An Unnamed Road in Tuscany

a butterfly breeze-tumbles
beneath a curved branch
an ochre-colored fortress
of circling buildings
sits on a flat-topped mountain
the birds sound like frogs
the insects sound like birds
the slender leaves and the fruit
of the olive trees give them a look
of decoration
everybody's waiting for rain

Day & Nights Italia

1000 YEARS

Tree with an ancient trunk
Split gnarled curled
An ant descending
A mountain behind
Still grows
Branches draped
With olives and moss

MONTEGIOVI

stars seen through
the space between
the cypress

dogs bark
crickets chirp
a window creaks open

three olive trees
shimmer green
in a field

their shape rounded
like sea urchins
perched on a reef

a road coils
upward to a yellow
tower on a hill

three cats
are under the stairs
eyes glowing

ROMA, MONTEGIOVI

music
in kitchens
on motorbikes
italian
reggaeton
bachata
jukebox songs
in restaurant
in tuscany town
stone churches
shadow cats
cypresses sending green
heavenward
Ana y Johnny
"Io ti amerò"
b/w
Bob Dylan
dal LP
Street Legal
"Changing the Guards"

 ROMA, MIA ROMA

the arches, the marble, the churches, the towers, the portals, the fountains, the old gods, the new gods, the windows of shoes-suits-ties-gloves-coats-shirts, the yellows the blues the rose the beige the black, the pink clouds of dusk, the blue dome of the night sky, the chittering insects, the strutting pigeons, the chairs the tables on cobblestone, the running underground spring water on tap in a wall, the steam, the espresso machine, the italian, the brazilian portuguese, the spanish, the english, all spoken all sent out into the night air

AN UNNAMED ROAD IN TUSCANY

a butterfly breeze-tumbles
beneath a curved branch
an ochre-colored fortress
of circling buildings
sits on a flat-topped mountain
the birds sound like frogs
the insects sound like birds
the slender leaves and the fruit
of the olive trees give them a look
of decoration

everybody's waiting for rain 

ROMA ELASTICA

Say three tall panels
In a field
Of burnt scrub grass
Along the road
From the airport
An office complex
The shape of a castle
Made of blocks
Sits on a hill
Overlooking parched fields
Mechanics' shops
Parking lots for roadside eats
Suddenly wide letters
Jump out into space
JOS! GAF! (a big head
With big teeth & eyebrows
In black & white)
BONCO!
The message could be
From the walls and pillars
Along the train tracks
Of Chicago
Sent and received
We enter the city
Via del Corso
And walk to the wide
Piazza del Popolo
A strong god watching over
A fountain with more gods
A obelisk 60 feet high
Covered in hieroglyphics
Rises skyward
On its top
A cross within a circle

ROMA ELASTICA

 

Say three tall panels
In a field
Of burnt scrub grass
Along the road
From the airport
An office complex
The shape of a castle
Made of blocks
Sits on a hill
Overlooking parched fields
Mechanics' shops
Parking lots for roadside eats
Suddenly wide letters
Jump out into space
JOS! GAF! (a big head
With big teeth & eyebrows
In black & white)
BONCO!
The message could be
From the walls and pillars
Along the train tracks
Of Chicago
Sent and received
We enter the city
Via del Corso
And walk to the wide
Piazza del Popolo
A strong god watching over
A fountain with more gods
A obelisk 60 feet high
Covered in hieroglyphics
Rises skyward
On its top
A cross within a circle

Roma, Montegiovi

 

music
in kitchens
on motorbikes
italian
reggaeton
bachata
jukebox songs
in restaurant
in tuscany town
stone churches
shadow cats
cypresses sending green
heavenward
Ana y Johnny
"Io ti amerò"
b/w
Bob Dylan
dal LP
Street Legal
"Changing the Guards"

Roma, Mia Roma

 

the arches, the marble, the churches, the towers, the portals, the fountains, the old gods, the new gods, the windows of shoes-suits-ties-gloves-coats-shirts, the yellows the blues the rose the beige the black, the pink clouds of dusk, the blue dome of the night sky, the chittering insects, the strutting pigeons, the chairs the tables on cobblestone, the running underground spiring water on tap in a wall, the steam, the espresso machine, the italian, the brazilian portuguese, the spanish, the english, all spoken all sent out into the night air

