I'm on the long road to Canaan and I'm leaving today.
The doves are flying, and bats are hiding in the rafters.
I'm leaving anyways.
My jeans are packed my lakes are frozen
I've got ice skates and yellow hair.
My ice heart and pumpkin breath is like a pair of dice from Halloween
the black dots are his eyes, the white die are his skin
he's just a creepy ghost, nothing to be afraid of now.
I'm on the long road to Canaan and I'm leaving today.
Image source: Wikipedia, public domain.
Where the rubber meets the road for the modern Renaissance man is somewhere between arrogance and rust, somewhere in the mist of the dust of ancestors and geniuses lost. She said it while wiping out a glass lamenting the geniuses lost in south America to slavery the untold losses that are never counted. I really liked her way of looking at things I remember how she laughed wildly talking about Marx and I regretted I hadn't yet read him enough to weigh in. I think she was a survivalist. She's waiting for the world to end. Meanwhile a man I know seems like he's waiting for the world to fall at his feet.
Don't just have all the lines be the same
allow yourself to make one really long line which stretches into infinity's hair and fingers intertwine
Don't have all your lines be short
allow yourself to make two really long lines which move beyond the boundaries of the poem into the great unknown as you never know what you might find when you reach as you thought you were in some crazy dumpster dive freelance gutter punk dance show and you might find yourself at the beach.
Don't let all your lines be...
sometimes you got to...
reach.
the connection between my soul and heart is getting bigger in other words you make my arrows quiver
Separate is an illusion we are all together all the time
all things happening at once
a sun spot in the eye of the blind
a quiver in the leg of the lame
a mouth dry and parched
shaping the name
I guess I had heard "Santa Baby" enough times, through the speakers of every store, in between my ears, and out of the mouths of divas in sequins all December, and I just had it.
Was nothing sacred, what about Silent Night?
Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.
I just see the shoe prints in the snow of holiday shoppers.
I hear the roar of weather reports.
On a snowy night, I was called off from work.
I stood there motionless, like a child in the hay.
Somehow, despite my best intentions to stay holy
I ended up in a jazz bar,
on my night off with a glass of wine
talking to someone about Brazil.
I came home, my stomach rolling
wondering how I got so off track
especially when I have
gifts
to
wrap.
It's up to us ourselves to keep something holy and sacred
whatever it is, it has nothing to do with religion
it's about those moments
when the band starts
and you realize they are playing Ray Charles
and your heart lights up
and you get to hear
a soloist you've never heard before
as the winter sprinkles outside
and blurs the lines
you're inside
with candles
and it's a moment.
It's the moment of a lifetime.
The breathless mentor told the team that youth will keep you slim and serene, yet tickled everyone's nose with a feather if they thought they could get better than her genius wheel, spinning with bright colors and causing earthquakes in our souls.
We sat captivated on Zoom from 8am until noon at this webinar which was meant to save us from being broken hearted. I cooked some eggs and shaved my legs and now I am right back where I started.
With a busted lip and boxing gloves from falling in and out of love, listing all the names and places the nouns and the nebula, taking notes which look like designs I can't read any
meaning in the lines, yet I had to laugh because I practically thought she could save my life.
Love letters from a jail cell
are always signed, 'I wish you well'
where' they're from I'll never tell
I throw them all into the well
In the darkness and the wet
the ink runs and dissipates
it makes a murky fog
that even the bull frogs hate
I hear them chirping and burping
late at night
in the haze over the lake
meanwhile he's in his tiny cell
thinking over his mistakes
and here I am running free
but I am not a woman
I am just his
imagination.
It's all about intention, a rough sketch will not be a work of art, if that's the intention. As soon as the pen goes to paper, that's where the intention starts. In the mind and hands, that's where the intention lives.
James Brown went to Africa
and then there was Afrobeat.
In Afrobeat
you need to play one thing
for a very long time.
When I was in a painting class, the teacher said
to start the year on "the good foot"
and this was in reference to a James Brown song.
Considering
that he travelled the world
and is referenced even in "fine art" classes
shows the breadth
of his influence—
I'd have to say,
damn good job.
May wild birds fly into the night
and may your groove always be strong
and guide you
into the heart
of life.
This is how the bird comes home to roost.
