Is Man Done In?
Copyright 2007, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Killin' his brother over one lousy dollar
Rippin' down interstates, swimmin' through squalor
Beggin' God for a new car, or a full pardon
Kickin' and clawin' his way back to the garden
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Fightin' the same war down decades' long corridor
Thinks he's a toreador, hooray for the picador
Roses become trash rainin' out of the stands
Desperate for high ground in these filth-laden lands
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Skulls' grins on bankers boardin' up broken glass
Keep hoppin' freighters and keep off the grass
If T.R. was here he'd smile and roll up his sleeves
Rubber girl's cryin' as she rakes up dead leaves
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
The Angels are weepin', wings all a-tatter
The blind man on Main Street cries "What is the matter"
While the usual golf carts rattle all down the green
The show must go on though the host's not been seen
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Hoisted on meat hooks, roasted in green flame
A man breaks down his neighbor, thinks it's all just a game
But it never was about good or evil or original sin
'Til you learn to be kind you must go round again
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Missiles rain down with a sulfurous stench
America's favorite charioteer is down in a ditch
They smashed out the headlights and stole all the chrome
Sixteen souls in the scupper are startin' to moan
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Frankenstein's creature could be your best friend
The Parent-Teacher Organization is hot to molest him
Accusations come cheap and now loyalty's for hire
Salvation Army's contracted a mercenary choir
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Is man done in?
Waitin' around for the new Babel to fall down
And a king to rise up and claim his burnished crown
Dogs rippin' the meat from old gutter bones
Hedgin' our bets on horror and precious stones
Is man done in?
Crocodile Tears
Copyright 2007, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
It is shaped, sir,
Like itself
And it is as broad as
It hath breadth
It is just so high
As it is
And it moves with
Its own organs
It lives by that which
Nourisheth it
And the elements once
Out of it,
It transmigrates
What color is it of?
Of its own color too
'Tis a strange serpent
'Tis so
And the tears of it
Are wet
I Wish I Was a Pirate
Copyright 2007, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I wish I was a pirate, me son
Far away at sea
Sinking Spanish galleys
'Fore they could sink me
An' I would ne'er brush me teeth
Nor ne'er take a bath
Strikin' terror into sailors' hearts, me son
Is always good for a pirate laugh
Under me black pirate flag, me son
I'd pose out on the deck
In purple coat an' matchin' eye-patch
I'd demand the world's respect
'Til one day sure as the sun is yeller
I'd go down wi' me ship, me son
I'd meet that Davy Jones feller
An' we'd share a sip o' rum
I wish I was a pirate, me son
Far away at sea
Sinking Spanish galleys
'Fore they could sink me
Moon
Copyright 2007, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Rays cut across tidal, dusty seas
Circular pools rimed in murky stains
This eternal silence, how lonely made
Among gray craters and silvered plains
Amidst the pits and knobby hillocks
Under the zodiac's unremitting trains
Covered over in pristine velvety night
Among gray craters and silvered plains
This supple desolation's no treachery known
Unblemished by men's intemperate brains
Dyed by no blood, nor propped up mortal throne
Among gray craters and silvered plains
The Lurking Beast
Copyright 2007, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
'Gainst the rattle of the buggy's wheels
And dull retort of hooves clopping in bracing air,
The steamy snorts from flaring nostrils of my mare,
And the new moon freshly set in a darkling, bruiséd sky
Came I.
Down a serpentine, wending, winding, diving trail
Through pressing woods, whose gaping meadows croak open
Under frosty, star-littered night,
Rose whiffs of bracken and nettles crushed under-wheel.
The mind's sensitive underside we seldom broach;
Therein I sensed the lurking beast's approach.
Weird terror slowly chilled mine own senses, now alerted,
Ebon blackness blotting phalangic bones of tree and bush,
Drifting, shredded, shapeless shapes stalked my much-vexed vision
Like wind-ravaged cloud, or stirring spectre secretly marking my course.
What is that, there! What agitation betwixt yon oaks?
As light glances from blade's edge or flickering dew,
Stars illume and flash from distant wide-set globular orbs!
Is it the scraping rustle of twigs askance or
Talons like horns a-swing through grassy tassels tossing?
I click-clicked up my steed to a light trot, set my eyes fixed
To a singular point dead-ahead, and strove
To refrain from contemplation of my undefended back-
Or of revolutionary deserters who once haunted these woods,
They who faithlessly their brothers at Valley Forge abandoned,
Bloody feet rag-wrapt, creeping through bitter snow and ice.
They did not all find their way back home.
The light is gloaming yellow up ahead.
Welcome acrid smoke wafts from the cottage chimney.
The lurking beast retreats, into the deeps of memory submerges,
Mine own fidelity justly fortified.
Too Close in Time
Copyright 2007, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I bought you a bracelet to
Brighten your wrist
I heard not one word that
Passed through your lips
In some parallel universe your
Footsteps follow mine
But we're too many worlds distant and
Too close in time
Your voice just sounds like
Some cruel kind of joke
But seeing you fills up my eyes with
Burning cities and smoke
Any word I might utter could only
Lead us to crime
We're too many worlds apart, dear, and
Too close in time
High-wire performers risk their
Lives for the circus
I left no message with God's
Answering service
His hands are too busy
Untangling human deception
And this kind of trouble warrants no
Immaculate conception
I don't have to be Bogey to know
What has to happen
If you're playing Patti Boyd then
I'm a miscast Clapton
And though it stretches our souls thin as
Nanotube lines
We're riding separate worlds pushed
Too close in time
Call Call Me
Copyright 2007, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Though the ages weigh you down
And you find you can't get around
Nightmares pursue you and you can't break free
You can always call on me
Call call me
Everything's broke down you learned by heart
No street boys shootin' marbles or building a go-kart
Your old preacher's pushin' papers on 12th Street and Vine
Is there still time for you to change your mind?
Call call me
Call call me
Call call me
Even though this world is broken
Never mind the words unspoken
Call call me
Your whole life's shattered past recovery
Your blinders are slippin', it's a nasty discovery
Those true things they taught you have turned into lies
There's no money to be made bringin' back the blue skies
Call call me
Someone higher up shoulda prevented the train wreck
But when your paycheck's at risk you don't stick out your neck
I got nothin' to give you but some sympathy
If you can't find it elsewhere you can always call me
Call call me
Call call me
Call call me
Even though this world is broken
Never mind the words unspoken
Call call me
20111022
Lines, 2006.
Bagpipes and Lightning Strikes
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Bagpipes and lightning strikes in a bloody shrouded sun
Running down the highway now my shift work is done
Some warmonger's raving about how Democrats interfere
Memories of Republican impeachment proceedings fade and disappear
I'd donate a fortune to see my Party sitting pretty
But I've been through every pocket and I haven't got a penny
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, I shred my old receipts
Why should I care about your schemes and deceits
Justice gonna get you where the asphalt meets
The descending horizon waiting up beyond the ridge
Unless your reckless driving acquaints you with a telephone pole
Or the happy fishes swimming under the state line bridge
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, make a wish and hold your breath
Look too close into their faces, scare a grown man half to death
Too much conversation, none of it reflects the meaning of the words
Tarantula trundles through the brush pursuing hummingbirds
I could tell your fortune, don't need to see your palm
It don't matter who you voted for or what side you think you're on
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, you backpack across Peru
All my email messages bounce and I can't get in touch with you
From way up in the highlands now that nasty business is through
Are there anacondas in Peru or narco-lefty-pirates in the hills
That secret wisdom you're affecting, someone's gonna come collecting
Put off your debts too long, one day you pay some hefty bills
Bagpipes and lightning strikes echo in the trees
Knocked me from a pinnacle and down onto my knees
Some people sneeze at the sunrise, but I don't hold with that
Too much air conditioning makes you allergic to a cat
Army brats afraid of friendship, partings bring too much pain
If you fall in love with me then how much am I to blame
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, terror in the fields
I used to be afraid of falling before we got nuclear shields
Allah wants your death, virgins overflow on Heaven's shelves
If you really want to be radical then don't blow up yourselves
Health care and welfare and say farewell to your pension plan
Market forces dictate we wring out every drop of oil we can
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, I'm up here tending sheep
You think it seems a wasted life, but you're the one asleep
I watched the boats on Biscayne Bay as they glide and tack
Their lights were gently swaying, their skippers signed a contract
I could never read the fine print through the seeping blood
Good luck with what you call insurance next time you face the flood
I Wish We Could Wake Up
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
I wish we could wake up
And find it was all just bad dreams
I didn't plan any of this
I've got no idea what it means
I wish we could wake up
In the bed of faith and trust
And God could look down on us and smile
And put no one on trial
If you consider corporate thieving and killing
And fashionable housewives cheating, and every bad-faith deal
People like caged rats envying the Joneses racing about in
This year's trendy stainless steel wheel
It wasn't Heaven ordered the gassing of six million
They were man-made swastika flags unfurled
No American president spitefully torched the oil fields
And gave the finger to the free world
We're all of us at risk, babe
No tellin' who'll come out the other side
Stop raving about convenient scapegoats
And reconsider your pride
I wish this world was different
And no evil threatened my child
But everybody's fighting for a piece of pie
Talking trash and running wild
I wish we could wake up
And remember what we used to believe
Don't know if I can climb out of this tough luck
Too much junk to haul off in the dump truck
I don't carry a torch for Abu Ghraib
Collective retribution for greed unfailingly descends
Do nothing you'd be ashamed to tell your mother
Don't invoke unpredictable Acts of God or illegal aliens
Things fall apart if the manufactures have done their part
Feed the fads and pass the youth your hat
Steal their futures and invest in munitions
Let 'em fret when their savings fall flat
We're all of us at risk, babe
No tellin' who'll come out the other side
Stop raving about convenient scapegoats
And reconsider your pride
I think I can hear the angels singing
Don't wake me up this time if I'm dreaming
I can't hold on forever to darkness
Been on the losing end of too much double-dealing
I wish we could all wake up
With those battles still unwaged
I'd give so much if the high towers never fell
And we never boarded a dive bomber to Hell
We're all on this life raft together
So stop selling your countrymen shiny new crap
You'll survive without bundling your cell phone and TV
You're building blind maze trails inside a trap
Don't blame God for human selfishness
Stop filling up my mail with spam
If we can't all get together
Darkness gonna envelope this land, sir
Darkness gonna envelope this land
We're all of us at risk, babe
No tellin' who'll come out the other side
Stop raving about convenient scapegoats
And reconsider your pride
I wish I could save you
From all the evils in this place
Or you could save me
From this shame and disgrace
In this old town full of broken down dreams
Every street's littered with pain and regret
Everything's left shattered wherever it fell
We boarded a dive bomber to Hell
Jesus on a Bad Day
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
I got dirt under my nails
I got dirt on my pants
People eye me sideways like I just stepped down from
A shipload of ignorant immigrants
Forces of insecurity
Sewing the seeds of future war
Gaza jihadis don't know the faces or names
Of the Persian Mullahs they're dying for
Roulette wheel's spinning
World's riding on red
An Irish girl's laughter's bouncing
Round inside my head
Don't ask me to remember a
Single thing she said
Or you'll be waiting round here 'til
One of us falls down dead
Economic profiteers rob the poor and pile up riches
While the feds on leashes pony up tax breaks
For those soulless phony sons-a-bitches
And sneer at the local response to earthquakes
Hurricanes tidal waves and meteor bombardment
The doctor's wife's grown grim still working nine to five
Flips through the checkbook in uncomprehending bewilderment
They cut off your wrong limb, you're lucky to get out alive
Don't tell me who's your boss
I got no cause to know
The higher up you look
The more corrupt they grow
Justified behind a screen of
"Just business" and "the great American way"
When I was a kid in America they used to
Do it some other kind of way
Don't want to learn anything about you
Where you've been or what you've seen
It all emerges in the mix
The scars and beauty never dreamed
No matter where you matriculated
That's no way to impress me
I'll catch your quality of consciousness
In a net of kindness and sympathy
Going through old dusty boxes
I misplaced my sense of humor again
I've had to move on so many times
Ahead of the Sheriff of Nottingham
You'd think they'd have bigger fish to fry
I guess that's just my tax dollars at work
Paying the law to chase me down
A star for every wish and a job for every jerk
I can hear the diesel drivers and the freight whistle wail
Another restless early morning with zombies pawing at the door
Everyone's gone crazy or else is locked in jail
I feel like Vincent Price facing twenty-four hours more
I'm remembering an Irish girl
Trying to reconstruct my damaged thoughts
The long red hair that she could whirl
Green eyes deep as Scotish lochs
I'm soaked in caffeine and I'm
Staring down the road
I'm growing mean and tired of doing
Every stupid thing I'm told
Playing dumb too long among somnambulists
Can make a man explode
Like Jesus on a bad day when the traffic cops
Got his favorite mule towed
Lookin' For Manue Garue
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Went down to the pizza parlor
I saw no one there so I had to holler:
"Anybody seen Manue Garue?"
Standing alone in an elevator
I decided I oughta come back later
After I found Manue Garue
Thought I saw him take off for the friendly skies
But you can't always trust your eyes
'Specially when searchin' for Manue Garue
Exotic visions can't compete with the Zen
Of dirty dishes - or so I was told
By Manue Garue
Cautiously sipping the Moon's sweet juice
Knocked me right off my caboose
This is the preferred libation of Manue Garue?
Archetypes dissolving. . . .starving felines
Countdown to caffeine ignition
I'd like to share a cup with Manue Garue
Anybody here can tell me straight
How much longer I gotta wait
'Til I find Manue Garue?
Melt My Mind
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Think I'll melt down my mind
'Til I find the Devil inside
I'm still runnin' so far behind, watchin'
Broken visions unwind in
Shrapnel and foreign design
I been cuttin' cattle, I been lost in space
I been lookin' out for some
Other kinda place
Think I'll melt down my mind
Seas like dark wine, sun doused
In slick oil and rolling brine
Emotions I can't quite define
I'm inclined to set an ambush or just resign
I been scentin' fugitives and cataloging clues
I been so sick down in them
Deep sea diver blues
What you gonna do when
Your well runs dry?
If you want me to
I'll be standing at your side
Darling if you really care
And I think you do
Then put your arms around me and
Paint these black skies blue
Think I'll melt down my mind
'Til I shine
In golden light sublime
Guess I was hopin' to find something that got
Left behind or else repossessed and consigned
I been bendin' rules, but I kept every vow
You win or you lose
But you never know how
The Temptation of St. Anthony
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Fish step, bent fin - turquoise surfaced ocean
Once proud street crowd sways backwards in slow motion
Young toughs play rough, try to get the beat on
Hive pulse in the dream stream - privacy is long gone
She said, he said - yank a wad of wires
Cyborg in the grocery store tries to buy desires
Uncle Sam's a rocket man shot out of a cannon
I'm watchin', I'm plannin', growin' hard of understandin'
Nerves jump, brain stump - focus your awareness
Streaming urban warfare, don't care - dare me to repress this
Trade away your competence for a little empathy
Conspiracy of sympathy, more lost opportunity
Thresholds raised behind dark shades, too much truth's too hurtful
Life among the zombies who mistake Benny for Churchill
New mushroom with auto-zoom, synthesize an edgy groove
While deep inside the sacred Louvre Mona's got a lot to prove
Sing a song of intense suspense, borderline depravity
Concavity, extravagancy - stuck on John Kennedy
The mystery dead, the young bride's bed - trying to discover
Recover, uncover - Marilyn and her lover
Flaming rooms and false baboons, electric eels in the lakes
Flaws, mistakes, glass breaks - grilling suspects and sirloin steaks
Man with a hack saw chopping through the cat's claw
Cole slaw, slow crawl - cite a source that trumps the law
Fish hips and bird lips, candy Cain and Abel
Sable coat, the dead vote - Vaseline tree limb rocking cradle
Something wrong in Hong Kong - riding on a dynamo
Busted scrawling graffiti on the hallowed walls of Jericho
Tyranny, who is free - prevailing mass opinion
Intention of restriction, diminishing dissention
Ecstasy, hex key - did you ever truly see
Beauty mingles nightmare, temptation of St. Anthony
Under moon and over hill, mow down friends through sheer will
I can still feel the chill of when we gave up what was real
Controversy comes for free, a new one every minute
You spin it, pretend it - please don't even mention it
Disorders, reporters - who decides and who anoints
The flunkies and the junkies trace out all the talking points
Don't wait too long, the past is gone, the present's almost finished
Diminished, extinguished - and Popeye needs his spinach
Tryin' to Do the Right Thing
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Substitute the herd mentality for
Tryin' to do the right thing
Life is sweet but much too short for
Tryin' to do the right thing
Make your fortune while you can instead of
Tryin' to do the right thing
God willing, one day soon we'll all be rid of
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
God musta thrown out Iraq and old Afghanistan
Tryin' to do the right thing
Every action bears its consequence whatever you plan
Tryin' to do the right thing
Killers crossin' borders into this forsaken land
Tryin' to do the right thing
I was only followin' orders - you gotta understand
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Weigh the wages of good and sin
Tryin' to do the right thing
Then tell me whether every man's your friend
Tryin' to do the right thing
You'll never make it until you discover
Tryin' to do the right thing
You see plenty hungry people and none of them your brother
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
No one escapes it - feast or famine
Tryin' to do the right thing
The almighty Dollar's the modern Mammon
Tryin' to do the right thing
You want to wed the West and East?
Tryin' to do the right thing
Rihani's who we need the least
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Black Train
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
There's a black train comin'
Gonna take me outta here
There's a black train comin', people
Comin' to roll me outta here
Well you might think you understand, but
Destiny's never clear
Phat bass comin' through
But the conductor's lookin' thin
I hear a phat bass line comin' through, but the
Conductor, he looks mighty thin
Somebody's rappin' at my door, but I
Sure ain't gonna let him in
Some of these dark blues
Get wrapped right around your head
Some of these deep dark blues, babe
They get wrapped tight right around your head
Don't know when you wake up tomorrow
If you're breathin' or if you're dead
Twin poles revolving in the night
Life arcing in between them
Twin poles spinning in the night
Life's sparking just like love between them
Takes real effort to make this garden a cage
Think I've had enough of your frightened rage
Aurora borealis lights
Dripping down behind my eyes
I can see them green and purple pools that fuse
And swirl behind my eyes
Star shells dazzle and burst up the night
While Jimi's guitar wails and cries
There's a black train comin' here for me
Let me tell you true
Said there's a black train headin' this way for me
Gonna tell you true
Someday it's gonna take me away, but
Tonight it's stoppin' just for you
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Bagpipes and lightning strikes in a bloody shrouded sun
Running down the highway now my shift work is done
Some warmonger's raving about how Democrats interfere
Memories of Republican impeachment proceedings fade and disappear
I'd donate a fortune to see my Party sitting pretty
But I've been through every pocket and I haven't got a penny
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, I shred my old receipts
Why should I care about your schemes and deceits
Justice gonna get you where the asphalt meets
The descending horizon waiting up beyond the ridge
Unless your reckless driving acquaints you with a telephone pole
Or the happy fishes swimming under the state line bridge
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, make a wish and hold your breath
Look too close into their faces, scare a grown man half to death
Too much conversation, none of it reflects the meaning of the words
Tarantula trundles through the brush pursuing hummingbirds
I could tell your fortune, don't need to see your palm
It don't matter who you voted for or what side you think you're on
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, you backpack across Peru
All my email messages bounce and I can't get in touch with you
From way up in the highlands now that nasty business is through
Are there anacondas in Peru or narco-lefty-pirates in the hills
That secret wisdom you're affecting, someone's gonna come collecting
Put off your debts too long, one day you pay some hefty bills
Bagpipes and lightning strikes echo in the trees
Knocked me from a pinnacle and down onto my knees
Some people sneeze at the sunrise, but I don't hold with that
Too much air conditioning makes you allergic to a cat
Army brats afraid of friendship, partings bring too much pain
If you fall in love with me then how much am I to blame
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, terror in the fields
I used to be afraid of falling before we got nuclear shields
Allah wants your death, virgins overflow on Heaven's shelves
If you really want to be radical then don't blow up yourselves
Health care and welfare and say farewell to your pension plan
Market forces dictate we wring out every drop of oil we can
Bagpipes and lightning strikes, I'm up here tending sheep
You think it seems a wasted life, but you're the one asleep
I watched the boats on Biscayne Bay as they glide and tack
Their lights were gently swaying, their skippers signed a contract
I could never read the fine print through the seeping blood
Good luck with what you call insurance next time you face the flood
I Wish We Could Wake Up
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
I wish we could wake up
And find it was all just bad dreams
I didn't plan any of this
I've got no idea what it means
I wish we could wake up
In the bed of faith and trust
And God could look down on us and smile
And put no one on trial
If you consider corporate thieving and killing
And fashionable housewives cheating, and every bad-faith deal
People like caged rats envying the Joneses racing about in
This year's trendy stainless steel wheel
It wasn't Heaven ordered the gassing of six million
They were man-made swastika flags unfurled
No American president spitefully torched the oil fields
And gave the finger to the free world
We're all of us at risk, babe
No tellin' who'll come out the other side
Stop raving about convenient scapegoats
And reconsider your pride
I wish this world was different
And no evil threatened my child
But everybody's fighting for a piece of pie
Talking trash and running wild
I wish we could wake up
And remember what we used to believe
Don't know if I can climb out of this tough luck
Too much junk to haul off in the dump truck
I don't carry a torch for Abu Ghraib
Collective retribution for greed unfailingly descends
Do nothing you'd be ashamed to tell your mother
Don't invoke unpredictable Acts of God or illegal aliens
Things fall apart if the manufactures have done their part
Feed the fads and pass the youth your hat
Steal their futures and invest in munitions
Let 'em fret when their savings fall flat
We're all of us at risk, babe
No tellin' who'll come out the other side
Stop raving about convenient scapegoats
And reconsider your pride
I think I can hear the angels singing
Don't wake me up this time if I'm dreaming
I can't hold on forever to darkness
Been on the losing end of too much double-dealing
I wish we could all wake up
With those battles still unwaged
I'd give so much if the high towers never fell
And we never boarded a dive bomber to Hell
We're all on this life raft together
So stop selling your countrymen shiny new crap
You'll survive without bundling your cell phone and TV
You're building blind maze trails inside a trap
Don't blame God for human selfishness
Stop filling up my mail with spam
If we can't all get together
Darkness gonna envelope this land, sir
Darkness gonna envelope this land
We're all of us at risk, babe
No tellin' who'll come out the other side
Stop raving about convenient scapegoats
And reconsider your pride
I wish I could save you
From all the evils in this place
Or you could save me
From this shame and disgrace
In this old town full of broken down dreams
Every street's littered with pain and regret
Everything's left shattered wherever it fell
We boarded a dive bomber to Hell
Jesus on a Bad Day
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
I got dirt under my nails
I got dirt on my pants
People eye me sideways like I just stepped down from
A shipload of ignorant immigrants
Forces of insecurity
Sewing the seeds of future war
Gaza jihadis don't know the faces or names
Of the Persian Mullahs they're dying for
Roulette wheel's spinning
World's riding on red
An Irish girl's laughter's bouncing
Round inside my head
Don't ask me to remember a
Single thing she said
Or you'll be waiting round here 'til
One of us falls down dead
Economic profiteers rob the poor and pile up riches
While the feds on leashes pony up tax breaks
For those soulless phony sons-a-bitches
And sneer at the local response to earthquakes
Hurricanes tidal waves and meteor bombardment
The doctor's wife's grown grim still working nine to five
Flips through the checkbook in uncomprehending bewilderment
They cut off your wrong limb, you're lucky to get out alive
Don't tell me who's your boss
I got no cause to know
The higher up you look
The more corrupt they grow
Justified behind a screen of
"Just business" and "the great American way"
When I was a kid in America they used to
Do it some other kind of way
Don't want to learn anything about you
Where you've been or what you've seen
It all emerges in the mix
The scars and beauty never dreamed
No matter where you matriculated
That's no way to impress me
I'll catch your quality of consciousness
In a net of kindness and sympathy
Going through old dusty boxes
I misplaced my sense of humor again
I've had to move on so many times
Ahead of the Sheriff of Nottingham
You'd think they'd have bigger fish to fry
I guess that's just my tax dollars at work
Paying the law to chase me down
A star for every wish and a job for every jerk
I can hear the diesel drivers and the freight whistle wail
Another restless early morning with zombies pawing at the door
Everyone's gone crazy or else is locked in jail
I feel like Vincent Price facing twenty-four hours more
I'm remembering an Irish girl
Trying to reconstruct my damaged thoughts
The long red hair that she could whirl
Green eyes deep as Scotish lochs
I'm soaked in caffeine and I'm
Staring down the road
I'm growing mean and tired of doing
Every stupid thing I'm told
Playing dumb too long among somnambulists
Can make a man explode
Like Jesus on a bad day when the traffic cops
Got his favorite mule towed
Lookin' For Manue Garue
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Went down to the pizza parlor
I saw no one there so I had to holler:
"Anybody seen Manue Garue?"