Montegiovi

 

stars seen through
the space between
the cypress

dogs bark
crickets chirp
a window creaks open

three olive trees
shimmer green
in a field

their shape rounded
like sea urchins
perched on a reef

a road coils
upward to a yellow
tower on a hill

three cats
are under the stairs
eyes glowing

Cream Colored Guitar

 

he told me he got his tone
his sustain listening
to John Mayall & the Blues Breakers
in his parents' house
in the U.P.
and the black wax spun
on the spindle
and his spindly fingers
gripped the neck
and bent the strings
as the ice floes creaked
outside the windows
on the mighty lake
the color of stone
and I heard him
in milwaukee
30 years ago
on a cream colored strat
in a second-floor apartment
overlooking
a lilac tree
in bloom

Martian Movie Idea

 

Movie about an alien who comes to earth, looks around, see the endless roads, the garages, the gas stations, the oil wells, the tankers and the gas trucks, the highways, expressways, streets, boulevard, on ramps, off ramps, asphalt, concrete... and concludes that cars are the dominant species on the planet and that they force humans to drive them to the places they need to go.

Novels II

 

Novel about a woman who thought for 20 years about a phrase her friend said: "Drum machines have soul."

Novel about a ventriloquist who has a dummy, Serge, that talks to him and for him on stage, and sometimes off stage. After years of this, the dummy grows to desire his own remote talking creature. He settles upon a green parrot - and a loquacious one at that. At home, the parrot, called Jeremy, lives a largely cageless life - flying to the window ledge, over to the kitchen counter, the coat rack, back to his open cage. And all the time, talking - repeating words and phrases in a doubly uncanny voice: The uncanny voice of the dummy echoed in the almost human voice of Jeremy. As happens to many bird owners and bird watchers, Serge is struck by the canny intelligence of Jeremy. The mind beneath those green feathers appears to be always absorbing and processing. Jeremy develops a robust vocabulary which he can produce on his own. The three of them - the ventriloquist, Serge and Jeremy - take to the stage, and they are a hit. Nobody has ever seen something so dynamic in the world of ventriloquism. Inevitably, Jeremy the parrot wants more. He wants his own remote creature to speak through. The ventriloquist is the obvious choice. The ventriloquist will speak the saucy, sassy and occasionally sage words of Jeremy.

Novel about a guy who could not solve capitalism. He couldn't solve it on a personal level. He would get a decent job and eventually, inevitably, find himself unable to cope with the workplace hierarchy and the fact that the job consumed his peak hours of mental acuity and physical energy. He wanted those hours to himself, to be able to create things, beautiful things, great things. He wanted those hours to be able to enter into relationship with the natural world -- even if this merely meant the winds, the oaks, the elms, the squirrels, the rabbits, the worms, the ladybugs and the clover in his neighborhood. He sensed that the loneliness he felt on an existential level could only be resolved through a relationship with that world. He started to bring grasses, insects and, ill advisedly, mice into the nonprofit where he worked. It seemed like a good solution. People could get to know the native grasses, The bugs and even the scurrying mice. And so it went, with the guy trying method upon method to both be able to earn a livable and have a relationship with the living world, with some methods working better than others.

Yo La Tengo

 

I've really only heard Yo La Tengo once. It was about 30 years ago, in a small grocery store that hired musicians and artists as cashiers. I was moving slowly up and down the aisles, picking out dried fruit, apples and some cheese when I heard this pulsing music. It sounded like someone pulling on a massive steel string and letting it go, the reverberations ringing in the air. This sound was accompanied by somebody banging steadily on tom toms. Then the massive pulled and released steel string was joined by multiple other strings that were hit and plucked. There was a bass behind all this, articulating three and four-note figures that served as both counterpoint and anchor. The whole thing slowly built, increasing in intensity. The musicians were taking their time, like it didn't matter to them if the song was eight minutes or twelve or twenty. The rising sounds reminded me of those plastic tubes we had as kids that you would raise above your head and then move your arm in a circle to produce whistling wind. Listening in the grocery store, I pictured red, yellow, and royal blue forms surging up and twisting around in the air above the vast field where it seemed the strings were being plucked and hit. I got to the cashier and I asked him what it was. He told me, Yo La Tengo. He didn't say it pretentiously or warmly. He just stated it as a fact. Later, I heard the cashier play bass. He was very nimble, very intelligent and dialed in. I figured he would go onto renown, playing in national touring bands. Back then I didn't understand that many, many other things beyond talent had to fall into place, internally and externally, for one to make a living playing music or making paintings or acting, etc. But that didn't really matter. His sharing Yo La Tengo music in the grocery store and telling me the name of the band declaratively and his playing a cheap electric bass limned in red paint in such a way that I can still hear the space between his notes are worth the world to me.

