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.

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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.