Saturday, September 28, 2024

Even As

 



You see them
On the street
Begging for money
In torn clothes limping
Or their wheelchair
Rolls crooked
Their eyes glossy
Or they're clear but gaze
Far beyond the scene
Their hair is matted
Or their head
Is shaved unevenly
And they need money
For a roof in the rain
Or some food
For drugs or alcohol
Or hot coffee
Sweetened thick
With packets of sugar
This is not defeat
It is a moment preceded
By some other calamity
We can scarcely imagine
Even as they shuffle
Or push along
The highway offramp
In the sunlight on
The painted yellow lines

Monday, September 9, 2024

Signals

 



Borges writes a story
About a cavalryman
In Tashkent
Who finds a musical score
For bone flute
Written in an unknown
System of notation
Buried among the ruins
Of a battlefield
There are conversations
As the soldier speaks
To imams & scholars
Seeking to decipher the tune
I write a poem
About the story
Somebody reads it
And writes a song
Which contains the melody
I try to find this person
Where are they

Saturday, September 7, 2024

Wandering Through the Caves



 

sete cisnes voando sete corvos cantando
a pantera andando
pelo rio da caverna

as folhas da planta se abrindo
na chegada da noite azul
o espĂ­rito quer voar
pelos ares

Wandering through the caves you find a skiff
You sit down in it and drift
A panther appears on the ridge of the stream
And walks beside you
Mica reflected in the black water
Waking in the bones feels like cold water flowing
The plains blossom across the color spectrum
You see this in your mind projected beyond the cave walls
Words travel across the wind
Though the air remains still inside the cave
Along the dark stream you encounter an instrument
Five strings, a gourd bowl resonator
And you know how to play this
The panther appears again on the ledge beside you
You try to speak to her
She only looks at you
There is a guitar figure you wrote 30 years ago
Or maybe you dreamt you wrote it
You can play it now
And now the panther speaks
You are to follow the cave stream
Until the open fields blossoming
Across the color spectrum
Your old injury is gone away, disappeared
You should have been a swan
Gliding in the night lagoon
How is it that your ancestors lived
On a black volcanic island
Covered in flowers
You should have been a firefly
Flickering on the night plain
Or you were
Or you were a worm purifying soil
For the larger creatures
To eat, grow, die and decay back into the earth
The scale you play on the instrument
Has intervals that mirror the distance
Between thought and action
Between cloud and rain
Residue on the side of your craft
Blossoms iridescent as you push forward
Crystals flickering silently beneath you
You're drinking the cool water
And you approach a threshold

***
Hymn translation:
Seven swans flying Seven crows singing The panther walking Along the river in the cave

The leaves of the plant opening up With the arrival of the blue night The spirit wants to fly
Through the air

***

A composition with MiM for our set at the annual Night of Modular Synthesis at the Empty Bottle, Chicago, 8/27/24. Linked video is a portion of the set.


Friday, September 6, 2024

BENZOS ALCOHOL WEED



 

People take benzos
Drink alcohol smoke weed
To bring down a panic
Whose origin remains vague
Flickers in & out of the system
A rising a fluttering a wind
Benzos alcohol weed
Rearrange thoughts
Interrupt a chaos ritual
Whirring swiftly
Like a night insect
And place a gauzy calm
Between you & the world
Between you & that part of you
That prepares the ground
For the winged creature's eggs
That you must unearth
Name speak to befriend
Or bid farewell one day

(thank you to Carlos Monsivais for the phrase "ritual del caos")

Big Fun

 



how does
why does
miles
1969-1974
still sound like
multiple
futures

Two Short Antifascist Poems

 



PERFORMANCE ART

Donald Trump earnestly singing
"(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love & Understanding?"

ALEX JONES

If you pretend to be crazy for long enough
something happens
and it is not good

NOT THERE STILL NOW

 


My friend leaned out
Of a second story window
Of a wood slat 19th century
House slapped together
For Maine mill workers
And said I always wondered
What it would be like
To go mad
It was a bad experience
From which he did not return
But could have I think
Even as he had stopped
Forward motion
Or was receding
A march back up the ladder
Might have engaged
With enough time movement
And experiments
And failures
The state he entered
At the end
Was like he was
Demetabolizing
In order to pass through
A bank vault door
But had become stuck
Undone into particles
Trapped midway through passage
Within the mineral plane
Halted vibrating
At too high
A frequency to feel well
And too low
To move through
I hope he is not
There still now
I don't think he is
After he left
An information bulletin
Kept arriving in my mind
He was somewhere else
Solving what he couldn't here