Standing alone in an elevator
I decided I oughta come back later
After I found Manue Garue
Thought I saw him take off for the friendly skies
But you can't always trust your eyes
'Specially when searchin' for Manue Garue
Exotic visions can't compete with the Zen
Of dirty dishes - or so I was told
By Manue Garue
Cautiously sipping the Moon's sweet juice
Knocked me right off my caboose
This is the preferred libation of Manue Garue?
Archetypes dissolving. . . .starving felines
Countdown to caffeine ignition
I'd like to share a cup with Manue Garue
Anybody here can tell me straight
How much longer I gotta wait
'Til I find Manue Garue?
Melt My Mind
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Think I'll melt down my mind
'Til I find the Devil inside
I'm still runnin' so far behind, watchin'
Broken visions unwind in
Shrapnel and foreign design
I been cuttin' cattle, I been lost in space
I been lookin' out for some
Other kinda place
Think I'll melt down my mind
Seas like dark wine, sun doused
In slick oil and rolling brine
Emotions I can't quite define
I'm inclined to set an ambush or just resign
I been scentin' fugitives and cataloging clues
I been so sick down in them
Deep sea diver blues
What you gonna do when
Your well runs dry?
If you want me to
I'll be standing at your side
Darling if you really care
And I think you do
Then put your arms around me and
Paint these black skies blue
Think I'll melt down my mind
'Til I shine
In golden light sublime
Guess I was hopin' to find something that got
Left behind or else repossessed and consigned
I been bendin' rules, but I kept every vow
You win or you lose
But you never know how
The Temptation of St. Anthony
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Fish step, bent fin - turquoise surfaced ocean
Once proud street crowd sways backwards in slow motion
Young toughs play rough, try to get the beat on
Hive pulse in the dream stream - privacy is long gone
She said, he said - yank a wad of wires
Cyborg in the grocery store tries to buy desires
Uncle Sam's a rocket man shot out of a cannon
I'm watchin', I'm plannin', growin' hard of understandin'
Nerves jump, brain stump - focus your awareness
Streaming urban warfare, don't care - dare me to repress this
Trade away your competence for a little empathy
Conspiracy of sympathy, more lost opportunity
Thresholds raised behind dark shades, too much truth's too hurtful
Life among the zombies who mistake Benny for Churchill
New mushroom with auto-zoom, synthesize an edgy groove
While deep inside the sacred Louvre Mona's got a lot to prove
Sing a song of intense suspense, borderline depravity
Concavity, extravagancy - stuck on John Kennedy
The mystery dead, the young bride's bed - trying to discover
Recover, uncover - Marilyn and her lover
Flaming rooms and false baboons, electric eels in the lakes
Flaws, mistakes, glass breaks - grilling suspects and sirloin steaks
Man with a hack saw chopping through the cat's claw
Cole slaw, slow crawl - cite a source that trumps the law
Fish hips and bird lips, candy Cain and Abel
Sable coat, the dead vote - Vaseline tree limb rocking cradle
Something wrong in Hong Kong - riding on a dynamo
Busted scrawling graffiti on the hallowed walls of Jericho
Tyranny, who is free - prevailing mass opinion
Intention of restriction, diminishing dissention
Ecstasy, hex key - did you ever truly see
Beauty mingles nightmare, temptation of St. Anthony
Under moon and over hill, mow down friends through sheer will
I can still feel the chill of when we gave up what was real
Controversy comes for free, a new one every minute
You spin it, pretend it - please don't even mention it
Disorders, reporters - who decides and who anoints
The flunkies and the junkies trace out all the talking points
Don't wait too long, the past is gone, the present's almost finished
Diminished, extinguished - and Popeye needs his spinach
Tryin' to Do the Right Thing
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Substitute the herd mentality for
Tryin' to do the right thing
Life is sweet but much too short for
Tryin' to do the right thing
Make your fortune while you can instead of
Tryin' to do the right thing
God willing, one day soon we'll all be rid of
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
God musta thrown out Iraq and old Afghanistan
Tryin' to do the right thing
Every action bears its consequence whatever you plan
Tryin' to do the right thing
Killers crossin' borders into this forsaken land
Tryin' to do the right thing
I was only followin' orders - you gotta understand
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Weigh the wages of good and sin
Tryin' to do the right thing
Then tell me whether every man's your friend
Tryin' to do the right thing
You'll never make it until you discover
Tryin' to do the right thing
You see plenty hungry people and none of them your brother
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
No one escapes it - feast or famine
Tryin' to do the right thing
The almighty Dollar's the modern Mammon
Tryin' to do the right thing
You want to wed the West and East?
Tryin' to do the right thing
Rihani's who we need the least
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Tryin' to do the right thing
Black Train
Copyright 2006, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
There's a black train comin'
Gonna take me outta here
There's a black train comin', people
Comin' to roll me outta here
Well you might think you understand, but
Destiny's never clear
Phat bass comin' through
But the conductor's lookin' thin
I hear a phat bass line comin' through, but the
Conductor, he looks mighty thin
Somebody's rappin' at my door, but I
Sure ain't gonna let him in
Some of these dark blues
Get wrapped right around your head
Some of these deep dark blues, babe
They get wrapped tight right around your head
Don't know when you wake up tomorrow
If you're breathin' or if you're dead
Twin poles revolving in the night
Life arcing in between them
Twin poles spinning in the night
Life's sparking just like love between them
Takes real effort to make this garden a cage
Think I've had enough of your frightened rage
Aurora borealis lights
Dripping down behind my eyes
I can see them green and purple pools that fuse
And swirl behind my eyes
Star shells dazzle and burst up the night
While Jimi's guitar wails and cries
There's a black train comin' here for me
Let me tell you true
Said there's a black train headin' this way for me
Gonna tell you true
Someday it's gonna take me away, but
Tonight it's stoppin' just for you
20111021
Lines, 2003 to 2005.
Terrible Day
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Where were you on that terrible day (terrible day)
Where were you on that terrible day?
Where were you on that terrible day (terrible day)
When the fireball expanded through the sky?
How did you feel on that summer morning?
Did the world slip away suddenly without any warning?
How did you feel on that summer morning
When you knew that he must die?
What did you see on New Years Day?
Could you see at all with so many tears in the way?
A price much higher than you ever thought to pay.
What did you see on New Years Day?
How did you feel while the towers were falling?
You could hear their voices like lost birds calling.
How did you feel while the towers were falling?
Empty eyes still look expectantly toward you.
There are times for battle and times for forgiveness.
Time's so turbulent when your table's full of unfinished business.
Where were you on that terrible day (terrible day)
Where were you on that terrible day?
Did you let emotion get in the way watching
When they nailed Him up against the sky?
The Sower's Parable
Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
They're shooting geese and mallards
From cold dark winter skies
The sheep hide from their shepherds
The homebound sprinter sighs
And a wounded wildcat cries
He's desperate in the night
Connect the dots on leopards
As they vanish from sight
Rapping every piece of wood
Constantly employs you
You said if you only could
Before these bores destroy you
You'd shoot the moon; although you lost
Your nerve, still you found
Trusting friends; but sometimes good
Seed falls on stony ground
People out to make a buck
Some grow rich, some despair
Call it skill or call it luck
Die with style and flair
Passionate flames in your hair
No detail out of place
Slouch down in a pickup truck
You pay the price of taste
While time gnaws on tempered steel
And distant stars burn down
Do bonds and stocks still seem real
Money makes this world whirl round
Voices grate without a sound
Until the last retreat
Compete with selfish zeal
Relish in your defeat
They're shooting geese and mallards
From cold dark winter skies
The sheep hide from their shepherds
The homebound sprinter sighs
Barstow Bank Robbery
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I am just a highway man
No one knows my name
I fell to desperation
And buried my light in shame, boys
Buried my light in shame
One night in Amarillo
That grand old Lone Star State
I sat down to poker
And get some business straight, boys
Get my business straight
We saddled up our ponies
To California we did ride
Underneath the starry skies
Where the plains roll wide, boys
Riding for the other side
I fixed my sights on the Barstow bank
But my brother he did say:
"You carry out this job, boy,
You're gonna rue the day," he said
Then he turned and walked away
"Hand over all your money, sir
Don't think to make delay
For we are desperados
So you'd best hurry and obey
Better hurry and obey."
The cashier, he was true and brave
But not so very smart
One of the Texans panicked, and he
Shot him in the heart, boys
He shot him right through the heart
Away we scattered into the desert
The law hot upon our trail
I soon was overtaken
And hauled back here to jail, boys
They brought me to the jail
Now here in heavy chains I lay
As the years slowly fade away
And somewhere damned Texas outlaws
Remember that lonesome day, boys
But not one word do they say
Iron Rod
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Underneath the spinning rainbows of the promise of leniency
Soaked through in storms of swirling light and sound
You know we struck some blows for simple decency
While the dreadful wolves of dogma circled us all around
All around
While the dreadful wolves circled 'round
Deep within the forests of fairytale despair
I pulled your heads back out of mulberry pie ovens
Revealing caverns behind your merry eyes as you brushed at your coifed barbed wire hair
Then ran back to your prisons to brew new potions in your covens
In your covens
Like misfit witches brewing love potions in your ovens
Earthquakes bounced around the continent, my friends falling to murderers and crooks
Bottles rolling 'round the floorboards, now curses volley down like fire and hail
While I was out crusading somebody tore out the endings from all my favorite books
Seems like any minute a thief with an iron rod's gonna press aside the veil
While you wail
His iron rod's gonna press aside the veil
Barnacle on a boulder rides out the pounding waves
Army of cheerful soldiers marches dutifully to its graves
How many strayed sheep saved, how many must remain lost
Who mastered and who slaved and which one's gonna pay the cost
Excuse me gentlemen, there's a long train comin' and I gotta catch it
These broke down porches hang from derelict palaces with such indignity
Good night ladies, you get an itch for roving and you gotta scratch it
But I'm sure to say a prayer for you if you'll do the same for me
I guarantee it
You do unto others and I guess we'll wait and see
Syringes With Wings
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Flying needles
Blood sucking mosquitoes
Step down the steps into Hell
I doubt there's a more earnest fellow
Than Elvis Costello
Step down the steps into Hell
Wisdom's discreet
Tiptoes on clay feet to the grave
Step down the steps into Hell
If I could hold on to the next passing wave
Step down the steps into Hell
Nobody to save us
Or cast out a net
Step down the steps into Hell
Broken hearts and crockery
Not even paid for yet
Step down the steps into Hell
Flapping wings
Flying things
Step down the steps into Hell
Leathery creatures with
Talk show host features
Step down the steps into Hell
Banisters of
Broken glass
Step down the steps into Hell
The blaring dissonance of
Off-key brass
Step down the steps into Hell
Kiss me one time for good luck
Or death
Step down the steps into Hell
You can close your eyes and
Even hold your breath
Step down the steps into Hell
Out in the Wind
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Underneath the gnarled trees I wait out in the wind
The gales slash between the sails
And the carrion fowl descend
In the parking lots of betrayal I wait out in the wind
While the wolves in the timber wail
The coin you've stolen you must now spend
You discarded fidelity for temptation's facile plans
Now soon your tears must fall down in flood
You scrub away at your remorseful hands
But you can't wash away so much blood
Rocked in unseen arms so strong I wait out in the wind
Can't believe Judgment Day's postponed so long
You've got so little to protect and less to defend
Little boy's under the bar, he's lookin' for lost treasure
Little girl's on the high stage reciting from Measure for Measure
Heavy under a lonesome pregnant desert night I wait out in the wind
Do you ever wish for blindness to blot out your sight
Don't you miss your true best friend
Don't you long to drink from the sacred cup
And to lay down the too bloodied sword
Is the life you once coveted
Become the life that you've abhorred
Queen Isabella fell out of her party dress
King Ferdinand sweated in solitary duress
The Prince rode forth on his ferocious steed
So you took it upon yourself to commit the dirty deed
Do you ever ask yourself what have I done?
Do you ever ask yourself my God, what have I done?
Pound of Flesh
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Been hangin' 'round the fisherman docks watchin' the golden sunsets unravel
You can lose your leg to Moby Dick but expand your mind through travel
Maybe le bête noir is finally shriveling up inside my chest and viciously dying
You can beat a man back from his sweet reward but it won't keep him from trying
Remember when we used to set the sea and the sky to war
We could summon thunder and lightning and tempests galore
Those were the days you'll recall when we raised the dead up from their graves
Before you stole all my expensive necromancer scrolls and broke all my best staves
I been thinkin' 'bout the ones who went down in the burgundy flood
Their faded faith in a better world drained their veins of blood
Some fell to derision or landed in prison or live free in abject misery
So everyday I try to thank my Lord for the blessings bestowed upon me
I hope this doesn't turn into another grotesque story about a pound of flesh
Who needs more evidence that this wicked world rewards self-interest best
All of these strangers trapped by the circumstances of idiotic lives
Each one calculating escape, gazing out from suspicious salamander eyes
Evil flashes down the wire, war reports and disparaging retorts and hope buckling in compression
A forlorn woman flees flaming devils but can't hire a sanctified priest to hear her memorized confession
Politicians for sale, liberty assailed in auction to the highest bidder
Maybe you took a wrong turn somewhere but now it's too late to reconsider
Another year behind us, more babies thrown to Baal's ravenous appetite
Another beer raised in defiance, more bribes to lubricate the steely night
The blind Mexican calls out, he sells funeral flowers made out of tin
And if I don't make it to dawn I hope the rebels redistribute my expensive wife to him
Now the sky begins to shatter and the glassy rain pierces the pier
Here comes the captain with his albacore as the starving hordes appear
They rip him bit from bloody bit for lunch and throw the fish into the sea
And it might seem significant to you but it's just another captain crunched to me
At the Almanac House
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
She sees the truth, how it moves too fast
With no time to talk, now it's gone at last
When everything disintegrates that's when you start to curse
Your torture chamber humor was hideous but tranquility cuts you worse
She walks barefoot across the grassy hill
Knowing they may go for glory, but they're gone still
The crew erupts in a desperate riot of singing, drinking
But still the squall comes on and their hearts are sinking
Get up to leave and clear your credit card debt
But there's little to receive and the movie isn't even over yet
At the Almanac House we knew tragedy as just a fact of life
She was somebody's true friend but never his true wife
She inhabits a glass world ruled by rueful animals
Neither prejudicial devotees nor effusive infidels
Doubting all earthly phenomena, suspecting some heavenly things
Conjuring the shade of Alexander the Great on scaly wings
We might have sneaked right through while the enemy was asleep
But you were a hungry lion gorging yourself on helpless sheep
What manner of man calls for a doctor as a cyclone descends?
Another unlit lamp exalting expediency over his own true friends
She pours the waters from a spectral and sacred urn
But the fires rage on, and on they must burn
The pattern can't persist, it must reach an end
We may meet yet in the springtime when the breaks will mend
Casey Jones
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Gather round you railroaders if you want to hear
A famous story 'bout an engineer
Casey Jones was this old-timer's name
He ran a heavy load pullin' an icy chain
Lord, Lord, pullin' an icy chain
He ran a heavy load pullin' an icy chain
Casey got up at half past four
He kissed his wife at the bedroom door
Police stopped him at Main and Vine
He said: "Let me go 'fore the sun starts to shine."
Lord, Lord, 'fore the sun starts to shine.
He said: "Let me go 'fore the sun starts to shine."
Cops kept him 'til the hour grew late
Casey arrived 'bout a quarter past eight
Jumped in the cab with his orders in his hand
Saying: "This here's a trip to the holy land"
Lord, Lord, to the holy land
Saying: "This here's a trip to the holy land."
Casey pulled out of the Memphis yard
With a number three daily on his schedule card
Passengers all knew by the engine groans
That the man at the throttle must be Casey Jones
Lord, Lord, it was Casey Jones
That the man at the throttle must be Casey Jones
Pulled out his watch and looked at the time
He said to the fireman: "This engine's way behind
We gotta run this train, we're gonna leave the rail,
Cos we're four hours late with the Southern mail."
Lord, Lord, with the Southern mail
"We are four hours late with the Southern mail."
Round the curve he saw a passenger train
Both headlights blazing through a driving rain
He grinned at the fireman, said: "Hope you made your splash.
The number one's a-comin' and we're bound to crash."
Lord, Lord, we are bound to crash.
"The number one's a-comin' and we're bound to crash."
Casey was bleeding but he said with a grin
There's an ocean or two he still wanted to swim
Conductor rubbed his hands and asked which ones
An ocean of whiskey and an ocean of rum
Lord, Lord, and an ocean of rum
An ocean of whiskey and an ocean of rum
When the news come down that Casey was dead
His wife and children were asleep in the bed
"Lie still children, dream sweet and long
For this life is over and your daddy's gone."
Lord, Lord, and your daddy's gone
"For this life is over and your daddy's gone."
Forlorn Carol
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Forlorn Carol paints her nails, she ignores her crimes
History doesn't repeat itself, history only rhymes
On a night that pities neither laughter nor misery
Anticipating real human happiness in about a century
She gazes at the sunset, crimson and golden threads
A lifeless baby bird riding on the crest of shattered thunderheads
A brutal creature bursts from the woods, a hound with a lion's head
But she just watches mournfully, suspecting she's already dead
Where art and genius intersect there can be no loneliness
Shuffling like an animal toward a witch-doctor's coarse caresses
Her passions ran much deeper, he couldn't keep her, now her angel's lost
She must see the parallel - there's no delinquent cost
Forlorn Carol waits downtown on a dirty street
She could turn around and drop the frown but there's no one to meet
Forlorn Carol why don't you see that I'm free and I'm lonely too
We could get together, it's my view that's what we were born to do
Haunted Mansion
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In ten more years the trees will have all been cut down
In ten more years the machines and men will be crated and shipped away
Odd words echo in your hollow head, you're so distorted and conflicted
How shattering it must be to realize all your wounds were self-inflicted
Just consider how far we've come and how patient time outwits you
While you keep buying halos hoping to stumble across one that fits you
Or at least a villainous minion to keep you supplied with jewels and finest clothes
While these years burden me no more than balancing a steam engine on my nose
I gather you received an urgent message about a bottle of arsenic
Didn't I take a carriage to town at midnight to save you from being sick
When we met by accident in Puerto Vallarta and you spewed those unfortunate lies
Whose chest was it came crashing in? What rage rushed beneath your icy eyes?
Too many fires burning underfoot, too many warning shots unheeded
Two many carrion fowl in white satin, too many honest men defeated
Whatever remained from that mansion is tumbled down in decay
The walls demolished for firewood, not one vow left you can betray
Luther & Ima Jean
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Luther stumbles down a road in dark despair and lunacy
Suffering flashing pangs of passion and sacred lucidity
But insight lasts about three seconds then flickers and is lost
He should apologize before the eagles pluck his eyes out
He cannot afford the cost
In every story death quenches happiness no matter how two hearts conspire
As the opposite of love is greed, so that of death must be desire
He gazes upon blood streaming down heavy beams
Hoping to melt back in the moonlight
And come apart at all the seams
Ima Jean grabbed hold of his heart before he heard her voice
His veins swelled with life, but situations conquer choice
Years later in the theater he could not focus on the show
She was sitting with her husband in the darkness
Three rows down below
Luther requires a miracle, he's desperate for a cure
That takes away the horrors that memories insure
Someone who helps obscure the grief compounded on disaster
Who can slow down these rushing faces and traces of complicity
While the whole world goes by faster
Magdalena
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I'm lazin' at this old sawmill
Underneath the sandy crags
Got some bad pig meat from Aunt Sadie
Dead horse bobs among the snags
It's quiet tonight in Rock Port
Underneath a toxic moon
Light's flashing out on Pea Ridge
No sublimity's comin' soon
Mercantile sellin' soda pop
Smugglers sellin' Chinese
Sweet Charlie's sittin' in San Quentin
Got his head between his knees
Steam engine stalled on unfinished tracks
Dilatory progress comin' through
You've got no words to suit your need
And I'm struck mute just like you
Crimson devil's in the details
Golden turkey's in the corn
I can't tell whether I'm a-dyin' or I'm
Getting' ready to get born
Border patrolman's on the border
He's waist-deep in the flood
Give your ticket to the porter
Scrape your boots clean of boggy mud
Layin' tracks in Rincon
Makin' for Magdalena
A dainty on the corner's solemnly engaged in
Playing her concertina
And I'm struggling to not conjure up
Any thought too vigilantly made
I could charm the lady's heart, but
Plucked flowers so fleetly fade
I'm standin' by the window
My world saturated in harsh light
Some people can't tell wrong from left
They mix up might with right
All these young men feelin' their oats
Got no notion of the mischief they're bound to meet
Twister tumbles down on Emporia
House frames splayed out in the street
Some friends you once knew now won't
Give you the time of day
Remember before they burnt the fields when
We were all the way
I got a room in the Shaffer Hotel
Way up in the pines
I'm gonna think about anything but you and watch
While the western sky unwinds
Manor House
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I wandered the decaying halls of your manor house
Thought I overheard someone whisper your name
I searched out your pantries like an old mouse
But my searching's all in vain
Could you recognize me if you saw me now?
Not sure how long I can carry on like this
Who'da thought the deputy'd outdraw me anyhow?
The "Brilliancy Melody" saws on delicious
I once clung to the side of a broke down lattice
And smelled the rotting plaster in my hair
Who's been here on this sagging mattress?
In piles of broken promises, why should I care?
