Monday, March 24, 2014

A Fable

He heard the cry of love. It burned white hot.
He saw trumpets, trombones and harps 
floating high in the sky.

He heard symphonies echoing in a blue wind.
He transcribed all that he heard.
He sought out a queen, 
a star, to perform in his kingdom of sound.
He held auditions. He had affairs.
He exercised mind control. 

(He practiced the black arts of the heart.)
Women vanished, found later 
floating in the river. 
He sunk into a bog of mediocrity and despaired.
Then a maiden appeared with long blond hair 
and gray eyes.
When she opened her mouth, choirs sang and bells rang. 
She was able to hold the high note of his dreams.
She drifted into a zone of his own making.

He thought she would save him. He was the conductor. 
She was his instrument. He pulled the strings.
They went viral worldwide. His ego bloomed in the dark.
He bought mansions on both coasts. 
(Barrymore once played the part.) 
But their love was a sham. It was all a big act.
The tabloids discovered the truth.
They filed for bankruptcy. She filed for divorce.
Lawyers kept the cash.



Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The Woman in Dark Clothes (Poems)



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Contents
With Our Eyes Closed 
The Woman in Dark Clothes
The TV 
The Hills of Judea (The Woman in Blue)
The Hereafter 
The Planet of the Blind 
Death of a Televangelist 
Here in the Shade of Blue Televisions 
We Open Our Mouths But No One Knows How to Sing
Did You Hear the Story of the Boy who Forgot His Name? 
We See the Flash of Headlines in the Sky 
Denial Is Like A Cloud That Blots Out The Sun 
The Death of JFK 
Death Rides in on a White Horse 
A Fable
I Once Saw Hank Williams Follow a Flock of Blackbirds into a Dark Field 
The King in a Country of Rain 
Anna Nicole Smith in TV Heaven 
A Lonesome Dwarf in a House of Whores 
Confession of a TV Addict 
The Sound of War 
Terror Blooms in the Ghettos of Palestine 
Aurora 
That Invisible Country 
A Girl Called Heaven 
The Eye of Winter 
Carry Me Across the Water 
Song for John Berryman 
An Awakening 
Advent 2012 (Newtown Connecticut) 
The Waves at Midnight 
In This House of Clouds 
Warhol at the Factory 
Above Dam Square 
Nuit Blanche 
The Ghost of a Girl 
We Have No Hymns to Give Him 
Back to the Beginning 
The Goddess
They are like Visitors from Another Country 
For Vincent Van Gogh & Edgar Allan Poe 
True Story of an Incident at Chateau de Vincennes with the Daughter of a Chinese Opera Star 
9/11 
The Missing 
Back Here Again 
Quay Winston Churchill 
Ghosts in Winter 
She Once Believed in Happy Endings 
From Black to Blue 
Long After Dark 
I Saw Socrates on the Road Today
Not as They Once Were 
He Took The Head Shot that Killed JFK 
The Bigfoot Hoax (The Man Who Killed Kennedy)
No More Games, No More Toys 
For Agnes at the Cafe 
Rumors of War
March 2003 
High Condition (Red) 
Of Winter & Wars 
There are No Heroes Here 
Walter Cronkite Dead at 92 
TelePrompTer 
Oceans & Technology 
With a Wave of Our Hands 
A Masked Man 
They're Holding Jesus in Guantanamo Bay 
The Burial of Osama Bin Laden at Sea 
Transformation 
White Orchids & Death 
Her Vanishing God 
The Sleepwalker 
On Our Way Back To Paris 
I Cannot Take It From Them
The Drag Queen 
Basilique du Sacré-Cœur 
Chatelet (Pont au Change)
The Poet
The Riders of the Night 
Too Long in the Wind 
Eros 
I Could Fly a Plane 
The Troubadour 
Neverland 
Hiroshima
The Facebook Song 
Black Coat & Tails (If Looks Could Kill) 
The Eighth of December 
That Imaginary Boat 
Long Into the Night 
The Man on the Blue Horse 
The Moon Followed Me Home 
The Horses 









"There is another heaven & earth beyond the world of men"

Li Po







With Our Eyes Closed

Darkness descends without a sound on the wings of an invisible horse.
No one knows his name, this stranger in love with his own shadow.

We are walking backwards now with our eyes closed.
We have nowhere else to go.







The Woman in Dark Clothes
 

(for Edith Stein)


She adored Husserl, the depths of his thought.
But philosophy was not enough for her.
She became a student of love.
We breathe in the ashes of those burned
in the ovens of Auschwitz.
Flowers bloom out of the dust.
She walks with us in the darkness.
She is familiar with it.
She knows the way out.

