1. |
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Cantata of the Red Rock Shadow
1.
the halo around incandescence
whites out my eyes.
Background sounds lull into dull
white noise.
Images fragment, sounds of trains
dopple through planes,
the geometric barriers of architecture.
Negative space the only true space.
The page bears fruit.
Outside the mesquite thrashes the air,
unhappy again that it is spring here.
In spring the wind gods vanquish all life,
succulence gone to wind and dust,
a cantata created from fragmentation,
the apocalyptic present,
the smell of lilac from a neighbor’s yard.
A noose dangling like a naked light bulb.
I am thinking nothing not contained
in the halo of a hanging light bulb,
naked in the night.
Nothing.
Always nothing.
2.
Waiting for the knock at the door.
Twin lovers never the twain shall meet.
The beast with two backs broken.
Boys locked in closets of baseball bats.
The fear of rats.
An infant howling for its mother’s drugs.
Take this.
Eat.
Bread my body.
Wine my blood.
Easter season brings conflagrations
close to home.
She stumbles beneath the weight of it.
her cross to bear.
Fire scourges west Texas.
What phoenix can we pray to rise up?
Low in the grave he lay.
our savior.
Waiting the coming day.
Our lord.
Her cross to bear.
Her life to lose.
Her grasp on life loose.
Breath turned brown.
Death’s earthy ground.
3.
Sound of water running.
Telephone ringing.
Rock of ages cleft for me singing.
He is dead and we are left dying.
Sepulchral voices accuse of lying.
The sound of water over rock.
Paper over rock.
Scissors rend paper.
Rock breaks scissors.
Superfluous options.
A liar’s waiver, voice haunting.
Spiritis evaporate to dust.
trains thunder through the barrio.
The sound of motion.
Steel on steel.
Hurry before the spirits steal
what’s left of sanity.
Peal after clamorous peal.
Bells ring warnings.
Effulgence pouring.
Someone’s at the door—
out the door running.
4.
The murmur of women praying.
Drunken lilies
nod their heads like sages.
Irish poets sing in French.
Smell the scent of angels falling.
Bells clamor above death’s stench.
Sparrows huddle, not the least of these.
Desertscape desiccated and austere.
Heaven the sound of water running
over rocks somewhere hidden.
Somewhere out there a choir of angels
beat boys with baseball bats.
Adesti Fidelis.
5.
Four flaming drays running away.
Everywhere the smell of excrement
and fire.
The life as sacrament.
The poem as testament.
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2. |
Another Twilight
02:56
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Another Twilight
Twilight is my favorite time to be walking. I'm walking. Right now. Just walking. Walking and typing into a phone in Fort Mason park. Heading home to my husband, my kitchen, the evening meal that awaits my creation.... Conifers line one portion of the footpath, their seed-bearing cones hanging heavy as the clouds in this dusk. Waiting for release. I wonder if trees have memory in their seed pods, if they know they are displaced like me. We are not of here.
This same park holds palm trees on the other side of path. They too reside here in incongruity. I wonder if they dream of heat and mist... of mangroves and skies that scald their frilly little fronds. Their roots longing for the tropical sun. Or is what we think of as 'roots' really a 'seed'. The seed’s job is done, but our roots continue to grow and feed wherever our eyes meet the horizon. Still, I wish there was a place that I belonged… a ground my roots long to thicken in... But I'm a dandelion, a weed, pushing my way through concrete beds, to the nothing - carried away by the whim of the wind…
There is an interesting American Indian saying about the wind, and why they don't wish to move from where they were born... The American Indians say "the wind won't know me." And some people believe that when our bodies die, our souls must go back to the very place we were born in order to transition to whatever is next. I know the feeling they have. Sometimes I dream of the Beatles song..."Once there was a way to get back homeward...once there was a way to get back home..." and am forlorn over wonderment at where my "home" is. I've learned this, though: Home is where the heart is. Really. it is. Now finding that heart, well... that's another thing.
