The Voice In The Cottonwoods

I walked in the water
to baptize myself thither
the river rushed past
yeah she ran away
I asked what's your hurry?
she said do not tarry
come home child come home

I stared in the water
at the face of another
the other stared back
for an eternity
I waved to the other
the other waved back
so long child, so long

SDAD

Sdad

1.

Last night was a rough one. Sofia was scratching so badly that I had to lay in bed with her to stop her. All night long she woke up, tossing and turning, grimacing and grunting angrily, lashing out, kicking at me, telling me to stay away and, worst of all, scratching up her skin like crazy. She's had the flu for 3 days and it is taking its toll now. Her fever is down, but the force of this virus is fierce, especially on her sensitive skin. We gave her benadryl, but it didn't seem to be working.

Why am I writing in prose?

Genevieve had gone to sleep in Sofia's bed, because she had

to be up early for work, and needed the sleep. Thank God

she got some. Oh yes, verse is better, for me, worse

for you? Maybe an epic fail. I mustn't swerve off course!

Oh it looks like this is going to be in quatrains, but you never know

how it's going to go this early on in the game. No, I won't even try to

revise this. It's that kind of experiment. One with the aim to be read

by every angry sleepy-head on the block, because this is how, instead,

you may quell the fire in the breast of the beast, quiet the monster

and put her gently to back to sleep. Singing, at least with my disaster

of a voice, doesn't hold muster, she just asks me to stop. A story

to hold her attention is the only hope, and it has to be a good story,

good enough to make her forget the inflammation raging under skin.

(I'm going to switch back to prose, at least until poetry is needed again.)

Nice how that "just so happened" to turn out to be a little sonnet. Ugh, my friend just called and interrupted my train of thought. He was calling asking for marital advice. I didn't tell him what he wanted to hear and so he hung up frustrated. Apparently he didn't want to answer to the last question I asked him, because he suddenly got flustered and conveniently remembered that he had forgotten to bring his computer to work and had to go. The question was "When someone isn't making you happy, isn't it generally true that it's you that aren't making yourself happy? Like a corollary to that idea that nobody can make you mad? Isn't it really your stuff and not theirs?" Nope, that's not what he wanted to hear at all. Maybe it was insensitive on my part. Maybe it was too judgemental. I don't know what he's really going through. But I think I do.

At any rate, the story I am trying to tell is the other side of that story, the happy ending side. Maybe I should have never answered the phone in the first place, but I'm glad I did, just because it lead to the observation that "taking care of my own desires" is sometimes in opposition to "taking care of another's needs." It fits into my narrative purposes, by showing me a contrast. Taking care of another is just what I was busy doing last night. Hard to do sometimes, but good for the heart! Good!

The story I told Sofia to calm her down was this. (Here I suppose we should once again enter into poetry.)

There was a yellow little flower with purple polka dots

(it's good to start with something sensory and basic, like the color

of polka dots, and then when you have attention get to the conflict

right away) and this yellow flower stood in a field of a thousand others,

only these flowers were all purple, with yellow dots, and Mabel,

(the flower's name was Mabel. Good to throw a funny name

in there) thought she looked funny in the middle of all those flower people.

She was embarrassed about the way she stood out, in all that purple,

dressed in bright yellow. But then one day a funny little fellow

came along and picked her. He chose Mabel among all the others

because she stood out. Her difference made him instantly love her,

and so he picked her and took her home to give to his mother.

The boy's name was Frederich, and he and his mother and grand

father lived in a little cabin in the woods of Montana, in a faraway land.

Whoa, I just noticed that I unconsciously wrote another sonnet! I guess I've read enough of them by now that I just automatically go there when I slip into poetry. That's a trip. I shall return to the ease and comfort of prose once again,

By this point Sofia had fallen asleep. So I returned to sleep too, happy to know I could comfort her with the powers of my imagination by sweeping her up in a tale.

But an hour later Sofia was up again, kicking me, snarling and scratching like a fiend, crying and whining that she wanted to go into the other room to sleep with Mama. I told her Mama needed sleep because she had to go to work early, but Sofia wouldn't accept that answer and kept crying for Mama. I told her she was going to wake up the upstairs neighbors. She said she couldn't help it. So to bandage up the situation I told her that I was going to finish telling her the story that I started earlier, and then, when I was finished, she could go in and sleep with her Mama. She tacitly agreed. So, shaking off deep sleep, I started again from where I left off...