Guess I'm just suffering some kind of attack
No Hell-brewed poison ever tasted more bitter
Comes the Devil now so eager to bring her back
Hope I can find the strength this time to quit her
Now I know the precise tones of your bright voice
Forgive me if I don't quite recall your name
Nor the occasion when I made my fatal choice
Births and funerals have become the same
Don't care to give you what you're owed this winter
Consider it a blessing you should just accept
Soon you'll be resold to the highest bidder
Marked down for miles and base neglect
Run and tell Aunt Sally the gray goose is dead
The one she was saving for a feather bed
If I thought it would help I'd take a leap from the loft
Or lay my head in your lap where the willow shade's soft
Morning, Noon & Night
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Willie's passing by again
Gonna keep my eye fixed on him
Praying morning, noon and night
Joan of Arc never passed up a good fight
Seen kingdoms come and kingdoms go
Seen bandits tramping over white snow
We played chess, never did nothing mean
Black rook took my white queen
Now there's time to murder and blood to spill
If the law don't get me then I know what will
Fifty years spent in prison ain't no hard time
But learning to lie is more wicked than crime
From this valley I now must be going
The sun's risen and the cockerel's crowing
All the people rush to the screams and the fire
Another family crushed, more burned up desire
There is a promise to take me to a high place
Where I can wash off my folly and disgrace
Praying morning, noon and night
Joan of Arc never passed up a good fight
Standing in a Station
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Standing in a station
Waiting for a train to come
Don't need a close relation
To criticize what I've done
Take down the family Bible
And blot me from the pages
I'd never call it libel
We'll just take it in stages
I'm going down to New Orleans
Find a flophouse with some color
I'll drink my rum until I'm numb
And the pain grows duller
Standing in a station
Suitcase at my feet
Don't need a revelation
My heart pumps concrete
Batteries leaking battery acid
Dragons heaving gasoline flames
The blue hills once seem so placid
Only our honored dead retain their names
Fair weather friends stab you in the back
Then condemn you for the blood you bleed
Can we ever get it back on track
Sometimes you sew, but sometimes you weed
Standing in a station
The night has grown so quiet
Don't need a new sensation
Don't knock it 'til you've tried it
The Autopsy
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
The peritoneum is opened
Glistens purple, pearlescent
Fine mother-of-pearl
Moist with its own sweating exudate
Centaurs, minotaurs, monsters, masks we must now adore
Beasts eluding classification are conjured in the
Relentless ecology of leaf and worm
Pulpy pastures, rippling gridirons of grain
Mournful violins swelling, swelling
Mournful violins swelling
Tiny black spiders dash across the steel table
A small explosion of yellow butterflies hurtling across visceral landscape
Cereal grain silos the texture of multiethnic skin
Hair and grass
The bison are grazing and lazing
Rolling under the blazing sun and over
The controlled dismemberment of quarks
Blindly dependent on invisible magnetism and membrane stability
Every day recycling neural constituents, fashioning
Simulacra of memories lost
In her blue dress with smile like fountain in the palace courtyard she plays,
Pockets stuffed with shiny new dimes
Undone
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In the jungles of the mind
We scratched our axioms
Virus unpacks
Submicroscopic detonation
Tongue twirls
Time unfurls
Etched in acid
Fox among dissolving trees
Moon's eyes behind cloud hands
Birdman wafts westerly
Enveloping arms or calipers
The digitstream pulsates
Shatters to globs of vibrant color and sound
Mandala
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Bells in the trees
Silent
Trees in the air
Junctions, convoluted branching
Threadlike lines
Structure of woman's form or
Acoustic guitar
Dry wood splitting
Watercolors run in
Nebulous starscape
Afterimage flash
Stars become cavities
Dusty ribs of gas
Terrible opalescent engine
Diaphanous, suspended over
Pale blonde and golden
California sea
The mandala shines
Lips curl, mirth held back
Face pressed out through bright
Psychedelic chalk
Aeschlepius Muted
Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
The spritling skies were rumbling
As we broached our spiritual intentions
Two impish cherubs retracting red velvet shrouds
To liberate a yawning sun
I dreamed a mechanism for retracting objective reality
Into interlaced dimensions
And treasure maps with accompanying rolled scrolls
And jewels belonging to no one
A shivering sailor sick in fever
Waited in the hotel lobby in deep decay
He spoke briefly to me of deformed monsters
Bobbing in bottles of formaldehyde
It reminded him of corrupt vessels he'd been compelled
To board in Mandalay
Indifferent to my incredulity and existentialism, for:
"You alone must now decide."
His monocled and starched white captain came in
All swagger and blue cape
Who lectured us a harping lecture
Of misconceived Latin American militancy
Grenadiers with meat cleavers from whom
Hallucinatory bug-men find no escape
And how he'd bombarded their costal caves
After tricking them with token mercy
As the sailor raised a protest
Under the bust of musing Aeschlepius, who stayed on
The corridors filled with Mexican peasant women
Pregnant or else infectious
The captain barked orders to desist
While scrawling the walls with a purple crayon
And I imagined a hag with her broiling pan
Determined to perfect us
The bright white clouds puffed up like
Swelling bullfrog corpses under tension
The candles all blew out and all the girls
Squealed in terror most joyous
And ran through the ranch house
Grown huge and fanlike through chaotic addition
Steam-spewing dragons flanked us all the way
To private treasures that destroy us
The white captain won his long-sought commission
The sailor got his shot of penicillin
Responsibility is the dark side society hides from and perpetually flees
We're condemned to our own freedom and these
Voracious parasitic personalities
Exits
Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Lifetimes flash between the ticks of a clock
Tired of waitin' 'round for this ol' world to pop
Everybody still here's lookin' for some other place to go
Woman in a restaurant, drinkin' at the bar
She's got stilettos on her heels, she's watchin' for a fast car
And a fast stranger who's too eager, one she can easily control
So let me walk across the spur-scarred floor
I'll tip my hat to you and push through the double-door
Poison in the sound waves, killers sniff down every trail
Everyone you used to know's got some kinda junk up for sale
Destiny in front of me, the posse's closin' in, twistin' up the noose
I'm trying to pass the test, I'm trying to walk the line
I can smell the cities burning. We're crashing by design
Dealing with pathologic liars, it's hard to negotiate a lasting truce
So let me walk across the glass-strewn street
I may be the last man you'll know who remembers how to be discreet
The best of intentions were never good enough
You got to know your place 'cause the big boys play so rough
Tusslin' in the filthy streets over a lousy dime
Desires and dreams burst in fires and screams that make the pain that much worse
You know what they say 'bout a man's labors and the original curse
I plunge my hands in my pockets, collar turned up against the cons and crime
So let me walk across the killing grounds
And try to betray no sign I hear the brutal sounds
I watched her down along the beach, the sun was ragin' where I sat
Her blonde hair was streamin' in the wind, guess you never know what you're looking at
Or what kinds of crazy tricks and traps we spring on each other
I'm noddin' to a jazz band, the drummer's got his groove on
Sometimes everything feels so fine, you just know it's time to move on
I can live without your sympathy, but I could use a little cover
So let me lay awhile under your gilt bedroom canopy
I'll buy you steak and lobster to compensate for my poor company
Bands of color, neon lights arc across a decadent land
Too much smoke and strippers, curses, whimpers and drink can kill a good man
Too many card games, too many false names, too much bump and grind
Zealous students sweat a coming tyranny already seething around them unsuspected
I'd like to catch the next train, but these modern beatniks are no less infected
No place left to explore where I don't already know what I'll find
So let me walk across the spur-scarred floor
I'll tip my hat to you and push through the double-door
Prisoner for Life
Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Maxine tried to warn Faye
One thing that's true
You're gonna rue the day
When that monster comes through
Prisoner for life
Faye said back to Maxine
That sure ain't no lie
Got two great big humps
And one burning eye
Prisoner for life
Well Maxine met le bête
One dark fateful night
But soon fascination
Stripped off all her fright
Prisoner for life
Faye said to Maxine
I mark well the change
You kissed the beast
And now you're so strange
Prisoner for life
Funny how the things you want the most
Are the things you need the least
You'll raise up your glass in toast
When you're face to face with the beast
Prisoner for life
Maxine said back to Faye
You'll know what it's about
When the dragon's rising above you
And the flames come gushing out
Prisoner for life
Searching for His Shining Face
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I keep searching for His shining face
I keep searching everywhere
And I hope He's searching for me too cos
I can't find Him anywhere
Searching high and searching higher
Search in rain and search in fire
Searching for His shining face
I keep searching for His shining face
Over hill and over dale
I search for Him down every trail
Searching for His shining face
Searching for His shining face
Looking in each most unlikely place
I keep searching for His shining face
Zeboiim
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Way down in Zeboiim don't the wind blow cold
Way down south in Zeboiim don't the wind blow cold
Salty statues rise up from the waters
Mobs with pitchforks don't want your daughters
Down in Zeboiim
Throw your seed in the rocks
Throw your seed in the rocks
No sweet fruit springs from corrupt wood
Long-sleeved robes of striped flannel
Strain out gnats and swallow a camel
Lookin' for a place serves ribs down in Zeboiim
Lookin' for a place serves barbeque ribs and slaw
Way down south in Zeboiim
Lightning reflected off the waters
Mobs with torches don't want your daughters
Down in Zeboiim
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Where were you on that terrible day (terrible day)
Where were you on that terrible day?
Where were you on that terrible day (terrible day)
When the fireball expanded through the sky?
How did you feel on that summer morning?
Did the world slip away suddenly without any warning?
How did you feel on that summer morning
When you knew that he must die?
What did you see on New Years Day?
Could you see at all with so many tears in the way?
A price much higher than you ever thought to pay.
What did you see on New Years Day?
How did you feel while the towers were falling?
You could hear their voices like lost birds calling.
How did you feel while the towers were falling?
Empty eyes still look expectantly toward you.
There are times for battle and times for forgiveness.
Time's so turbulent when your table's full of unfinished business.
Where were you on that terrible day (terrible day)
Where were you on that terrible day?
Did you let emotion get in the way watching
When they nailed Him up against the sky?
The Sower's Parable
Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
They're shooting geese and mallards
From cold dark winter skies
The sheep hide from their shepherds
The homebound sprinter sighs
And a wounded wildcat cries
He's desperate in the night
Connect the dots on leopards
As they vanish from sight
Rapping every piece of wood
Constantly employs you
You said if you only could
Before these bores destroy you
You'd shoot the moon; although you lost
Your nerve, still you found
Trusting friends; but sometimes good
Seed falls on stony ground
People out to make a buck
Some grow rich, some despair
Call it skill or call it luck
Die with style and flair
Passionate flames in your hair
No detail out of place
Slouch down in a pickup truck
You pay the price of taste
While time gnaws on tempered steel
And distant stars burn down
Do bonds and stocks still seem real
Money makes this world whirl round
Voices grate without a sound
Until the last retreat
Compete with selfish zeal
Relish in your defeat
They're shooting geese and mallards
From cold dark winter skies
The sheep hide from their shepherds
The homebound sprinter sighs
Barstow Bank Robbery
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I am just a highway man
No one knows my name
I fell to desperation
And buried my light in shame, boys
Buried my light in shame
One night in Amarillo
That grand old Lone Star State
I sat down to poker
And get some business straight, boys
Get my business straight
We saddled up our ponies
To California we did ride
Underneath the starry skies
Where the plains roll wide, boys
Riding for the other side
I fixed my sights on the Barstow bank
But my brother he did say:
"You carry out this job, boy,
You're gonna rue the day," he said
Then he turned and walked away
"Hand over all your money, sir
Don't think to make delay
For we are desperados
So you'd best hurry and obey
Better hurry and obey."
The cashier, he was true and brave
But not so very smart
One of the Texans panicked, and he
Shot him in the heart, boys
He shot him right through the heart
Away we scattered into the desert
The law hot upon our trail
I soon was overtaken
And hauled back here to jail, boys
They brought me to the jail
Now here in heavy chains I lay
As the years slowly fade away
And somewhere damned Texas outlaws
Remember that lonesome day, boys
But not one word do they say
Iron Rod
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Underneath the spinning rainbows of the promise of leniency
Soaked through in storms of swirling light and sound
You know we struck some blows for simple decency
While the dreadful wolves of dogma circled us all around
All around
While the dreadful wolves circled 'round
Deep within the forests of fairytale despair
I pulled your heads back out of mulberry pie ovens
Revealing caverns behind your merry eyes as you brushed at your coifed barbed wire hair
Then ran back to your prisons to brew new potions in your covens
In your covens
Like misfit witches brewing love potions in your ovens
Earthquakes bounced around the continent, my friends falling to murderers and crooks
Bottles rolling 'round the floorboards, now curses volley down like fire and hail
While I was out crusading somebody tore out the endings from all my favorite books
Seems like any minute a thief with an iron rod's gonna press aside the veil
While you wail
His iron rod's gonna press aside the veil
Barnacle on a boulder rides out the pounding waves
Army of cheerful soldiers marches dutifully to its graves
How many strayed sheep saved, how many must remain lost
Who mastered and who slaved and which one's gonna pay the cost
Excuse me gentlemen, there's a long train comin' and I gotta catch it
These broke down porches hang from derelict palaces with such indignity
Good night ladies, you get an itch for roving and you gotta scratch it
But I'm sure to say a prayer for you if you'll do the same for me
I guarantee it
You do unto others and I guess we'll wait and see
Syringes With Wings
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Flying needles
Blood sucking mosquitoes
Step down the steps into Hell
I doubt there's a more earnest fellow
Than Elvis Costello
Step down the steps into Hell
Wisdom's discreet
Tiptoes on clay feet to the grave
Step down the steps into Hell
If I could hold on to the next passing wave
Step down the steps into Hell
Nobody to save us
Or cast out a net
Step down the steps into Hell
Broken hearts and crockery
Not even paid for yet
Step down the steps into Hell
Flapping wings
Flying things
Step down the steps into Hell
Leathery creatures with
Talk show host features
Step down the steps into Hell
Banisters of
Broken glass
Step down the steps into Hell
The blaring dissonance of
Off-key brass
Step down the steps into Hell
Kiss me one time for good luck
Or death
Step down the steps into Hell
You can close your eyes and
Even hold your breath
Step down the steps into Hell
Out in the Wind
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Underneath the gnarled trees I wait out in the wind
The gales slash between the sails
And the carrion fowl descend
In the parking lots of betrayal I wait out in the wind
While the wolves in the timber wail
The coin you've stolen you must now spend
You discarded fidelity for temptation's facile plans
Now soon your tears must fall down in flood
You scrub away at your remorseful hands
But you can't wash away so much blood
Rocked in unseen arms so strong I wait out in the wind
Can't believe Judgment Day's postponed so long
You've got so little to protect and less to defend
Little boy's under the bar, he's lookin' for lost treasure
Little girl's on the high stage reciting from Measure for Measure
Heavy under a lonesome pregnant desert night I wait out in the wind
Do you ever wish for blindness to blot out your sight
Don't you miss your true best friend
Don't you long to drink from the sacred cup
And to lay down the too bloodied sword
Is the life you once coveted
Become the life that you've abhorred
Queen Isabella fell out of her party dress
King Ferdinand sweated in solitary duress
The Prince rode forth on his ferocious steed
So you took it upon yourself to commit the dirty deed
Do you ever ask yourself what have I done?
Do you ever ask yourself my God, what have I done?
Pound of Flesh
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Been hangin' 'round the fisherman docks watchin' the golden sunsets unravel
You can lose your leg to Moby Dick but expand your mind through travel
Maybe le bête noir is finally shriveling up inside my chest and viciously dying
You can beat a man back from his sweet reward but it won't keep him from trying
Remember when we used to set the sea and the sky to war
We could summon thunder and lightning and tempests galore
Those were the days you'll recall when we raised the dead up from their graves
Before you stole all my expensive necromancer scrolls and broke all my best staves
I been thinkin' 'bout the ones who went down in the burgundy flood
Their faded faith in a better world drained their veins of blood
Some fell to derision or landed in prison or live free in abject misery
So everyday I try to thank my Lord for the blessings bestowed upon me
I hope this doesn't turn into another grotesque story about a pound of flesh
Who needs more evidence that this wicked world rewards self-interest best
All of these strangers trapped by the circumstances of idiotic lives
Each one calculating escape, gazing out from suspicious salamander eyes
Evil flashes down the wire, war reports and disparaging retorts and hope buckling in compression
A forlorn woman flees flaming devils but can't hire a sanctified priest to hear her memorized confession
Politicians for sale, liberty assailed in auction to the highest bidder
Maybe you took a wrong turn somewhere but now it's too late to reconsider
Another year behind us, more babies thrown to Baal's ravenous appetite
Another beer raised in defiance, more bribes to lubricate the steely night
The blind Mexican calls out, he sells funeral flowers made out of tin
And if I don't make it to dawn I hope the rebels redistribute my expensive wife to him
Now the sky begins to shatter and the glassy rain pierces the pier
Here comes the captain with his albacore as the starving hordes appear
They rip him bit from bloody bit for lunch and throw the fish into the sea
And it might seem significant to you but it's just another captain crunched to me
At the Almanac House
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
She sees the truth, how it moves too fast
With no time to talk, now it's gone at last
When everything disintegrates that's when you start to curse
Your torture chamber humor was hideous but tranquility cuts you worse
She walks barefoot across the grassy hill
Knowing they may go for glory, but they're gone still
The crew erupts in a desperate riot of singing, drinking
But still the squall comes on and their hearts are sinking
Get up to leave and clear your credit card debt
But there's little to receive and the movie isn't even over yet
At the Almanac House we knew tragedy as just a fact of life
She was somebody's true friend but never his true wife
She inhabits a glass world ruled by rueful animals
Neither prejudicial devotees nor effusive infidels
Doubting all earthly phenomena, suspecting some heavenly things
Conjuring the shade of Alexander the Great on scaly wings
We might have sneaked right through while the enemy was asleep
But you were a hungry lion gorging yourself on helpless sheep
What manner of man calls for a doctor as a cyclone descends?
Another unlit lamp exalting expediency over his own true friends
She pours the waters from a spectral and sacred urn
But the fires rage on, and on they must burn
The pattern can't persist, it must reach an end
We may meet yet in the springtime when the breaks will mend
Casey Jones
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Gather round you railroaders if you want to hear
A famous story 'bout an engineer
Casey Jones was this old-timer's name
He ran a heavy load pullin' an icy chain
Lord, Lord, pullin' an icy chain
He ran a heavy load pullin' an icy chain
Casey got up at half past four
He kissed his wife at the bedroom door
Police stopped him at Main and Vine
He said: "Let me go 'fore the sun starts to shine."
Lord, Lord, 'fore the sun starts to shine.
He said: "Let me go 'fore the sun starts to shine."
Cops kept him 'til the hour grew late
Casey arrived 'bout a quarter past eight
Jumped in the cab with his orders in his hand
Saying: "This here's a trip to the holy land"
Lord, Lord, to the holy land
Saying: "This here's a trip to the holy land."
Casey pulled out of the Memphis yard
With a number three daily on his schedule card
Passengers all knew by the engine groans
That the man at the throttle must be Casey Jones
Lord, Lord, it was Casey Jones
That the man at the throttle must be Casey Jones
Pulled out his watch and looked at the time
He said to the fireman: "This engine's way behind
We gotta run this train, we're gonna leave the rail,
Cos we're four hours late with the Southern mail."
Lord, Lord, with the Southern mail
"We are four hours late with the Southern mail."
Round the curve he saw a passenger train
Both headlights blazing through a driving rain
He grinned at the fireman, said: "Hope you made your splash.
The number one's a-comin' and we're bound to crash."
Lord, Lord, we are bound to crash.
"The number one's a-comin' and we're bound to crash."
Casey was bleeding but he said with a grin
There's an ocean or two he still wanted to swim
Conductor rubbed his hands and asked which ones
An ocean of whiskey and an ocean of rum
Lord, Lord, and an ocean of rum
An ocean of whiskey and an ocean of rum
When the news come down that Casey was dead
His wife and children were asleep in the bed
"Lie still children, dream sweet and long
For this life is over and your daddy's gone."
Lord, Lord, and your daddy's gone
"For this life is over and your daddy's gone."
Forlorn Carol
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Forlorn Carol paints her nails, she ignores her crimes
History doesn't repeat itself, history only rhymes
On a night that pities neither laughter nor misery
Anticipating real human happiness in about a century
She gazes at the sunset, crimson and golden threads
A lifeless baby bird riding on the crest of shattered thunderheads
A brutal creature bursts from the woods, a hound with a lion's head
But she just watches mournfully, suspecting she's already dead
Where art and genius intersect there can be no loneliness
Shuffling like an animal toward a witch-doctor's coarse caresses
Her passions ran much deeper, he couldn't keep her, now her angel's lost
She must see the parallel - there's no delinquent cost
Forlorn Carol waits downtown on a dirty street
She could turn around and drop the frown but there's no one to meet
Forlorn Carol why don't you see that I'm free and I'm lonely too
We could get together, it's my view that's what we were born to do
Haunted Mansion
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In ten more years the trees will have all been cut down
In ten more years the machines and men will be crated and shipped away
Odd words echo in your hollow head, you're so distorted and conflicted
How shattering it must be to realize all your wounds were self-inflicted
Just consider how far we've come and how patient time outwits you
While you keep buying halos hoping to stumble across one that fits you
Or at least a villainous minion to keep you supplied with jewels and finest clothes
While these years burden me no more than balancing a steam engine on my nose
I gather you received an urgent message about a bottle of arsenic
Didn't I take a carriage to town at midnight to save you from being sick
When we met by accident in Puerto Vallarta and you spewed those unfortunate lies
Whose chest was it came crashing in? What rage rushed beneath your icy eyes?
Too many fires burning underfoot, too many warning shots unheeded
Two many carrion fowl in white satin, too many honest men defeated
Whatever remained from that mansion is tumbled down in decay
The walls demolished for firewood, not one vow left you can betray
Luther & Ima Jean
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Luther stumbles down a road in dark despair and lunacy
Suffering flashing pangs of passion and sacred lucidity
But insight lasts about three seconds then flickers and is lost
He should apologize before the eagles pluck his eyes out
He cannot afford the cost
In every story death quenches happiness no matter how two hearts conspire
As the opposite of love is greed, so that of death must be desire
He gazes upon blood streaming down heavy beams
Hoping to melt back in the moonlight
And come apart at all the seams
Ima Jean grabbed hold of his heart before he heard her voice
His veins swelled with life, but situations conquer choice
Years later in the theater he could not focus on the show
She was sitting with her husband in the darkness
Three rows down below
Luther requires a miracle, he's desperate for a cure
That takes away the horrors that memories insure
Someone who helps obscure the grief compounded on disaster
Who can slow down these rushing faces and traces of complicity
While the whole world goes by faster
Magdalena
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I'm lazin' at this old sawmill
Underneath the sandy crags
Got some bad pig meat from Aunt Sadie
Dead horse bobs among the snags
It's quiet tonight in Rock Port
Underneath a toxic moon
Light's flashing out on Pea Ridge
No sublimity's comin' soon
Mercantile sellin' soda pop
Smugglers sellin' Chinese
Sweet Charlie's sittin' in San Quentin
Got his head between his knees
Steam engine stalled on unfinished tracks
Dilatory progress comin' through
You've got no words to suit your need
And I'm struck mute just like you
Crimson devil's in the details
Golden turkey's in the corn
I can't tell whether I'm a-dyin' or I'm
Getting' ready to get born
Border patrolman's on the border
He's waist-deep in the flood
Give your ticket to the porter
Scrape your boots clean of boggy mud
Layin' tracks in Rincon
Makin' for Magdalena
A dainty on the corner's solemnly engaged in
Playing her concertina
And I'm struggling to not conjure up
Any thought too vigilantly made
I could charm the lady's heart, but
Plucked flowers so fleetly fade
I'm standin' by the window
My world saturated in harsh light
Some people can't tell wrong from left
They mix up might with right
All these young men feelin' their oats
Got no notion of the mischief they're bound to meet
Twister tumbles down on Emporia
House frames splayed out in the street
Some friends you once knew now won't
Give you the time of day
Remember before they burnt the fields when
We were all the way
I got a room in the Shaffer Hotel
Way up in the pines
I'm gonna think about anything but you and watch
While the western sky unwinds
Manor House
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I wandered the decaying halls of your manor house
Thought I overheard someone whisper your name
I searched out your pantries like an old mouse
But my searching's all in vain
Could you recognize me if you saw me now?
