"There was this
little prince with
a magic crown.
An evil warlock
kidnapped him,
locked him in a
cell in a huge tower
and took away his voice.
There was a window
made of bars. The
prince would smash
his head against the
bars hoping that someone
would hear the sound and
find him. The crown made
the most beautiful sound
that anyone ever heard.
You could hear the ringing
for miles. It was so beautiful,
that people wanted to grab
the air. They never found
the prince. He never got
out of the room. But the
sound he made filled
everything up with beauty."
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
When I first found out you were pregnant I was at
first shocked & scared but I then grew happy with
the possibilities raising a child had. I then grew even
happier when I found out my lil baby was going to be a
boy. Jacob was born & we began our life as parents.
But now...i feel as if... let me be dareful how i
word this. Now i fell....as i f....
first shocked & scared but I then grew happy with
the possibilities raising a child had. I then grew even
happier when I found out my lil baby was going to be a
boy. Jacob was born & we began our life as parents.
But now...i feel as if... let me be dareful how i
word this. Now i fell....as i f....
Friday, April 05, 2002
I
How soon we come to road's end--
Failure, our two-dimensional side-kick, flat dream-light,
Won't jump-start or burn us in,
Dogwood insidious in its constellations of part-charred cross
points,
Spring's via Dolorosa
flashed out in a dread profusion,
Nowhere to go but up, nowhere to turn, dead world-weight,
They've gone and done it again,
dogwood,
Spring's sap-crippled, arthritic, winter-weathered, myth limb,
Whose roots are my mother's hair.
------
Landscape's a lever of transcendence--
jack-wedge it here,
Or here, and step back,
Heave, and a light, a little light, will nimbus your going forth:
The dew bead, terminal bead, opens out
onto a great radiance,
Sun's square on magnolia leaf
Offers us entrance--
who among us will step forward,
Camellia brown boutonnieres
Under his feet, plum branches under his feet, white sky, white
noon,
Church bells like monk's mouths tonguing the hymn?
------
Journal and landscape
--Discredited form, discredited subject matter--
I tried to resuscitate both, breath and blood,
making them whole again
Through language, strict attention--
Verona mi fe', disfecemi Verona, the song goes.
I've hummed it, I've bridged the break
To no avail.
April. The year begins beyond words,
Beyond myself and the image of myself, beyond
Moon's ice and summer's thunder. All that.
------
The meat of the sacrament is invisible meat and a ghostly
substance.
I'll say.
Like any visible thing,
I'm always attracted downward, and soon to be killed and
assimilated.
Vessel of life, it's said, vessel of life, brought to naught,
Then gathered back to what's visible.
That's it, fragrance of spring like lust in the blossom-starred orchard,
The shapeless shape of darkness starting to seep through and
emerge,
The seen world starting to tilt,
Where I sit the still, unwavering point
under that world's waves.
------
How like the past the clouds are,
Building and disappearing along the horizon,
Inflecting the mountains,
laying their shadows under our feet
For us to cross over on.
Out of their insides fire falls, ice falls,
What we remember that still remembers us, earth and air fall.
Neither, however, can resurrect or redeem us,
Moving, as both must, ever away toward opposite corners.
Neither has been where we're going,
bereft of an attitude.
------
Amethyst, crystal transparency,
Maya and Pharaoh ring,
Malocchio, set against witchcraft,
Lightning and hailstorm, birthstone, savior from drunkenness.
Purple, color of insight, clear sight,
Color of memory--
violet, that's for remembering,
Star-crystals scattered across the penumbra, hard stars.
Who can distinguish darkness from the dark, light from light,
Subject matter from story line,
the part from the whole
When whole is part of the part and part is all of it?
------
Lonesomeness. Morandi, Cezanne, it's all about lonesomeness.
And Rothko. Especially Rothko.
Separation from what heals us
beyond painting, beyond art.
Words and paint, black notes, white notes.
Music and landscape; music, landscape and sentences.
Gestures for which there is no balm, no intercession.
Two tone fields, horizon a line between abysses,
Generally white, always speechless.
Rothko could choose either one to disappear into. And did.
------
Perch'io no spero di tornar giammai, ballatetta, in Toscana,
Not as we were the first time,
not as we'll ever be again.