I'm listening to Blues music on a Wednesday morning,
thinking about the past ten years.
There are addictions you can afford, and those you cannot.
There are drums where the hide is stretched in such a way as when it's hit it makes a sound.
There's a piano tuner out there somewhere.
Did you get his number?
The sound of water rushing in a stream
and the wheels of far away cars screeeeeeching on the sidewalk
as they knock over garbage cans
such was your entry into my life
such was it that planets collided.
My teeth now chatter in the cold
the oven is off and the bones are bleached
my hands are twisting and turning
to make the bathtub faucet
stop leaking
and I am sleeping on the dry earth.
Offer me a glass of water?
Cool to the touch, chilled with ice
the glass sweating.
Be careful who you think is handsome, take my advice.
Fame is a razor's edge and it doesn't cut twice.
The line of his jaw that you saw will burn like electricity through your mind for all time.
Pride and yearning go learning.
It's all old school.
Crazed eyes of the homeless, crack and tipped back heads
Sleeping on the benches and playing cards
Hope has been wrecked
the strongest man in the world
can't swing an anchor around his head.
The clock on the wall is old school, not digital. It clacks in a click-clack way, every other click is slightly different than the previous one, and different than the one that follows. The bathtub also drips. It drips slightly faster, maybe about 2.7 drips per second. When these two sounds overlap, when I am laying down to sleep, I catch moments where they intersect.
We found second hand smoke in the SPAM
We found sycophants in the master plan
but we found joy in the jam
we found joy in the jam...
I think I'm getting jazzed out, from too much jazz coming in. I'm slim sleazed and jazz fizzed, jazzy tizzy ruck rhumba and a side of salt. I am rip roaring, free falling, tipping over, and it's all my fault. I took the job at the jazz club, thinking it'd be some extra cash and now all I hear is tipped over sea shells.
Yet the ocean, is so beautiful, all of its waves. Its underwater caves. Its caverns and its dancing froth.
How can I miss it, how can it be gone? You can never lose what belongs to you - paraphrasing a song by Abby Lincoln.
The memories of songs is all I have now. It's almost like the music is gone, even when it's happening right in front of you, jazz music seems to be the art of making music feel like a memory.
At least that is how it seems to me.
I am counting quarters, 6, 7, 8
unless I have $2 I will have to wait.
I do, I'm good and all is well
and all of them are shiny bright.
I have some that are colorful, dark and distressed,
from years so covered up you have to guess
I call these my "alchemy" quarters and I
am bummed when I need to use them for wash
as they are so beautiful
so much variety
so strange to think
of all that the quarters have been through
...to rub and leak against chemicals
and reactions to the air
where have these quarters been?
Gaseous fumes on other planets?
In the soil on Mars?
In the souls of the devils
underneath the counter at some
Country Western Bar
have they been on floorboards
or floating in raw sewage
in the pockets of politicians
or the grubby hands
of a homeless woman
counting stars
Where have they been?
I just hold on to them sometimes.
Admiring their dark purples, blacks and greens, sepias and rusted reds.
In the coatroom, sometimes the hangers make shadows and it looks quite artistic. Sometimes a vinyl raincoat hanging catches a light in a certain way that makes it look like rubber. And oh, the perfumes and the colognes, rich robust orange lemon cotton candy floral hearth. Oh the furs, oh the vintage numbers. I could just hug them all and fall into them, imagining what it's like to go out on the town. I stand and get the coats at the end of the night, and smile. I try to keep my mouth closed when I smile. I don't know why but I think that's more polite. I realized after awhile that the tips that go into my little brass cup aren't really about my value, they are a way of people showing that they value their coat. It's all very complex, yet so simple. Sometimes my hands run longingly on the soft fabrics as I hang them on the hangers. When the hangers are empty again, at the end of the night, that's when the hangers cast the shadows. It's not dull nor dreary actually, it's quite evocative and ready for a MOMA exhibit. Hangers, in the coatroom.
The griots and the girlish ghouls feigning stardust on the rule of law. Libel can't touch the smile. Inches, meters, cubic yards, measuring her beauty in scars. The characters inhabit souls, masks are just the outer shell. The length the storyteller will go, there's miles between our hearts, then the distance suddenly collapses. Cue the choir. Remove the mask! The dawn is coming and we must go about our business.