Not sure how long I can carry on like this
Who'da thought the deputy'd outdraw me anyhow?
The "Brilliancy Melody" saws on delicious
I once clung to the side of a broke down lattice
And smelled the rotting plaster in my hair
Who's been here on this sagging mattress?
In piles of broken promises, why should I care?
Guess I'm just suffering some kind of attack
No Hell-brewed poison ever tasted more bitter
Comes the Devil now so eager to bring her back
Hope I can find the strength this time to quit her
Now I know the precise tones of your bright voice
Forgive me if I don't quite recall your name
Nor the occasion when I made my fatal choice
Births and funerals have become the same
Don't care to give you what you're owed this winter
Consider it a blessing you should just accept
Soon you'll be resold to the highest bidder
Marked down for miles and base neglect
Run and tell Aunt Sally the gray goose is dead
The one she was saving for a feather bed
If I thought it would help I'd take a leap from the loft
Or lay my head in your lap where the willow shade's soft
Morning, Noon & Night
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Willie's passing by again
Gonna keep my eye fixed on him
Praying morning, noon and night
Joan of Arc never passed up a good fight
Seen kingdoms come and kingdoms go
Seen bandits tramping over white snow
We played chess, never did nothing mean
Black rook took my white queen
Now there's time to murder and blood to spill
If the law don't get me then I know what will
Fifty years spent in prison ain't no hard time
But learning to lie is more wicked than crime
From this valley I now must be going
The sun's risen and the cockerel's crowing
All the people rush to the screams and the fire
Another family crushed, more burned up desire
There is a promise to take me to a high place
Where I can wash off my folly and disgrace
Praying morning, noon and night
Joan of Arc never passed up a good fight
Standing in a Station
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Standing in a station
Waiting for a train to come
Don't need a close relation
To criticize what I've done
Take down the family Bible
And blot me from the pages
I'd never call it libel
We'll just take it in stages
I'm going down to New Orleans
Find a flophouse with some color
I'll drink my rum until I'm numb
And the pain grows duller
Standing in a station
Suitcase at my feet
Don't need a revelation
My heart pumps concrete
Batteries leaking battery acid
Dragons heaving gasoline flames
The blue hills once seem so placid
Only our honored dead retain their names
Fair weather friends stab you in the back
Then condemn you for the blood you bleed
Can we ever get it back on track
Sometimes you sew, but sometimes you weed
Standing in a station
The night has grown so quiet
Don't need a new sensation
Don't knock it 'til you've tried it
The Autopsy
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
The peritoneum is opened
Glistens purple, pearlescent
Fine mother-of-pearl
Moist with its own sweating exudate
Centaurs, minotaurs, monsters, masks we must now adore
Beasts eluding classification are conjured in the
Relentless ecology of leaf and worm
Pulpy pastures, rippling gridirons of grain
Mournful violins swelling, swelling
Mournful violins swelling
Tiny black spiders dash across the steel table
A small explosion of yellow butterflies hurtling across visceral landscape
Cereal grain silos the texture of multiethnic skin
Hair and grass
The bison are grazing and lazing
Rolling under the blazing sun and over
The controlled dismemberment of quarks
Blindly dependent on invisible magnetism and membrane stability
Every day recycling neural constituents, fashioning
Simulacra of memories lost
In her blue dress with smile like fountain in the palace courtyard she plays,
Pockets stuffed with shiny new dimes
Undone
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In the jungles of the mind
We scratched our axioms
Virus unpacks
Submicroscopic detonation
Tongue twirls
Time unfurls
Etched in acid
Fox among dissolving trees
Moon's eyes behind cloud hands
Birdman wafts westerly
Enveloping arms or calipers
The digitstream pulsates
Shatters to globs of vibrant color and sound
Mandala
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Bells in the trees
Silent
Trees in the air
Junctions, convoluted branching
Threadlike lines
Structure of woman's form or
Acoustic guitar
Dry wood splitting
Watercolors run in
Nebulous starscape
Afterimage flash
Stars become cavities
Dusty ribs of gas
Terrible opalescent engine
Diaphanous, suspended over
Pale blonde and golden
California sea
The mandala shines
Lips curl, mirth held back
Face pressed out through bright
Psychedelic chalk
Aeschlepius Muted
Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
The spritling skies were rumbling
As we broached our spiritual intentions
Two impish cherubs retracting red velvet shrouds
To liberate a yawning sun
I dreamed a mechanism for retracting objective reality
Into interlaced dimensions
And treasure maps with accompanying rolled scrolls
And jewels belonging to no one
A shivering sailor sick in fever
Waited in the hotel lobby in deep decay
He spoke briefly to me of deformed monsters
Bobbing in bottles of formaldehyde
It reminded him of corrupt vessels he'd been compelled
To board in Mandalay
Indifferent to my incredulity and existentialism, for:
"You alone must now decide."
His monocled and starched white captain came in
All swagger and blue cape
Who lectured us a harping lecture
Of misconceived Latin American militancy
Grenadiers with meat cleavers from whom
Hallucinatory bug-men find no escape
And how he'd bombarded their costal caves
After tricking them with token mercy
As the sailor raised a protest
Under the bust of musing Aeschlepius, who stayed on
The corridors filled with Mexican peasant women
Pregnant or else infectious
The captain barked orders to desist
While scrawling the walls with a purple crayon
And I imagined a hag with her broiling pan
Determined to perfect us
The bright white clouds puffed up like
Swelling bullfrog corpses under tension
The candles all blew out and all the girls
Squealed in terror most joyous
And ran through the ranch house
Grown huge and fanlike through chaotic addition
Steam-spewing dragons flanked us all the way
To private treasures that destroy us
The white captain won his long-sought commission
The sailor got his shot of penicillin
Responsibility is the dark side society hides from and perpetually flees
We're condemned to our own freedom and these
Voracious parasitic personalities
Exits
Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Lifetimes flash between the ticks of a clock
Tired of waitin' 'round for this ol' world to pop
Everybody still here's lookin' for some other place to go
Woman in a restaurant, drinkin' at the bar
She's got stilettos on her heels, she's watchin' for a fast car
And a fast stranger who's too eager, one she can easily control
So let me walk across the spur-scarred floor
I'll tip my hat to you and push through the double-door
Poison in the sound waves, killers sniff down every trail
Everyone you used to know's got some kinda junk up for sale
Destiny in front of me, the posse's closin' in, twistin' up the noose
I'm trying to pass the test, I'm trying to walk the line
I can smell the cities burning. We're crashing by design
Dealing with pathologic liars, it's hard to negotiate a lasting truce
So let me walk across the glass-strewn street
I may be the last man you'll know who remembers how to be discreet
The best of intentions were never good enough
You got to know your place 'cause the big boys play so rough
Tusslin' in the filthy streets over a lousy dime
Desires and dreams burst in fires and screams that make the pain that much worse
You know what they say 'bout a man's labors and the original curse
I plunge my hands in my pockets, collar turned up against the cons and crime
So let me walk across the killing grounds
And try to betray no sign I hear the brutal sounds
I watched her down along the beach, the sun was ragin' where I sat
Her blonde hair was streamin' in the wind, guess you never know what you're looking at
Or what kinds of crazy tricks and traps we spring on each other
I'm noddin' to a jazz band, the drummer's got his groove on
Sometimes everything feels so fine, you just know it's time to move on
I can live without your sympathy, but I could use a little cover
So let me lay awhile under your gilt bedroom canopy
I'll buy you steak and lobster to compensate for my poor company
Bands of color, neon lights arc across a decadent land
Too much smoke and strippers, curses, whimpers and drink can kill a good man
Too many card games, too many false names, too much bump and grind
Zealous students sweat a coming tyranny already seething around them unsuspected
I'd like to catch the next train, but these modern beatniks are no less infected
No place left to explore where I don't already know what I'll find
So let me walk across the spur-scarred floor
I'll tip my hat to you and push through the double-door
Prisoner for Life
Copyright 2005, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Maxine tried to warn Faye
One thing that's true
You're gonna rue the day
When that monster comes through
Prisoner for life
Faye said back to Maxine
That sure ain't no lie
Got two great big humps
And one burning eye
Prisoner for life
Well Maxine met le bête
One dark fateful night
But soon fascination
Stripped off all her fright
Prisoner for life
Faye said to Maxine
I mark well the change
You kissed the beast
And now you're so strange
Prisoner for life
Funny how the things you want the most
Are the things you need the least
You'll raise up your glass in toast
When you're face to face with the beast
Prisoner for life
Maxine said back to Faye
You'll know what it's about
When the dragon's rising above you
And the flames come gushing out
Prisoner for life
Searching for His Shining Face
Copyright 2003, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I keep searching for His shining face
I keep searching everywhere
And I hope He's searching for me too cos
I can't find Him anywhere
Searching high and searching higher
Search in rain and search in fire
Searching for His shining face
I keep searching for His shining face
Over hill and over dale
I search for Him down every trail
Searching for His shining face
Searching for His shining face
Looking in each most unlikely place
I keep searching for His shining face
Zeboiim
Copyright 2004, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Way down in Zeboiim don't the wind blow cold
Way down south in Zeboiim don't the wind blow cold
Salty statues rise up from the waters
Mobs with pitchforks don't want your daughters
Down in Zeboiim
Throw your seed in the rocks
Throw your seed in the rocks
No sweet fruit springs from corrupt wood
Long-sleeved robes of striped flannel
Strain out gnats and swallow a camel
Lookin' for a place serves ribs down in Zeboiim
Lookin' for a place serves barbeque ribs and slaw
Way down south in Zeboiim
Lightning reflected off the waters
Mobs with torches don't want your daughters
Down in Zeboiim
Lines, 2002.
Car Wash
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Coolin' my heels on a Mexican tile bench as the golden sun parches
Stripes and stars snapping beside some familiar golden arches
A one-legged man hurries on crutches past the white steeple
Waitin' for my car to come clean with other waitin' people
There's a big tire store right across the street
It's not the way they roll but the people that you meet
Short-haired kids in red tee-shirts with grease on their sleeves
What are the accomplishments a man hopes he achieves
Cars hurry by, clouds float like ice cream
A thin whisker separates what's real from what's dream
I was doubting my own senses when I felt the Earth crack
They were waxing my car, now there's no going back
These sultans and kings, these baronies and empires
Are but a handful of dust
These tussles for treasure and ugly scrambles for pleasure
Are a bust
Dance of the Mutant, the Stranger, and a Corrupt Angel
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
a huge & muscular mutant shambling by the side of the gray burning highway in california desert. salt cracks his full lips. sinuous alien ripples distort landscapes of brawn dawn. a fallen lump of godflesh in a shirt made out of purple mirrors & claws. chisel-sculpted face, wounds trailing glutinous serous queues. solar flares & rockets descending. missiles. bullets. thru sky's gash descend three corrupt angels w/too long feet & hands attached bulbous joints & piercing blue eyes unusually immense & wide-set. sharp toothy smiles. this must be the politics of cellular sap.
sweat dripping on the side of a highway, blood dipping in a buttercup. museum-archaeologists clumsily attempting to re-stitch frankenstein's monster from randomly preserved bits of flesh & hearsay, but a few are conjoined in true resonance & love for their subject. vanishingly few. are there to be boundaries, limits? can we suck oxygen & simultaneously bow before little minds? the beast colossus avariciously nursing wordy oil between strange conceits in mortifying emission.
honor-bound to serve precious seed. all faces & names all numbers transforming into musical notes like bells having rung. corrupt angels take up electric guitars & wail like demons in sweet rebellion. here we break the thick waxy river of the past & dilate fragile souls into impossible beginnings. it's this way for the handsome stranger with curlicue hair, gazing suspect new-made world laid out below his feet when one translucent angel w/wild shoulder-length ebon hair whirls softly around him. he marvels his unexpected creation while she scoops it up w/sharp-edged tumblers & injects it into lymph tubes gritty w/cobalt sand & rust. somebody mentions the mutant then someone wonders where it has gone. swallowed by a gila monster. no, he was the monster, the father, the heavy purse. & then arterial trafficking of lymph & spleen as vessels & ducts tear out little mouths & fuse across bus seats & floors down hallways into elevator shafts all moving all merging we share these fluids gushing together sing it all together now, followed by the blood vessels & spidery nerves until neuron buttons find all new dendrites & synapse & we can only dwell on the phony losses of suicides & mass murder. all knives are jazzy serrated. all bones too white & glossy w/self-conscious cartilage.
disconnection, then? separation? angels can promote the fight against the power but what is time to an angel? i can feel the teeth w/in my side chewing, chewing. i know about those microscopic shapes plugging receptors signaling opiate-satisfaction. we are drugged out on mundane shopping mall existence. we signal, we signal back, we deceive ourselves w/slick feedback. flickering antique coruscating fibers. the tired theory of performance on the global stage. all theories are tired now. i smell your signal from across the room & worship the dopamine flashing gyration of color & light airy lightning. it must be better to possess this knowledge. give to me the nectar of your juicy receptacle. i lick the honey w/mad religious schizophrenic visionary zeal. i plug into electric passion where there are no boundaries or censorship or vulgar limits. we could all become insane prophets or flashing chameleons bright green w/twitchy pyramidal eyes searching out predators. fluid monkeys chatter & throw seed pods. feed me words now. we must have words.
we live on words. the world is words. this best of all possible words world. time is words. night after night the deep sky screaming me in foreign voices & hallucinogenic perfume. spinning back through time the words revolve sickeningly, pieces falling back together in revolting precision & the precious seed flowing back up w/in pollen cases. roaches grown fat on yesterday's poison. corpses fatten, ripen. ripped sutures reassemble. the words roll on & on around my mouth & on my tongue & on.
ohhh. . . .breaking breads, baking heads. severed hands & feet & legions of slumbering dead. your face is that of a pony. your hair is alive & it grieves when cut. your eyes flash to their corners & i know you watch me watch you. but time is a wet mattress that suffocates & the lizards slither into dark crevices until the jewels of the word world shatter into disparate, irretrievable litter of forgotten possibilities. the mutant is dead in a foreign tomb. gibber back at the night.
Freak Show
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Went to see the freak show
They held it in the mall
Some were fat and some were thin
Some were short and some were tall
Some wore stripes and some wore plain
Some were generous and some were vain
Some wore diamonds and some wore tin
Some had to frown and some had to grin
I've been deceived by so much greed
If you don't believe in evil you must not be awake
Seems pretty quaint at this point
To blame it on a snake
You with your astrological charts and your head in the sand
Preferring cosmic causation to malice that's man-planned
Hollywood has a million ways to liquefy your brain
A million tools to prevent you seein' anything too plain
You keep stuffin' your God-shaped hole with hypocrisy and crime
You keep waiting for class to start, but it's graduation time
A golden city's shining, better cut your ego down to size
Its gates are too narrow for your swollen pride and lies
Went to see the freak show
Some will elevate you, some make you crawl
Ten sharp swords shoved in my back
Gotta confess I love 'em all
Passage
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
===============================================
pass thru a tiny pore
eye-searing starlight jolts
where memory & reason
char to bony ash w/terminal grief
the music is scorching, deafening
lays waste to uncharted acres of bedlam
the choruses undulate among metallic spheres
waves of delirium, waves of beauty
like the beauty in a silver singin' river
cruising at lightspeed on
a cool blue light beam, you've
ruptured thru a fragile crystalline shell
into the land w/o fingerprints
in a country beyond petty kingdoms
the ruts are filling in
entropy reversing
sundered, missing bits of pieces
in slo-mo implode & auto-assemble
all discord overlapping, interfering
yields unified fields of harmony
it's the last bus pulling out
last call, the last trip
distant birds flying
fluttering climbing
a cyclone of black birds
ravens & diamond-eyed butterflies
rainbow trout gliding, sailing & smiling
buzzing honey bees left behind
receding din of the voice of the swarm
acoustic guitars give way
plug in to undisciplined electric swells
out of the tragic, out of the comic
into the mystic & beyond
further
gossamer films of revelations lay down on
deeper layers of antediluvian answers
before pieces of questions can be formulated
all things connected, all time
all place, space
this is not free-jazz
or acid rock or fuzz guitar
this is not tidal chemistry
or ergot intoxication or riot pills
who brings on this tribulation?
what slow corrosion drains our veins of dedication?
this is not heritage
that noble massive spreading bushy tree
that slop bucket splashing
trial-&-error-shaped organics
this is not a gently beating heart
a commodity in great demand and scant supply
not fear & loathing in high places
not vonnegut, not yeats, not herman hesse
not 9/11, not biological attack
not pablo, nor his faithful slave pedro,
not leonardo or dali or bosch
this is not bowling ball planets distorting spacetime
or spacetime fiercely gripping matter
or virtual photons & their anti-selves
emerging & self-immolating at event horizon
w/shimmering embers of hawking radiation
this is no mission to mars
or panspermia w/its infested pebbles
peppering volcano land in a hard rain
this is not cosmic inflation
not alan guth
not arlo guthrie
or frankie & albert or diamond joe
not jerry or janis or jim or john
or stevie ray or george or jimmy
or ken or timothy
you hear the train whistle blowin' ooh-ee
thru the back of your memory
w/2 lights on behind; no,
you've burst thru the backdoor of the
motel of lost companions, trailing
a phosphorescent wake of glimmering stardust
blazing another momentous trail across
eternity: let
all men heed this passage
i can't follow that trail, i
too much love this more turbulent tumble-down realm where we
struggle w/fractured bits of questions
where perceptions in time are too truncated
to be of much use 'cept in a dark ironic vein
& biases of heritage & prejudice
distort a more lucid vision, & anyway
how not stick around to see how things turn out,
to recover what was lost? i wonder did you
take too much for granted, or else
get your signals crossed?
where we fomented our on-going rebellion
against those powers whose small minds are most constrictive
where i told you the 1980s reminded me most of the 1480s
& you told me that "things have changed" reminded you of my trials
where, on a good day, the dead were bearable
especially playing someone else's song
where, considering their inexplicable fiscal success,
we considered charging half as much
& taking the chemistry analyzers on the road
on the road
where we catalogued the political hypocrisy
of rabid republicans & other miscellaneous unindicted criminals of war
where thru geometric proof we finally discerned vividly
that all songs, future & past,
are lesser derivatives of
primal dylan forms
& thru the scientific method we resolved
that all jokes are best taken just a bit too far, for
what good's your humanity unless
you experiment w/it?
where we conspired to escape to alaska
or to san francisco
where we struggled to crack diana's stony resistance
w/contemptible twisted tales of titanic proportions
& quests for amputee amphibians
& where we tormented jillian w/tumid intestines
& where your controls were never quite w/in
2sd
where you made far-out dilutions to appease
the irritable gods of nephelometry
you tuned in on agrobacterium radiobacter &
the genetic promiscuity of gonorrhoea
you turned on to every alternative to conservative bombast & ennui
& long ago you dropped out gloriously
how we stretched out the membranes of those fathomless nights
solving the problems of the world one crisis at a time, drawing
arcane conclusions on the wall
unearthing ebola virus before it became fashionable
tobasco or soy sauce on popcorn
you spit out the mexican chocolate when
sour milk spilled forth
you grimaced at waldenstrom's syrup in your viscometer
w/your stopwatch slowly ticking away the hours
you w/your tape recorder in your car
archiving endless reels of dead air
you w/your telescope gazing back
into god's face
you loved so much
your generosity transformed everyone you met
your words were light to me when i wandered in shadow
faithful companion & kind
most of all you loved your children best
there is no greater honor
i wish you could see how it all turns out
then i remember:
already you are there
Taker
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
You can take my shoes
You can take my fan
You can take my gum
And my trash can
You can take my radio
You can take my phone
You can take my steak
You can keep the bone
You can take my paper
You can take my pen
You can tear it up,
Make me write it down again
You can take my table
You can take my chairs
You can take the floors
You can take the stairs
You can take my books
Take away my PC
You can take it all
Far away from me
You can take my money
You can take my wheels
You can rev it up
Until it squeals
You can take my house
You can rattle my life
Shatter my peace
With war and strife
You can make the ground rock
You can make the air roll
But one thing you know you'll never do:
You'll never touch my soul
Tale of Fifteen Honey Bees
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Diamond fragments scattered upon slick streets like
Broken promises whispered between urgent sheets
Lonely people crouching low behind pompous words
Lifting from ruby-stained lips like wayward carrion birds
And I'm passing under the full moon among certain eerie trees
That overhang the hushed alleyways of uncertain destinies
We were eating buzz candy
That the fuzz kept handy
Swinging in hammocks between
The milkwood trees
Right before the moon turned sandy
And the mayor became a dandy
You misremembered what we'd seen
And swallowed fifteen honey bees
Helen of Troy bouncing off-beat in a beat up black and white
Sways with a silver hip flask, she's a drunken soaring kite
"Here's to the love 'em and leave 'ems," she blurts at the surly hack
Who takes a swig then idly hands it back
While suspicious cats go slinking like sinister refugees
Among the trash blowing greedily between uncertain destinies
The phones were ringing like gold medallions
Bright, besmeared with polished dew
While wobbling girls slipped off their shoes
To race against a bitter curfew
Cold scissors waltzed across the lake
Which was frozen and blue green
We smelled our way between the walls
And convulsed in a Spanish influenza dream
Mosquitoes buzzing like terrified soldiers are just ribbons in my ears
Clutched at by young widows in black deserts to dab at children's tears
What's all this dry snow that blows cold dust through dead branches
Napoleon in the gutter sputters somethin' 'bout missed chances
Then Walt Disney and Sprio Agnew play at chess, immune from current hesitancies
While Deliah and I duck under the brazen skies of uncurtained mysteries
A pig performed experiments
In chemistry from experience
And sung of what an ascetic requires
To soothe our uncombed nerves
We donned our suits for December gents
And brushed away suggestive evidence
Is karma served through fulfilled desires
Or receiving what one most deserves
Olive drab fabrics run on to carpet a shuddering globe
The hit-and-run escapes as a passing surgeon carves lobe from golden lobe
Curved surfaces fill in the corners and coroners inflate my veins
Ghosts around the steeples cry over fiery eruptions from passenger trains
And dwarves sip cream while excavating ancient abominations and ecstasies
As we run down the echoing hallways away from these too certain destinies
Between telephones and electronic mail
Our voices have been strung
Between the clouds and featureless stratosphere
Where the blind and bloated caterpillar's stung
By famished ants with mouths to feed
Back home, the game sums to none
There's no way out without a doubt
But back whatever way you've come
You Don't Ever Know
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Whirl around, pick any direction
Then open up your eyes
Human beings beat down like dogs
But that ain't no surprise
You might be an evil soul
With no conception where it's at
If you already know everything you can't learn much, but
Some day you're gonna discover that
You don't ever know anybody
Half as well as you think you do
Just cos you don't wanna believe something
Don't mean that it's not true
People angry everywhere
'Bout things they know nothing about
Take a look through any door
All those people start to shout
"Vengeance is mine," sayeth the Lord
Nobody seems to think it's true
You vomit your lies and malicious excuses
You better hope no retribution's headed for you
You don't ever know anybody
Half as well as you think you do
Just cos you don't wanna believe something
Don't mean that it's not true
This old world is bruised and battered
Every few minutes another species goes extinct
Wedges driven into family structure
Whole nations driven to the brink
But you're not hoping to heal the Earth
You find the weak spot and you hit there
I see a golden city on a hill, but I don't think
I'll ever see you there
You don't ever know anybody
Half as well as you think you do
Just cos you don't wanna believe something
Don't mean that it's not true
I never knew your kind of hatred
Your soul is fully corrupt
Your heart is tangled in turmoil
Your terror perpetually threatens to erupt
Don't matter what you think you know
You better shut your mouth and open your ears
You're takin' nothin' with you when you leave this world
Folly's forgotten, but kindness runs down the years
You don't ever know anybody
Half as well as you think you do
Just cos you don't wanna believe something
Don't mean that it's not true
You're My Girl
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
You're my girl, my precious child
You're the future, you're the gold
I brush your hair until it shines
I cover you when the night is cold
You're my girl, my favorite kid
You sing and play, you skip away
You never know I'm watching you
Your dreams will all come true someday
You're my girl, my tender one
You think the world's beyond your reach
I give you gifts that you don't see
You always have something new to teach
You're my girl, my little girl
And though time so quickly must unwind
One thing always will be true:
You're worth more to Daddy than a diamond mine
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Coolin' my heels on a Mexican tile bench as the golden sun parches
Stripes and stars snapping beside some familiar golden arches
A one-legged man hurries on crutches past the white steeple
Waitin' for my car to come clean with other waitin' people
There's a big tire store right across the street
It's not the way they roll but the people that you meet
Short-haired kids in red tee-shirts with grease on their sleeves
What are the accomplishments a man hopes he achieves
Cars hurry by, clouds float like ice cream
A thin whisker separates what's real from what's dream
I was doubting my own senses when I felt the Earth crack
They were waxing my car, now there's no going back
These sultans and kings, these baronies and empires
Are but a handful of dust
These tussles for treasure and ugly scrambles for pleasure
Are a bust
Dance of the Mutant, the Stranger, and a Corrupt Angel
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
a huge & muscular mutant shambling by the side of the gray burning highway in california desert. salt cracks his full lips. sinuous alien ripples distort landscapes of brawn dawn. a fallen lump of godflesh in a shirt made out of purple mirrors & claws. chisel-sculpted face, wounds trailing glutinous serous queues. solar flares & rockets descending. missiles. bullets. thru sky's gash descend three corrupt angels w/too long feet & hands attached bulbous joints & piercing blue eyes unusually immense & wide-set. sharp toothy smiles. this must be the politics of cellular sap.
