Oracles For Empty Minds

Headlines and mountain ranges vanish in the clouds.

A wizard floats above it all.
He hides his face
behind false confessions and a one-way mirror.

He holds nothing too dear.

He sells gossip, bleach and time bombs on TV.

He beams images into a billion homes.

He paints one head red, another blue,

oracles for empty minds.

He broadcasts fictions on cue.

He sells books that no one reads.

He offers advice that no one needs.

The gray ones have been banished,

exiled with Dante into the furnace,

ashes into the trash.

A few horses remain just outside the city

but no one

knows how to ride.

The Blue Trains Run After Midnight

Mary Hart at Mount Rushmore flashes a white power sign

or so some say.

Others say she is an automaton programmed and planted by QAnon.
Decades before, a woman claimed the tabloid TV anchor’s voice
caused epileptic seizures.
Here in this darkness, the truth is rarely spoken.

The mob beheads a statue of Christopher Columbus
and drags the torso across the square
and dumps it into the lake.
The ghost of Jack Ruby watches from the shadows,

wearing a mask and holding a gun.
We don’t follow him, he follows us.

The blue trains run after midnight
while a boy sleeps

with pics of poets pinned to his bedroom wall.
Here the night is long, and dreams are like fireflies in fog.
Here nothing is spoken.
Here nothing can be broken.

Blackout

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Dallas, JFK, mourners in black.
Where do we go now, is there no way back?
Helicopters hover, there's a gunman in the clouds.
There’s a chokehold on the soul, too many dead,
too many guns, too much lead.
Memphis, Martin Luther King, mourners in black.

Where do we go now, is there no way back?
Helicopters hover, there's a gunman in the clouds.
There’s a chokehold on the soul, too many dead,
too many guns, too much lead.
L.A. RFK, mourners in black.
Where do we go now, is there no way back?

Helicopters hover, there's a gunman in the clouds.
There’s a chokehold on the soul, too many dead,
too many guns, too much lead.
George Floyd, mourners in black.
Where do we go now, is there no way back?
Where do we go now, is there no way back?

JFK

A dancer twirls on top of a musical box

and spins round and round in a loop.

A child pulls the string of a doll that talks.

A TV anchor spins a web of half-truths and lies

while his soul

withers and dies.

The TV commercials run. Get your online degree

and change your life

between the pratfalls of Andy and Barney Fife.

An old friend of mine from Dallas, the nephew of CIA cowboy

and assassin, Rip Robertson,

would tell me stories about visiting Miami

and New Orleans when he was a boy

and playing baseball in a vacant lot

and about his uncle landing on the beach at the Bay of Pigs.

‘What did your uncle say

about the death of JFK?’ I asked.

In an alcoholic blackout, my friend replied, ‘Good shot’.

The Angel of Death

The aliens have landed. They’re wearing gas masks

and looking just like the military police.

Elmer Fudd has been disarmed.

Elmer Fudd will no longer have access to a gun.

A vagabond beats over and over on a plastic drum.

Here, the world revolves around a make-believe sun.

The red and blue people tell each other lies.

The Angel of death poses on a beach

dressed in black, 
holding a sickle and wearing a crown.

A solitary woman sits in a corner and cries.

All the businesses are gone in the center of town.

If I could hold on to the rain.

If I could live in a world without pain,

where no one lies and no one dies. 
George Floyd carried away in a horse drawn hearse.

If I could just hold on to the rain.

If I could.

Lady G

The moon comes out from behind a cloud

and witnesses a meeting between J Edgar Hoover

and Lady G in Lafayette Park.

Lightning flashes and so begins a clandestine romance.

In the shadows, the two lovers begin to dance.

One moans and the other cries out aloud.

I dream a dark dream and see a dark truth.

I see automatons with automatic weapons standing guard 

in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I see looters 

in Manhattan and Beverly Hills.

I see David Dorn murdered on Martin Luther King Drive

for nothing but a TV.  Apathy kills.