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3. |
||||
In Vino Veritas
My head is on his lap. A thousand fumes swirl purple, possibility dances around the room. The air is distilled - raining ruby droplets, soft as mist. His fingers try to free the unruly tangle of my jungle warfare hair, but pull back in retreat as they feel the resistance. An arm appears from nowhere, tugs my body, scooping me in tighter. I lift my head. My neck cranes, stretching to stare up into his mirror eyes. They're glazed with my reflection. I hear a simple song. The lyrics cry, they say my happiness is his ambition. "That's all I want", he murmurs. He slurs this only a little.
|
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4. |
The Nursery Room Blues
05:34
|
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The Nursery Room Blues
resist
Resist
R
E
S
I
S
T
deny
Deny
D
E
N
Y
Don't look!
Don't touch!
Don't tell!
Stop ASKING...
why
Why
W-H-Y?
Bless me, Father
For I have sinned
But the sin
was in the Lies...
The Lies were in
the cat's cradle
so deftly woven
in lollipop guise
Rock-a-bye baby
on the treetop
When the wind blows
the cradle will rock...
STOP ROCKING THAT CRADLE!!!
When the bough breaks
the cradle will...
with
tangled
stringy messiness
take that inevitable fall...
Then
Ashes
Ashes
And we all fall
down...
Down...
Down...
the rabbit hole we go...
When we'll hit rock bottom?
Fuck, if I know!
Hey, come on Jack...
Be nimble.
Come on, Jill
Be quick.
Or you may get burned
by that candlestick!
Hell's fire...
Lord, I am not worthy
to receive thee...
But only say the word
and I shall be healed...
Heel, Spot, heel
Stop spinning that wheel!!!
Little Jack Horner may never get out of that corner
while Miss Muffet on her bigass tuffet eats her curds & whey
Cuz Russian Roulette's NOT
a game built by Nintendo,
So...
Ok, Peter, Peter Pumpkin eater
you had a wife but couldn't keep her
Sure, stick the bitch in that pumpkin shell
and there you'll keep her in marital hell
Tis she spontaneously combusts
But...
HEY!!!
No worries,
'Cause, of course...
All the king's horses & all the king's men
Can pick up those pieces
and put them back together again
No?
Oh...
then maybe
some other time...
Looks like Love
is just
Another
Nursery rhyme...
|
||||
5. |
Didn't cha Know?
06:18
|
|||
Didn't Cha Know?
They say
the clothes make the man
but I disagree
Show me the glide
in his stride
and I'll tell you
Who he could be
I've never seen your gait
yet, I know you stand arrow straight
casting long shadows continents wide
I bet an exploration through your countryside
would give me the sweetest ride
along the confluence of your river's swells
into your Mississippi mud trails
I long to take a torrential dive
When I walk
my hips sway to the beat of my heart
swinging to a primitive rhythm
strong and steady
like the pendulum of a clock
Tic toc
Tic toc
I pound the ground
and command my space.
I feel the core of the earth
that ore smelts into my pores.
As I transpire, I respire elemental fumes,
The planet's mantle becomes my throne
its submission elevates me to places unknown
Now is my season
The world is mine
I am its reason
And it is my rhyme...
But I do not weight myself down with anchors
Nor ensnare the rare fish with word-bated hooks
I leave that to the erudite and the learned
I did not earn the bites
Of the polished apple I eat
From the wan yellowing pages
Of dust-ridden books
My knowledge is very limited
That's true
It ends with me
And begins again with you
But every education has its price
And such a heavenly body
Can make a willing study of any vice
My winnow window has
No need to hull the seed,
It will eat up every bit of your wisdom
with gleeful greed
What you call your rusty water pan drips
On my lips
And I lap up every sip
of its milk and honey
Your alley cat Kerouac
Tickles my whiskers
Making me purr
Yes, I love
The way you stroke my fur
Paste me with your flypaper glue
Those sticky icky bits of you
ignite my wings
But I'll never burn free
I soar high in the sky every night
Carrying the essence of you with me
Like the white smoke of papal hope
Together we shall rise
anointed in the new
Tearing down the boundaries
of the real
making the miracles
of the ancient's promises
come true
So Buon giorno, my favorite
Stradivarius fiddler crab.