sweat dripping on the side of a highway, blood dipping in a buttercup. museum-archaeologists clumsily attempting to re-stitch frankenstein's monster from randomly preserved bits of flesh & hearsay, but a few are conjoined in true resonance & love for their subject. vanishingly few. are there to be boundaries, limits? can we suck oxygen & simultaneously bow before little minds? the beast colossus avariciously nursing wordy oil between strange conceits in mortifying emission.
honor-bound to serve precious seed. all faces & names all numbers transforming into musical notes like bells having rung. corrupt angels take up electric guitars & wail like demons in sweet rebellion. here we break the thick waxy river of the past & dilate fragile souls into impossible beginnings. it's this way for the handsome stranger with curlicue hair, gazing suspect new-made world laid out below his feet when one translucent angel w/wild shoulder-length ebon hair whirls softly around him. he marvels his unexpected creation while she scoops it up w/sharp-edged tumblers & injects it into lymph tubes gritty w/cobalt sand & rust. somebody mentions the mutant then someone wonders where it has gone. swallowed by a gila monster. no, he was the monster, the father, the heavy purse. & then arterial trafficking of lymph & spleen as vessels & ducts tear out little mouths & fuse across bus seats & floors down hallways into elevator shafts all moving all merging we share these fluids gushing together sing it all together now, followed by the blood vessels & spidery nerves until neuron buttons find all new dendrites & synapse & we can only dwell on the phony losses of suicides & mass murder. all knives are jazzy serrated. all bones too white & glossy w/self-conscious cartilage.
disconnection, then? separation? angels can promote the fight against the power but what is time to an angel? i can feel the teeth w/in my side chewing, chewing. i know about those microscopic shapes plugging receptors signaling opiate-satisfaction. we are drugged out on mundane shopping mall existence. we signal, we signal back, we deceive ourselves w/slick feedback. flickering antique coruscating fibers. the tired theory of performance on the global stage. all theories are tired now. i smell your signal from across the room & worship the dopamine flashing gyration of color & light airy lightning. it must be better to possess this knowledge. give to me the nectar of your juicy receptacle. i lick the honey w/mad religious schizophrenic visionary zeal. i plug into electric passion where there are no boundaries or censorship or vulgar limits. we could all become insane prophets or flashing chameleons bright green w/twitchy pyramidal eyes searching out predators. fluid monkeys chatter & throw seed pods. feed me words now. we must have words.
we live on words. the world is words. this best of all possible words world. time is words. night after night the deep sky screaming me in foreign voices & hallucinogenic perfume. spinning back through time the words revolve sickeningly, pieces falling back together in revolting precision & the precious seed flowing back up w/in pollen cases. roaches grown fat on yesterday's poison. corpses fatten, ripen. ripped sutures reassemble. the words roll on & on around my mouth & on my tongue & on.
ohhh. . . .breaking breads, baking heads. severed hands & feet & legions of slumbering dead. your face is that of a pony. your hair is alive & it grieves when cut. your eyes flash to their corners & i know you watch me watch you. but time is a wet mattress that suffocates & the lizards slither into dark crevices until the jewels of the word world shatter into disparate, irretrievable litter of forgotten possibilities. the mutant is dead in a foreign tomb. gibber back at the night.
Freak Show
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Went to see the freak show
They held it in the mall
Some were fat and some were thin
Some were short and some were tall
Some wore stripes and some wore plain
Some were generous and some were vain
Some wore diamonds and some wore tin
Some had to frown and some had to grin
I've been deceived by so much greed
If you don't believe in evil you must not be awake
Seems pretty quaint at this point
To blame it on a snake
You with your astrological charts and your head in the sand
Preferring cosmic causation to malice that's man-planned
Hollywood has a million ways to liquefy your brain
A million tools to prevent you seein' anything too plain
You keep stuffin' your God-shaped hole with hypocrisy and crime
You keep waiting for class to start, but it's graduation time
A golden city's shining, better cut your ego down to size
Its gates are too narrow for your swollen pride and lies
Went to see the freak show
Some will elevate you, some make you crawl
Ten sharp swords shoved in my back
Gotta confess I love 'em all
Passage
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
the flowers of the city, though breathlike, get deathlike at times,
& there's no use in tryin' to deal w/the dyin', tho' i cannot explain that in lines.
- BD
===============================================
pass thru a tiny pore
eye-searing starlight jolts
where memory & reason
char to bony ash w/terminal grief
the music is scorching, deafening
lays waste to uncharted acres of bedlam
the choruses undulate among metallic spheres
waves of delirium, waves of beauty
like the beauty in a silver singin' river
cruising at lightspeed on
a cool blue light beam, you've
ruptured thru a fragile crystalline shell
into the land w/o fingerprints
in a country beyond petty kingdoms
the ruts are filling in
entropy reversing
sundered, missing bits of pieces
in slo-mo implode & auto-assemble
all discord overlapping, interfering
yields unified fields of harmony
it's the last bus pulling out
last call, the last trip
distant birds flying
fluttering climbing
a cyclone of black birds
ravens & diamond-eyed butterflies
rainbow trout gliding, sailing & smiling
buzzing honey bees left behind
receding din of the voice of the swarm
acoustic guitars give way
plug in to undisciplined electric swells
out of the tragic, out of the comic
into the mystic & beyond
further
gossamer films of revelations lay down on
deeper layers of antediluvian answers
before pieces of questions can be formulated
all things connected, all time
all place, space
this is not free-jazz
or acid rock or fuzz guitar
this is not tidal chemistry
or ergot intoxication or riot pills
who brings on this tribulation?
what slow corrosion drains our veins of dedication?
this is not heritage
that noble massive spreading bushy tree
that slop bucket splashing
trial-&-error-shaped organics
this is not a gently beating heart
a commodity in great demand and scant supply
not fear & loathing in high places
not vonnegut, not yeats, not herman hesse
not 9/11, not biological attack
not pablo, nor his faithful slave pedro,
not leonardo or dali or bosch
this is not bowling ball planets distorting spacetime
or spacetime fiercely gripping matter
or virtual photons & their anti-selves
emerging & self-immolating at event horizon
w/shimmering embers of hawking radiation
this is no mission to mars
or panspermia w/its infested pebbles
peppering volcano land in a hard rain
this is not cosmic inflation
not alan guth
not arlo guthrie
or frankie & albert or diamond joe
not jerry or janis or jim or john
or stevie ray or george or jimmy
or ken or timothy
you hear the train whistle blowin' ooh-ee
thru the back of your memory
w/2 lights on behind; no,
you've burst thru the backdoor of the
motel of lost companions, trailing
a phosphorescent wake of glimmering stardust
blazing another momentous trail across
eternity: let
all men heed this passage
i can't follow that trail, i
too much love this more turbulent tumble-down realm where we
struggle w/fractured bits of questions
where perceptions in time are too truncated
to be of much use 'cept in a dark ironic vein
& biases of heritage & prejudice
distort a more lucid vision, & anyway
how not stick around to see how things turn out,
to recover what was lost? i wonder did you
take too much for granted, or else
get your signals crossed?
where we fomented our on-going rebellion
against those powers whose small minds are most constrictive
where i told you the 1980s reminded me most of the 1480s
& you told me that "things have changed" reminded you of my trials
where, on a good day, the dead were bearable
especially playing someone else's song
where, considering their inexplicable fiscal success,
we considered charging half as much
& taking the chemistry analyzers on the road
on the road
where we catalogued the political hypocrisy
of rabid republicans & other miscellaneous unindicted criminals of war
where thru geometric proof we finally discerned vividly
that all songs, future & past,
are lesser derivatives of
primal dylan forms
& thru the scientific method we resolved
that all jokes are best taken just a bit too far, for
what good's your humanity unless
you experiment w/it?
where we conspired to escape to alaska
or to san francisco
where we struggled to crack diana's stony resistance
w/contemptible twisted tales of titanic proportions
& quests for amputee amphibians
& where we tormented jillian w/tumid intestines
& where your controls were never quite w/in
2sd
where you made far-out dilutions to appease
the irritable gods of nephelometry
you tuned in on agrobacterium radiobacter &
the genetic promiscuity of gonorrhoea
you turned on to every alternative to conservative bombast & ennui
& long ago you dropped out gloriously
how we stretched out the membranes of those fathomless nights
solving the problems of the world one crisis at a time, drawing
arcane conclusions on the wall
unearthing ebola virus before it became fashionable
tobasco or soy sauce on popcorn
you spit out the mexican chocolate when
sour milk spilled forth
you grimaced at waldenstrom's syrup in your viscometer
w/your stopwatch slowly ticking away the hours
you w/your tape recorder in your car
archiving endless reels of dead air
you w/your telescope gazing back
into god's face
you loved so much
your generosity transformed everyone you met
your words were light to me when i wandered in shadow
faithful companion & kind
most of all you loved your children best
there is no greater honor
i wish you could see how it all turns out
then i remember:
already you are there
Taker
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
You can take my shoes
You can take my fan
You can take my gum
And my trash can
You can take my radio
You can take my phone
You can take my steak
You can keep the bone
You can take my paper
You can take my pen
You can tear it up,
Make me write it down again
You can take my table
You can take my chairs
You can take the floors
You can take the stairs
You can take my books
Take away my PC
You can take it all
Far away from me
You can take my money
You can take my wheels
You can rev it up
Until it squeals
You can take my house
You can rattle my life
Shatter my peace
With war and strife
You can make the ground rock
You can make the air roll
But one thing you know you'll never do:
You'll never touch my soul
Tale of Fifteen Honey Bees
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Diamond fragments scattered upon slick streets like
Broken promises whispered between urgent sheets
Lonely people crouching low behind pompous words
Lifting from ruby-stained lips like wayward carrion birds
And I'm passing under the full moon among certain eerie trees
That overhang the hushed alleyways of uncertain destinies
We were eating buzz candy
That the fuzz kept handy
Swinging in hammocks between
The milkwood trees
Right before the moon turned sandy
And the mayor became a dandy
You misremembered what we'd seen
And swallowed fifteen honey bees
Helen of Troy bouncing off-beat in a beat up black and white
Sways with a silver hip flask, she's a drunken soaring kite
"Here's to the love 'em and leave 'ems," she blurts at the surly hack
Who takes a swig then idly hands it back
While suspicious cats go slinking like sinister refugees
Among the trash blowing greedily between uncertain destinies
The phones were ringing like gold medallions
Bright, besmeared with polished dew
While wobbling girls slipped off their shoes
To race against a bitter curfew
Cold scissors waltzed across the lake
Which was frozen and blue green
We smelled our way between the walls
And convulsed in a Spanish influenza dream
Mosquitoes buzzing like terrified soldiers are just ribbons in my ears
Clutched at by young widows in black deserts to dab at children's tears
What's all this dry snow that blows cold dust through dead branches
Napoleon in the gutter sputters somethin' 'bout missed chances
Then Walt Disney and Sprio Agnew play at chess, immune from current hesitancies
While Deliah and I duck under the brazen skies of uncurtained mysteries
A pig performed experiments
In chemistry from experience
And sung of what an ascetic requires
To soothe our uncombed nerves
We donned our suits for December gents
And brushed away suggestive evidence
Is karma served through fulfilled desires
Or receiving what one most deserves
Olive drab fabrics run on to carpet a shuddering globe
The hit-and-run escapes as a passing surgeon carves lobe from golden lobe
Curved surfaces fill in the corners and coroners inflate my veins
Ghosts around the steeples cry over fiery eruptions from passenger trains
And dwarves sip cream while excavating ancient abominations and ecstasies
As we run down the echoing hallways away from these too certain destinies
Between telephones and electronic mail
Our voices have been strung
Between the clouds and featureless stratosphere
Where the blind and bloated caterpillar's stung
By famished ants with mouths to feed
Back home, the game sums to none
There's no way out without a doubt
But back whatever way you've come
You Don't Ever Know
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Whirl around, pick any direction
Then open up your eyes
Human beings beat down like dogs
But that ain't no surprise
You might be an evil soul
With no conception where it's at
If you already know everything you can't learn much, but
Some day you're gonna discover that
You don't ever know anybody
Half as well as you think you do
Just cos you don't wanna believe something
Don't mean that it's not true
People angry everywhere
'Bout things they know nothing about
Take a look through any door
All those people start to shout
"Vengeance is mine," sayeth the Lord
Nobody seems to think it's true
You vomit your lies and malicious excuses
You better hope no retribution's headed for you
You don't ever know anybody
Half as well as you think you do
Just cos you don't wanna believe something
Don't mean that it's not true
This old world is bruised and battered
Every few minutes another species goes extinct
Wedges driven into family structure
Whole nations driven to the brink
But you're not hoping to heal the Earth
You find the weak spot and you hit there
I see a golden city on a hill, but I don't think
I'll ever see you there
You don't ever know anybody
Half as well as you think you do
Just cos you don't wanna believe something
Don't mean that it's not true
I never knew your kind of hatred
Your soul is fully corrupt
Your heart is tangled in turmoil
Your terror perpetually threatens to erupt
Don't matter what you think you know
You better shut your mouth and open your ears
You're takin' nothin' with you when you leave this world
Folly's forgotten, but kindness runs down the years
You don't ever know anybody
Half as well as you think you do
Just cos you don't wanna believe something
Don't mean that it's not true
You're My Girl
Copyright 2002, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
You're my girl, my precious child
You're the future, you're the gold
I brush your hair until it shines
I cover you when the night is cold
You're my girl, my favorite kid
You sing and play, you skip away
You never know I'm watching you
Your dreams will all come true someday
You're my girl, my tender one
You think the world's beyond your reach
I give you gifts that you don't see
You always have something new to teach
You're my girl, my little girl
And though time so quickly must unwind
One thing always will be true:
You're worth more to Daddy than a diamond mine
Lines, 2000: Squeak City.
1. Torch Song.
Like peanut butter too thinly spread we hurried toward the vertebral procession, across spacetime's sun-bleached carbohydrate ribs, stretching, stretching ourselves very nearly beyond our means, forever seeking an appropriate connection port & perfection of moment.
There are circles inside circles, & these contain more circles inscribed w/in.
Asimmer in the tryptophan stew, that's us. The house was gothic. . . .enormous. . . .you could drive your car (4WD) thru the front door & did. A murder mystery? I remember fast ghosts w/radar & each time they seized you, your echo glowed brighter the next. Fake mountain streams of transparent acrylic, only a thin skin of real water over the top, then the plummeting thru trap doors.
You think I'm making this up? Flashout into birth's cataclysm my eyes burning fast now epileptic brinkmanship to the edge to the razor we go hi ho. (You can sometimes make out the printed circuits in the irises of those who've been here longer.) I do not WANT to tune in paint me psychedelic we're deep in the soup now & no mistake. There is an arc there is a current ride the murder electric plasma spasm suspended fierce & breathless between platinum balls, the blood curdling fire of desire, the edge of all things, way out at the bloodied lips of mortal incomprehension. . . .up for days, we're wide awake just waiting for the dam to break. . . .we see, some of us, the formless expression of an underlying voice, a hurtling wave of old black mud & concrete chunks. . . .telegraph-hearted orb at the center of the earth, at the center of my breast, click on then, tap-a-tap-tap-a-tap, signal the new dawn of creation into perpetuity. It, the shared communal language of the primitive voice, speak as kindred brainstems, stir thru dark eons bizarre & familiar, uneasily drifting thru misty sleep.
An arrowhead for your thoughts. . . .I am the ghost telegraph. . . .I am the chipped human femur half-buried in the sandy wash. . . .it was a good day for the blowing up of birthday balloons, & smelling for all the world like great piles of fresh lawn clippings in the hot summer night. . . .primal experiences are not logical experiences.
There were the clothes, the detective's trench coat for me? Many hrs to days for escape/solution/haunting. . . .as I was beginning secretly to suspect that there is no end to the worlds w/in the world, each containing his own world, reconstructing it day to day, hr by hr, minute by minute, & second to second. Images spilling out like fruit from a cornucopia when the unconscious mind comes bursting thru. By such paths do creativity & other varieties of madness enter the phenomenal world.
It reflects the status of fragments of time, freedom flight manacles on feathery gill tongues, calcified brain lesions & nitric oxide. Returning. Broken shard of wing shell, dull black chitin: a modern relic. The royal signet ring rolled from the broken finger of the porcelain king, bounced down the stairs in rising arcs & plunged into a foamy sea. Thyroxin opens secret doors into the past, harvests head trauma colors that smell of Frankengod & unborn flesh on an old man's face, certain angles & the light & all, embryonic dinosaurs. Guilt & blame & burdens we are pawns to a man, eating ancient foods still, dry crackers & fruit slices, placental segments. You say: "I'm just working off my karma." The message (signal) is not independent of the medium. A good day as I should have said for the blowing up of the nearest Turkish embassy. & the answer she suggested to me, you fool, you've dharma to burn.
(This way we have of convincing ourselves the world we inhabit now is the one true world.)
Prawns, tentacles, twitching antennae, swimming drifting in pools of amnion, dank buckets of old blood, treading panic-stricken in the past, or in the prospects of countrymen for whom we know not how or even why we should live. Inevitably, the witch of the sands elevated his bones in her hands. . . .this might be thought of as our limit-loving psychology & often our emotional burden our poor ol' moral burden convincing ourselves that the laws of this brusque marrow & tallow world are the true & actual laws of Nature. . . .merchant on the beach, looking over the wall for example, over another sea, turbulent mutation globe of worlds in his hand; there, the tall ships cross over forever nowhere. That this is reality. The Genghis Khan People are just the same as you & me, caught up in the vortex, the mad churning whirlpool of history. This is where black edges up to white & we draw the line. (Hey, articulate this, bud.)
Mesmerized by spindle lines again. . . .eagle eyes draw you in thru the portal of life. . . .sandstone spires twist weird knives at the smooth ivory throat of vulnerable noon. . . .we were quite prepared to do the evil that must be done by men under the eyes of heaven. . . .diamond patterns that burn, turn inward, reverse propulsion thru time, accelerating back thru navel quilted, the brain slides back a notch, catches against pins of restraint. . . .the bigger chunks, pick them up & assemble everything ad hoc into a shaky, approximate mental mural reconstruction called (w/out irony) the real world. . . .& underneath the skin meanwhile underneath the fine network of incoming jagged edge & jaded sensory input inside that opaque shield from raw reality about which we've been speaking which pretends to be a perfectly lucid window into reality there is an engine there is a field of pure existence of pure equity w/the spiritual essence w/the cosmic galactic spiral slice spirit-infected w/all the balance the yin & squeezing thru the diamond-lined pockets of exploding stars, I'm beyond your petty word play, twisting thoughts & routine concepts like molasses, like spun sugar, that way & this to my own ends. So many lifetimes are forbidden to us-so much colorful drama. Not to have known certain sadnesses. . . .I will not bow before fools. In the joining of clubs there is much to alienate the conscience. The yang the true prime breath of living under all pure ultimately free there must be this thing this real thing the transcendent the hope for actualization needle-threader the mind. Hosts rise aided & abetted under a cantankerous cerebellum, there they live & stir, dark, haggard armies, entire legions of slivered soldiers decked for savagery momentarily flare up in transient passion like so many computer subroutines wriggle & contract. Ice blue daggers. . . .never content. . . .and anyway, what's the use of being alive if you don't experiment w/your humanity?
