Monday, January 29, 2024

First Two Lines From a Dream, Followed by Lines Written Immediately Upon Waking

First Two Lines From a Dream, Followed by Lines Written Immediately Upon Waking


Sweet leaf Keats drew my whole life over
It gave flesh to me

Tumbling over mountains over
rivers, through valleys
like a borg in heat

SHE stoned me
and cried for me

I let down my dress
and went to
heaven

Absolved of nothing
yet resolved to everything
I entreated the sun

Infrared rays reveal
astrological scars
amidst the ruins,
like a farmer's car
amidst faint
festoons of
pansies.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

New song, with lyrics by Darin Stevenson and myself

the piano puddle song (set to tune of all the gold in california)

G She told some little children. ( Who never saw her book tho)
That all the puddles in the world...Led to other D worlds...

G like a puddle of water, with the sun shining on her
is full of the reflection
of the shiner herself

G or a puddle of jello, in red or green or yellow
is molded like a meadow,
of cherry lemonlime snow


G Suppose I got a piano?
Bold in pianissimo,
and everyone came to listen.
Or no one came at D all.

G Let’s say, instead, that judges came.
or maybe some surveillors
a whole sea of assailers
to D drown all the notes

G some dreams might be inside me.
And even the piano.
Some spirits eviscerate. D
Ancient urgencies.

C imagine a piano arising from a G puddle tho
But there's only this room D really.
Even if it’s filled with G stars
stars D no one.
could possibly ob G serve.

Too best to love

Anahid you were standing there, next to the desk, trying to say what Eternity was all about. I couldn't hear you, your voice was so low, like a whisper, but I could feel your breath. It was slowly arriving from the right, while in the left Paganini played through time and space into a Smartboard speaker. I was caught between the two. I asked you the author was and you didn't know. It didn't matter. But I wanted you to know. You said the poem was about "being abroad". You said you didn't really know how to put it. You whispered it, "it's about not putting all of your joys in one basket." The moment was eternal. I knew it couldn't last, even in the moment of feeling it, grafted it onto myself as something eternal, went into it completely, lingered, maybe you could say, wallowed in it. 


Clarice, I was leaning over reading when you walked up. You weren't as shy. It was me this time, softly saying to you, "Eternity. It's about being abroad. I don't know the author." You were caught suspended it seemed to me between Paganinni's ancient fiddle of fire, and my cool breath.  

Sue, there you were, on fire, so cooly, so I did due diligance and got to know you better through Emily's letters. Duly noted. Every time the word Eternity shows up in a poem, it is forever more redolent of you. Paganini was invited to one of your parties, but tragically, he was afraid to cross the ocean. Now he's stuck in time and you are forever free.

Gertrude. On fire on fair fire unfettered you shew, you show, you shew the show. The show you shew unfettered you, unshoes the fair notion of fire. The eternal flame is in the saying of the same. The fiddle of Pagannini solves the riddle of the speech, eternally. 

I can't go on. I must go on. 

Frank, I knew I was going to have to Dick 
Tracy you too, like a retrofuturist wristwatch,
which now is just so...so... yesterday. I'd
rather hang out with you in Eternity, dear,
while Pagannini solves the mystery of Joe. 

"It's the dinner party of my dreams."

 


