The light of my lamp.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
This is For the Ones That Didn´t Get Away
This is for the ones
That didn´t get away
Grown large over time
Escaping nets
Fame spread around school and
In tales of old fishermen
This is for the ones
That didn´t get away
Jumping over boats
Shiny flips
Teasing adversaries and their sons
Just a glint
On the horizon dips
This is for the ones
That didn´t get away
Blackened not
By Creole mens´hands
But crude oil barons
Shoving barrels
Tearing at our backs
Giving protegé commands
Sarasota, June 2010
That didn´t get away
Grown large over time
Escaping nets
Fame spread around school and
In tales of old fishermen
This is for the ones
That didn´t get away
Jumping over boats
Shiny flips
Teasing adversaries and their sons
Just a glint
On the horizon dips
This is for the ones
That didn´t get away
Blackened not
By Creole mens´hands
But crude oil barons
Shoving barrels
Tearing at our backs
Giving protegé commands
Sarasota, June 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Blood of The King
Sometime around 1958, Saint Paul, Minnesota
My birth mom Charlane carried the blood of The King. Pretty lofty words, you might think I was descended from royalty, but it’s not exactly like that. Actually this was The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Now what is this boy talking about?
You know the scene, screaming girls and Elvis shaking his hips. Charlane was there, in some Civic Auditorium in 1958. I can’t say I was in her womb, but perhaps my connection to The King is a bit more subtle, a bit more elusive than being a teenybopper’s soon to be adopted son drifting in fluid while Elvis and Scotty Moore work it out on Mystery Train. I can’t make that claim, like being conceived at Woodstock or something.
In the midst of all the screaming and crappy sound system, girls were throwing things up on stage. Not like notes or roses, but pictures in frames and big heavy notebooks to sign. One of these objects hit him square in the forehead, drawing blood. There was a hush in the crowd as the music stopped for a second and Elvis dabbed at his wound, looking vindictively into the crowd for help or to find out who threw it. Suddenly a flurry of handkerchiefs floated onto stage from the front rows, girls were pouring up to the front and laying out there handkerchiefs for Elvis.
He was so thankful and polite. He leaned down to choose one and a girl gasped, cupping her hands over her mouth. Elvis dabbed the blood for a moment and smiled at the crowd again, backing away toward the band. He counted off a One Two Three and went into Teddy Bear just like that, putting pressure on his wound the whole time.
As the song was finishing, The King walked toward the front of the stage and, according to Charlane, looked straight at her and then didn’t really throw, but let go of the handkerchief, and like a leaf it flew down into her outstretched hands. The red stain was still wet and warm.
She kept the memento for some years, and I’d like to think it was still there in her room, folded neatly under glass, red stain peeking through, the day I was born. But the story goes that her Mother, who was quite a serious non emotional person, threw it away one day in a cleaning frenzy. It’s not clear if she knew what it was and thought her daughter didn’t need it or if it were just an oversight, another non descript item lying around. It could go either way.
My birth mom Charlane carried the blood of The King. Pretty lofty words, you might think I was descended from royalty, but it’s not exactly like that. Actually this was The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Now what is this boy talking about?
You know the scene, screaming girls and Elvis shaking his hips. Charlane was there, in some Civic Auditorium in 1958. I can’t say I was in her womb, but perhaps my connection to The King is a bit more subtle, a bit more elusive than being a teenybopper’s soon to be adopted son drifting in fluid while Elvis and Scotty Moore work it out on Mystery Train. I can’t make that claim, like being conceived at Woodstock or something.
In the midst of all the screaming and crappy sound system, girls were throwing things up on stage. Not like notes or roses, but pictures in frames and big heavy notebooks to sign. One of these objects hit him square in the forehead, drawing blood. There was a hush in the crowd as the music stopped for a second and Elvis dabbed at his wound, looking vindictively into the crowd for help or to find out who threw it. Suddenly a flurry of handkerchiefs floated onto stage from the front rows, girls were pouring up to the front and laying out there handkerchiefs for Elvis.
He was so thankful and polite. He leaned down to choose one and a girl gasped, cupping her hands over her mouth. Elvis dabbed the blood for a moment and smiled at the crowd again, backing away toward the band. He counted off a One Two Three and went into Teddy Bear just like that, putting pressure on his wound the whole time.
As the song was finishing, The King walked toward the front of the stage and, according to Charlane, looked straight at her and then didn’t really throw, but let go of the handkerchief, and like a leaf it flew down into her outstretched hands. The red stain was still wet and warm.