Electrical birth of the original syntax flashing skid marks in a blinding rain, arcing an ozone burn. Volcanoes, fire rivers. They were all enemies as a consequence of ancient land feuds whose roots were now at best mythological, but under a greater force of protection they could get some quality robbing & killing in. Thus we were made to feel right at home. Fire flowers where the flesh feels raw earth & stars swirl Van Gogh-wise, scissors roll on pinwheel novae. A newly rediscovered ancient chemical tongue, feeling one's way cautiously-hurried along narrow hallways feet twisting giving way walls recede at a glance at lightspeed & the ghosts in the machine searching for some half-concocted port of connection simmering in the nerve crunch, ceilings low & hot, reshaped tissue for lunch, had a hunch. Don't tamper w/paradise locks. We could advise them on negotiations all right just sign up w/our little organization & on religion & the terms of a working peace or at least the masks of institutionalized systems of caste enslavement. Rich indigo sky & sharp bear grass in a wild wind to slice cleanly thru to the soul. . . .drive time & the eyelid movies metal intestines persistent blood vessels infiltrate a wooden ship flaming torches on the upper deck raving over the top over the top lifting curved bow beyond gone.
Deep w/in the sleep zone w/a familiar, comfortable parasite, yet static electric signals wince up & down the spinal staircase.
There is one machine language but so many applications. My head hurts at the sentences squeezing out mandatory for slight infractions or enticement & entrapment. No games here please on this big spoked drum while riding restless. The blind egg in the flesh - the Great American Curse. Historians will note revolution's been here a while now but we are forbidden to notice it just yet. Am tired of all this punishment & crime. Take my anger to the streets. The boy-fool on the white pony raises the silver horn to his lips. Unfamiliar telephone voice soliciting my membership in the Union of Concerned Iconoclasts Local 314. Buckling under the skin like freeze-paint or earthquakes or sinks of crushed ice, face-first into rarefied sobriety & choking on something hard & raspy. . . .born to be a voice of grass among the trees in solitude.
The guests were adorned in pendant jewelry & cut glass, exquisite, seated properly along long, dark tables for the bacchanal. Strings filled the cool air, & loud voices, laughter, & stories, jests. What a crazy cocky American self-image sure, arcane explosion event w/rockets & home-made ice cream meandering thru w/o taste. The laughing man w/small teeth, relentlessly polishing spectacles, the tall woman, glum willow, her smile a passing high cloud, thin wild energy lightning shooting out sideways in furious forks & time lost repairing the gadgets of man. . . .chromium resistance mercurial cube. Time waits for no man so I won't wait for time. Spitting out distasteful flecks of the original intrusion. . . .illusion - insubstantial flowers, petals, the rubies of our leaves, slow plugging, the drunken gurgle & the recondite slap of a corpulent queen. . . .these monthly rituals & filthy money, wringing out corruption to stain the blot of evil blood. . . .all this, temporal detritus adhering around the shins & knees, that clings to skin when the truly big lesson is learning to keep your big mouth shut, to subvert the pretender. Flags blazing guns & drum beats waving bumble bees hearts of beets defibrillated unfurled proud-hearted wasted love in a desert burned up ash sage sooty snowing setting smoke glowing sludge. Yellow & black bands, slow flick of forked tongue, black as deep cool caves w/blind fishes. . . .yet uneager for the latest news. . . .patient nearly as the earth itself. Last eagle dies of respiratory distress - too much experiences.
Unfortunately we can relate in tropical climes, feeling the season of the roots of stone chipper despair.
Squirmy living, settle back deep in subconscious mind sipping death venom. . . .wetware. Resorting at last to desperate ink fumes, fine tip. . . .consider if you must this to be an act of religious zeal. . . .an act of supreme faith. . . .opening escape hatches for those fractured fellows down near the cool sea bed. . . .to take a break & sigh, if only for a little while. My object vanished into what hole piercing the side of the sky & letting air go out w/it? Down drips the ichor of the mother wound. Where has she gone these lifetimes past now apart these altered persons these exchanged worlds. . . .these changes so much change surely bartered & broken purchased & abandoned, these new worlds indeed splintered & sawn weepy planks & sundered & branched so far now irreconcilable. . . .I can relate to much which you despise because you despise much that is embarrassingly revelatory. But one time I remember when everything might have been different at that hinging point in our time at that particular breakdown, you know? The earth does not wait & no school of philosophy can therefore devour the world as I can, supremely disinterested in any form of recognition; compelled, nonetheless, to record for you the cleansing acts to which we've alluded, which char my papery endothelia. . . .you are lost. . . .too tightly clinging barnacle among men. This may be a time for reflection but I think not, looking neither north nor south but here where this spectacle reigns at rest where there is no describing there is no explaining these strange threads I am called to wear, this out of time existence, this alien yet welcome castle. To consider the acrylamide fibers which you've inhaled, too, & the tips & tones of Fiberglas bells. . . .like timorous tongues wind chimes.
Mindbending rant, we stretch arms aching 'round to embrace dawn's glory hairshine rays melting golden glue. Target garden is behind your eyes, still was, man's limits self-imposed, the sky is free. Wilderness knows no landlord. Wilderness w/in your stony ephemeral cranium. We all are as artists working in the soul. To say: "I have responsibilities" is to cave in to irresponsibility to discontinue maintenance of the holy flame; a prisoner w/mind intact is a prisoner by choice. According to our orders, which were very clear on this matter, we soldiers then went marching toward the perpetrator who sat dining in a fragrant garden, full of the odor of yesterday's lawn trimmings in the close night. Ah, choices. . . .3-dimensional web of metal cables, spiders w/human faces dance limber & swift, blood on sharp mouth parts. . . .I am getting sick there are spiders & lice in this meal. Huddle 'round the video men for a story I will tell. . . .sudden flash of coiling green smoke snake mouth closing in on unsuspecting prey terrifies the brain like oil spilling across redly glowing metal sheets, a verdant borealis hazy cooker springing thin steel wire traps. . . .options to explore. . . .we melt into one before we know it we've dissolved our brains, we flash violently across gods' faces the mind conceals what the vid reveals, only lost causes change us & believe me buster we must change. . . .flinging out arms in the broken ice at any possibility. . . .a protective barrier probably one stitch before us, so thin that skin, thorns thru tongues for repentance & cast iron stomachs intrinsic factor rust circle blades whirring the mowing snake's among us secret in a bowler hat to build a perfect man soul irrigated in a blue bottle. Whirring blades. Who be the profit of the times? Tryptophan lightning on the dorsal spine darkness burning in pools, irritated & pop-hissing.
They are worlds w/in worlds. Boxes w/in boxes. Circles w/in circles. These molecules are killing me. Fluorescent zebras hard press a function key. . . .mosquito-headed mongrel machines tear the air & terrorize motorists & their sterile butterflies, angels whirling midway from heaven. The rapture is on hold the Angel of Death was lost in Nueva York. Intangible connectors. We fail to align as we sputter-emote the fallacy of the memo, the moment of the document's recognizable demise. & clearly none of them is real.
2. Squeak City.
Passion. Light. Elastic embryo, transmit molecular code.
(Just an illusion of frightful roulette. Stuck back in the time of bush men in loafers.)
Flaming like acetylene, a misplaced corpse gone over the top. . . .city lights, sorry industrial reflection of spinning infinity. What new miscast beast shuffling hesitantly tonight under strangely calculated galactic pastures? Stars & blinking traffic lights humming high voltage & LEDs. Waves w/in gambol & percolate in the capacity to metamorphose from the butterfly into the creeping larva, to become that which you most fear, most despise. Concentric stellar ripples over an unsteady purple Mylar desert sea, liquid dunes. Over the top. These molecules pressing outwards against my skin. . . .a thin film where worlds collide like steely dew drop billiard balls. . . .glistening orbs, quicksilver marble eyes flashing these patterns & colors, agitated, circles-triangles-rectangles & slowly twisting spindle lines draw us receding into the spout of consciousness. Many worlds exist w/in the world.
Mental garrets of compliance in the era of the padded cellular vesicle & deadly diamond explosions 'cross LPT1 (I try to not let my scorn shine thru). . . .we know how color grunts in whispers of forgotten freedom. . . .the keys to a secret other kingdom w/in a city skeletons & ghosts moon dance in a lake dry dust bed fills up the soiled eyeballs like bearings rusty & bleeding faucets dust, dust dead grass lost trust in soulful improvisation. The letter of the law, single head lamp-eyed bile lamprey implosion sucked into a void unwitting, voluntary vomiting, slow & soft plop & out of our heads. . . .this lack of emotion more sinister than cynicism this the post-cynical microcosm cardboard cereal flakes this when TV speaks to us in dull, forgotten languages, dead tongues of crumbling beetlemen, this.
Clocks all ticking brains all tripping the computer is the drug you be the judge. The pattern has mutated to fill all the screen. Bring the wine up from the cellar. Pour the poison in the pail. As if these elections affected you. Log the values in their fields & cure the disease. There is a rotting sweetness in every falling flake of snow & the high tingling hum, the wind on the wire, the beating wings of war, the soft denial of timeflow, the sink into forever now dissolution of flesh & soul & the endless flocks of silent blackbirds w/dry eyes, images plundered by an emotionless necroholic. Good bleats of dull sheep. This is no time for mind expansion. The tangible world is thinner than mist - we are sloppy molecular puddles. These failing worlds easily recognized. They are boxes. They occupy the spaces of rectangular solids. Thus you may recognize & doubt them. . . .nowadays though the technology is more artistic, intricate, miniscule & dangerous. . . .I have a recurring dream of a cat that pulls a large fish - maybe a catfish - out of a river. The fish has baleful, but observant, human eyes. When the cat claws it at first the fish bleeds red blood in four long slashes, but soon this turns to thick black motor oil, & when the cat opens the fish a jumble of metal gears & levers & wires & transistors, resistors, circuit boards, capacitors, vacuum tubes, power supplies, ceramic knobs spill out in a noisy crunch like a weekend family car wreck. But the empty-eyed fish watches on & on. Nucleoplasm pours out sloppy plastic. . . .save the incriminating evidence on a floppy & vomit rational numbers. The signal is burning all down the wire. Don't soil the plane. Purge your hard black shell of spastic slumbers. The silver serpent devours his tail: please don't scream at the rain.
The night was unexpectedly wet & they were less familiar anyway w/that terrible country. Speaking of the old victims in the diluted way of years, but the savages must be brought up to moral standards if we are to achieve the necessary clamp on human creativity. Who will resist who be the prophet of this burned transformer carnage waste? Smoke thick rising like sated dragon, unchallenged terrorist plunder. We maybe are too old burst lips frozen blue oozing bilivirdin lip pulp under thick, soiled words, old concepts clink, hard stones & dry. Heroes & other devout crusaders must have days like this. But it is hard sometimes all the time really preaching the obvious to obviously unweaned intellects. Even the revolutions are planned & advertised in advance, choreographed spontaneous cable commercial campaigns & no one believes anyway I, no, no one, no one no I we need a brand new program a new algorithm, a mind blowing intestine chewing blitz & like I say serving time every one of us each pilgrim in prison (part of the ordeal you understand quest junket vital necessity of the bursting bud). Circles squares triangles lines that I see. Little marble ideas spin & come apart & click together broken like tree limbs or telephone poles in the hurricanes & wheat fields lashing grain lightning ozone burst drifting spinning dizzy. High throat flighted pitch & wings twist, spiral into fearful near-oblivion. A TV-headed lizard croaking static & burping soap commercials in dry dunes, fringe-toed swimming down in sand refugee from the blazing silver eye. Down we come in spring baling wire rust automobiles & other wagons, wretched furniture dross strapped on against new beginnings, this is how we barter time in chunks of broken lifestems.
Take this little trip before you slip into carnivorous despair. Fire rising in lost girls' hair. Cockroach dutifully sniffs the past. Egg cases & rotten shoe laces & LPT1. Good morning & welcome to the friendly voice of the swarm WANT splattered against space piping hot resentment secret boils so secretly & secrets of secrets kept from themselves in chosen conformity & mindless compliance. A rising frenzy this is how taut genes sing wildly dizzy turmoil & the slimmest sea wall to contain the onslaught of jihad. . . .& fear only some unconnected language stuff some letters cuneiform scratches against meaningless surfaces paper flowers this where reluctant skeletons grow flesh back guts nervous tissue skin grows more firm tongues & voices that squeak out perplexed new fleshy skeletalspeak. Stones turn to roses, worms into hands. They are: TV sets, rooms, houses. They are: parcels of land & swimming pools & subdivisions & neighborhoods. They are: towns & cities & counties & states & nations.
Boxworld.
Moment & movement. White & black, time & space. A monument to the evolution of the onion & its union w/an aluminum sun. This black & white run together eventually & world laws revealed flawed. They are not absolute after all not final no. So constructing then to the four points a new world, broader, more encompassing, for ourselves, we build it & light it brightly new borders & draft it new laws. & these laws too fail over time. . . .flocks of birds, no pennies for dead cord wood. Rag snags on cold lonely wire. . . .you live by your convictions, you just might die by a lie. Humming like violent high seas, torture saws. Clouds mustard lavender bruises. Lymphspray. The fishing net breaks drifting, random killing fragments. Birds ragged sky holes. Our friend the automaton. . . .every clock is numbered. The people here are patently insane. Madness in the machine. You would not believe it. Only so much delirium a human can comply w/& remain human. Machines designed to promote their own violent demise-that's life in these United States of Vegas. What's so human about this industrialized incarceration of the intellect/emotional strata? The out-dogged cower & whimper & whine, beaten at their own game. This is squeak city & baby you're the cheese.
Comply or die: resistance is futile. Machines don't hallucinate. Don't salute until you are saluted to. You can run but you can't hide. These minds frustrating locked in aboriginal peasants digging ants digging roots high in slate mountains & obsidian & woodpeckers, conifers, & bushes shot thru w/new lavender blooms. Straw brooms for sweeping up the dirt, gray squirrels that hunt down around heavy rocks in the stream bed dry now. . . .sunlight thru velvet oak leaves. Bay leaves, steam. These are the minds I mean, though you might doubt it, these powers, potentials, ensnared by pettiness, by self-promotion in the phony market of status. . . .but one day as the wetware interfaces. . . .
We are watching you, always watching you. We know what that smile is intended to signify. You are weak, & we seldom resort to violence.
3. Full Circle.
I cannot begin to imagine the degree of T. Jefferson's disgust. . . .had to quit the coliseum early - too bored w/hot lion breath down back of my collar. Besides, I didn't want to wait for the Supreme Court to convene my special case. Like I can sing you this song but I can't wait around for your belief to settle & shake down into place. . . .I dig humanity in principle. Do you get at all the edges of things the unique quality therein frontier of expectation? These insights we must add to our injuries. Listening like adolescent girls for years (in practice we must decide for ourselves) to worn out records before ears come unbuttoned to hear inner seedlings rupture sound & space, the full-burnished bright & shining mirrors blazing fiery red silver sheen golden spectacular glow, not fully consciously maybe (certainly) set to define global politics but. . . .these days you don't meet too many people w/pride in their work, though arguments marshaled & standing at the ready. . . .the liability remains nevertheless or ought to rather if there were such a thing as justice. . . .craftsmanship gone now down the lonely slick path of fast food. . . .this was no idea of mine. Anyway, no one I voted for.
Broken up, everything is chopped up in little pieces. When I think of you I think of teeth, eyes fierce. I think of finishings. Bridges blown up in wartime. Overturned carriages & library fires. When I think of you I picture broken clocks, terrified matadors in bloodied silk, unblinking eyes of snakes & the musky smell of human serum. When I remember you.
Postulate: two gigantic polished mirrors, as for reflecting telescope but a more immense scale & perfectly parallel, regarding one another in lust/disgust light too bright to cast perspective-yielding shadow, illusions of grand truth. Grand illusions of truth. You know Jesus might show up tomorrow but maybe not before next year. Mirrors to reflect cold inhuman legislation mechanizing all human action mechanical intelligence nerve arc reflex genuflection & intercourse all stasis of merchandise & radio indigestion. When you've come full circle & lost all respect even passing interest I would say in the gods & their laws worshipped in your home town you get nailed apathetic in the rubber stamp catechism the catch-all don't have to stop & think about it label device medallion w/yellow short ribbon strip attached, might even just blow off the whole spectacle & kind of disappear & why not I think I would too into the fading morning mists & all while some of you people so busy decorating your houses like that to impress foreigners whose opinions you despise you know full well as do I & yet joining political parties so your voices are amplified & sound wise shouting slogans down dried up wells gathered squawking together secure in the knowledge of phony issues & positions ("issues & positions" & other created dissembling concepts & words) you feel obligated to embrace or to ridicule just to be satisfied by the conditioned flock bleating & nodding of strangers heads vacant of thoughts more complicated than latest pop hit syrup lyrics w/no weight herds of human cattle. So much for caginess then you'd surely agree I trust sick of so much judging based on superstition jealousy & down in trite political grooves I mean just like ancient game path hunted for years by the same tribes who just sit & wait for you to stumble into the gun sights. W/out a doubt he'd be thoroughly put out w/all these self-proclaimed lovers of Christ (really just another well-worn rut or bland rant hunted two millennia now) who live to press their political agendas, all itching to drive the cruel circus well beyond the border of decency when they can't even manage to get their own lives in order. Just think of all those private shrines across Europe if that helps you w/their genealogies all laid out of the political dead dead dead no coming back do not forward dead not about improving the condition of man but squabbling over ever thinner slices of pie. That's why I'm getting out. (Ten years from now maybe fifteen you'll get it suddenly oh yeah ah ha so that's & then you'll see even though no one else but better late than never.)
How many times must we watch these commercials repeated? Were you shopping for a passport to the last port on the cruise? Did you expect to find eternity in Santa Fe or Baton Rouge? Wearing chain mail leisure suits, bobbing in the thick of it, lances at the level, jousting behind perplexed expressions w/expectations of a uniformity that never can exist. Oh that's just the news the mirror reflections of the posers who mimic manufactured human deathtimes. A bean, then, dietary attempt at translocation psychic penetration of deep-sea ooze. No ornamental gadfly, no harbinger of the grinding ice. . . .dust gritty in the ointment & insect exoskeletal fragments. Belies our local calm, see. & limping wounded opened up across a tan trail of sizzling stars & sirloin steaks w/sea clam sauce & ferocious bursting comet orb debris, hazy spray into silence milk, stony teeth & enzymatic saliva to digest the stain spreading & reduce, return to the whirlpool of inspiration, exhalation into conjured original form bodies & spiritual metamorphosis. Some lingering sentiment. . . .some trace of the original innocence of birth, trudging thru the soil where commodities have obvious worth, thought I saw you threaten to suffer an original thought, but I guess maybe it was just a shadow across your face.
No preferable compass than that I suppose, all points converging toward equivalency. . . .absolute serenity. Super or sub conscious? Universal? What then are we? Your fear, your irons. Your doubts & a list of strangers you've encountered, up close but as far away as You-Know-Who. Pusher of buttons, you buy your morals canned. These are powder keg experiments, waiting for the cylinder lid to fly. These are excessive moonbeams, lunatics & smoke rings & yet I reconsider & must wonder about whatnot those lost trails, those paths forsaken not by choice nor accident but by a more fickle & sinister, subtle process - those shrewd forces the sorcerer cannot influence. Posture for the mirror, dip into the vortex, dive into infinite regression & believe what you read. Not despite his best efforts, those switching stations, streamers of blue & golden lights & thin red blood tangle thru triangular matrix that already itself is a struggle sometimes to recall as a mandala, more than the curving ripples in the sea of wave interference. The hollow tree meanwhile drinking clayey water as the planet tumbles humdrum thru the body of lights. & you: "Did I say the right thing?" The dying at a river of earth, sickness & disease & eternity, & you: "Should I call in sick?" Participant in the mental slave trade, willing & eager. Sun is early rising, a black river that shimmers, fire dancing on the water. Willow leaves we now see crying above silver slivers of light that flash like fiercely polished eating utensils & deep blue jewels & crystals dangling on narrow brown wrists of youth. Smells of slow green watercourse to fill our nostrils full in the summer of strumming banjos & red plank row boats as slick rainbow trout glide out & inside the fluid atmospheres. . . .scroll thru files I shall as the leaves flutter windy on the trees, madly in search of the secret column. . . .it must be out there, waiting. . . .the intrapersonal bureaucracy has taken its toll on me. Unmitigated trust has gone undetected these past fifteen years. We manipulate our friends to advance our own careers, so careful to defend against the least unplanned for insertion or deletion: the mauling of America in the last stages of completion.
4. Worlds w/o End.
Nature is neither old nor young. She is not beautiful or repulsive. She is not patient or impatient. She does not hesitate, but she is not impulsive. Nor is she passionate, yet her all passions fill. She is at once biting cold & scalding hot, wracked in the birth-pangs of cataclysmic weathers & shot thru w/perfect solitude & peace at death's firm insistence. She knows all things, she knows no single thing. No words she speaks, yet there is none wiser than her most wounded student.
Guns & explosions our rockets rise on pillars of fire a controlled burn flames on mountainsides illuminate the darkness gila monsters stir forked tongue flickers testing. Don't trust no talkin' gods. Shun the bleach & eat a peach. . . .We are all sitting outside the pit house puffing on a big green peace pipe. Not fashionable no more - the fireworks in the flesh. . . .too much confusion too many distractions abound around these parts spare me the deluge of details, if you please. . . .too late we are burning we are lifting we are rising now, now we're shifting the sky is turning above an eye that's burning in the middle of an open field where we toil in black humus soil, busting the links in the great chain of being someone has left the fold if you know what I mean not too far removed but a facsimile of a little rebellion more like a charade of revolution, a mockery of the self, the soul, the great harmony of being. . . .separated from the earth itself. There are tragic heroes & then there are the buffoons: the road of self-delusion leads to the palace of exile, the intrusive, invasive wickedness we do not hasten to mention. Timeshifting thru prismatic colorspray. To know limits, to hunt them down & scribble on them words of both refute & respect, to punch & to kick, to push back the brooding storms to clear horizons, to clear the decks & let 'er rip. . . .horse head forged in brass tack iron ring eyes wheel scream melting to long jaw bone yellow tooth & steel & porcelain frame. . . .bursting cells, surrender your marvelous purple dye, binding pigments. Not to join a movement. To be free. To enliven the senses drunk on the music of the spheres. This is the house we live in. . . .this is not some cursor steady on your screen & brilliant blue sparking filigrees. . . .when the moon winks out away by not looking at it, thru thin branches & lungs & twigs. . . .my intention was not to pull up this landslide around cold limbs in bed & it is breaking now I hear it creaking & cracking now, it is left. . . .wounded.
Turning colors inside out to discover the fires that drive hidden engines & engines prehistoric w/in engines as the flowering shoot mind-wrecking, freedom-gulping games in which they willingly engage, while purple beiges merge & melt 'cross abandoned alleys in infinite wave packets & spicy swirls, thrown for a loss. . . .so many locked up in heads w/key-shaped pacifier. . . .push to operate. . . .yes! Split wide, forc'd apart, cracked open, broken shellfish, sharp-sliced, freshly cut & succulent oozing, spill your blood, your lymph, your bile. Pour forth contents of bladder & bowel, gray-white chips embedded in deep nervous tissue. Exsanguinate forcibly into the viaducts & channels & tributaries & cisterns of Nature. Gush greedily! For all shall be renewed that you may be born in time, freed in time, ruins of a ship unleashed from the crushing rocks of social values, customs, manners, flotsam & jetsam. For you have swallowed valueless values, unbelievable beliefs, inconceivable concepts, & invisible visions. You, who are but a nod, who are a curt bow, or less - who are an eye blink maybe, a whisper, a rumor of a whisper of a whisper. . . .the silent bookends supporting a hand clap, a match strike, pupil-squeezing phosphorescent flash, you, yes, existing only as you imagine that you might exist, or even less, as an unwitting fraction of something far bigger than yourself, transcending space, straddling time, feeding time w/moments & drenching the chiaroscuro outlines & smudges of motion w/saturated color. Green toads on cool red walls. . . .amphibia abounding w/in glass blue pitchers of water. . . .tequila attack under wheeling sun golden light like dormancy. . . .like financial opportunity born of the earth soil creatures thick w/it damp breath. . . .& slipped thru sideways slats over time on the flip side fringe of our mornings especially when it rains.