Frederich's mother, whose name was Alma, loved the beautiful yellow flower

he brought her. She found a cobalt blue glass vase and filled it with water.

This glass vase was very unusual, because everything else in their home

was made of white blonde wood, all of the furniture, all of the flotsam

and jetsam, everything it seemed but the blue glass vase with the yellow

flower with purple dots. Everybody fussed over what a beautiful glow

the flower had, and then they all went to bed, and went to sleep

(because it is always helpful to have the people in your story go to sleep

as soon as possible, because it is suggestive to the impressionable mind

of the listener to help her nod off herself, and at this point I generally slow my

voice way down too, leave longer and longer spaces between my words,

breath deeper, like a hypnotist. And then I continue toward the absurd

world of dreams.) The little flower noticed a book lying on the table,

a beautiful green book telling how to fly like a reindeer, and Mabel

the flower was excited because she had always wanted to learn to fly,

and she had loved reindeer ever since she had seen a red sleigh

being pulled across the sky one night (even though it doesn't really make sense

that a flower would see Santa Claus in Summer in Montana. Logic, and even tense

doesn't matter at a time like this. Just keep the story rolling.) Mabel wished she

could read the book and learn how to fly like a reindeer. She imagined she

was flying like a reindeer until she fell asleep and then, in turn, she dreamed she

was flying like a reindeer, on her way to Iceland, that blue island in the Northern sea.

(Hmm, a stanza too long to be a sonnet this time.)

Around this point I like to stop and ask a question, to see if she is sleeping yet, like "Do you know where Iceland is?" And depending on whether she answers or not, I know if she is sleeping. If I am lucky she is, and I can stop and get some more sleep. In this case I was in luck. She was asleep.

But soon she is up yet again, angry and upset, scratching and crying, and so I pull out of slumber and return to the story once again. But you get it now. The story goes that as Mabel was flying through the sky, on her way to Iceland, to see her reindeer family, she is nearly hit by a plane (another heavy conflict to get her back into the story) faces freezing winds and the guns of hunters. But then she meets a goose who has lost her V, and the story veers off from there.

2.

Eventually we get through the night, after five or six of these episodes. In the morning, after her mother and sister have gone off to work and school, I have her do some homework. Her homework is a "reading response" in which she draws a picture from one of her books and then writes a few sentences about it. As she was drawing I put on Bach's Goldberg Variations. I wanted to listen to that because last night while cleaning the basement closet I listened to a podcast about the artist Marina Abramovich's new project which was simply having people put away away their devices, put on noise cancelling headphones and listen to the Bach piece. The podcast mentioned the origin of the piece, which I hadn't heard.

From Wikipedia:

“[For this work] we have to thank the instigation of the former Russian ambassador to the electoral court of Saxony, Count Kaiserling, who often stopped in Leipzig and brought there with him the aforementioned Goldberg, in order to have him given musical instruction by Bach. The Count was often ill and had sleepless nights. At such times, Goldberg, who lived in his house, had to spend the night in an antechamber, so as to play for him during his insomnia. … Once the Count mentioned in Bach's presence that he would like to have some clavier pieces for Goldberg, which should be of such a smooth and somewhat lively character that he might be a little cheered up by them in his sleepless nights. Bach thought himself best able to fulfill this wish by means of Variations, the writing of which he had until then considered an ungrateful task on account of the repeatedly similar harmonic foundation. But since at this time all his works were already models of art, such also these variations became under his hand. Yet he produced only a single work of this kind. Thereafter the Count always called them his variations. He never tired of them, and for a long time sleepless nights meant: 'Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations.' Bach was perhaps never so rewarded for one of his works as for this. The Count presented him with a golden goblet filled with 100 louis-d'or. Nevertheless, even had the gift been a thousand times larger, their artistic value would not yet have been paid for.”

I spent awhile just scrolling through the different versions of Goldberg Variations they had on Spotify, then I decided to choose one by album cover. That took me on a detour to looking at hundreds of different covers of Bach albums, most of them surprisingly bad. But a few were very beautiful. I wanted to stop everything and create a blog on the spot of great found Bach album cover art. But one can't do everything.