Wednesday, May 26, 2021

paging Dr. Williams

Portal of skin allow the wind in

caress flesh across face


Dr. Williams' face

in the ever present


imagination. Turtle snaps

in my right hand


as I type

Spring and All


leads me to the richest well

where on the lip


a bird of paradise sips


The imagination is the doorway

to actual present reality you say


it took the whole book to show me

what is and what isn't is interlaced


You and I interfaced

the flesh blowing across each


peach bristling the fuzz 

caressing the deep recesses


of sunwarmed juice 

Friday, May 29, 2020

A dream, to keep up with the fellow dreamers  5/28/20

I'm in some kind of military camp, running around on an uneven rock-strewn field with my platoon/team, doing maneuvers, playing some sort of frisbee game, like a big game of monkey in the middle played by teams. We're having fun, keeping fit, making some great throws and catches, leaping off a rock to grab the frisbee and then rolling landing. Rob Wilson, the head of the St. Francis Prep English dept. is our laid-back sergeant. He's that type in real life too, the guy who's cool as long as you're cool. He motions us off the field where we go to a long "mess" table. There are other platoons sitting at other tables, a loud raucous lunch scene. At each place setting there is nice linen, silver-wear, filled water glasses, a wine glass, and I'm delighted to see that, at every setting, there are identical glass-pipes with the bowl filled. I can't believe it and think, well, I guess this is the future. It's legal, so it's just like having an afternoon drink. But I note that I'll have to be careful and keep my composure. (This likely came up because I watched the season finale of High maintenance last night, which was, in part, about being judged by family for being "a stoner", so I think my dream self was normalizing this. Reader, I cried when the guy's name was casually revealed by his niece at the end of the episode.). We eat and move into the next room where a rock band is setting up to play, 6 guys or so, ridiculously good, nice harmonies, a unique sound I can still hear, but hard to describe. Maybe the band Spoon would be a close fit. Something interrupts them, but I'm not sure what, a disturbance, like a small earthquake. The band stops. I start talking to a kid and we are talking about dreams, about what happens after we die, about the end of the world. We get interrupted again, like you do at parties, and then I'm talking with someone else in deep conversation. Things are getting messy, like a food fight, or something. Everything keeps jostling around, a drunken party feeling. There is an egg dripping down the front of the guy I'm talking to. The first kid comes back because he wants to continue our conversation and asks me if I would be able to "control myself" in an apocalypse. I think about it and say, "control myself, that's a good way to put it. Yes, I think I could control myself. I would be in frantic action, trying to keep my head and protect and serve as best I could. I would I would be freaked out, and it would be intense, but I've done enough meditation practice that I THINK I would be able to control myself, and be present to appreciate the intensity of it, even if I am screaming."  
 
"Yeah," he says, "and it could come anytime, even on a beautiful day like today." 

"I know that's the wild part, it can interrupt the dream of life anytime."  

Then I hook up with some other kids, a boy and a girl. A couple. We are on some kind of walkway for a while, a bridge made out of tree branches. It is tricky going. The boy breaks out an instrument and plays it. It's like a guitar stick with two strings. He plays a sick intricate fast pattern, which seems totally intrinsic to him. The girl hands me another instrument. We are on a train now, in a big round booth, like at a diner, This instrument, like the other one, is homemade, with a sturdy tree branch at its center. This one has one string attached to it, which you can play by hitting it with a stick, and at the top of the instrument there is a metal bulb with notes written around it, like a concave metal drum. It takes me awhile to figure it out, and they laugh at me, in a nice way, as I work at it. There are more people in the booth now, watching. The girl helps me. I start to make patterns on the notes of the drum. The G note is marked "G" and below it, scratched into the drum, is written, Jerry Garcia. I start playing "You know our love won't fade away." Buddy Holly's Ur song, covered by the Dead. I get pretty into it. I look up and the train car booth is now filled with friends. Tyler, his brother Todd and Karen Marder are there. They are all looking at me with a funny expression that I can't quite interpret. At first I think their expression is one of being pleased with the music, but then I notice they all have their hands in their pants. They are waiting for me to get the joke, and I finally do. 

Sunday, March 29, 2020

I just had a "funny" dream in which I was leaving a museum and I saw on the outside of it a large image of myself, sculpted out of clay. My legs were spread and I was masturbating in a bed of flowers with a dildo. (I had a vagina.) The piece was called, "The Failure of the Personal."

I immediately knew that the piece was by Brice Hobbs and was meant to embarrass me, but not in a mean way. So I laughed. 

Then the next piece of the "movie" on the side of the museum showed Brice in process sculpting the piece, first the flowers and then the vulva. They were almost exactly the same shape. I realized then that something else was going on here besides making fun. 

But "Failure of the Personal?" Was this a critique? 

So I called Brice up (in the dream) and he gave me a long explanation of the piece that was terrific, but had nothing to do whatsoever with my take on it. I can't remember what he said though. 

I also dreamed this line last night, in a different dream, 

"Sweet leaf Keats drew my whole life over. It gave flesh to me."