See less

I Had an Allan Holdsworth Cassette Once

 

I had an Allan Holdsworth cassette once
I can picture it now in the trunk of my car
I think it was Bill who gave it to me
He knew I played guitar
He said I needed
To listen to it
To consider myself
A real guitarist
The tape was red and white
With Allan Holdsworth’s name
In blue pen on the label
Somehow I knew I would never
Listen to this cassette
But in my mind I acted as if I would
I transferred it from the trunk of my car
To a shoebox with other cassettes
Close to my boom box
It traveled to different cities with me
Milwaukee Chicago Baltimore
But remained laying down in the box
What are those things we do not like
But do not know why?
Did the name Allan Holdsworth
Sound like a math teacher to me?
Did I think he was cold & analytical
Not an organic player?
I remember hearing this other guitarist say
That he thinks he plays around 12,000 notes a night
And I thought: That might be 11,000 too many
And maybe that's what I was afraid of
With Allan Holdsworth
A bee swarm of notes I couldn't escape
But he deserved better from me
I need to listen to Allan Holdsworth

In the Café

 

A guy in powder blue pants speaks into a headset with the resonant voice of a radio broadcaster and keeps his cigarettes in a Tupperware container. Into the phone, he declares sets of letters and numbers using the whiskey tango foxtrot system.

He wears clear framed glasses and has a backpack, a tote bag and a travel mug. He has a sketchbook covered in abstract designs made in magic marker, a clear plastic bag for toiletries and an off-brand computer. I think he's either a millionaire or homeless or both.

Novels

 

Novel that consists of real and invented oral histories of obscure Milwaukee bands.

Novel about a writer who argues that Lester Bangs' list of all the books he was writing and planning to write before he died (e.g. A Reasonable Guide To Horrible Noise; All The Things You Could Be by Now If Iggy Pop's Wife Was Your Mother – A Book Of Jive 'n' Verities by Lester Bangs; All My Friends Are Hermits, etc.) is one of the great works of American literature.

Novel about a woman who decides to live by the dictates of the book Andy Warhol’s Philosophy every day for one year. (e.g. "When I look around today, the biggest anachronism I see is pregnancy. I just can't believe that people are still pregnant.” etc.)

Novel about a guy who leaves the country to live a more natural life, distant from the dictates of capitalism and closer to the rhythms of the elements, and who discovers he's a shitty gardener.

Novel about a guy who assembles a language and a culture based upon all the texts that are not digitized. He knows AI is sucking up all the language on the Internet. So, he sets out to develop a culture based on orality, the spoken. He just can't put anything he records and archives onto the Internet.

Novel about a woman who keeps going to Moth storytelling competitions and keeps losing because she refuses to put redemption into her tale.

Novel about a guy who goes to Moth storytelling competitions and tells a tale in which the epiphany he experiences is that he loathes capitalism and must work to defeat it.

Novel in which the arrangement and production of Born in the USA is completely other and the course of US history is changed as a result. Gone is the bombastic gated snare drum. Gone is the hyper-loud buzzing synth line. Perhaps the charmed man, Rick Rubin, produces the track. Bruce, the E Street band and Rick all hang out, eat vegetarian food, and slowly arrive at the heart of the lyrics and how they can best be expressed. People hear what the lyrics say, and the line of history moves.

Novel about a woman who is a performance artist in a small town in the South. Her works of time-based art are seen by local residents sometimes and are frequently seen by local wildlife - river birds, alligators, deer, squirrels, sometimes a peacock. Her visionary performances never lead to a career and are not seen in New York or Los Angeles until after her passing, on decaying VHS tapes.