Yep, I am here like the mad wind
Trying to find the bind to lure you
from your sandy burrow
til you wave that big violin claw in the air
and shout "Hell to the yeah!".
Maybe I should make like the tide and hide
so that you feel the coast is clear
to come out here
flip your liquid golden lid
and feast on my fruits of le mar
with your fiddler on the roof sand dune glee.
Yessiree...
I do miss your bliss so very very muchly...
Guess I'll just leave you a shallow saucer
of moon milk out at night
with a flicker of candle for your alley cat-eye to sight
And keep my heartlight shining bright
til you phone home, ET...
Maybe I'll recede to give you the quiet
you sometimes seem to need...
But I know how hard you breathe
the stench of my sex is on you
all the relief that you seek
is the buried deep
in the treasure that lies
between the fertile valley of my thighs
Ubermensch, I need an infusion of blood
For all this time I have patiently stood
Waiting
Negating
The other...
But no more!
I need succor
I wish to drink deep of your Nile
to be soothed by the groove of your ooze
but sans the ruse
which the clever Ra used
to slake the savage thirst
of a rabid Sekhmet
Oh no...
THAT
Will never do...
not for this lion queen!
This connoisseur cannot be fooled
There is only one taste
I want to savor the flavor of
and that, my Zooma Zoom Zoom
of the Big Badaboom
pools in the cry of the "SPOON!"
that Ticks within the tattletale heart
of you
Eclipse me
Eclipse me
My man on the moon.
|
||||
6. |
Lady Liberty's Face
06:14
|
|||
Lady Liberty’s Face
I beg alms from the rare passers by
Here at my little corner of the universe
The one I painted myself into
With gradients of gray charcoal
And unsteady fingers, constantly erasing
or smearing the blurry lines between
The reality and the fantasy
The Agony and the Ecstasy
The You and the me.
It's never a pretty picture.
My bowl is still empty, too
It's got a drain in it that can't be
stopped up, or so it seems...
Every bit of love freefalls into its abyss
I told you that one day you would tire
of this explosive suitcase bomb kiss
that I proffered.
My allure has
a built-in obsolescence
A must-destruct code
in its concupiscence.
Just call me Pris.
Like a Tyrell Corporation
mendicant replicant...
I want more life, fucker...
But all my crying is in vain
It's just tears in the rain.
Wish I lived in an
Ansel Adams photograph
Instead of floating along
this megapixel Asimovian Babylon.
His blacks are not shadowy
And his whites don't blind
He snapped shots of a world
Tinged in a Patron silver
tequila spun light
So unlike
The cyber hyperspace
I inhabit now...
I'm lost
Got caught
Inside
The cool blue blight
Its
Wavy gravy particles
made to mesmerize.
How did I let this happen?
This viral dance
with ribbons of words
Tied into sailor knots shot
Out of a Howitzer
with errant arrows
That boomerang back
to wound my Eros.
All those streamers of
meaningless encounters with you
Gaily waving in a
festive doomsday wind
Tied to a motorcade cruising
at Sunday afternoon ease.
Sulu at the helm...
Oblivious to the danger
in the parade
Never seeing the Oswald
crosshairs on the grassy knoll.
Our smiles wrapped
in bright birthday bows
and honeycombed in hope...
As we dive-bombed the future.
Those playtimes?
Where did they all go?
The sand pails and the apple trees?
The rainbows and the sweet dollies?
Guess they all eloped
with the Easter Bunny
Or were kidnapped by the Sandman
To sow dreams for other deluded folks
With self-forged yokes
that choke and sputter
In a chitty chitty shitty shitty
bang bang gutter...
Gutter
{{{{Shudder}}}}
Utter
the
Gutteral
Language
La Lingua Franca...
Che stancha!