Such snowflakes of memory, they fall nowhere but there.
Absorbed in remembering, we cannot remember--
Exile's anthem, O stiff heart,
Thingless we came into the world and thingless we leave,
Every important act is wordless--
to slip from the right way,
To fail, still accomplishes something.
Even a good thing remembered, however, is not as good as not
remembering at all.
------
Time is the source of all good,
time the engenderer
Of entropy and decay,
Time the destroyer, our only-begetter and advocate.
For instance, my fingernail,
so pink, so amplified.
In the half-clerk, for instance,
These force-fed dogwood blossoms, green-leafed, defused,
limp on their long branches.
St. Stone, say a little prayer for me,
grackles and jay in the black gum,
Drowse of the poetry head,
Dandelion globes luminous in the last light, more work to be
done...
II
Something will get you, the doctor said,
don't worry about that.
Melancholia's got me,
Pains in the abdomen, pains down the left leg and crotch.
Slurry of coal dust behind the eyes,
Massive weight in the musculature, dark blood, dark blood.
I'm sick and tired of my own complaints,
This quick flick like a compass foot through the testicle,
Deep drag and hurt through the groin--
Melancholia, black dog,
everyone's had enough.
------
One summer, aged 16, I watched--each night, it seemed--my
roommate,
A college guy, gather his blanket up, and flashlight,
And leave for his rendezvous with the camp cook--
he never came back before dawn
Some 40 years later I saw him again for the first time
Since then, in a grocery store, in the checkout line,
A cleric from Lexington, shrunken and small. Bearded even.
And all these years I'd thought of him, if at all, as huge
And encompassing,
Not rabbit-eyed, not fumbling a half-filled brown sack,
dry-lipped, apologetic.
------
In 1990 we dragged Paris
--back on the gut again after 26 years--
The Boulevard Montparnasse
La Coupole, the Select, you know, the Dome, the Closerie de Lilas,
Up and down and back and forth.
Each night a Japanese girl would take a bath at 4 a.m.
In the room above ours,
each night someone beat his wife
In a room above the garage outside our window.
It rained all day for ten days.
Sleeplessness, hallucination, O City of Light ...
We're after deadbeats, delinquent note payers, in Carter's words.
Cemetery plots--ten dollars a month until you die or pay up.
In four months I'll enter the Army, right now I'm Dr. Death,
Riding shotgun for Carter, bringing more misery to the miserable.
Up-hollow and down-creek, shack after unelectrified shack--
The worst job in the world, and we're the two worst people in it.
------
Overeast afternoon, then weak sun, then overeast again,
A little wind
whiffles across the back yard like a squall line
In miniature, thumping the clover heads, startling the grass.
My parents' 60th wedding anniversary
Were they still alive,
5th of June, 1994.
It's hard to imagine, I think, your own children grown older than
you ever were, I can't.
I sit in one of the knock-off Brown-Jordan deck chairs we
brought from California.
Next to the bearded grandson my mother never saw.
Some afternoon, or noon, it will all be over. Not this one.
How soon we come to road's end--
Failure, our two-dimensional side-kick, flat dream-light,
Won't jump-start or burn us in,
Dogwood insidious in its constellations of part-charred cross
points,
Spring's via Dolorosa
flashed out in a dread profusion,
Nowhere to go but up, nowhere to turn, dead world-weight,
They've gone and done it again,
dogwood,
Spring's sap-crippled, arthritic, winter-weathered, myth limb,
Whose roots are my mother's hair.
------
Landscape's a lever of transcendence--
jack-wedge it here,
Or here, and step back,
Heave, and a light, a little light, will nimbus your going forth:
The dew bead, terminal bead, opens out
onto a great radiance,
Sun's square on magnolia leaf
Offers us entrance--
who among us will step forward,
Camellia brown boutonnieres
Under his feet, plum branches under his feet, white sky, white
noon,
Church bells like monk's mouths tonguing the hymn?
------
Journal and landscape
--Discredited form, discredited subject matter--
I tried to resuscitate both, breath and blood,
making them whole again
Through language, strict attention--
Verona mi fe', disfecemi Verona, the song goes.
I've hummed it, I've bridged the break
To no avail.