Almost forty years ago, in the Dallas County Jail,

I witnessed an intoxicated black man 

put in a chokehold for over ten minutes.

His body limp, his eyes 

lifeless, blank. I was under arrest for DWI.

I was white and did not die.

Humpty Dumpty

Sirens wail, red and blue lights flash.

Marshall McLuhan

foresaw the invention

of the internet 
and declared TV was cool

but did not predict this. 

White girls listen to rap
(Or is it a nursery rhyme?)

and smoke cigarettes at the pool.

The dinosaurs and dollar stores in DC 
all carry guns.

The death and unemployment rate is up.

'Humpty Dumpty sat on Trump’s wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All of the DC horses

and all of Trump’s men

could not put Humpty 
together again.'

The Umbrella Man

A marionette dances to an old tune.
The umbrella man dresses all in black.

South Minneapolis ablaze beneath half a moon.

Malcolm X floats on a cloud of tear gas,

the fumes drift.

The horses turn back.

A knee to the neck and the heart

of the country stops.

George Floyd killed by a cop.

A protester chants into a megaphone.
The Third Police Precinct on Lake Street 
is overrun.

The furies descend. 

The barricades have been breached.

Windows have been smashed.

The mannequins in L.A. are on fire.

The hymn books burn in the upper room
of the church choir.

When Darkness Comes

The water is high and green on the lake.

Harnessed to an invisible kite, 

I float over islands.

I take photographs in my mind and ask questions.

Is the sky bigger at night when the moon is out?

Do we dream when we sleep alone?

Where is the beginning, where is the end?

A thin man fasts in the corner.

A homeless man dies 

of a drug overdose.

When darkness comes, we promise not to fall.
If we fail at love, we fail ourselves.

Fake News

A governor stands at the podium, an interpreter makes signs.

In Los Angeles, the homeless gather in hotels.

Jane Fonda in whiteface dressed as the Easter bunny

looks into the eye of a camera.

In a silver jacket and orange pants, Michael Jackson

floats across a blue stage. 

The Co-Ed killer wanders an empty campus and finds no prey.
Dressed in gray, Lana Clarkson wakes after a long sleep.

Phil Spector falls to his knees.

The voice of John Prine echoes across the hills of Tennessee.
A priest baptizes a baby with a toy water gun.
He maintains his social distance. Is it all fake news?

Was the Covid-19 virus manufactured in a lab or the bloodstream of a bat?

Are vampires real? 
Was Jon Benet Ramsey murdered by an alien cult?

Is the land in China round or flat?

In a pink Cadillac, a woman sings.

Flights are no longer grounded; the dead have wings.

A Ventriloquist Holds Out An Empty Hand

Headlines flash across the screen.

All the monsters 
wear the same mask.

All the shadows gather

just outside

the hospital walls.

Refrigerated trucks whir 
and rumble in Manhattan 

and Long Island.

Death comes in waves.

Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe 

share one last kiss.

A ventriloquist holds out 
an empty hand.

The lights come back on in the city

while the world wakes
hooked on a ventilator

and breathes with half a lung.

The Last Song of the Buddha

I remember a story, but it has changed

like a place 
or a city visited after a long absence.

I remember a song, but it too has changed.

My eyes widen and then blink 
in a dark cavern.

I reach out in the darkness.

The chrysanthemums are cold.

Outside, snow begins to fall.

I cannot wear the death mask 
of another,

I put on my own.