I'm sick of words.
Sick of people who wield them
like the Evil Queen's mirror, too.
"Mirror Mirror on the wall
who's the cleverest of them all? "
Making obvious observations
seem like grand epiphanies.
Weaving prayer rugs from the grazing
of their jelly belly lint.
Such little bundles of wriggling Id,
Colicky and cranky crying out constantly
Their chronic need to show their profundity,
Spewing geysers of gullibility.
Me, included...
Blah blah blah...
We think, therefore we are.
We are, therefore we think.
And into the abyss we sink.
Stinking like 1000 year old eggs
Chicken, egg.
Egg, chicken.
We don't care as long
as it's finger-licking
Good
Just as we should...
We are the gift that keeps giving
Just ask the universe
Who's on first?
No!
Who's on second!
I thought you said
Who was on first?
I dunno...
Third base!
It's all a second rate
Machiavellian vaudevillian show.
Screw it, spew it, then chew it...
We pedal on the Krebs cycle, yo
Til we cannibalize ourselves
The bastard children of Cronus, after all.
Let's make a Gulag Archipelago Incanto
And sing old sea chanteys
with the ghosts of the oppressed.
Nobody realizes that they are so blessed
until you strip them and whip them...
"The secret of joy is the mastery of pain."
Said the goddess Anais Nin...
Damn such self-realization
It's probably considered a sin...
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7. |
||||
8. |
Ojáncana
02:37
|
|||
Ojáncana
It is the eye of the beast in a storm of red that throttles blood from stone. The storm has arms that wrap around unsuspecting men - like you. Her perfume is damnation, but you swallow the scent like honey because it pours over your tongue and enguilds you, making you sing her name out to the stars. The smell of grilled meat is strong as her thighs tighten their grip. You feel your breath shorten to gasps. The moon turns a blind eye and douses the night - the ground is wet with anticipation. The fall is soft, the reckoning is hard, but her embrace is stronger than time and you never feel the sting as she tears through your belly. You are too busy feasting at the altar of your own sacrifice.
|
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9. |
Comé Mierda
09:31
|
|||
Comé Mierda
“You’ve got pineapple picking hands”, he told me.
I was 10. It was summer. We were in Dona Juanita’s apartment.
421 East 102nd St #1-C was my sanctuary even though it was only just across the hall from where the bad things were happening.
There was no bell tower
, no hunchback, and I wasn't a gypsy (although I loved the name Esmeralda and used to don scarves & rings for Halloween before I gave that sort of thing up a couple of Octobers before), but Dona Juanita's door was always unlocked, and her apartment was clean and welcoming.
I looked at my little hands, at my short square palms, at all the many lines that were etched across them. I hated them. I wanted soft smooth palms with long tapered fingers like John’s. John had the hands of someone born to play Schubert piano concertos. My hands looked like the road map to a country in upheaval, like something concocted by a mad cartographer drunk on mavi and rum.
When John shared his impression of my hands, I imagined the Puerto Rico
I had never lived in. I saw endless fields of pineapple, prickly and golden,
oozing their juicy fruitfulness, ready to be snatched out of existence by
hands expressly designed for that purpose. Hands that John remarked
about so disdainfully. My hands turned into scythes in my little
kaleidoscope mind. I sucked on the sour jelly of a quenepa fresh off its
dead vine as I considered the implication of my pineapple picking hands.
Of course, John’s name was really Juan - until he changed it. He was named after his mother, but declined the honor as soon as learned the difference between a boy named Juan and a man named John from the backwoods of East Harlem. Had he been a man named Juan from Barcelona, he might have reconsidered the name change. Then he would have been a rare form of esoterica, not just another ghetto dweller ashamed of his heritage.
Despite John's cattiness, I enjoyed his company, much as I enjoyed the company of all adults at that age. I liked their chatter. I found conversation with other ten year olds tiresome. Adults lived rich complicated lives, yet all seemed so incapable of dealing with the issues they grappled. They amused me.