April. The year begins beyond words,
Beyond myself and the image of myself, beyond
Moon's ice and summer's thunder. All that.
------
The meat of the sacrament is invisible meat and a ghostly
substance.
I'll say.
Like any visible thing,
I'm always attracted downward, and soon to be killed and
assimilated.
Vessel of life, it's said, vessel of life, brought to naught,
Then gathered back to what's visible.
That's it, fragrance of spring like lust in the blossom-starred orchard,
The shapeless shape of darkness starting to seep through and
emerge,
The seen world starting to tilt,
Where I sit the still, unwavering point
under that world's waves.
------
How like the past the clouds are,
Building and disappearing along the horizon,
Inflecting the mountains,
laying their shadows under our feet
For us to cross over on.
Out of their insides fire falls, ice falls,
What we remember that still remembers us, earth and air fall.
Neither, however, can resurrect or redeem us,
Moving, as both must, ever away toward opposite corners.
Neither has been where we're going,
bereft of an attitude.
------
Amethyst, crystal transparency,
Maya and Pharaoh ring,
Malocchio, set against witchcraft,
Lightning and hailstorm, birthstone, savior from drunkenness.
Purple, color of insight, clear sight,
Color of memory--
violet, that's for remembering,
Star-crystals scattered across the penumbra, hard stars.
Who can distinguish darkness from the dark, light from light,
Subject matter from story line,
the part from the whole
When whole is part of the part and part is all of it?
------
Lonesomeness. Morandi, Cezanne, it's all about lonesomeness.
And Rothko. Especially Rothko.
Separation from what heals us
beyond painting, beyond art.
Words and paint, black notes, white notes.
Music and landscape; music, landscape and sentences.
Gestures for which there is no balm, no intercession.
Two tone fields, horizon a line between abysses,
Generally white, always speechless.
Rothko could choose either one to disappear into. And did.
------
Perch'io no spero di tornar giammai, ballatetta, in Toscana,
Not as we were the first time,
not as we'll ever be again.
Such snowflakes of memory, they fall nowhere but there.
Absorbed in remembering, we cannot remember--
Exile's anthem, O stiff heart,
Thingless we came into the world and thingless we leave,
Every important act is wordless--
to slip from the right way,
To fail, still accomplishes something.
Even a good thing remembered, however, is not as good as not
remembering at all.
------
Time is the source of all good,
time the engenderer
Of entropy and decay,
Time the destroyer, our only-begetter and advocate.
For instance, my fingernail,
so pink, so amplified.
In the half-clerk, for instance,
These force-fed dogwood blossoms, green-leafed, defused,
limp on their long branches.
St. Stone, say a little prayer for me,
grackles and jay in the black gum,
Drowse of the poetry head,
Dandelion globes luminous in the last light, more work to be
done...
II
Something will get you, the doctor said,
don't worry about that.
Melancholia's got me,
Pains in the abdomen, pains down the left leg and crotch.
Slurry of coal dust behind the eyes,
Massive weight in the musculature, dark blood, dark blood.
I'm sick and tired of my own complaints,
This quick flick like a compass foot through the testicle,
Deep drag and hurt through the groin--
Melancholia, black dog,
everyone's had enough.
------
One summer, aged 16, I watched--each night, it seemed--my
roommate,
A college guy, gather his blanket up, and flashlight,
And leave for his rendezvous with the camp cook--
he never came back before dawn
Some 40 years later I saw him again for the first time
Since then, in a grocery store, in the checkout line,
A cleric from Lexington, shrunken and small. Bearded even.
And all these years I'd thought of him, if at all, as huge
And encompassing,
Not rabbit-eyed, not fumbling a half-filled brown sack,
dry-lipped, apologetic.
------
In 1990 we dragged Paris
--back on the gut again after 26 years--
The Boulevard Montparnasse
La Coupole, the Select, you know, the Dome, the Closerie de Lilas,
Up and down and back and forth.
Each night a Japanese girl would take a bath at 4 a.m.
In the room above ours,
each night someone beat his wife
In a room above the garage outside our window.
It rained all day for ten days.
Sleeplessness, hallucination, O City of Light ...
We're after deadbeats, delinquent note payers, in Carter's words.