The God Protocol

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THE GOD PROTOCOL download free PDF

The old ones, ghosts now, had grand and glorious machines. They inhabited glittering cities of light. They loved to fly (seemingly so dangerous to us). They could fly across oceans. Their sailing vessels filled the skies. They mapped the stars and sent men into space, but they went mad and destroyed themselves. They were like gods, yet they were like us. Their minds worked like our own, using the same inner protocol. What we call the “God protocol”. Faint traces of the old world can still be seen in our world, in ruins and refuse not yet been reclaimed by nature. We do not know what lies beyond our shores. Our seafaring vessels are not capable of traversing the globe. Over many generations our people have engaged in battles but nothing like the great wars of the past. We live a peaceful existence. We feel blessed. We share a common language with the old world, with our ancestors, the others; even so, many of their words seem foreign to us and are difficult to decipher. The old ones were capable of great magic. They were able to record and transmit images of themselves across great distances. This art has now been lost. We do have transcripts of these talking pictures (one of which we have included here) along with faded photographs, ragged books and other deteriorating volumes archived in makeshift libraries. Sadly, the largest of these libraries recently burned. This is why we have decided to compile and distill from the existing archives a few stories that moved us and print and distribute them. We are thinking of future generations, that there will be a record not just of sacred texts (stories of sky gods and virgin births), of poets and philosophers and of visionaries and prophets but we wish to produce (using the archives and literary techniques discovered in the books of the old ones) a glimpse into this ancient civilization before death and the whirlwind overtook them (the collapse of that world documented in the final two stories in this collection). 

Copyright © 2020 Will James

All rights reserved.

ISBN:  9798616459060

For Edgar Allan Poe

CONTENTS

Peter Pan, UFOs & the Marlboro Man (Circa 1995)  

The Blue Poet

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A White Horse  

Oceania  

The Blue Poet (2020)

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In 1993 (shortly before her cancer diagnosis became public) I spoke to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in a dream. I explained to her that I was the same age as her daughter Caroline and that the trauma of my father’s alcoholism and her husband’s death had become fused in my psyche. Based on that dream, I wrote a short story called “The Blue Poet” covering the period between the Kennedy inaugural and the assassination and funeral of JFK. In that story, I created my protagonist, Jesse Sandstrom. In 2003 (while living in Paris, France), I continued the story as a screenplay, taking Jesse Sandstrom (a troubled musician and artist) into the nineteen seventies and through adolescence. I have now taken that story, his life, all the way up to 2020.

 –Will James

The Shadow King

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A princess watches from her imaginary tower
She casts no spells, she has lost all her power

A shadow king blows smoke rings
At the foot of the stage
His mind is broken, locked in an imaginary cage

A madman rides a lame horse

Round and round a twisted course

A train whistles and whines throughout the night
Like a missile with wings it takes flight
From the roof of a fallout shelter we look out at the stars
From the roof of a fallout shelter we can almost see Mars

A princess watches from her imaginary tower

She casts no spells, she has lost all her power

from ORPHEUS IN THE ATTIC

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Miss America 

Miss America lapses in and out of consciousness

As she floats down the catwalk

She often sleepwalks

Her dreams are diminished

Her kisses are no longer free

She works the seedy side of reality TV

Her pimp owns the pageant  

He wears a bronze mask

His platinum blond hair 

Shimmers under the hot TV lights

He states that he’ll kill, deport or jail

All the shadows in his way

The headlines are depressing

The news of despair is everywhere

Gossip, rumors and innuendo rule

Our dreams are diminished

No one buys our kisses, and nothing is free

Here on the seedy side of reality TV

White Cloud

I examine a photo of a ragged child,

Holding a ragged doll

In Arabic, her name means “White Cloud”

She is just five years old

She is a refugee from Aleppo

In a filthy camp, she cries out

In thunder and rain

In tragedy and pain

Here in another zone

In the valley of the green mountains

I hear the blackbirds squawk and moan

They mimic hawks and humans

Some say they guide the living and the dead

Out of the shadows

Beyond the thunder and the rain

Beyond the tragedy and the pain

We Dance in the Dark

for Judy Garland

I put on an old mask that matches my worn shoes

And make my way up the mountain

To where only the fog blooms

Her ruby slippers still fit when she died of a drug overdose

In a London hotel, triumphant and alone  

We dance in the dark, here in this garden of stone

Father Berrigan Floats on a Cloud

Father Berrigan floats on a cloud
Like a wizard, he watches us from above
As a boy, I carried the news of wars
Along with the baseball stats and scores