John had the glamour of being 6 feet tall, strongly built, 25 years old, singing Puccini operas in a rich baritone, painting mythical figures with a primitive palette in thick geometric dashes and swirls, collecting marsupials, snakes and other forms of reptilian exotica. I smile now as I recall the menagerie. Using Dona Juanita’s bathroom was like entering the petting zoo at Central Park. Frogs and turtles and lizards all co-existed peaceably and swam around in Dona Juanita's bathtub. John's rabbit and ferret were kept in cages that were not much smaller than John's bedroom.
John took this occasion of his inspection of my palms to remind me that I would never amount to anything, that nothing would become of my life, no matter how many grades I was skipped in school (as I had been twice in two years), but I suspected he spent most of that night and many other ones trying to forget all the bows and dresses his mother, Dona Juanita, made him wear the first 10 years of his life, so I forgave him instantly. On days when the mercury on the thermometer is high, and (for whatever reason) my confidence seems to be evaporating at the rate of every bead of my sweat, I look at my hands and hear John's words. Still
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10. |
The Rock
04:16
|
|||
The Rock
The pain was swallowed. Ossification had been slow but steady. Flesh churned to stone. Stone ground to sand. Sand burned to glass. Can you see through this vitrine window? This is not a body. It's a terrarium. Fed by a crimson lake of carmine. Its salts cloud my vision and flood my dreams. I'm crawling with insects. Go on, tap my screen. But don't leave your fingerprints smudged on me. It might identify you, us and what we are, or worse - what we aren't. I'm tired of living in this bell jar. I'm breaking the glass. This is an emergency.
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11. |
||||
Put The Blame On Mame
He comes to me
his hot breath masked
by the icepack
he straps
to his head
to keep cool
Both hands fall off
the clock
& all the
hours deteriorate into
a messy pile of random debris
I feel threatened by
the pulse of dead seconds
trying to scale the glass
the music they played was
once so pretty
but now
every note sounds out
death
|
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12. |
Throw The Dice
09:37
|
|||
Throw The Dice
I was walking along the beach thinking of Heisenberg's Principle, the idea of our atoms bombarding and affecting everything around us, about the effect the wind that was blowing on me could have as all the breath it carried from so many lives, past & present, blended with mine.
I was wondering, too, what more than its gritty grains the sand gave up to me, what it lost or gained as I dug my heels in, commingling the impressions, desires from every person that walked upon it before I did, wondering if we were always exchanging raw data - every second of our lives... wondering if I could feel someone else's kiss in the wind... and was mortified. I don't want to steal anyone's kisses...
Wondering about reliquary halls, and the essence of what we are everchanging and if we were always recombining with the world around us, are we who we think we are? Or is this constant state of flux a negation of our being?
I was thinking of love and the cosmos...
I guess I always am.
Always indulging a nation of images
I imagine I hear the moans of captive tides
being discarded by the wind
That same fickle wind
that blows through my hair as
the setting sun
lights the copper-fire
burning within each strand
of barbed wire that
assaults my scalp,
and in this dimming light
I begin to wonder and reflect on...
Why?
Why each frazzled tendril of mine fights
with a bloodlust, trying to secure its place
on my otherwise carefree head...
Coiled in constriction
with a tenacity that I (futilely) wish to believe
belies my nature -
- But I know what I am.
Don't I?
These follicles of mine are contortionists,
rebellious, desperate wantons
holding their fierceness with
a tension never sprung.
Maybe my hair's prickly nature really expresses
my repressed desires,
my husband
says they are always unruly and tangled
because they love each other so much
that can't bear laying calmly apart.
It's a sweet thought, in a perverse way.
Is it my unsung cries of frustration
that tousle them in these moments of
mid-January leaf-breezing?
The sky's combing teeth
grooming me...
but for what?
Only the wind knows...
There is something about walking
along the ocean that always seems
to untangle me --
leaving me sea-scented
and perfumed by an atomizer
of cosmic possibility.