Eventually Sofia asked me what I was doing and I returned to the task at hand, choosing the right version, by cover design, to play in that moment. I found one and put it on. I sat back in the green chair and listened. The music was so beautiful! I almost wished I had insomnia myself, like Count Kaiserling, if only so I could hear this played to me live every night. And even more, perhaps, I wanted to learn to play it for myself. Maybe someday, I thought. Maybe in my dotage, as they say.

This thought, of my dotage, lead me to another train of thought. That word, "dotage," reminds me that I ran across the word "doit" last week, at a Burns Dinner at my friend Karen's house in Astoria. A Burns Dinner is a ritualized dinner organized around the birthday of Robbie Burns, the great Scottish poet. It was wonderful. The haggis was piped in by a live Scottish bagpiper. Karen had to order the Haggis from Scotland because it is illegal in the United States, for some reason, to sell lung meat, and she found the bagpiper by asking around. She said she asked a meditation teacher she had at Shambala Center who just so happened to have a student that was a bagpiper. Kismet. Anyhow, after the dinner we sang Burns' songs and read his poems. I read one stanza from a long ode called simply, "Scotch Drink," with the lines addressed to scotch,

Thou clears the head o'doited Lear;

Thou cheers the heart o' drooping Care;

Thou strings the nerves o' Labour sair,

At's weary toil;

Though even brightens dark Despair

Wi' gloomy smile.

It's a funny line, that first one, as if Lear had just needed a bit more Scotch to keep him sane. Then all that mess he created by dividing his Kingdom would have been cleared up! The train of thought also takes me back to The Year of Lear, a fantastic book I read a few weeks back. Lear, which was written 150 years before Burns was born, was addressed to the Scottish king of England. The scotch connection.

The line about about Lear being doit: doit, like dotoge, comes from the middle English word "dote", to act silly. Like, maybe these digressions seem a little silly, a little dotty, if you possess a linear mind. Get to the point, you might be saying to yourself. The point? The point is a period. This is more like a dot.

Meanwhile Sofia, still feeling lousy, trying to work on her Reader Response, was getting worked up and frustrated by little things, five-year-old problems, like figuring out what direction the letter "b" went, or how to get the book she was copying from to lay flat. She would just growl each time in irritation. And every time I would take a breath and talk her gently through the problem, bolstered up by the calming music of The Goldberg Variations.

Eventually Sofia brought me the drawing she had been working on "for years."

She had drawn monkey walking through a thick jungle crying, a waterfall of tears

falling into a puddle at his feet. Two elephants with sad wide open eyes look on,

She writes, "Bobo is sdad. The elephant see that Bobo is sdad inn

fact everyone sees that Bobo is very very very sdad." She wrote sdad

because she asked me how to spell "sad" and I told her that it was just like "dad"

which she knows, but it starts with an "s." Makes total sense. It was a neat trick,

as it turns out. My friend Jacques, after I posted the drawing on FaceBook

commented, "Sofia is learning Hebrew, apparently, in which

language "sdad" means "okay". That was amazing, in one little switch

of meaning, stemming from a supposed mistake, Jacques had completely

changed the meaning of Sofia's drawing from very very very "sad" to "okay."

It just took a little "d" at the beginning of sad to make all the difference,

and a network of friends big enough, and sharp enough, to note the sense.

There, my final sonnet for today. I tried to make one that time. Probably not as successfully as when I wasn't trying.

After making the drawing Sofia showed it to me and sat in the big green easy chair to watch a show. She was happy now. She had channeled her feelings into making a beautiful little piece of art. And, for a moment, though her body may be sick, her spirit was light.

3.

Later that afternoon Sofia was convalescing by watching Doc McStuffins in the living room, Disney’s comfort food show.

Meanwhile I had to call Apple Care because my headphones  will no longer fit into my iPhone jack. I called just after getting as high as a rain cloud on my meditation. The Apple genius I talked to was in business mode, but he seemed really eager to help. It turned out it wasn't a problem he could help me with, after all, but we kept talking. We talked about the weather. It was as awkward as it was perfectly natural. “Speaking of weather,” I said and then started talking to him about the poet I was reading, Sampson Starkweather. Just to see how far I could take it. I asked him if I could read him a short poem. He hesitated for a moment and then said yes.