Cemetery plots--ten dollars a month until you die or pay up.
In four months I'll enter the Army, right now I'm Dr. Death,
Riding shotgun for Carter, bringing more misery to the miserable.
Up-hollow and down-creek, shack after unelectrified shack--
The worst job in the world, and we're the two worst people in it.
------
Overeast afternoon, then weak sun, then overeast again,
A little wind
whiffles across the back yard like a squall line
In miniature, thumping the clover heads, startling the grass.
My parents' 60th wedding anniversary
Were they still alive,
5th of June, 1994.
It's hard to imagine, I think, your own children grown older than
you ever were, I can't.
I sit in one of the knock-off Brown-Jordan deck chairs we
brought from California.
Next to the bearded grandson my mother never saw.
Some afternoon, or noon, it will all be over. Not this one.
How soon we come to road's end--
Failure, our two-dimensional side-kick, flat dream-light,
Won't jump-start or burn us in,
Dogwood insidious in its constellations of part-charred cross
points,
Spring's via Dolorosa
flashed out in a dread profusion,
Nowhere to go but up, nowhere to turn, dead world-weight,
They've gone and done it again,
dogwood,
Spring's sap-crippled, arthritic, winter-weathered, myth limb,
Whose roots are my mother's hair.
------
Failure, our two-dimensional side-kick, flat dream-light,
Won't jump-start or burn us in,
Dogwood insidious in its constellations of part-charred cross
points,
Spring's via Dolorosa
flashed out in a dread profusion,
Nowhere to go but up, nowhere to turn, dead world-weight,
They've gone and done it again,
dogwood,
Spring's sap-crippled, arthritic, winter-weathered, myth limb,
Whose roots are my mother's hair.
------
Monday, March 18, 2002
It has been a minute but I am back to speak
I got a message for the weak
minded type people who succumb to the drama
wonder were i get it from? I get it from my momma.
The world is different with our idols missing
& the bible in my town may have different listings
than the one you're used to
Reading
Isn't it demeaning to be told what to do?
Being forced against ones will
To Steal, Heal or possibly even Kill for the CAUSE.
Cuz' whether you like it or not
We all get got in the end
the enemy is out there
Look he's right there
Hiding in the midst
ready to set trip & dip on the innocents.
Two people got shot in my neighborhood
last night
I sware it to be true I even saw it on the T.V.
It sucks to be me.
I got a message for the weak
minded type people who succumb to the drama
wonder were i get it from? I get it from my momma.
The world is different with our idols missing
& the bible in my town may have different listings
than the one you're used to
Reading
Isn't it demeaning to be told what to do?
Being forced against ones will
To Steal, Heal or possibly even Kill for the CAUSE.
Cuz' whether you like it or not
We all get got in the end
the enemy is out there
Look he's right there
Hiding in the midst
ready to set trip & dip on the innocents.
Two people got shot in my neighborhood
last night
I sware it to be true I even saw it on the T.V.
It sucks to be me.
Sunday, February 24, 2002
Thursday, February 14, 2002
Life is ugly when you run out of options. People become objects that need to be disposed of. Desperate men take desperate actions. They form desperate factions & look for friction against perceived enemies. That type of scene squeezes the vigor from a person & just when things seem like they couldn’t worsen, a knock on the door brings death. & After death what is left? The theft of all worldly possessions? The doling out of mediocre positions on the ladder of Life. The strife & fights that come with unhappiness. More & more we become less. We guess at what seems like the next best movement. The world is filled with Malcontents that lament torment & circumvent those that would choose to repent discontent.
I too have refused the open hand when it was lent.
I too have refused the open hand when it was lent.
Tuesday, February 12, 2002
These days are stress filled & tiresome. People scrounging & fighting for the same crumbs off of the same plate. Fate seems cruel & hate-filled. Many dreams have spilled to the wayside. We need to build new dreams that rise above the mediocre schemes we seem to erect around ourselves. The screams of the mute are deafening if you can tune them in. soon enough it will be to late to rectify the sins of the past. Fast is the speed of life with knives in our backs.