Feeling that luscious honey-spill
of light rays and pachouli that calls to me
from the Crissy Field dunes every twilight
I know... I sound loopy...
But I like me that way.
I walk on the sand and consider
whose foot imprints flirt openly now
with my bare toes, leaving their
impressions on me in this giving ground
if I were to follow along some righteous man's path
will forgiveness for all my sins later be found?
Can I breathe in the lives of a million pasts
from one gust of air circulating all times at once
in eddy currents of despair, hope, love, hate?
Does sunlight teleport secrets in ionic exchanges
whispered in worlds unseen and unheard
by the seizures of man?
Is the who of what I am changing
as I rummage through the relics of sandy past?
As I shed cells & respire
into the atmosphere of Now,
does the air commit mitosis with me
in fulfilling some sated purpose
with a plan to form other beings
through the emissary of my essence ?
What creatures do we birth
from the expulsion of our dark matter?
And whose galaxies will they portend?
Are we the sun they orbit to warm their cold spots?
In our emergence with an impartial world, is there choice, or
do we unbecome to the pinpoint of what we are not?
Or are we not knotted to the what of the us?
Ego living on in the tensegrity of eternity?
This is all babble, but I'll go on.
I am just one big question mark all the time.
But I like me that way...
The Japanese rebuild ancient temples
plank for plank
as the old wears out
to be borne anew --
rebuilding with
the same tools
simple structures millennia old
Their history
A heralding
A visceral outpour
streaming in muscle memory,
The Past's gifts mine in the veins of minds.
Culture becomes ingrained.
Encoded in their people's DNA.
Using techniques preserved
lemony fresh, their elders
and their elders elders live on...
their infinity blowing the sails of Theseus' ship...
The old is ever new --
this happens to me & you, too.
Our bodies rebuild us
cell for cell,
kiss by kiss,
year by year
Making all human beings
walking talking paradoxes
I wonder if we'll ever be able to replace
a shattered psyche
Prosthetically?
If Captain Hook had two fleshy hands
would he be the same man
that tried to kill Peter Pan?
We can clone Mary's lamb
with an eerie precision.
But why?
Won't she only just lose him again?
Cybernetics promises eternal perfection
but do we then cause cellular insurrection?
How many nerves can we Xerox?
Will that actually make a man?
How will we ever know
the damage we can do?
Frankenstein used sky's fiery cry
to make his Lazarus rise
from bits of Cain he was able,
but the gods threw him down a ditch
gave him the Old Scratch to itch
The Devil's in the details when a mad scientist
gets hooked on a Faustian pitch:
Money back guaranteed or double your destiny...
The Gods don't like a gamble
Unless they throw the dice
They always make their point
That's why they live in Paradise
And if they let you roll them
No need to think twice
They'll be all 7's & 11's and
You can bet you'll shoot snake eyes
However I am the master of my own blue heaven
I could hitch another ride, that's true
But I don't choose to in a galaxy of possibilities,
my dice keep rolling your point.
I don't know what, why, how or who
All I know is I'm a Right Bettor
when the shooter is you.
If I took the memory of your kiss on my lips
And used it to light a sandalwood pyre
then kept the incensed ashes of our desire
faithfully in the Shari-den or maybe in a bell jar
would our love live again?
Or is that just another relic collecting dust
on the shelf of one possible Past's unworthy trust?
We are the reliquary of all that we are
We are the combustion of Life's lust.
Love isn't some option to be weighed
and meted out in careful measure
It is every particle accelerating in
this universe.
It is a must!
"This desperation
Dislocation
Separation
Condemnation
Revelation
In temptation
Isolation
Desolation
Let it go
And so fade away
To let it go
And so fade away
To let it go
And so to fade away...
|
CCPP San Francisco, California
"The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them
separately..."
Thomas Paine, 'The Age of Reason'
"Scientists believe that the universe is made of hydrogen because they claim it's the most plentiful ingredient. I claim that the most plentiful ingredient is stupidity."
Frank Zappa
... more
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