beatspirit

Dr. Who's Intervention

rudderless, still she crosses
the great water
for divine intervention
from sarah the caseworker
who asks her who is president

and she messes it up
on purpose,
says "Oh I remember William"
like he is some long lost relative

and Sarah the caseworker
does not get it
that William is Bill
the last president
and she take some notes

while the traveller
who was just passing through
decides she is Doctor Who
and changes the fabric of time
to undo all the system's crimes

she hear d a woman died last year
at the hospital she is told not to fear
and she remembers it well
the windows with no way out
that she'd stare out of
for a glimpse of galaxy

she demands to see the great one
the wise one who would know
the key to her unfoldment
instead of this place called Kino

where the psych techs were clowns
and the doctors were stuck
in some made for tv movie
saying their uninspired
memorized lines

there is a fly on the sofa
that has red jewel eyes
the first she'd seen of nature
in this institutional limbo
the fly quitely whispers "Just say no"

so she decides not to sign anything
as the great wise one buzzes on by
she decides she can make it
til she's not so manic

and goes home and has extra fish oil
and tension tamer tea
she'll call the doc in the morning
to avoid being locked up for once

she's had enough of haldol
used as straightjacket punishment
and the way they take away
the element of fire
even if it's evil tobacco

she lights candles and incense
and dances to bob marley
she sings a little too loudly
the redemption song

and no one can force her anymore
to lock herself up
cause she is not a danger
but only a time lord
who listens to music
not everyone hears

what could be more honest than something written frantically... something lived once.... something unrevised - because it's unrevisable, irreversible - it's in the air!

this assignment takes some setting up. you'll need something to record your voice with, and you'll need to go somewhere stimulating. time of day, pot of coffee, alcohol... it's all up to your personal style, but the idea is to allow your faculties to perceive... to notice things and make deeper sense of it than you ever thought you could.

where normally you might only be seeing the shadows of things dancing around you, look directly at the things... understand them for what they are, notice how they're related or not related. see them and speak.

then, transcribe it exactly. is it something you would have normally written? you might be suprised.

caught with a train and a cigarette (by me and friend michael h.)

caught with a train and a cigarette
while talking on the phone
having to smoke outside and face the elements
outside my own home

i remember when everyone smoked
in beatnik cafes listening to odetta
sometimes in cars with the windows rolled up
and on the planes it helped the nervous feel better

caught with a train and a cigarette
we trade stories on the phone
have to give in to the pauses
the brakes of the trains and horn drones

i refuse to get mad at the train
it wouldn't do any good anyways
and sometimes its nice in the rain
the horn like jazz from the old days

a way out of writer's block

play drum. chant.
take care of a peyote plant
not necessarily to ingest
just to tend to something sacred.
bow down to a tree
kiss the ground
feel bare feet in dirt
notice every sound
look around
go to the lost and found
lose something, tie it with a ribbon
in the tree
find something
on a walk around the block.

sorry about my pity party
just hand me my dose of bab marley
root a toot tootin in the swamp cooler air

108 outside
my brain is fried
everyone is mad
if you get sick
maybe they think
they might catch it
maybe it is easier
to blame you
than to care

just give me my dose of bob marley
in the swamp cooler air

everybody is mad anyways
when the heat sinks in your bones
tucson is a scalding graveyard
summer hell and yet
there are those merry tones
coming out of the backyards
at midnight
when it drops thirty degrees
out in the sandlot
bermuda grass breeze

just give me my bob marley
in the swamp cooler air

dancing on rooftops in the rain
eventually washes away that pain
and just a glimpse at the milky way
when its clear
can set your mind a buzzing
for an entire year

just give me my dose of bob marley
root a toot tootin in the swamp cooler air

reading kerouac when the birds awoke,
at dawn i lost my mind,
i found america in the early morning,
disturbing, small,
confused me.
i redefinied my name,
with my hands, on wood, paint, paper...
any medium i could come across,

really it took losing myself,
in the heat of early summer,
to find myself in the grain of the wood,
in the paper,

the page always my enemy,
simply alive in my hands,
my mind somewhere out of my skull,
unconsciously working,
with a constant vigor,

the seam undone on my pants,
grew into a longer tear,
and i without a needle was aware,
but i walked down my road,
painfully apathetic,
and aware,
smiling at the dogs, and sun intermittently,
as i remembered home,
as it had been,
as it was,
as i walked.

my mind tries to grip it again,
and it slips out of grasp,
and i'm ok with that,
every syllable resonating in my skull,
because my mind left me to wander.

and i will never ask why.