They were not aliens from another planet.
They put their human faces on just like us
before they dropped Zyklon B in a hole
in the roof and waited for the bodies to fall.
That they shared in our common humanity
somehow made monsters of us all.
But why should we feel responsible
for their crimes,
when we barely recognize our own?

But the stain remains just the same.
It will take all of human history to recover
from that loss.
We breathe in the ashes of those burned
in the ovens of Auschwitz.
Flowers bloom out of the dust.
She walks with us in the darkness.
She is familiar with it.
She knows the way out.




The TV

They left the TV on for years. No one ever
seemed to watch it.
Often, I could see it through the open drapes
illuminating the room at night.
Eventually the TV caught fire.
Flames shot out from the walls
and the roof.
Someone called the police.

Neighbors gathered in the street.
They opened their mouths in wonder
but no one spoke. They watched it all
like some kind of ancient sacrifice
as they witnessed clouds of smoke
floating up into the heavens,
sending signals to those
no longer left on the ground.




The Hills of Judea (The Woman in Blue)

She walked in from the hills
wearing blue jeans with frills.
She sang a song in a broken voice.
It was the only one she had,
she had no choice.
Some say she took pills
to kill the pain.

She was a stranger here, 
no one knew her name.
There was beauty in her eyes.
There was a wound she could not hide.
Her hair had a touch of gray.
There were lines in her face.
She sang a song in a broken voice.

It was the only one she had,
she had no choice.
She walked in from the hills
wearing blue jeans with frills.
She sang a song in a broken voice.
It was the only one she had,
she had no choice.




The Hereafter

How many clowns would fit into a toy car in the hereafter?
Imagine them piling in. Imagine the laughter.

We search for poltergeists in a darkened room.
Will there be space enough for them to bloom?

We wake in a world of make believe, as we hover between
what is seen and unseen.

We scan the brain
and enter into that mysterious terrain.

Human consciousness is a mystical thing,
seemingly held together with two tin cans and one lone string.

We look out at the heavens from a darkened room.
Will there be space enough for us to bloom?

How many clowns would fit into a toy car in the hereafter?
Imagine them piling in. Imagine the laughter.




The Planet of the Blind

Light shone all around them but they did not see it.
They had eyes but they remained closed.

No one analyzed their dreams.
No one even knew if he they had any.

Like Oedipus they walked in a world of darkness.
They existed in a land of unknowing.

They built war machines.
In air conditioned rooms, they piloted drones

by touch and dropped bombs
on innocent women and children.

Whirlwinds of dust blew all around them.
Radioactive clouds darkened the sky.

Ultimately, they considered themselves blessed
by their blindness.

When the end came, no one cried,
no one was left to tell their story.

Light shone all around them but they did not see it.
They had eyes but they remained closed.





Death of a Televangelist

They claimed children would be blessed and would impart wonders
to others by touching the TV screen,
that the dead would be raised by being placed in a room
with a TV tuned to their programming, coming from signals 
high in the sky. (Surely the moon
witnessed their conspiracy to defraud viewers of their savings.)  
Even as the pope abandoned his papal palace,

they continued to broadcast their gospel of prosperity
on satellites worldwide.
They flew not on the wings of angels
but on the wings of private jets.
In a platinum pink bouffant wig (like a drag queen in a John Waters film),
the one sat beside the other.
They lived in mansions paid for with promises

they could never keep. The fault was not in the Gospel.
The fault was with them.
(God is not a genii in a bottle to be bought and sold.)
Paul Crouch is dead. But his body will not be resurrected
in front of a TV screen tuned to TBN.
He is caught in the eye of a needle.
There is no need to send any cash.


Here in the Shade of Blue Televisions

Here in the shade of blue televisions,
we winter in the outer dark
and cast our nets
into an ocean of stars.

We wait for a signal.
We long for a sign to guide us,
a word, a beam of light that will render us
sanctified and whole.

We cling to scraps of paper in skyscrapers.
(The world is ruled by admen
and conjurers,
lobbyists and salesmen.)

The dead live among us.
There they stand,
those that we once turned away,
long hidden in the folds of time,

now transformed,
made new again,
born out of invisible waves,
crashing on an invisible shore.

Here in the shade of blue televisions,
we winter in the outer dark
and cast our nets
into an ocean of stars. 