We are thinking we are talking this particular path we are taking not because it goes to a destination enamored by our secret beings but due to other matters of which we are reluctant to converse. So the gem-throated hummers drink breast blood & aquatic feathers in a slit light when there is little breeze. . . .orange fish w/popping O-mouths testing limits of this universe world persistently. Walking, wandering out on the open desert, cookie-shaped hearts in streets of ovens, under an uncreated atmosphere, gila monster w/beaded skin.
Everything happens. . . .everything occurs. Is there a metaphysician in the house? Vision: the infinite, glittering, intrapenetrating tree, drinking at the pristine wells of Time. Spectacular, supraluminescent, unfolding & nothing ever lost in its gossamer glassy substance. . . .minds like radar echoes on its highway space in motion already gone before they're seen the hanging places the grommets. . . .pins to the works. Detaching from the imaginary physical world as detach we must we free our souls from tactile prejudice from arbitrary limits unhitching of crude hammers & prisms & enter the open network the perfectly silent hurricane. . . .
Projections of silica consciousness fail to resemble the human paradigm. Anthropomorphism a theology in decline. Futures contort indescribable peculiar & hazy flashes of metal, a minimal number of underlying rules synergize predictably to establish complex patterns & behaviors. . . .higher reasoning so-called a trick of rearranging or substituting various simple subconscious constructs to approximate desired goals w/editing until satisfaction. . . .peace, man. . . .careening precariously thru intermeshed grids of demonstrable evidence. . . .This inter-knitted network of solid electronic wave blasters. . . .The hurricane of reason, the hurricane of the solid paradimensional eternity realm folding down unmeasured axis toward mind-distorting box waves convergence points ride infinity's surf raging warfare into & then & then. . . .exceed all false limits & losses & prophets flying up above free free like birds of ice across new moons of our own volition. . . .new corridors & wind-swept high pylon-decked planes of air. . . .new rings 'round giant gaseous planets new cauldrons dropped therein bubbling forth furious new species of reptiles plants & deep sea fishes phosphorescent bulbous darting new races new colors new flavors of creation this the vision the horizon ahead new definitions of conscious existence as we step across another analog universe, new galaxies just thought up or digital, our chosen stepping stones into a floral fountainhead of ultimate possibility where we must part & put down fingers into unexplored depths of possibility & remove them dripping wet w/the fiery substance of unmade worlds w/out end. . . .
We are endpoints, we are terminal expressions of the whole, nondimensional & unhelpful misleading for the drawing of inferences.
From out of the darkness comes a chant, from midnight's navel shake of a tambourine. . . .drum beats, the low patter-tap, a deep, sonorous river, hoary w/time & patience, no expectations. Are your ears open to pursue a calling? There's a burden on your back, I know that you don't see it there. Do your television eyes still hunger for another startling & refreshing image? There's a formless word worked in gold leaf inscribed in every wordless eon whispering behind your ear, waiting until you're ready to receive it. There's a signal that your traveling companions aren't hearing. Though they labor w/o rest to anchor themselves to the guy lines of this world sometimes you suspect their souls slowly disappearing. Vivid visions drip undistilled from the hollow skull of the broken brain. Skeletons dancing, tambourines & pipes & rattles, whistle chime & jangle-jing. We must split open our souls to music, to magic we don't see, we don't smell, sniff, feel, taste. Ideas ignite the sky like volcano glow, lambent, rich. Thought I found the source of the raw creative force, swirling, chaos power. Here, we break out of waking sleep, we shirk the bright light, we move in pale places where the sheer contrast swells us, inflating all things, puffing up sails, & we are driven into another ocean of bell-spouting souls, hydropneumatic. Papier-mâché skeletons gibber, shadows filter long & dark & frightful, familiar. This is a bitter mercurial tea, but it will cure you of the special intoxication which numbs your limbs & nerves today.
I have seen this before.
Out of the timeless time, out of the mindless mind, out of the voiceless throat, out of the foundered boat, under a bountiful earth, worth more than you'd think it worth, over an unexpected wall, falling where all conceits must fall, this ghost, she is projected, made manifest, right out of the video game: high-tech she is, wearing a primitive necklace, shell, silver, & bone. Thanks me, she does, for my time. & I, her. Then. . . .the alarm. . . .there is this great & ancient sea, full of mystery, secrets, fragments of myth & unknown ancestors. I ride the small boat like a shell under the weather of emotion. There is an island called Memory which I see thru association; unbidden messages come from the deeps, called intuition. Beyond the atmosphere, beyond the benthos, the skin that protects us, that translates for us, the locked bars of perception. . . .there are the storms overhead & the swells below & there is me, riding the boat thru, & conjuring a new almighty tsunami. . . .
I tell you that your society is no thing. I assure you that your history is no thing. Past, future - all envelopes less significance than the least stone upon this earth, the least molecule of oxygen which we breath, which was when the dust on your books was an ancestor, which will be when your children's children themselves settle upon books, or upon computers, or upon rocket engines or upon mechanized insect intelligence - it is of no consequence: the molecules remain. The stone does not perish. The earth abides for ever.
All of these souls, all of these brains. . . .the potential is boundless psychic synergism polytemporic network webwork extending thru endless ages dramatic. . . .yet egos bound by political considerations not governmental but useless distractions & delays of mundane concerns. . . .the brainstem & cap autonomic functions especially the organizing principle to regulate our chariots we know thru empiricism more difficult a problem more technical for example than ever anticipated spatial temporal manipulation of physical activity everyday extend arm flex fingers elevate glass of wine no firm set of differential equations there to evaluate in the local field conditions in the problems but semi-autonomous functional units nerve ganglia prehistoric overlaid w/limited conscious nerve net reflex function arcs at local nodes primitive phylogeny.
But now we have this miracle mutation unintended unexpected development reason or unclear reason then applying thru the shredder w/force, the logic backwards & undefining some certain brand name units of truth or presumed fact. . . .these postulates are handy aphorisms, nothing more, but then, nothing less than existence. Critical tension at the spindle nexus, mine eyes have drunk in the glorious spectacle. Running before we've mastered the delicate art of walking, these are the paths the pressure points-here, another form of balance, or preoccupation w/universe's hot breath, back of neck, hairs rise in anticipation of soulquake. (Somebody said something 'bout enlightenment. Wonder what he meant by that?) As the wetware interfaces one day the realm of subatomic species, as the quanta that cascade thru inspiration. . . .this compass drug, doors yawn open, eyes opening, endless stream-out. Is this what happens when the brain exits a tiny key hole?
As the quanta that cascade thru the theater surge up against defective languages cultures that sneak back away from one another, when the breakthru comes & the language generators & translators are achieved & the soul enters the bazaar of super-reality, then these blinders become irrelevant & we become much more appealing. . . .stars I see, pine needles, croak of crows timeless, forever stained glass. . . .to step casually across a galaxy at a heartbeat. . . .to kiss the fiery lips of a nova new-born.
Apparently, no end exists to this sane drug.
Forever & forever & forever. . . .the physicist w/rows upon rows of equations in Greek comprehends how words abstract deeper truths. . . .there is a unity there is a oneness in creation there is an essential solid which suggests but ultimately denies itself to the senses. . . .white light shining all around you is not the summation of all colors of the spectrum the prism a particular crude hammer used to smash light one certain way only. . . .the more prisms we use to fracture the world surely the closer we approximate an explanation of the interactions of those broken parts out of context misquoted as usual but the further we stray from the essential unity of existence. Tongues, fingers, you see, throats, temperature-sensitive neurons, noses, vestibular apparatus, cones & rods, ears: all this & more highly specialized hammers for shattering the universe into a myriad of manipulatable tiny shiny fragments, for abstracting creation, pick up the bigger chunks & assemble everything. . . .
Seep then beyond your skin. Seep out thru the pores of your face, my friend: this my challenge to you. Infuse the substance of this place. Saturate the fluffy wool of the world, dye creation in all the strange hues of your individual psyche. Become this very earth, become the serene cosmos, swallow whole the body of Nature & endure as more than an idea of an idea, as more than a dream of a dream.
Like peanut butter too thinly spread we hurried toward the vertebral procession, across spacetime's sun-bleached carbohydrate ribs, stretching, stretching ourselves very nearly beyond our means, forever seeking an appropriate connection port & perfection of moment.
There are circles inside circles, & these contain more circles inscribed w/in.
Asimmer in the tryptophan stew, that's us. The house was gothic. . . .enormous. . . .you could drive your car (4WD) thru the front door & did. A murder mystery? I remember fast ghosts w/radar & each time they seized you, your echo glowed brighter the next. Fake mountain streams of transparent acrylic, only a thin skin of real water over the top, then the plummeting thru trap doors.
You think I'm making this up? Flashout into birth's cataclysm my eyes burning fast now epileptic brinkmanship to the edge to the razor we go hi ho. (You can sometimes make out the printed circuits in the irises of those who've been here longer.) I do not WANT to tune in paint me psychedelic we're deep in the soup now & no mistake. There is an arc there is a current ride the murder electric plasma spasm suspended fierce & breathless between platinum balls, the blood curdling fire of desire, the edge of all things, way out at the bloodied lips of mortal incomprehension. . . .up for days, we're wide awake just waiting for the dam to break. . . .we see, some of us, the formless expression of an underlying voice, a hurtling wave of old black mud & concrete chunks. . . .telegraph-hearted orb at the center of the earth, at the center of my breast, click on then, tap-a-tap-tap-a-tap, signal the new dawn of creation into perpetuity. It, the shared communal language of the primitive voice, speak as kindred brainstems, stir thru dark eons bizarre & familiar, uneasily drifting thru misty sleep.
An arrowhead for your thoughts. . . .I am the ghost telegraph. . . .I am the chipped human femur half-buried in the sandy wash. . . .it was a good day for the blowing up of birthday balloons, & smelling for all the world like great piles of fresh lawn clippings in the hot summer night. . . .primal experiences are not logical experiences.
There were the clothes, the detective's trench coat for me? Many hrs to days for escape/solution/haunting. . . .as I was beginning secretly to suspect that there is no end to the worlds w/in the world, each containing his own world, reconstructing it day to day, hr by hr, minute by minute, & second to second. Images spilling out like fruit from a cornucopia when the unconscious mind comes bursting thru. By such paths do creativity & other varieties of madness enter the phenomenal world.
It reflects the status of fragments of time, freedom flight manacles on feathery gill tongues, calcified brain lesions & nitric oxide. Returning. Broken shard of wing shell, dull black chitin: a modern relic. The royal signet ring rolled from the broken finger of the porcelain king, bounced down the stairs in rising arcs & plunged into a foamy sea. Thyroxin opens secret doors into the past, harvests head trauma colors that smell of Frankengod & unborn flesh on an old man's face, certain angles & the light & all, embryonic dinosaurs. Guilt & blame & burdens we are pawns to a man, eating ancient foods still, dry crackers & fruit slices, placental segments. You say: "I'm just working off my karma." The message (signal) is not independent of the medium. A good day as I should have said for the blowing up of the nearest Turkish embassy. & the answer she suggested to me, you fool, you've dharma to burn.
(This way we have of convincing ourselves the world we inhabit now is the one true world.)
Prawns, tentacles, twitching antennae, swimming drifting in pools of amnion, dank buckets of old blood, treading panic-stricken in the past, or in the prospects of countrymen for whom we know not how or even why we should live. Inevitably, the witch of the sands elevated his bones in her hands. . . .this might be thought of as our limit-loving psychology & often our emotional burden our poor ol' moral burden convincing ourselves that the laws of this brusque marrow & tallow world are the true & actual laws of Nature. . . .merchant on the beach, looking over the wall for example, over another sea, turbulent mutation globe of worlds in his hand; there, the tall ships cross over forever nowhere. That this is reality. The Genghis Khan People are just the same as you & me, caught up in the vortex, the mad churning whirlpool of history. This is where black edges up to white & we draw the line. (Hey, articulate this, bud.)
Mesmerized by spindle lines again. . . .eagle eyes draw you in thru the portal of life. . . .sandstone spires twist weird knives at the smooth ivory throat of vulnerable noon. . . .we were quite prepared to do the evil that must be done by men under the eyes of heaven. . . .diamond patterns that burn, turn inward, reverse propulsion thru time, accelerating back thru navel quilted, the brain slides back a notch, catches against pins of restraint. . . .the bigger chunks, pick them up & assemble everything ad hoc into a shaky, approximate mental mural reconstruction called (w/out irony) the real world. . . .& underneath the skin meanwhile underneath the fine network of incoming jagged edge & jaded sensory input inside that opaque shield from raw reality about which we've been speaking which pretends to be a perfectly lucid window into reality there is an engine there is a field of pure existence of pure equity w/the spiritual essence w/the cosmic galactic spiral slice spirit-infected w/all the balance the yin & squeezing thru the diamond-lined pockets of exploding stars, I'm beyond your petty word play, twisting thoughts & routine concepts like molasses, like spun sugar, that way & this to my own ends. So many lifetimes are forbidden to us-so much colorful drama. Not to have known certain sadnesses. . . .I will not bow before fools. In the joining of clubs there is much to alienate the conscience. The yang the true prime breath of living under all pure ultimately free there must be this thing this real thing the transcendent the hope for actualization needle-threader the mind. Hosts rise aided & abetted under a cantankerous cerebellum, there they live & stir, dark, haggard armies, entire legions of slivered soldiers decked for savagery momentarily flare up in transient passion like so many computer subroutines wriggle & contract. Ice blue daggers. . . .never content. . . .and anyway, what's the use of being alive if you don't experiment w/your humanity?
Electrical birth of the original syntax flashing skid marks in a blinding rain, arcing an ozone burn. Volcanoes, fire rivers. They were all enemies as a consequence of ancient land feuds whose roots were now at best mythological, but under a greater force of protection they could get some quality robbing & killing in. Thus we were made to feel right at home. Fire flowers where the flesh feels raw earth & stars swirl Van Gogh-wise, scissors roll on pinwheel novae. A newly rediscovered ancient chemical tongue, feeling one's way cautiously-hurried along narrow hallways feet twisting giving way walls recede at a glance at lightspeed & the ghosts in the machine searching for some half-concocted port of connection simmering in the nerve crunch, ceilings low & hot, reshaped tissue for lunch, had a hunch. Don't tamper w/paradise locks. We could advise them on negotiations all right just sign up w/our little organization & on religion & the terms of a working peace or at least the masks of institutionalized systems of caste enslavement. Rich indigo sky & sharp bear grass in a wild wind to slice cleanly thru to the soul. . . .drive time & the eyelid movies metal intestines persistent blood vessels infiltrate a wooden ship flaming torches on the upper deck raving over the top over the top lifting curved bow beyond gone.
Deep w/in the sleep zone w/a familiar, comfortable parasite, yet static electric signals wince up & down the spinal staircase.
There is one machine language but so many applications. My head hurts at the sentences squeezing out mandatory for slight infractions or enticement & entrapment. No games here please on this big spoked drum while riding restless. The blind egg in the flesh - the Great American Curse. Historians will note revolution's been here a while now but we are forbidden to notice it just yet. Am tired of all this punishment & crime. Take my anger to the streets. The boy-fool on the white pony raises the silver horn to his lips. Unfamiliar telephone voice soliciting my membership in the Union of Concerned Iconoclasts Local 314. Buckling under the skin like freeze-paint or earthquakes or sinks of crushed ice, face-first into rarefied sobriety & choking on something hard & raspy. . . .born to be a voice of grass among the trees in solitude.
The guests were adorned in pendant jewelry & cut glass, exquisite, seated properly along long, dark tables for the bacchanal. Strings filled the cool air, & loud voices, laughter, & stories, jests. What a crazy cocky American self-image sure, arcane explosion event w/rockets & home-made ice cream meandering thru w/o taste. The laughing man w/small teeth, relentlessly polishing spectacles, the tall woman, glum willow, her smile a passing high cloud, thin wild energy lightning shooting out sideways in furious forks & time lost repairing the gadgets of man. . . .chromium resistance mercurial cube. Time waits for no man so I won't wait for time. Spitting out distasteful flecks of the original intrusion. . . .illusion - insubstantial flowers, petals, the rubies of our leaves, slow plugging, the drunken gurgle & the recondite slap of a corpulent queen. . . .these monthly rituals & filthy money, wringing out corruption to stain the blot of evil blood. . . .all this, temporal detritus adhering around the shins & knees, that clings to skin when the truly big lesson is learning to keep your big mouth shut, to subvert the pretender. Flags blazing guns & drum beats waving bumble bees hearts of beets defibrillated unfurled proud-hearted wasted love in a desert burned up ash sage sooty snowing setting smoke glowing sludge. Yellow & black bands, slow flick of forked tongue, black as deep cool caves w/blind fishes. . . .yet uneager for the latest news. . . .patient nearly as the earth itself. Last eagle dies of respiratory distress - too much experiences.
Unfortunately we can relate in tropical climes, feeling the season of the roots of stone chipper despair.
Squirmy living, settle back deep in subconscious mind sipping death venom. . . .wetware. Resorting at last to desperate ink fumes, fine tip. . . .consider if you must this to be an act of religious zeal. . . .an act of supreme faith. . . .opening escape hatches for those fractured fellows down near the cool sea bed. . . .to take a break & sigh, if only for a little while. My object vanished into what hole piercing the side of the sky & letting air go out w/it? Down drips the ichor of the mother wound. Where has she gone these lifetimes past now apart these altered persons these exchanged worlds. . . .these changes so much change surely bartered & broken purchased & abandoned, these new worlds indeed splintered & sawn weepy planks & sundered & branched so far now irreconcilable. . . .I can relate to much which you despise because you despise much that is embarrassingly revelatory. But one time I remember when everything might have been different at that hinging point in our time at that particular breakdown, you know? The earth does not wait & no school of philosophy can therefore devour the world as I can, supremely disinterested in any form of recognition; compelled, nonetheless, to record for you the cleansing acts to which we've alluded, which char my papery endothelia. . . .you are lost. . . .too tightly clinging barnacle among men. This may be a time for reflection but I think not, looking neither north nor south but here where this spectacle reigns at rest where there is no describing there is no explaining these strange threads I am called to wear, this out of time existence, this alien yet welcome castle. To consider the acrylamide fibers which you've inhaled, too, & the tips & tones of Fiberglas bells. . . .like timorous tongues wind chimes.
Mindbending rant, we stretch arms aching 'round to embrace dawn's glory hairshine rays melting golden glue. Target garden is behind your eyes, still was, man's limits self-imposed, the sky is free. Wilderness knows no landlord. Wilderness w/in your stony ephemeral cranium. We all are as artists working in the soul. To say: "I have responsibilities" is to cave in to irresponsibility to discontinue maintenance of the holy flame; a prisoner w/mind intact is a prisoner by choice. According to our orders, which were very clear on this matter, we soldiers then went marching toward the perpetrator who sat dining in a fragrant garden, full of the odor of yesterday's lawn trimmings in the close night. Ah, choices. . . .3-dimensional web of metal cables, spiders w/human faces dance limber & swift, blood on sharp mouth parts. . . .I am getting sick there are spiders & lice in this meal. Huddle 'round the video men for a story I will tell. . . .sudden flash of coiling green smoke snake mouth closing in on unsuspecting prey terrifies the brain like oil spilling across redly glowing metal sheets, a verdant borealis hazy cooker springing thin steel wire traps. . . .options to explore. . . .we melt into one before we know it we've dissolved our brains, we flash violently across gods' faces the mind conceals what the vid reveals, only lost causes change us & believe me buster we must change. . . .flinging out arms in the broken ice at any possibility. . . .a protective barrier probably one stitch before us, so thin that skin, thorns thru tongues for repentance & cast iron stomachs intrinsic factor rust circle blades whirring the mowing snake's among us secret in a bowler hat to build a perfect man soul irrigated in a blue bottle. Whirring blades. Who be the profit of the times? Tryptophan lightning on the dorsal spine darkness burning in pools, irritated & pop-hissing.
They are worlds w/in worlds. Boxes w/in boxes. Circles w/in circles. These molecules are killing me. Fluorescent zebras hard press a function key. . . .mosquito-headed mongrel machines tear the air & terrorize motorists & their sterile butterflies, angels whirling midway from heaven. The rapture is on hold the Angel of Death was lost in Nueva York. Intangible connectors. We fail to align as we sputter-emote the fallacy of the memo, the moment of the document's recognizable demise. & clearly none of them is real.
2. Squeak City.
Passion. Light. Elastic embryo, transmit molecular code.
(Just an illusion of frightful roulette. Stuck back in the time of bush men in loafers.)
Flaming like acetylene, a misplaced corpse gone over the top. . . .city lights, sorry industrial reflection of spinning infinity. What new miscast beast shuffling hesitantly tonight under strangely calculated galactic pastures? Stars & blinking traffic lights humming high voltage & LEDs. Waves w/in gambol & percolate in the capacity to metamorphose from the butterfly into the creeping larva, to become that which you most fear, most despise. Concentric stellar ripples over an unsteady purple Mylar desert sea, liquid dunes. Over the top. These molecules pressing outwards against my skin. . . .a thin film where worlds collide like steely dew drop billiard balls. . . .glistening orbs, quicksilver marble eyes flashing these patterns & colors, agitated, circles-triangles-rectangles & slowly twisting spindle lines draw us receding into the spout of consciousness. Many worlds exist w/in the world.
Mental garrets of compliance in the era of the padded cellular vesicle & deadly diamond explosions 'cross LPT1 (I try to not let my scorn shine thru). . . .we know how color grunts in whispers of forgotten freedom. . . .the keys to a secret other kingdom w/in a city skeletons & ghosts moon dance in a lake dry dust bed fills up the soiled eyeballs like bearings rusty & bleeding faucets dust, dust dead grass lost trust in soulful improvisation. The letter of the law, single head lamp-eyed bile lamprey implosion sucked into a void unwitting, voluntary vomiting, slow & soft plop & out of our heads. . . .this lack of emotion more sinister than cynicism this the post-cynical microcosm cardboard cereal flakes this when TV speaks to us in dull, forgotten languages, dead tongues of crumbling beetlemen, this.