So I read this poem to him,

    Things fit together. Two inconsequential things can combine

together to become a consequence. The poem doesn’t exist

by itself. Likewise, our fears and desires, our angers

and dreams are not unique, they relate, become one

and like us, will die if left alone. Did I tell you I was

watching Game 2 of the Playoffs between the Detroit

Pistons and the Orlando Magic when suddenly there

appeared on the screen this skinny little white boy with

glasses, a Pistons fan, maybe ten years old, shirtless,

standing in the aisle, flexing imaginary muscles, and

painted on the entirety of his chest in glittery pink and

blue spray-paint was the message, “There’s No Such

Thing As Magic” and POOF --you were beside me,

naked and in my arms?

Then I told him thanks for listening and thanks for the help. But he wasn’t ready to get off the phone. He thanked me for the poem and then wanted to get back to troubleshooting my problem.

So, even though unnecessary, I  just enjoyed the process off him trying to help me, trying to understand the complexity of my problem, and offering possible solutions. This weird thing happened though, in which a human connection was forged that transcended the business at hand. At the end, when there was nothing more he could possibly say, there was a hesitation, and I swear he had a wistful tone in his voice when he was saying goodbye. It is so clear in moments like this what awareness means. That thing that connects us.

(We never call each other up anymore just to talk.)

Then I had to call back Apple back again. Because I forgot my second order of business, to cancel my iCloud account. This time, as soon as told them I wanted to cancel a service, of course, I got put on hold. For a long time. Fortunately they were playing really good background music. A band called Milky Chance I found out by using Soundhound. I picked up my acoustic guitar and played a pretty stellar guitar solo to the song. I was feeling it.

That's called whistling while you wait.

In the end I had to wait for 17 minutes! Just to cancel a $3 monthly service. Where's your care, Apple? Corporate shenanigans.

But besides just the guitar solo, I also wrote all of this during that time. So it was a gift!

Ah Apple Care is back. Finally.

"...I understand that you want to cancel the service, Mr. DeGraff. I would too."   (What?)  "Before we go forward I just need to ask you some questions to verify your account."

"Okay"

"What was your childhood nickname.

"I didn't have one."

"Uh, well, what would you have put there?"

"I don't know. Bean pole?"

"Okay, just a moment."

MORE going on hold.

"Sorry, my system is slow today. We've got you all taken of. Thank you, have a nice day"

Bedtime story for sick and miserable child

Bedtime story for a Sick Child (a primer)

There was a little yellow flower with purple polka dots

(it's good to start with something sensory and basic, like the color

of polka dots, to grab her attention, but then you must get to the conflict

right away) and this yellow flower stood in a field of a thousand others,

only these other flowers were all purple with yellow dots, and Mabel

(it's helpful to give the heroine a name that's memorable)

thought she looked funny in the midst of all those flower people.

She was embarrassed about the way she stood out in all that purple

dressed in bright yellow. But then one day a funny little fellow

came along and picked her. He chose Mabel among all the others

because she stood out. Her different colors made him instantly love her

and so he chose her and took her home to give to his mother.

The boy's name was Frederich, and he and his mother and grand
father lived in a little cabin in the woods in a faraway land.

***

There you go! If she's asleep by now you have a nice little sonnet,
but if she's still awake, you will have to forget that form and stay on it...

Frederich's mother, whose name was Alma, loved the yellow flower

he brought her. She found a cobalt blue glass vase and filled it with water.

This glass vase was very unusual, because everything else in their home

was made of white-blonde wood, all of the furniture, all of the flotsam

and jetsam, everything it seemed but the blue glass vase and the yellow

flower with purple dots. Everybody fussed over what a beautiful glow

the flower had, and then they all went to bed and fell to sleep

(because it is always helpful to have the people in your story go to sleep

as soon as possible, as it is suggestive to the impressionable mind

of the listener to help her nod off, and at this point I generally slow my

voice way down too, leave longer and longer spaces between my words,

breathe deeper, like a hypnotist. And then I continue toward the absurd

world of dreams.) The little flower noticed a book lying on the table,

a beautiful green book telling how to fly like a reindeer, and Mabel

the flower was excited because she had always wanted to learn to fly

and she had loved reindeer ever since she had seen a red sleigh

being pulled across the sky one night (even though it doesn't make sense
that a flower could see Santa in summer in Montana. Logic, and even tense