We Open Our Mouths But No One Knows How to Sing

While a dictator is deposed, monsters wait in the wings,
their eyes shining in the darkness.
From the top of the world everything seems so small.
From the top of the world is a long way to fall.

When the student of a poet guns down thirty two people,
her books suddenly fill the library shelves,
she is interviewed on TV, her books begin to sell.

After over one thousand are gassed outside of Damascus,
the president asks congress for authorization to drop
American bombs to rid Bashar al-Assad of his ghosts.

We open our mouths but no one knows how to sing,
even the stars have lost their meaning.
From the top of the world everything seems so small.
From the top of the world is a long way to fall.





Did You Hear the Story of the Boy who Forgot His Name?

Did you hear the story
about the boy who forgot his name?
Did you hear the story
about the girl who did the same?
Here we are again.
Take my hand.
I'll show you something grand.
Don't be shy.
We can fly.
Take my hand.
I'll show you something grand.
I'm not a ghost.
I'm not a shadow.
Don't turn away.
Did you hear the story
about the boy who forgot his name?

Did you hear the story
about the girl who did the same?
I'm not a ghost.
I'm not a shadow.
Don't turn away.
Take my hand.
I'll show you something grand.
I know you've been told all this before.
Don't be shy.
Open up the door.
I know you've been hurt before.
Open up the door.
Take my hand.
I'll show you something grand.
Take my hand.
I'll show you something grand.




The Children of the Past

"Never war I am thinking of children who are deprived of the hope of a worthwhile life, a future." Pope Francis

We sailed on an ocean of regret,
until we found a land where we could forget.

We see the flash of headlines in the sky.
There are no more bargains left to buy.

We hear a siren song that fills the air.
We hear a whistling in our heads.

We are done sleeping in our beds.
If you woke us we would fall.

We once were the children of the future.
We are now the children of the past.

We sailed on an ocean of regret,
until we found a land where we could forget.







Sunday, March 9, 2014

The Hills of Judea (the Woman in Blue)






She walked in from the hills
wearing blue jeans with frills.
She sang a song in a broken voice.
It was the only one she had,
she had no choice.
Some say she took pills
to kill the pain.

She was a stranger here,
no one knew her name.
There was beauty in her eyes.
There was a wound she could not hide.
Her hair had a touch of gray.
There were lines in her face.
She sang a song in a broken voice.

It was the only one she had,
she had no choice.
She walked in from the hills
wearing blue jeans with frills.
She sang a song in a broken voice.
It was the only one she had,
she had no choice.



Thursday, March 6, 2014

WE SEE THE FLASH OF HEADLINES IN THE SKY






We sailed on an ocean of regret,
until we found a land where we could forget.

We see the flash of headlines in the sky.
There are no more bargains left for us to buy.

We hear a whistling in our heads.
We are done sleeping in our beds.

We hear a siren song that fills the air.
If you woke us we would fall.

We once were the children of the future.
We are now the children of the past.

We sailed on an ocean of regret,
until we found a land where we could forget.





Saturday, March 1, 2014

Mister Minnesota


CONTENTS

The Emperor's New Clothes

Peachland in Winter
Mister Minnesota
The Dream House
Dallas (Captain America)
Amsterdam (Fat City)
Have You Seen the Buddha?
Vampires (Blackout)

Recovery
A Shining Light



Mister Minnesota


One two three four five six seven all good children go to Heaven” (Lennon/McCartney)