Clocks all ticking brains all tripping the computer is the drug you be the judge. The pattern has mutated to fill all the screen. Bring the wine up from the cellar. Pour the poison in the pail. As if these elections affected you. Log the values in their fields & cure the disease. There is a rotting sweetness in every falling flake of snow & the high tingling hum, the wind on the wire, the beating wings of war, the soft denial of timeflow, the sink into forever now dissolution of flesh & soul & the endless flocks of silent blackbirds w/dry eyes, images plundered by an emotionless necroholic. Good bleats of dull sheep. This is no time for mind expansion. The tangible world is thinner than mist - we are sloppy molecular puddles. These failing worlds easily recognized. They are boxes. They occupy the spaces of rectangular solids. Thus you may recognize & doubt them. . . .nowadays though the technology is more artistic, intricate, miniscule & dangerous. . . .I have a recurring dream of a cat that pulls a large fish - maybe a catfish - out of a river. The fish has baleful, but observant, human eyes. When the cat claws it at first the fish bleeds red blood in four long slashes, but soon this turns to thick black motor oil, & when the cat opens the fish a jumble of metal gears & levers & wires & transistors, resistors, circuit boards, capacitors, vacuum tubes, power supplies, ceramic knobs spill out in a noisy crunch like a weekend family car wreck. But the empty-eyed fish watches on & on. Nucleoplasm pours out sloppy plastic. . . .save the incriminating evidence on a floppy & vomit rational numbers. The signal is burning all down the wire. Don't soil the plane. Purge your hard black shell of spastic slumbers. The silver serpent devours his tail: please don't scream at the rain.
The night was unexpectedly wet & they were less familiar anyway w/that terrible country. Speaking of the old victims in the diluted way of years, but the savages must be brought up to moral standards if we are to achieve the necessary clamp on human creativity. Who will resist who be the prophet of this burned transformer carnage waste? Smoke thick rising like sated dragon, unchallenged terrorist plunder. We maybe are too old burst lips frozen blue oozing bilivirdin lip pulp under thick, soiled words, old concepts clink, hard stones & dry. Heroes & other devout crusaders must have days like this. But it is hard sometimes all the time really preaching the obvious to obviously unweaned intellects. Even the revolutions are planned & advertised in advance, choreographed spontaneous cable commercial campaigns & no one believes anyway I, no, no one, no one no I we need a brand new program a new algorithm, a mind blowing intestine chewing blitz & like I say serving time every one of us each pilgrim in prison (part of the ordeal you understand quest junket vital necessity of the bursting bud). Circles squares triangles lines that I see. Little marble ideas spin & come apart & click together broken like tree limbs or telephone poles in the hurricanes & wheat fields lashing grain lightning ozone burst drifting spinning dizzy. High throat flighted pitch & wings twist, spiral into fearful near-oblivion. A TV-headed lizard croaking static & burping soap commercials in dry dunes, fringe-toed swimming down in sand refugee from the blazing silver eye. Down we come in spring baling wire rust automobiles & other wagons, wretched furniture dross strapped on against new beginnings, this is how we barter time in chunks of broken lifestems.
Take this little trip before you slip into carnivorous despair. Fire rising in lost girls' hair. Cockroach dutifully sniffs the past. Egg cases & rotten shoe laces & LPT1. Good morning & welcome to the friendly voice of the swarm WANT splattered against space piping hot resentment secret boils so secretly & secrets of secrets kept from themselves in chosen conformity & mindless compliance. A rising frenzy this is how taut genes sing wildly dizzy turmoil & the slimmest sea wall to contain the onslaught of jihad. . . .& fear only some unconnected language stuff some letters cuneiform scratches against meaningless surfaces paper flowers this where reluctant skeletons grow flesh back guts nervous tissue skin grows more firm tongues & voices that squeak out perplexed new fleshy skeletalspeak. Stones turn to roses, worms into hands. They are: TV sets, rooms, houses. They are: parcels of land & swimming pools & subdivisions & neighborhoods. They are: towns & cities & counties & states & nations.
Boxworld.
Moment & movement. White & black, time & space. A monument to the evolution of the onion & its union w/an aluminum sun. This black & white run together eventually & world laws revealed flawed. They are not absolute after all not final no. So constructing then to the four points a new world, broader, more encompassing, for ourselves, we build it & light it brightly new borders & draft it new laws. & these laws too fail over time. . . .flocks of birds, no pennies for dead cord wood. Rag snags on cold lonely wire. . . .you live by your convictions, you just might die by a lie. Humming like violent high seas, torture saws. Clouds mustard lavender bruises. Lymphspray. The fishing net breaks drifting, random killing fragments. Birds ragged sky holes. Our friend the automaton. . . .every clock is numbered. The people here are patently insane. Madness in the machine. You would not believe it. Only so much delirium a human can comply w/& remain human. Machines designed to promote their own violent demise-that's life in these United States of Vegas. What's so human about this industrialized incarceration of the intellect/emotional strata? The out-dogged cower & whimper & whine, beaten at their own game. This is squeak city & baby you're the cheese.
Comply or die: resistance is futile. Machines don't hallucinate. Don't salute until you are saluted to. You can run but you can't hide. These minds frustrating locked in aboriginal peasants digging ants digging roots high in slate mountains & obsidian & woodpeckers, conifers, & bushes shot thru w/new lavender blooms. Straw brooms for sweeping up the dirt, gray squirrels that hunt down around heavy rocks in the stream bed dry now. . . .sunlight thru velvet oak leaves. Bay leaves, steam. These are the minds I mean, though you might doubt it, these powers, potentials, ensnared by pettiness, by self-promotion in the phony market of status. . . .but one day as the wetware interfaces. . . .
We are watching you, always watching you. We know what that smile is intended to signify. You are weak, & we seldom resort to violence.
3. Full Circle.
I cannot begin to imagine the degree of T. Jefferson's disgust. . . .had to quit the coliseum early - too bored w/hot lion breath down back of my collar. Besides, I didn't want to wait for the Supreme Court to convene my special case. Like I can sing you this song but I can't wait around for your belief to settle & shake down into place. . . .I dig humanity in principle. Do you get at all the edges of things the unique quality therein frontier of expectation? These insights we must add to our injuries. Listening like adolescent girls for years (in practice we must decide for ourselves) to worn out records before ears come unbuttoned to hear inner seedlings rupture sound & space, the full-burnished bright & shining mirrors blazing fiery red silver sheen golden spectacular glow, not fully consciously maybe (certainly) set to define global politics but. . . .these days you don't meet too many people w/pride in their work, though arguments marshaled & standing at the ready. . . .the liability remains nevertheless or ought to rather if there were such a thing as justice. . . .craftsmanship gone now down the lonely slick path of fast food. . . .this was no idea of mine. Anyway, no one I voted for.
Broken up, everything is chopped up in little pieces. When I think of you I think of teeth, eyes fierce. I think of finishings. Bridges blown up in wartime. Overturned carriages & library fires. When I think of you I picture broken clocks, terrified matadors in bloodied silk, unblinking eyes of snakes & the musky smell of human serum. When I remember you.
Postulate: two gigantic polished mirrors, as for reflecting telescope but a more immense scale & perfectly parallel, regarding one another in lust/disgust light too bright to cast perspective-yielding shadow, illusions of grand truth. Grand illusions of truth. You know Jesus might show up tomorrow but maybe not before next year. Mirrors to reflect cold inhuman legislation mechanizing all human action mechanical intelligence nerve arc reflex genuflection & intercourse all stasis of merchandise & radio indigestion. When you've come full circle & lost all respect even passing interest I would say in the gods & their laws worshipped in your home town you get nailed apathetic in the rubber stamp catechism the catch-all don't have to stop & think about it label device medallion w/yellow short ribbon strip attached, might even just blow off the whole spectacle & kind of disappear & why not I think I would too into the fading morning mists & all while some of you people so busy decorating your houses like that to impress foreigners whose opinions you despise you know full well as do I & yet joining political parties so your voices are amplified & sound wise shouting slogans down dried up wells gathered squawking together secure in the knowledge of phony issues & positions ("issues & positions" & other created dissembling concepts & words) you feel obligated to embrace or to ridicule just to be satisfied by the conditioned flock bleating & nodding of strangers heads vacant of thoughts more complicated than latest pop hit syrup lyrics w/no weight herds of human cattle. So much for caginess then you'd surely agree I trust sick of so much judging based on superstition jealousy & down in trite political grooves I mean just like ancient game path hunted for years by the same tribes who just sit & wait for you to stumble into the gun sights. W/out a doubt he'd be thoroughly put out w/all these self-proclaimed lovers of Christ (really just another well-worn rut or bland rant hunted two millennia now) who live to press their political agendas, all itching to drive the cruel circus well beyond the border of decency when they can't even manage to get their own lives in order. Just think of all those private shrines across Europe if that helps you w/their genealogies all laid out of the political dead dead dead no coming back do not forward dead not about improving the condition of man but squabbling over ever thinner slices of pie. That's why I'm getting out. (Ten years from now maybe fifteen you'll get it suddenly oh yeah ah ha so that's & then you'll see even though no one else but better late than never.)
How many times must we watch these commercials repeated? Were you shopping for a passport to the last port on the cruise? Did you expect to find eternity in Santa Fe or Baton Rouge? Wearing chain mail leisure suits, bobbing in the thick of it, lances at the level, jousting behind perplexed expressions w/expectations of a uniformity that never can exist. Oh that's just the news the mirror reflections of the posers who mimic manufactured human deathtimes. A bean, then, dietary attempt at translocation psychic penetration of deep-sea ooze. No ornamental gadfly, no harbinger of the grinding ice. . . .dust gritty in the ointment & insect exoskeletal fragments. Belies our local calm, see. & limping wounded opened up across a tan trail of sizzling stars & sirloin steaks w/sea clam sauce & ferocious bursting comet orb debris, hazy spray into silence milk, stony teeth & enzymatic saliva to digest the stain spreading & reduce, return to the whirlpool of inspiration, exhalation into conjured original form bodies & spiritual metamorphosis. Some lingering sentiment. . . .some trace of the original innocence of birth, trudging thru the soil where commodities have obvious worth, thought I saw you threaten to suffer an original thought, but I guess maybe it was just a shadow across your face.
No preferable compass than that I suppose, all points converging toward equivalency. . . .absolute serenity. Super or sub conscious? Universal? What then are we? Your fear, your irons. Your doubts & a list of strangers you've encountered, up close but as far away as You-Know-Who. Pusher of buttons, you buy your morals canned. These are powder keg experiments, waiting for the cylinder lid to fly. These are excessive moonbeams, lunatics & smoke rings & yet I reconsider & must wonder about whatnot those lost trails, those paths forsaken not by choice nor accident but by a more fickle & sinister, subtle process - those shrewd forces the sorcerer cannot influence. Posture for the mirror, dip into the vortex, dive into infinite regression & believe what you read. Not despite his best efforts, those switching stations, streamers of blue & golden lights & thin red blood tangle thru triangular matrix that already itself is a struggle sometimes to recall as a mandala, more than the curving ripples in the sea of wave interference. The hollow tree meanwhile drinking clayey water as the planet tumbles humdrum thru the body of lights. & you: "Did I say the right thing?" The dying at a river of earth, sickness & disease & eternity, & you: "Should I call in sick?" Participant in the mental slave trade, willing & eager. Sun is early rising, a black river that shimmers, fire dancing on the water. Willow leaves we now see crying above silver slivers of light that flash like fiercely polished eating utensils & deep blue jewels & crystals dangling on narrow brown wrists of youth. Smells of slow green watercourse to fill our nostrils full in the summer of strumming banjos & red plank row boats as slick rainbow trout glide out & inside the fluid atmospheres. . . .scroll thru files I shall as the leaves flutter windy on the trees, madly in search of the secret column. . . .it must be out there, waiting. . . .the intrapersonal bureaucracy has taken its toll on me. Unmitigated trust has gone undetected these past fifteen years. We manipulate our friends to advance our own careers, so careful to defend against the least unplanned for insertion or deletion: the mauling of America in the last stages of completion.
4. Worlds w/o End.
Nature is neither old nor young. She is not beautiful or repulsive. She is not patient or impatient. She does not hesitate, but she is not impulsive. Nor is she passionate, yet her all passions fill. She is at once biting cold & scalding hot, wracked in the birth-pangs of cataclysmic weathers & shot thru w/perfect solitude & peace at death's firm insistence. She knows all things, she knows no single thing. No words she speaks, yet there is none wiser than her most wounded student.
Guns & explosions our rockets rise on pillars of fire a controlled burn flames on mountainsides illuminate the darkness gila monsters stir forked tongue flickers testing. Don't trust no talkin' gods. Shun the bleach & eat a peach. . . .We are all sitting outside the pit house puffing on a big green peace pipe. Not fashionable no more - the fireworks in the flesh. . . .too much confusion too many distractions abound around these parts spare me the deluge of details, if you please. . . .too late we are burning we are lifting we are rising now, now we're shifting the sky is turning above an eye that's burning in the middle of an open field where we toil in black humus soil, busting the links in the great chain of being someone has left the fold if you know what I mean not too far removed but a facsimile of a little rebellion more like a charade of revolution, a mockery of the self, the soul, the great harmony of being. . . .separated from the earth itself. There are tragic heroes & then there are the buffoons: the road of self-delusion leads to the palace of exile, the intrusive, invasive wickedness we do not hasten to mention. Timeshifting thru prismatic colorspray. To know limits, to hunt them down & scribble on them words of both refute & respect, to punch & to kick, to push back the brooding storms to clear horizons, to clear the decks & let 'er rip. . . .horse head forged in brass tack iron ring eyes wheel scream melting to long jaw bone yellow tooth & steel & porcelain frame. . . .bursting cells, surrender your marvelous purple dye, binding pigments. Not to join a movement. To be free. To enliven the senses drunk on the music of the spheres. This is the house we live in. . . .this is not some cursor steady on your screen & brilliant blue sparking filigrees. . . .when the moon winks out away by not looking at it, thru thin branches & lungs & twigs. . . .my intention was not to pull up this landslide around cold limbs in bed & it is breaking now I hear it creaking & cracking now, it is left. . . .wounded.
Turning colors inside out to discover the fires that drive hidden engines & engines prehistoric w/in engines as the flowering shoot mind-wrecking, freedom-gulping games in which they willingly engage, while purple beiges merge & melt 'cross abandoned alleys in infinite wave packets & spicy swirls, thrown for a loss. . . .so many locked up in heads w/key-shaped pacifier. . . .push to operate. . . .yes! Split wide, forc'd apart, cracked open, broken shellfish, sharp-sliced, freshly cut & succulent oozing, spill your blood, your lymph, your bile. Pour forth contents of bladder & bowel, gray-white chips embedded in deep nervous tissue. Exsanguinate forcibly into the viaducts & channels & tributaries & cisterns of Nature. Gush greedily! For all shall be renewed that you may be born in time, freed in time, ruins of a ship unleashed from the crushing rocks of social values, customs, manners, flotsam & jetsam. For you have swallowed valueless values, unbelievable beliefs, inconceivable concepts, & invisible visions. You, who are but a nod, who are a curt bow, or less - who are an eye blink maybe, a whisper, a rumor of a whisper of a whisper. . . .the silent bookends supporting a hand clap, a match strike, pupil-squeezing phosphorescent flash, you, yes, existing only as you imagine that you might exist, or even less, as an unwitting fraction of something far bigger than yourself, transcending space, straddling time, feeding time w/moments & drenching the chiaroscuro outlines & smudges of motion w/saturated color. Green toads on cool red walls. . . .amphibia abounding w/in glass blue pitchers of water. . . .tequila attack under wheeling sun golden light like dormancy. . . .like financial opportunity born of the earth soil creatures thick w/it damp breath. . . .& slipped thru sideways slats over time on the flip side fringe of our mornings especially when it rains.
We are thinking we are talking this particular path we are taking not because it goes to a destination enamored by our secret beings but due to other matters of which we are reluctant to converse. So the gem-throated hummers drink breast blood & aquatic feathers in a slit light when there is little breeze. . . .orange fish w/popping O-mouths testing limits of this universe world persistently. Walking, wandering out on the open desert, cookie-shaped hearts in streets of ovens, under an uncreated atmosphere, gila monster w/beaded skin.
Everything happens. . . .everything occurs. Is there a metaphysician in the house? Vision: the infinite, glittering, intrapenetrating tree, drinking at the pristine wells of Time. Spectacular, supraluminescent, unfolding & nothing ever lost in its gossamer glassy substance. . . .minds like radar echoes on its highway space in motion already gone before they're seen the hanging places the grommets. . . .pins to the works. Detaching from the imaginary physical world as detach we must we free our souls from tactile prejudice from arbitrary limits unhitching of crude hammers & prisms & enter the open network the perfectly silent hurricane. . . .
Projections of silica consciousness fail to resemble the human paradigm. Anthropomorphism a theology in decline. Futures contort indescribable peculiar & hazy flashes of metal, a minimal number of underlying rules synergize predictably to establish complex patterns & behaviors. . . .higher reasoning so-called a trick of rearranging or substituting various simple subconscious constructs to approximate desired goals w/editing until satisfaction. . . .peace, man. . . .careening precariously thru intermeshed grids of demonstrable evidence. . . .This inter-knitted network of solid electronic wave blasters. . . .The hurricane of reason, the hurricane of the solid paradimensional eternity realm folding down unmeasured axis toward mind-distorting box waves convergence points ride infinity's surf raging warfare into & then & then. . . .exceed all false limits & losses & prophets flying up above free free like birds of ice across new moons of our own volition. . . .new corridors & wind-swept high pylon-decked planes of air. . . .new rings 'round giant gaseous planets new cauldrons dropped therein bubbling forth furious new species of reptiles plants & deep sea fishes phosphorescent bulbous darting new races new colors new flavors of creation this the vision the horizon ahead new definitions of conscious existence as we step across another analog universe, new galaxies just thought up or digital, our chosen stepping stones into a floral fountainhead of ultimate possibility where we must part & put down fingers into unexplored depths of possibility & remove them dripping wet w/the fiery substance of unmade worlds w/out end. . . .
We are endpoints, we are terminal expressions of the whole, nondimensional & unhelpful misleading for the drawing of inferences.
From out of the darkness comes a chant, from midnight's navel shake of a tambourine. . . .drum beats, the low patter-tap, a deep, sonorous river, hoary w/time & patience, no expectations. Are your ears open to pursue a calling? There's a burden on your back, I know that you don't see it there. Do your television eyes still hunger for another startling & refreshing image? There's a formless word worked in gold leaf inscribed in every wordless eon whispering behind your ear, waiting until you're ready to receive it. There's a signal that your traveling companions aren't hearing. Though they labor w/o rest to anchor themselves to the guy lines of this world sometimes you suspect their souls slowly disappearing. Vivid visions drip undistilled from the hollow skull of the broken brain. Skeletons dancing, tambourines & pipes & rattles, whistle chime & jangle-jing. We must split open our souls to music, to magic we don't see, we don't smell, sniff, feel, taste. Ideas ignite the sky like volcano glow, lambent, rich. Thought I found the source of the raw creative force, swirling, chaos power. Here, we break out of waking sleep, we shirk the bright light, we move in pale places where the sheer contrast swells us, inflating all things, puffing up sails, & we are driven into another ocean of bell-spouting souls, hydropneumatic. Papier-mâché skeletons gibber, shadows filter long & dark & frightful, familiar. This is a bitter mercurial tea, but it will cure you of the special intoxication which numbs your limbs & nerves today.
I have seen this before.
Out of the timeless time, out of the mindless mind, out of the voiceless throat, out of the foundered boat, under a bountiful earth, worth more than you'd think it worth, over an unexpected wall, falling where all conceits must fall, this ghost, she is projected, made manifest, right out of the video game: high-tech she is, wearing a primitive necklace, shell, silver, & bone. Thanks me, she does, for my time. & I, her. Then. . . .the alarm. . . .there is this great & ancient sea, full of mystery, secrets, fragments of myth & unknown ancestors. I ride the small boat like a shell under the weather of emotion. There is an island called Memory which I see thru association; unbidden messages come from the deeps, called intuition. Beyond the atmosphere, beyond the benthos, the skin that protects us, that translates for us, the locked bars of perception. . . .there are the storms overhead & the swells below & there is me, riding the boat thru, & conjuring a new almighty tsunami. . . .
I tell you that your society is no thing. I assure you that your history is no thing. Past, future - all envelopes less significance than the least stone upon this earth, the least molecule of oxygen which we breath, which was when the dust on your books was an ancestor, which will be when your children's children themselves settle upon books, or upon computers, or upon rocket engines or upon mechanized insect intelligence - it is of no consequence: the molecules remain. The stone does not perish. The earth abides for ever.
All of these souls, all of these brains. . . .the potential is boundless psychic synergism polytemporic network webwork extending thru endless ages dramatic. . . .yet egos bound by political considerations not governmental but useless distractions & delays of mundane concerns. . . .the brainstem & cap autonomic functions especially the organizing principle to regulate our chariots we know thru empiricism more difficult a problem more technical for example than ever anticipated spatial temporal manipulation of physical activity everyday extend arm flex fingers elevate glass of wine no firm set of differential equations there to evaluate in the local field conditions in the problems but semi-autonomous functional units nerve ganglia prehistoric overlaid w/limited conscious nerve net reflex function arcs at local nodes primitive phylogeny.
But now we have this miracle mutation unintended unexpected development reason or unclear reason then applying thru the shredder w/force, the logic backwards & undefining some certain brand name units of truth or presumed fact. . . .these postulates are handy aphorisms, nothing more, but then, nothing less than existence. Critical tension at the spindle nexus, mine eyes have drunk in the glorious spectacle. Running before we've mastered the delicate art of walking, these are the paths the pressure points-here, another form of balance, or preoccupation w/universe's hot breath, back of neck, hairs rise in anticipation of soulquake. (Somebody said something 'bout enlightenment. Wonder what he meant by that?) As the wetware interfaces one day the realm of subatomic species, as the quanta that cascade thru inspiration. . . .this compass drug, doors yawn open, eyes opening, endless stream-out. Is this what happens when the brain exits a tiny key hole?
As the quanta that cascade thru the theater surge up against defective languages cultures that sneak back away from one another, when the breakthru comes & the language generators & translators are achieved & the soul enters the bazaar of super-reality, then these blinders become irrelevant & we become much more appealing. . . .stars I see, pine needles, croak of crows timeless, forever stained glass. . . .to step casually across a galaxy at a heartbeat. . . .to kiss the fiery lips of a nova new-born.
Apparently, no end exists to this sane drug.
Forever & forever & forever. . . .the physicist w/rows upon rows of equations in Greek comprehends how words abstract deeper truths. . . .there is a unity there is a oneness in creation there is an essential solid which suggests but ultimately denies itself to the senses. . . .white light shining all around you is not the summation of all colors of the spectrum the prism a particular crude hammer used to smash light one certain way only. . . .the more prisms we use to fracture the world surely the closer we approximate an explanation of the interactions of those broken parts out of context misquoted as usual but the further we stray from the essential unity of existence. Tongues, fingers, you see, throats, temperature-sensitive neurons, noses, vestibular apparatus, cones & rods, ears: all this & more highly specialized hammers for shattering the universe into a myriad of manipulatable tiny shiny fragments, for abstracting creation, pick up the bigger chunks & assemble everything. . . .
Seep then beyond your skin. Seep out thru the pores of your face, my friend: this my challenge to you. Infuse the substance of this place. Saturate the fluffy wool of the world, dye creation in all the strange hues of your individual psyche. Become this very earth, become the serene cosmos, swallow whole the body of Nature & endure as more than an idea of an idea, as more than a dream of a dream.
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