doesn't matter at a time like this. Just keep the story rolling.) Mabel wished she

could read the book and learn how to fly like a reindeer. So she imagined she

was flying like a reindeer until she fell asleep and then, in turn, dreamed she

was flying like a reindeer, on her way to that blue island in the Northern sea.
(By now your charge, lulled by the monotone drone of your voice
should be fast asleep, but if she's still awake you'll have little choice

but continue, as Mabel is shot at by hunters, frozen by freezing winds
and nearly hit by a plane, and any manner of trouble, until she finally ends
up meeting a goose who has lost the rest of her V and helps her find her way
back into the fold. 

Sdad Sonnet

Sofia brought me the drawing she had been working on "for years."

She had drawn a monkey walking through a jungle, a waterfall of tears

falling into a puddle at his feet. Two elephants watch him with concern.

She wrote, "Bobo is sdad. The elephant see that Bobo is sdad inn

fact everyone sees that Bobo is very very very sdad." She wrote sdad

because she had asked me how to spell "sad" and I said it was just like "dad,"

which she knows, but starts with "s." Makes sense, right? It was a neat trick,

as it turns out. My friend Jacques, after I posted the drawing on FaceBook

commented, "Sofia is learning Hebrew, apparently, in which

language "sdad" means "okay". It was astonishing, in one little switch

of meaning, stemming from a supposed mistake, Jacques had completely

changed the story of Sofia's drawing from very "sad" to very "okay."

It just took a little "d" at the beginning of sad to make all the difference,

and eyes sharp enough to see exactly how that made perfect sense.

so many ways to read

The First 2 books of Homegirl

Are in this little package.

Where is it?

Where my homegirls at?

*   *   *

How come everything to be a poem?

how come everything not?

*   *   *

Follow as you go

Fill the gaps up with thought

*   *   *

CONQUEST OF THE USELESS

The best book ever

Look at the way

The way those inimitable personalities emerged out of the ur band's form, that pure barroom form, taking form -in that high form- of rhythm and blues, using that as a platform, a diving board, diving toward a deeper and deeper self-expression, all the way down to wherever, maybe strawberry fields forever.

Tough Love Roll

The symposiums of opposites cannot unite without a fight

M's

BOOTY CALL

At one point I found myself going from a trot to a full run.

I felt like a horse running and then flying.

I was a horse dreaming I was a bird.

I was listening to Gogol Bordello.

The music leads me into slow motion running 

on Boulder Creek Path under a bridge 

remembering a dream of slow motion running 

from when I was very young, 6 or 7, 

a dream in which I was trapped in slow motion. 

There was a moment of feeling trapped in the slowness 

and then I just let go into the slow. 

This is the greatest feeling in the world

because I am moving, I am running and 

don't need to go any faster. I am running slow.  

I was listening to Velvet Underground.

I noticed a sign that said "Human Impact" 

It contained information about pollution. 

The sign was re-signed when some punk tagged it

-indecipherably- with black sharpie giving

a new meaning to the words "Human Impact".

This is what I call a re-appropriation.

I did a rad jump off the sign to re-sign it again,

giving my own meaning to the words "Human Impact".

This is what I call a one-up re-appropriation.

I was listening to Art Brut.

Later I saw another sign written in white spray paint 

in the gutter of a street. The sign said "flow" and 

pointed downhill. I followed the sign.

I was listening to The Monsters of Folk.

PODCAST

Kids history

Absurdist radio

Waterfalls and ice cream sundaes

Pohlm

Creator of nature

L

L

Mil lpmau

Upblmmpmp

Patch

X

Jesus spelled his name with backward esses

LpZj olmlpm l m

Pll

Op

Mopping lp

Mpll

Ppl m

La

POEM

One thing stood up tall and proud.

It was the sky. It was allowed.

It was out loud. It was outlaw.

I thought of that.

I thought about

how no is not alot.

The way living goes

is like a rodeo.

It takes a buck.

Donatello's seraphim

could speak truth to everyone

and everyone would see a star

of righteous indentation

MY SCREAM WENT TO HEAVEN

It died first of course. Then, when it had been

horse-whipped to death, it grew a pair. In seven

seconds it was sleeping in a dream hearse

peeling out in the silence of outerspace.