Novel about a guy from a small town in Wisconsin who moves to Milwaukee and pretends to be from an Irish neighborhood in Chicago. Nobody discovers this until he dies. Nobody knows exactly why he did it.

Novel lot about a guy who pursues five different art forms. He can't help himself. But it's too confusing, so he devises ways to not feel divided and unfulfilled. On the day he's a translator, he has one costume: T-shirt, navy blue pants, designer sneakers. And he eats a special diet on this day. Cappuccinos, elegant sandwiches, eggplant dips. And so it goes for each of his art form personas: poet, musician, actor, translator.

Novel about a guy who tries to write a novel about every Bandcamp sale that comes up approximately every nine seconds for one hour in a scrolling banner on this site. (e.g. "A Labyrinth Made of Labyrinths" "AX Vulcanalia" "No Problem Tapes Feel the Summer" etc. etc. etc. All purchased by individuals during the minute of 1:55 PM CST Sunday, June 14, 2026).

The journey to presidential vocabulary

 

CRIGGED
ROOKED
HONY
PHOAX

CROAX
PHOGGED
RIX
HOAGGED

CRONY
HIGGED
PHOOKED
RAOX

CROOKED
RIGGED
PHONY
HOAX

Jambalaya

 

AI is dumb
It can't think like me
Look I just thought of a hippopotamus
Waddling across the savannah
And then singing a song by hank williams
"Jambalaya"
And then I try to think of the ingredients
Of jambalaya
(Rice, onion, green pepper, maybe alligator...)
And then I try to remember the lyrics to the song
"Jambalaya"
(Is it the "we're gonna have big fun
On the bayou" hank song)?
And then I think about the possible origin
Of the word jambalaya
(It's got mb next to each other
This often suggests african origin)
And my chain of thoughts
And my searching in my mind
And the lacunae in my memory
The result of traumas
AI has not and cannot experience
Allows me to imagine a blood orange moon
Poised above the landscape
And the hippopotamus turns around
He wants to be in the shallow river
With the moonlight on his back
As he sinks into the cool muck

I Lost Two Poems

 

one was tall
vertical
handwritten
centered on the page
the name of the poem
was "wild horses"
about the stones song
written in a cafe
where they were playing it
well it was more
half bar/half cafe
lights were dim
and you could order beer
the poem was dedicated to bill
and he still hasn't seen it
because it is somewhere else
in a landfill
on a barge
being used
to line the nest of a crow
or lifted by the wind
across the mississippi
across the prairies
over the colorado
and into the mountain meadows
to land on the back
of a grazing mustang
surrounded by wildflowers
snowy peaks behind her

the other poem
was about
chicha and huaraz
huaraz and chicha
i wrote it in
in a friendly's notebook
in a cafe on lake st.
that serves cardamom lattes
(friendly's is the name
of the cafe/bar
where i wrote
the wild horses poem
and they sell notebooks)
and then after writing
the poem
i lost the friendly's notebook
and with it the poem
chicha is a drink
you make from
fermented corn
but i was writing about
the music chicha
which some people call
psychedelic cumbia
which i first heard
echoing out of the houses
facing the snowy peaks
of the mountains
in huaraz peru
i bought several cassettes
of chicha
and listened to them
in the mid 90s
i wasn't sure about
what i was hearing
the high register organs
the loping beat
the four-note lead-in
to each verse
like a quick appetizer
but i still kept flipping over
the cassettes
as I navigated milwaukee streets
walking in the shadows
of downtown towers and spires

Kangaroo basking shark buffalo

 

500 red orange yellow leaves
Blown east down Harvard St.
Look like racing buffalo
Charging across the prairie
The rust bellied squirrels on 13th St.
That stand up on their hind legs
And face you
Look like kangaroo
Next to the liquor store
Leaves have piled up
Into an big oblong shape
A basking shark
Multicolored
In the middle
Of the sidewalk

Cumbia

 

Walking in a boring neighborhood
The setting sun is blocked
By houses
Flat land
Shitty clouds
And rain
Up ahead
An open garage door
A car with its hood up
Tables benches carts on wheels
Blinking electronic equipment
A ONE two three
ONE two three beat
Snakes out onto the sidewalk
Propels me
I can go on and don't miss
The setting sun