She kept the memento for some years, and I’d like to think it was still there in her room, folded neatly under glass, red stain peeking through, the day I was born. But the story goes that her Mother, who was quite a serious non emotional person, threw it away one day in a cleaning frenzy. It’s not clear if she knew what it was and thought her daughter didn’t need it or if it were just an oversight, another non descript item lying around. It could go either way.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Hills of Home
Winter 1995, Tacoma Bluegrass Festival
Ralph Stanley is one of the legends of Appalachian banjo and singing. He was playing at a bluegrass festival one early winter, and after one of his concerts we saw him sitting out at the table where they were selling his CDs and merchandise. He had a bumper sticker saying Ralph Stanley for President which I bought and stuck on my guitar case. He had been selling the same bumper sticker for twenty years they told me later.
We got to talking with him and his son, a fine singer and guitar picker in his own right, performing with his daddy on the road since he was a boy. Ralph was in his late sixties, this was before his appearance in the Coen Brothers movie, when he sang Oh Death and won the grammy that year and started doing all those TV appearances.
He was only about five feet tall, coming from a long line of miners I guess. He didn’t say much, but he really radiated a peaceful and spiritual energy to all of us without even cracking a smile. Like a little Appalachian bodhisattva, we all thought he had the mountain inside him and every time he sang, the wind in the hollows blew up and through him.
Later in the festival I was talking to Peter Rowan, once with Jerry Garcia in Old and In the Way, still the highest selling bluegrass album of all time. We were talking about Ralph, and Peter told me he had been up to Ralph’s Hills of Home. Up on the hill you can hear the Stanley Brothers being played out of little speakers next to Ralph’s Brother Carter and their mother’s graves, 24 hours a day, leading them home. A little further up the hill, Peter told us, no music being piped out, but two more gravestones--father and son biker family who had loved Ralph for many years.
One day the Father overdosed on heroin and all his biker buddies, dragging the teenage son along, took him up to the Hills of Home on their choppers, propped him up against a tree next to Carter and his Mothers' graves and shot him full of holes with their various guns. They called for Ralph but Ralph was on tour in Belgium at the time. The bikers left the bullet-riddled corpse up against the tree, a note tacked to its chest with one final wish--that their friend be buried next to Carter and Mama Stanley at Hills of Home.
When Ralph got home he was told of the crazy incident and request by his family and the people who worked at the house. He just looked at everyone and said well if that old boy needs a way to find his way back home, then we ought to oblige him with a little resting place up here, but over yonder next to the hedge, not next to Mama and Carter.
Ten years later the son repeated the overdose at a much younger age than his Father had, and the bikers just made a quick call on their cellphones to make the immortal wish.
Ralph Stanley is one of the legends of Appalachian banjo and singing. He was playing at a bluegrass festival one early winter, and after one of his concerts we saw him sitting out at the table where they were selling his CDs and merchandise. He had a bumper sticker saying Ralph Stanley for President which I bought and stuck on my guitar case. He had been selling the same bumper sticker for twenty years they told me later.
We got to talking with him and his son, a fine singer and guitar picker in his own right, performing with his daddy on the road since he was a boy. Ralph was in his late sixties, this was before his appearance in the Coen Brothers movie, when he sang Oh Death and won the grammy that year and started doing all those TV appearances.
He was only about five feet tall, coming from a long line of miners I guess. He didn’t say much, but he really radiated a peaceful and spiritual energy to all of us without even cracking a smile. Like a little Appalachian bodhisattva, we all thought he had the mountain inside him and every time he sang, the wind in the hollows blew up and through him.
Later in the festival I was talking to Peter Rowan, once with Jerry Garcia in Old and In the Way, still the highest selling bluegrass album of all time. We were talking about Ralph, and Peter told me he had been up to Ralph’s Hills of Home. Up on the hill you can hear the Stanley Brothers being played out of little speakers next to Ralph’s Brother Carter and their mother’s graves, 24 hours a day, leading them home. A little further up the hill, Peter told us, no music being piped out, but two more gravestones--father and son biker family who had loved Ralph for many years.
One day the Father overdosed on heroin and all his biker buddies, dragging the teenage son along, took him up to the Hills of Home on their choppers, propped him up against a tree next to Carter and his Mothers' graves and shot him full of holes with their various guns. They called for Ralph but Ralph was on tour in Belgium at the time. The bikers left the bullet-riddled corpse up against the tree, a note tacked to its chest with one final wish--that their friend be buried next to Carter and Mama Stanley at Hills of Home.
When Ralph got home he was told of the crazy incident and request by his family and the people who worked at the house. He just looked at everyone and said well if that old boy needs a way to find his way back home, then we ought to oblige him with a little resting place up here, but over yonder next to the hedge, not next to Mama and Carter.
Ten years later the son repeated the overdose at a much younger age than his Father had, and the bikers just made a quick call on their cellphones to make the immortal wish.
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