The hearse was very old and only drove

in reverse, so the Scream rode across the sky

like Icarus, but backward. The sun was thus

snuck up on from behind and spun

the car around its orbit thrice

before spitting it out

somewhere near the spout

of the big dipper.

Still a long way from

The Destination

and yet so very far from home.

I DON'T NOT BELIEVE

Cut to the chase: I fell off

the cliff, jumped off 

and landed face down

on the empty concrete, decomposed

as the weeds grew through the cracks

where a creek seeped up, raw garlic

growing out of used rubber donuts. 

Today I did talk to a bird. I tried

my best to match her tone, but

could only barely match the melody.

Every note pierced through me.

And when I sat down in that field

suddenly my blind eye could see

that gods sprang from underfoot.

NIGHT SWEATS

Dreamt last night of hanging out with Cat Power 

in Thurston Moore's basement and I had NOTHING 

to say to her! I want to reach back into the dream and tell her,

"Look how the ripples in the water make wings of light 

as the swimmer flies in slow motion to the other end..."

THERE’S A ROBIN IN THE YARD

There's a robin in the yard.

Her head is bobbing to the beat.

That's how she eats.

She is eating, pulling up a worm,

Snaps the worm in half,

But don't you squirm.

The other half of the worm

Will someday grow into a full length worm.

And he'll crawl through the ground.

He'll come up when it rains.

And we'll pluck him up from the ground,

Use him as bait, cast him out, catch a fish. 

The fish snaps the worm in half

But don't despair!

Because the other piece

Will grow into his own self

On his own behalf.

There's a robin in my bed.

She said something

I did not catch.

Because I was dead.

My ears were no longer receiving any thoughts.

But I heard the robin singing.

(Robin whistle)

UPSCALE POETRY

"Doe, a deer, a female deer"

Look how beautiful she is.

"Ray, a drop of golden sun"

The deer is in the sun.

"Me, a name I call myself"

Now, by juxtaposition, you have yourself.

You have the thing that you call yourself.

This "me" escalates out of the "doe" in the "ray".

You are a female deer outside in the sun.

"Fa, a long long way to run"

You are a deer running in the sun

And you have a long, long way to go.

"Sew, a needle pulling thread"

The needle is you, leaping as you sew.

"La, a note to follow sew"

The notes are like the leaping needle,

leaping up cloth mountains, up the scale.

The deer slows, near the top of the mountain now, tired,

her voice straining to reach the next note.

"Tea, a drink with jam and bread"

Time for a little picnic.

"Which brings us back to doe doe doe doe"

The bread and tea nourishes you, literally becomes you

and you're ready to start again

escalating up the endless scale.

COFFIN DROP

I am compelled to wake up in the middle of the day and write.

Compelled by a conundrum. It is almost, almost, as if this thing, or things,

were born of dreaming. But it was not a dream. As I lay there sleeping,

wide awake, two beings appeared before me. Not appeared, exactly.

They became me. The being on the left was the shape of language

or rather was the stuff language is made from. At times it was even

the shape of feelings. Other times sight. Light presented itself

to the small imp on the left. The right side was silent. It was something

else, still. While the left side spoke an ever-changing and barely discernible

stream of images and words, the right side sat mute, waiting and watching,

a sentinel. The right side then became, for that moment, a shaggy ewe

bleating game. Sticky sweet saliva dripping from the corner

of its mouth, the right corner. The left side, the one who calls itself mammon

for a moment, and then man-moth and now woolly mammoth is prone

to suggestion. The right side encapsulates. The left is an imp bent on

surprise and exposure. This is the mutable undergirding of expression,

the immovable center of the left, and now the right. The right rises up

as an empty space with a palpable nothing; the isness of space.

Something must come of nothing. That something must be self.

There is that smell. There is a headache.The headache came from the left.

The headache is felt on the right. Inside are two monkeys, chained

to a rock. On the left Bruegel bubbles from the lips of John Wieners font.

On the right the monkey chatter hurts my head. The monkeys

are a symbol of themselves. They are plastic in a flash, dime-store

novelties. The left is taken up for watching. The right pops a drawl.

There is no naming of the left. We can say the right is correct.