A paradox

 

I'm probably "woke," but I still don't know what it means.

big star

 

big star was
behind the times
when they appeared
in '72
too much chiming guitar
composed drum fills
heartbreak harmonies
not enough prog ascension
prog typewriter guitar lines
they broke apart
in '73
then they were
ahead of their time
they still are -
the pop song percolating across
the top of the mountain range
the trees below
turning colors
whistling in the wind

Guy

 

Guy reads
Six books about
Duke Ellington
To write a poem
Of six lines
About Duke Ellington

Night April

 

Sound of water spouting
Out of a drainpipe
Onto the pavement
Cars pass on the wet street
Music for a film
Rises out of a basement apt.
Sparse piano notes
A sustained tone behind them
Some final bird song
Floats out into the night air

Interesting/Neat

 

The Pentagon is the largest administrative building in the world. If you pogo sticked down all its hallways, one wing at a time, it would be the same distance as crossing all the bridges that span the rivers of Pennsylvania.*

I've found a fast-food restaurant where I can read, write and feel comfortable and it's like the soft roll on the sandwich I order inspires me and permits me to do some good thinking - like Richard Brautigan did on the #49 bus crossing through San Francisco's hills, like David Byrne sings about in "Cities" when gets to the part about the dry ice factory.

Neoliberal go-go capitalism is finishing off the historic buildings of Bucharest even faster than authoritarian communism did. But let's face it: They both suck.

*(I made that last part up).

A Poem I Lost

 

It was about the professional wrestlers of Milwaukee. Or at least I think they were from Milwaukee, since I was watching them on TV Sunday mornings in Milwaukee. They were jumping off of the turnbuckle. Slamming their bodies off of the not soft bouncy shaking floor of the ring. Administering headlocks, knee raises to the face, even tumbling oh out of the ring. How could their bodies take it? In any case, the poem meditated on each of the wrestlers' names that I could remember, all evocative of something, even to me as a child. The Crusher: mad, unpredictable strength. Baron von Raschke: cunning, with a secret weapon - The Claw. Greg Gagne: fair play and proof that a slender person could be a powerful fighter if he had intellect and quickness. Vern Gagne: a patriarch of the Gagne wrestlers, solid, wise, protective... now I didn't articulate any of this at the time - I was probably eight years old - but I sensed it. The poem was written down on a scrap of paper. Somehow it slipped away from me. Maybe it made its way up to Milwaukee where a retired wrestler could read it.

who's that group?

 

Sparse electric guitar
Sounds like it's played in the desert
How do they do that
Broadcasting to the vast field of stars
It has armadillo sand track movement
And the silence of the roadrunner gliding
It has Stratocaster ring and chime
Who's the group
Where are they now

(authors note: I really don't know what band I was hearing on a sound system, probably in a café, but maybe at my house... however, I could make a pretty good guess... probably a band I really started to enjoy listening to last year... los hermanos gutierrez...)

1000 Years

 

Tree with an ancient trunk
Split gnarled curled
An ant descending
A mountain behind
Still grows
Branches draped
With olives and moss

Silly Love Songs

 

In 1985 I was in college
Living in a basement dorm room
That my roommate
A punk rocker
From Gainesville Florida
Called the Hellhole
The third roommate spent his days
With enormous headphones
Plugged into a radio broadcasting news reports
From an AM station in New Hampshire
We didn't know who lived aboveground
Or if anybody did
One night bass guitar frequencies
Began transmitting through the floorboards
And into the Hellhole
The notes appeared
As thick black sonic tires
Bouncing around the Hellhole
Ricocheting rolling plopping
The force of the notes was such
That nothing else could be heard
The notes said:
Dee dee doot dee do da di da doot dee do
In a tumbling inevitable way
They were insistent relentless
I listened beyond the bouncing tire notes
And detected a Liverpool voice
"What's wrong with that?"
The torrent of Rickenbacker hail
Issued forth in the early morning
In the afternoon at night
And from the movement of the feet
Across the floor upstairs
It sounded like a good time every time