Nagoya Writes just published the online version of our journal. I have two items in there - "The Old Cracked Hill" and "Wrinkled Ticket" (under two different names, guess which one is a pseudonym).
The journal is in PDF form... Print it out, have a read, write some reviews.

http://www.archive.org/details/Nag…

Salutations, in some sense of the word i am new here, i joined a while back because some of the assignments really interrested me though i've yet to make a post.  I guess i'll start with a little something i wrote standing at sunset after work on the subway overpass - overlooking most of Brooklyn:

i want to travel till the sun sets on a different coast. to take that great red beast and pile everything i'll need into the back. i'll drive it till she stops driving. then i'll walk until my legs stop walking. i want to live for weeks on the generosity of strangers, with 25 dollars in my pocket. just enough to buy dinner when i need it. in this new century america is reborn. the fast cars and computers can't change america. no america is born again exciting my bones. i want to meet everyone i've never met before, and introduce them to everyone else i do know. i want to follow a great red road on a map until it ends. i wanted to write like kerouac, until i read levy. i wanted to write like levy, then i read bukowski. i want to feel the rain in my shattered leg. i want to see the sun rise over chicago, turn the opposite way and smell the air in pittsburgh. but what i want is anti-established. i want not to walk down the main street and hear the radio blare some shooting. i want the art not to reflect itself on the building across the street. everything is metal. and cold. i want to hear smooth bop coming out of every window on my street. i want god damned coltrane to sit me down in my living room. and i want his horn to scream. i want it to scream with my horn until the neighbors call the police. i want dissonance on the piano boys, then bring it down, modulate now thats right we'll move from a to d. did you listen to the man on the tv. we're all gonna die before the years out. and i want it not to be true. terrorism, bird flu, war in some country that didn't ask us to come. but we're there. they hate that we're there. they want us to leave them alone. but alas. i want to hear the streets again.their miraculous sounds, and not worry about money. i'll never hitch my ride out to the other side. and i know it.

i was watching the water today, watched it come close, close enough to touch almost or if i wanted to. watched it slide away, away like everything else in this crazy, mad, spinning world. away like the girlfriend i have back in silver springs, new mexico, sitting on her porch, glass of lemonade, hand outstretched, always expecting me. when's a good time to say "never coming back". away like my dear, sweet mother, up north, rhode island where the lobster is best, waiting, waiting, for her only son to pull up in his rumbling car. can't ever say "never coming back," because don't we all go home at least once before we die? away like the fathers and grandfathers i no longer know, easy to say "never coming back" we aren't destined for the same afterlife, they are much better men than i, and here I am on the ocean, breathing salty air, and thinking of all the people i never treated right. what kinds of thoughts are these to be having, beautiful day, beautiful water, and nothing but sadness everywhere. in a minute i have to get up, have to return to the apartment i love, the only thing i've ever loved, i have to put a wall between me and this ever sifting sand, this ever shifting water. always building walls it seems.
there was a girl at the bar last night. she smiled the way i suspect all girls do, when they know that someone somewhere loves them. that "i like you but i like him too" secretive smile, where you feel let in, but really you are further from your goal then you'll ever really know. she talked about old streets in poland, and cell phones and a song on guitar and i found the juxtaposition enthralling or abrasive, can't remember now. annie. she wants a new name, wants one that screams originality, and i found that disturbingly cliché. I have her number, burning a whole in my back pocket, can't bring myself to throw it away.
i am a packrat of acquaintances it seems.