The right is fooled by shame, desire & nausea. This side is stopped,

keeps stopping. You see your mother now on the right. The head

expands. The hair grows ginger. The ginger is a new spice and takes

commitment to grow. The left is a rolling ball of clay set to animation,

claymation. The dough is stretched in space. To the right is the analogous

dough in mom's kitchen being stretched to make bread. Good bread.

The early smell of manna that takes us back to the womb.

Then the earlier smell of animal and guts of sweet dew and underwater

salt. Those scents, from the womb, that are tantamount to what the tongue

lacks. The tongue made of clay. The shape bouncing off the center

into wordy vibrations. The station plays on, now a deejay with a soft voice

running down a baseball game in 1967. My father passing out to the drone,

the crack of the bat barely interrupting. The crowd hollers, the dreamer watches.

A curtain falls. The monkeys fall endlessly. The falling feels to them a kind

of trick in time. The chatter seems to get lost in the fall. As heard from high

above and at the same time from far below. Echoing chatter that is speeding up

as it falls. The head swirls in sickness and excitement. The fall continues apace,

the two sides in a race, a perpetual tie. Focus in on the vision of the eye

on the right attached to a corpse come back alive. Now inside that eye

become that eye and on the left the surface is gummy. Walk upon the street

made of candy. The candy road spins off the rotating sphere of language.

The feet stick to the road and make loud god smacks with every step.

Stand still and feel the wobble. Push the surface in waves with one foot

and then the other. The waves wake up the baby. The babbling of the baby

becomes the waves, a synaesthesia of becoming. The curvature of sight

and sound undulating. The sensation spinning out from lower back now

as a sharp pain. This is on the right. As well as all of the new physical sensation,

which starts on the left. On the left the station changes to Socrates giving fits

to one of the students. The student is holding his head. He weakly smiles

at Socrates. Socrates bows to the student, with a slight tilt of the head.

The student puzzles over Socrates. What is he doing? The women start to cry.

The men are even crying now. The tears dry up into fantasy. The cries impinge,

originating on the right. The left is only momentarily frightened. The left takes comfort

in two steady hands that hold it tight. Study. The hands become breath, left breath in

the right breath out. The driver turns the wheel one-eighty. It is a neat trick.

In the center of the wheel is another wheel and so forth, further than the eye can see.

Wildwood Holler

Way up in the Wildwood Holler

Face to face with my killer

He raised his voice

He raised his fist

I raised my glass

I said here's to you

Here's to me

Here's to us

Now kick my ass

Way up in the Wildwood Holler

face to face with my killer

He raised his sun

I raised my moon

He raised the knife

I raised the spoon

He raised the gun

I put the flower in

Come on 

Let’s begin 

Lightning bolt

Lightning bolt 

and thunderclap

I had to laugh

Way up in the wild blue yonder

face to face with my creator

He raised the sky

I raised the balloon

He raised the bar

I raised the saloon

He raised the morning

I raised at noon

He raised the Ante

I raised my gin

Come on woman

Let's begin

Already

Lightning bolt,

Lightning bolt and thunderclap

I had to laugh

Salsa @ D Note

I’m standing behind the bar

Staring in awe at the dancers

Tearing up the dance floor

When a drop of cold water

Hits my ear. I turn to Diandra

And ask why she dripped

water on my ear for?

She said it wasn't her.

I ask, well, who was it?

She answers the sweat

Of the dancers. The heat

Causes sweat to condense

On the ceiling and now the sweat

Of all the dancers in the room

has fallen into my ear. Sweet

I said, the perfect metaphor.

Yuck, she said. Salty, I thought

And left to join the dance floor.

Reggaeton at the D

I’m standing behind the bar

Staring in awe at the dancers

Tearing up the dance floor

When a drop of cold water

Hits my ear. I turn to Diandra

And ask why she dripped

water on my ear for?

She says it wasn't her.

I ask well who was it then?

She answers the sweat

Of the dancers. She said the heat

Causes sweat to condense

On the ceiling and now the sweat

Of all the dancers in the room

has fallen into my ear. Sweet,

I said, the perfect metaphor.

Yuck, she said.  Salty, I thought

And left to join the dance floor.

I looked in the water at the face of another. 

The other stared back in wonder. 

He watched a bird fly in one ear and out the other.

I looked in the water at the face of another. 

The other stared back in awe and wonder. 

He watched a bird fly into one of my ears and out the other.