I saw a photo of a Buddhist monk on fire
I read about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir 
Father Berrigan floats on a cloud
Like a wizard, he watches us from above

I Ride with Ghosts

I unhook the stars from my neck

And let myself go, I descend, I ride with ghosts 

I roll and tumble into the unknown 

I parted company with the others in Tangiers 

I miss them so much 

I crossed the desert in the dark 

I tried to sing but it hurt too much 
My throat was parched from sleeping in the sun 

Back then, I would trade all the light

Of the world for water 

I trudged through the dust and haze

Of an ancient continent 

I remember my brothers 

I think of my sisters 

I unhook the stars from my neck and let myself go  

I descend, I ride with ghosts 

The Eighth of December (The Death of John Lennon)

 

It was the eighth of December

This is what I remember

This is what they said

John Lennon had been shot

John Lennon was dead

It could have been George C Scott

It could have been anyone

But a psycho with a gun

Had snuffed out the sun

Yoko took to her bed

John Lennon was dead

It was the eighth of December

That is what they said

This is what I remember

John Lennon had been shot

John Lennon was dead

January in Minnesota (John Berryman)

Snow enshrouds the Mississippi 

January in Minnesota

The world is silent and white

He dreams of Florida

He dreams deep into the night

The ocean beckons like a mistress

He longs for a kiss

He once had a plan 

But he failed as a pilot 

And fell as a man

The world is silent and white

He dreams deep into the night

January in Minnesota 

The ocean beckons like a mistress,

He longs for a kiss 

He once had a plan

But he failed as a pilot 

And fell as a man

This Ghost Town

Nero was born in this ghost town

And with just one eye

Watched the world die

I see a rider on the horizon

He rides a dark horse

He’s a stranger, he’s way off course

The mob outside my window makes do

With a hangman’s noose

They devour lies

There’s darkness in their eyes

Someone blows a lonely horn

Everything is smashed, our hearts are torn

We're locked in a box with no key

No one is true, no one is free

Black Coat & Tails (If Looks Could Kill)

Like a magician he's up to his old tricks
Another show another fix
His heart's in a box
Bound by a thousand and one locks
His world is whirling and about to tilt
The knives are in all the way to the hilt

He'd let them go but he doesn't know how
If looks could kill, he'd be a ghost by now

From the shadows he calls out your name
Just one shot and you're back in the game
Your heart's in a box
Bound by a thousand and one locks
Your world is whirling and about to tilt
The knives are in all the way to the hilt
You'd let them go but you don't know how
If looks could kill, you'd be a ghost by now

Warhol at the Factory

He walks on water; he floats across the room

On the wall, his paint by number flowers bloom

He's one-part pornographer, two parts whore

(Billy Name hands out masks at the door)

Over there is a portrait of Chairman Mao

Hung next to a silkscreen of a floating cow

To the left are studies of Marilyn Monroe

And several images of Jackie O

A doctor makes his rounds

Brando and Elvis have lost a few pounds

Batman has somehow misplaced his cape

Ultra Violet accuses him of rape

They walk on water; they float across the room

On the wall, the paint by number flowers bloom

Syria (Rumors of War)

He sang a tune or two in a one-man band

Then hopped a train to a distant and nameless land

And in a boxcar, he heard someone say

‘You can’t take back what you never gave away’

There are rumors of war; there are holes in the sky

The dead line the roads but no one hears them cry

The living are throwing stones into an empty well

Their houses are bare; they have nothing left to sell

I hum along to a song that I know and understand

As I trudge toward that distant and nameless land

 And in the darkness, I hear someone say

‘You can’t take back what you never gave away’

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Hiroshima

for Miyoko Mitsabara

I heard the whirring engines of a B-29
I glimpsed its wings and tail; a sign
Of foreboding filled the earth and the sky
With the terrifying message that all must die

I saw the shadow of the descending sword
After the flash, the heavens roared
I fell to the ground with my hands to my head
I awoke in the darkness and the dust of the dead

I ran toward my home, but I could never go back
Everything had changed; the sky was black
I went to the river to escape the flames
I saw bodies sink into graves without names

All around me were the broken pieces of mankind
Had the whole world lost its mind?
Out of the chaos came a voice I knew
Was this my friend? Could it be true?