The Times, The Changes

Die Kruezen, Cement - cassette, car stereo, blue Chevy Caprice

Meat Puppets II - blue Memorex cassette, boombox, driveway behind family house

Beatles "blue" double album - blue vinyl, grade school bedroom

Happiness Is Being with the Spinners - 8-track, car stereo, cream colored Cadillac convertible

Pell Mell, Flow - CD, boombox, bedroom third floor of family house

Butthole Surfers, Locust Abortion Technician - vinyl, Portland, Maine, roommate Matt's room

Pixies, Surfer Rosa - Portland, Maine, Brackett St., living room, music played from an upstairs bedroom, source unknown

Miles Davis, Big Fun - vinyl, Bart or Joe's dorm room

The Harder They Come soundtrack - vinyl, Zach’s house, living room

Cesaria Evora (eponymous) - CD, store sound system, Tower Records, Chicago Loop

Neil Young, Decade; Bob Dylan, Infidels; REM, Murmur - vinyl, in a room we never named, family house

Running Fence

 

In Junior High

When I went
To my best friend's house
To sit on the puffy orange
Corduroy couch
And listen
To Cheap Trick records
We would pick up a book
Off the coffee table
And leaf through it
Kind of enjoying it
Not really understanding it
It was oddly shaped
With an off-white cover
Made out of some
Sort of textured material
Inside were photos of a fence
Stretching across hill
After hill after hill
And through meadows
And across the sides of mountains
And the fence didn't seem
To serve any purpose
It was made of mere fabric
White glossy textured fabric
Tethered to steel poles
Stuck in the ground
Winding through miles
Of western landscapes
I was indifferent or confused
By this book
But I kept on looking at it
Visit after visit
There was wind across that land
Sun pounding down on the fence
One day I chanced to look at
The inside of the back cover
Tucked into a pocket
Was a piece of the fabric
Seen in the pictures of the fence
I felt one step closer to it

Sometimes

sometimes i really
miss the late night
cable access
political talk shows
arts talk shows
of the 1980s
the creaky sets
the off rack suits
the audio problems
the Q & A tinged with nerves
because you knew they were in it
in it for the love
in it for the dream
in it for the beauty

of those moments

15 Hallucinations on 15 Separate Patches of Sand

 

You Can Go Your Own Way

As he lay in the gully with a broken ankle, the snow gently falling onto his bare head, a Fleetwood Mac song whose lyrics he could never quite understand played on his mind's jukebox. "You can go your own way. You can call it under a long and day." It made no sense, but that's all he could make out through the little speaker in his clock radio back in the 1970s. I should have listened to more Fleetwood Mac, he thought. I never even listened to a full album, never bought one. They had songs composed following unknown strategies. Who was doing what in the songs? He couldn't tell. The drummer looked like a giant, and the band was named after him and the bassist, John. But then he knew more about Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Were they writing rock songs or pop songs? Could the lyrics be understood if one really focused? What were they about? Coming and going? Movements up and down hills? The movement of days? Love staying and love failing? He had heard about all the drug use in California in the 1970s. Those drugs must have been miraculous stuff to permit them to compose such music in the middle of the night in a wooden chalet studio in Sausalito.

A fox approached the man, sniffing him curiously. He tried to talk to the creature. "What do you know about Stevie Nicks? Do you know how Fleetwood Mac went from being a blues band to a rock and pop band?" The fox didn't answer and trotted off in the snow, leaving a trail of little paw prints.

The sun moved across the dome of the sky. A majestic 10-point buck approached the man, looking at him impassively. The man said to the deer, "Do you know how Fleetwood Mac wrote their songs? They don't seem to follow any pattern." The deer gestured upward with his powerful neck and head toward the road. He seemed to be letting the man know that it was time to try to drag himself up out of the gully. The deer traced some shapes in the snow with its hooves. The man interpreted the shapes as the melodies to certain Fleetwood Mac songs. The buck bolted away. And the man began to pull himself up the bank, singing the melodies to certain Fleetwood Mac songs, "Listen to the wind blow/ watch the sunrise /Run in the shadows / damn your love, damn your lies."

                               Scioto Lounge by Terry Allen

                                                               Columbus, Ohio public art