As I wandered about between the stacks of record albums, clouds of incense hung heavy from one end of the shop to the other (as it did in all head shops from San Francisco to New York at that time). The owner of this new shop on Medicine Lake Road, a guy in his late twenties, glanced at me—with shoulder length brown hair and a kind face, he looked like Jesus, or at least as Jesus has been so often depicted in portraits. So I'll call him Jesus. Later I  learned that Jesus was a body builder (he had once held the title of Mister Minnesota and went on to place in the Mister Universe finals). In a sweater and jeans, Jesus hid his sculpted physique. He was somewhat small with a thin waist but his shoulders were broad. “Who do you like? What bands do you like?” he asked.
Leslie West, Mountain, Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix,” I replied.
We have some of that.” Jesus came over and pulled out an album from the stacks. “Here's one by West, Bruce and Laing.”
Yeah, I have that one. I love it.” I looked over at the Hammond organ across the room and asked, “Is there a band that plays here?”
I'm putting together a band. I play keyboards,” Jesus answered.
I play bass.”
We need a bass player. What are you doing tonight? Do you think you could bring your equipment up here and try out some songs with us?
Sure. What time?”
Eight.”
I was quite excited about the invitation. I had become obsessed with playing bass guitar after Roger and Johnny O had asked me to join their band and replace Roger on bass. Up until then, they had one guitarist, Johnny O. The old band played a lot of Grand Funk. The new band would be different. The Allman Brothers were then in vogue. Johnny O would play slide guitar and Roger would play rhythm and lead guitar. It was a challenge for me, not only to learn how to play bass, but to play Berry Oakley's bass parts. I was overwhelmed. I did not even own a bass, I used Roger's bass. Roger convinced me to sell my beloved Silvertone twin twelve amp (an amp that would later be made famous by Jack White) and use the money to buy a bass and amp. But it was too late. Roger went back to playing bass and I was out. I did have a lot of fun and found several new girlfriends while playing with those guys. After that, I played in several more bands and began to get a feel for playing bass. Sometimes all that a bass offers is support for the other musicians, but not always. Sometimes a bass player can become a kind of conductor and guide the band through the various musical changes. Paul McCartney is a master of this type of playing. After I learned how to play bass, I never listened to music in the same way again, playing bass gave me a depth of understanding to what was going on in any given song.
I had a Vox teardrop bass and a Vox Royal Guardsman amp and a speaker cabinet with two fifteen inch bass speakers and soon set up my gear at the head shop. The guitar player and his girlfriend were from Lake Minnetonka (a cute couple of kids about my age).
Jesus was obsessed with one song in particular, "You Never Give Me Your Money" by the Beatles. More exactly he was obsessed with the final refrain of the song,“One two three four five six seven all good children go to Heaven.” He said he wanted to plaster the words all over his shop.
We rehearsed for several nights and then something happened that shook me up. Jesus said he had to run some errands and asked if we would we like to come along. We all piled in his car. We smoked some dope and then Jesus started in about the people in the other cars. “Do you see that guy over there in that car?” Jesus pointed over at the driver in the other lane. “I could take him out with my forty-five. One two three four five six seven all good children go to Heaven.”
Is he just stoned or a psycho? I asked myself. I wasn't sure, but after I got a glimpse of the pistol that he carried, I wasn't going to wait to find out. After we got back to the shop, I gathered up my equipment and called my dad and never returned. Later, I heard the feds raided the place and found a large stash of gold in the back room (at the time it was illegal to possess gold). While I would continue to play in bands in high school, I would never again take playing music seriously. I had found a new muse, a different calling, and the road I would soon take would both change and save my life.

*  *  *  *
Snow drifted out of the darkness, illumined by street lights and nothing else; the border of reality blurred, its edges defaced. Blizzards did not faze me. At the center of all that snow, there was a kind of peace, a stillness, even a kind of warmth.  Actually clear nights are often much colder than snowy ones. I spotted a figure, an apparition, in the haze, coming toward me. It was Debbie. I called out to her.
Laurel said she saw you from her window, so I came,” she said breathlessly
The park was closed because of the snowstorm. That did not stop me. I came most every night to see Debbie. Debbie would skate and I would watch (my skates no longer fit). Mostly we talked. We would sit off to the side of the skating rink on a bench beneath a tree. We would hold hands, it was so innocent, so tender. (Debbie did not do drugs. There were no endless make out sessions.) I met Debbie at a house party in the fall (where I played bass with a band). Debbie had long blonde hair and was adorable, the All American girl. Debbie was a year younger than me and was still at the junior high (in the ninth grade). I was in high school, so we did not see each other during the day. Debbie listened to everything I had to say, my dreams, my fantasies, no matter how absurd or strange.  I told her about the horror novel I was working on. It was derivative of Poe. The protagonist had a black cat (of course) and shared his plans of mayhem with his pet.
I had become obsessed with late night movies, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre. In one of my favorites, Lorre plays an innocent immigrant who is horribly disfigured after a bomb explodes beneath a car (his wife is killed). Lorre transforms from a kind, loving soul to a vengeful monster. That movie was so good, so moving. Basil Rathbone, in the Sherlock Holmes features, was another favorite. I wanted to make sure I saw every one. After that, I read the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who shares a birthday with me, May 22).
Later that spring, Debbie and I broke up. It wasn't her choice. It was mine. Why? She was perfect. I have seen pictures of her recently on facebook and she is as beautiful as ever (in her fifties she still looks like a young girl). I am so grateful to Debbie—that she listened, that she heard me, that she was there beside me, when I decided to become a writer. Thank you, Debbie.


*  *  *  *  *