Her face was swollen with slits for eyes
From behind charred lips came her cries
I was twelve years old when the A-Bomb hit
Just a child when that fuse was lit

I saw the shadow of the descending sword
After the flash, the heavens roared
I fell to the ground with my hands to my head
I awoke in the darkness and the dust of the dead

Paris (The Carousel)

for Louise Cowan

The carousel goes round and round
It goes up and down
It goes up and down

Children ride on white ponies
They go up and down
Airplanes could carry them higher
but they stay close to the ground

Refugees gather on the border
The lines are long
The children freeze in the camps
They say their prayers by kerosene lamps

The carousel goes round and round
It goes up and down
It goes up and down

Out in the desert, rockets flare
They go up and they go down
The go round and round
They go up and down

Along the canal, blue lights flash
The carousel goes round and round
Where children once rode white ponies
And stayed close to the ground

The carousel goes round and round
Where children once rode white ponies
And stayed close to the ground

The Lucky Ones

Someone saw a ghost sitting on the shore 
He was one of the lucky ones, he survived
He was one of the lucky ones when so many have died
He was one of the lucky ones, he survived

They are our mothers and fathers 
They are our sons and daughters
So many have died
The bombs fall; the rockets fly

We hear the children cry
Dressed in rags, they are the lucky ones, they survived
They are the lucky ones when so many have died
They are our sons and daughters

Someone saw a ghost sitting on the shore
She was one of the lucky ones, she survived
She was one of the lucky ones when so many died
She was one of the lucky ones, she survived

No More Games, No More Toys

for Damien Echols

A mother had a premonition
A mother had the chills
Three drowned boys
In the Robin Hood Hills
No more games, no more toys
For the boys
From the Robin Hood Hills

A mother had a premonition
A mother had the chills
One had a fractured skull,

Three drowned boys
In the Robin Hood Hills
The police targeted a teen
A false confession
Placed him at the scene
   

They said he wore black
They said his life was off track
They said his art was obscene
No evidence, no DNA, but a jury
Found him guilty
Of killing the boys
In the Robin Hood Hills  

  

He wishes he could sleep
He wishes he could go
But he's in too deep
There on Death Row
A mother had a premonition
A mother had the chills
Three drowned boys

In the Robin Hood Hills

UFOs (Ziggy Stardust to Major Tom)

I saw a spaceman in the park

I saw UFOs in the dark

I saw refugees on TV

I saw the vapor trail of a fighter jet cross the sky

I heard the wail of a mother cry

There are missiles hidden in the west

There are missiles hidden in the east

I saw mankind buried in the belly of a beast

I saw a spaceman in the dark

I saw a homeless man in the park

I saw refugees in the street  

I saw UFOs on TV

I saw the vapor trail of a fighter jet cross the sky

I heard the wail of a mother cry

There are missiles hidden in the west

There are missiles hidden in the east

I saw mankind buried in the belly of a beast

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On a Horse Made of Snow

If this was the last word you ever heard

Would you give it back?

If this was the last song ever sung

Would you let it go?

Once there was a princess

Who rode on a horse made of snow

She searched for a lost dove

She searched for love

If this was the last song ever sung

Would you let it go?

If this was the last word you ever heard

Would you give it back?

Once there was a man who wore a black mask

He had a dark past

If this was the last word you ever heard

Would you give it back?

If this was the last song ever sung

Would you let it go?

If I took off the mask

Would you take me back?

If I told you the truth

Would you let me go?

Once there was a princess

Who rode on a horse made of snow.

If this was the last song ever sung

Would you let it go?

If I took off the mask

Would you take me back?