Monday, February 11, 2002
HEY WORLD WHERE DID YOU GO SO LONG AGO. WHY DID YOU LEAVE WHEN YOU SAID YOU NEVER WOULD? COULDN’T YOU HAVE KEPT YOUR PROMISE & LEFT THE LIST YOU HAD WITH MY NAME ON IT? You always hurt the one you love most. Coasting through LIFE like nothing is worth worrying about. & Bouts of Madness mixed with your spells of Sadness, that is what’s keeping your head in the sand. & Where is that hand that was supposed to be extended to help you onto your feet? The streets are dangerous, filled with the lecherous & malnourished. & Remember that time when love bloomed & flourished? When youth was a flower held in the hand? Demand the best & you shall receive it for only the lust filled will deceive those that would be so naïve. Time beckons its demands & land gets smaller & more populated & the youth of your generation lie apathetic & sedated from the death T.V. spreads. Look inward for it is all in the head. Bitter things better left unsaid.
RAZ in L.A.
RAZ in L.A.
Saturday, February 02, 2002
Hey world! I am back. It is the second month of the second year of the new millennium. & People still survive off of the bare minimum. I just got XP for my PC. Its cool being a Laptop Type mother fuc*er, Thugs on the computer. Lugging this new type of street drug for people to sip from their coffee mugs. In Starbucks or any similar place that humans exist in this inner space. We have all faced adversity but how we handled it is how we differ. Some of us stiffen up & wither. Whether we like it or not; the smallest leaks can sink the greatest ships.
Monday, January 28, 2002
I hate when people who never read decide to pick up a book to answer the riddles of their pathetic plastic existence & the books they choose to look into to soothe their confused & simple souls end up being apocalyptic literature written by some reclusive hermit (not to mention physician) from the Middle Ages. What have we become as a nation? Are we a bunch of alliterate (people who can read but choose not to) T.V. & Internet surfing morons who chase & seek “sensationalism” rather than choose old-fashioned introspection & meditation? We need to look no further than to meditative thought for our answers. Simply making time to sit in a familiar & comfortable spot & taking time to “hear” what you are hearing & “see” what you are seeing opens the doors of the universe (not to mention, Perception). For your outward answers, look inward.
Thursday, January 17, 2002
A little Ed Gein lives in me. He knew a lot about Obsession & so do I. The story of Ed Gein begins with the Bible. It shows the tribal tendencies that we have just under the surface. & like the center ring at the circus, we are put in the limelight.
In case you did not know, Ed Gein was a gruesome killer that lived in smalltown USA during the 50’s. He was the inspiration for Hitchcock’s PSYCHO & Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. He failed the basic exam of Life, which is to respect life. I have failed that also on occasion.
In case you did not know, Ed Gein was a gruesome killer that lived in smalltown USA during the 50’s. He was the inspiration for Hitchcock’s PSYCHO & Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. He failed the basic exam of Life, which is to respect life. I have failed that also on occasion.
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
I was gone for a minute. I haven’t hit you guys up with a blog for a while. I forgot my pass word & thus I was barred from my own creation. Blogger.com wouldn’t let me in! I wondered what sin I had committed to afford such treatment.
It is a New Year & people all around me are pretending not to fear the future; filled with fictional attacks by unseen & unknown forces. That ride into our existences on strong, dark horses & fill our hearts with terror. Complacency is what breeds this rarer form of ignorance that we are know residing in.
“I saw a cop beat a priest on the T.V.” God lives in the T.V. he does. In the Slums I am from It is easy to meet Christ. I wanted to meet Christ & I did. In the ghetto I ran into him He wondered how long I would be able to swim in the pool of iniquities that I was at that moment existing in. Sin is fun once again. I haven’t had this much fun since I don’t know when.
RAZ in L.A.
It is a New Year & people all around me are pretending not to fear the future; filled with fictional attacks by unseen & unknown forces. That ride into our existences on strong, dark horses & fill our hearts with terror. Complacency is what breeds this rarer form of ignorance that we are know residing in.
“I saw a cop beat a priest on the T.V.” God lives in the T.V. he does. In the Slums I am from It is easy to meet Christ. I wanted to meet Christ & I did. In the ghetto I ran into him He wondered how long I would be able to swim in the pool of iniquities that I was at that moment existing in. Sin is fun once again. I haven’t had this much fun since I don’t know when.
RAZ in L.A.
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