Statten Island Ferry (Part 4: Celery Air)
The whole valley smelled like celery.
Which was odd, to me anyway.
Since I was in a field of mint.
The storm (that storm)
Was gathering thickly against the hills.
I wanted it to encapsulate me.
Throw me into it's pupil.
I wanted someone to lower down their hook.
To catch me at the seat of my pants,
and whisk me above.
Show me a clear picture...
For once.
This morning you called,
on your last walk in the city,
to remind me of myself.
Of what I have forgotten about.
"Stephen," you said,
"You know what you have to do."
But worries of what that freedom may mean,
Roll themselves from my inner tar pit,
Out to the end of my tounge.
Spewed into a bucket of another three years,
Gone before they were ever here.
I'm in the middle of a harvest.
My field: mint.
My air: celery.
But what we fill our silos with,
we can only hope to know.
Statten Island Ferry (Part 3: Evil, Needle, Damage Done)
I set out at a young age,
to find a certain definition.
To inhale the red breath,
of a world which promised: MEANING.
I peeled potatoes.
I mopped floors.
Folded shirts
Sat beneath the Witch's Hat Watchtower.
I had stuck my hand,
Blindly into a velvet bag.
Which was only a map.
A map that was more like a maze.
It showed no family.
No payments to a 401k.
My feet had stepped deeply,
into Twombly's scribbled croon.
In the same way Minor's peeling painted barns,
brought you to a weep.
I am in that peeling paint.
I thought I lay in giant barren hills.
In Eastern living cubes,
with taxis and trains and seas.
"Sometimes when you change," she said,
"You can never go back."
Damage done.
I'm the green on the ponds of Prospect Park.
I look like pollution,
but I'm alive and for purpose.
Your boat would row right through me,
and leave the water bare in your wake.
Statten Island Ferry (Part 2: Ramble in Em)
It does not seem right to pay you back with money.
It seems it should be something more meaningful.
Something spit up from my actual being.
My true ownership
Spilled from gut.
Walking, talking, exploring.
Hanging from the fire escape,
while your love lay to sleep.
Our lives once intertwined,
as brothers after the West.
We had come...
Not to conquer life,
But to learn what it was we wanted to conquer.
America.
How have you taken me to your breast?
What have you shown me with your mountains?
Your flashing tele tube?
Do you keep my brother safe?
Do you fight his father's disease?
Do you explode a tank with no fuel or fire?
I soak in your humid pool.
I seek who was here before me.
I eat your evolution.
Now I shall go inward, to seek what be me.
You go out, to be a man,
In the ways that you know how.
Brothers of authors, of songs in E minor.
Statten Island Ferry (part one)
At that moment,
I felt like Stephen Dedalus.
If I would have met someone,
I would have said,
"Call me Stephen."
"Dedalus"
"Stephen Dedalus."
Not with a Catholic struggle.
Not a call to the priesthood.
Not the freedom of women's eyes.
No need for definitions.
Just a man,
with an explosion inside of him.
A burst that could digest,
all of Manhattan.
A man on Klee's star amongst stars.
I'll lean on the tree,
that roots in your grave.
Until your song,
tells me what to do.
He lay across the bed of the truck.
Trying to undo the rope.
For once he could appreciate place.
A true sense of place.
Without person.
Or personality.
Just a natural spring.
Returned from his old life.
Which was bathwater.
Then drained.
Then sifted.
Then puddle.
Then evaporation.
Only to emerge as pure Earth's sweat.
She was the river.
Burned to thin air.
A molecule hanging with both hands.
To moss...
formed beneath a chunk of...
a Basalt covered layer of tropical soil.
One in the same.
The same ONE.
Once separated.
Clinging to something they were not.
So we till our ground.
Cut wood for our ships.
Feed our cattle.
Start fires.
Skin drums.
Churn butter.
And somewhere amongst my chores of modern ball gowns...
I will find her.
My old lady love: INSPIRATION.
Yet another one gone under the bus.
The timing is never quite perfect.
I could've waited for decades.
Small lurking fathers,
Cornered in the yacht's mothers.
Tempted by Panama.
Bliss in Nairobi.
It's all imagination.
Cowering, yet tall, within the crowd.
Behind the safe an embrace.
The SAFE.
So safe.
We go through the motions.
We create and recreate.
A menacing howl,
Tucked on the shoulders of another tin roof.
Pouring out your forgotten pages.
Say it's easy and it is.
Say it's not and you'll die.
I'm a chimney sweep.
I leave my bristles wherever I go.
So much electricity.
In the center of the field.
Where one trillion storms have slept.
Shedding that snake's skin once more.
Behind the planks of the fences--
Magic and mayhem.
Rushing clean water over the spine.
But in the open air--
The bolts are sent here to die.
And one more of those deaths,
could cause a halt,
In more than just themselves.
But how do you really fight the addiction?
When it is not really addiction?
How do you breathe so vibrant?
When it would...
Shatter.
Crush.
Choke.
Other worlds of which you orbit.
Just a moment in time.
Existing of it's own accord.
But only if I could hold this storm.
To the palm of my hand.
Put it in my pocket.
Keep it safe at all times.
I would light every city in the world.
The thistles below the creek will not dig out.
When I walked up here I was something I am not.
A challenger.
A romantic under a tree.
Stuck in the snow like a child.
Flakes on the face.
Smell of tamarack.
Cattle guard.
Cattle guard.
Cattle guard.
But it was there,
that everything else seemed like styrofoam.
Nothing to eat.
Nothing to wake me up.
Nothing to be devoted to.
So we challenged the world--
with cameras and drawings.
Pinning back our evolutionary minds.
Quartz and mold,
All in the same bucket.
Your computer chip lungs.
My campfire pentecost.
Thistle on bare hand.
Say a Hail Mary and your fine.
The paper from the small lime candy lay on the floor.
Four hours ago, I thought all had been unveiled.
Three sips of water broke up all questions.
Two lay their heads on the sheets for a child.
One stalmating.
Counting the times in his life he's seen a snake.
Over in the smallest corner.
Crutched below cobwebs and soot.
Over years of worn floors.
Something of salt and taboo lurked in cape's wide tie.
Me?
A realative?
Pacing steps and three course meals?
Nothing of use.
Nothing of inertia.
No blanket.
No binding.
Bing-ba-da-bing-ba-da-bing.
It's all just a dream so we sing.
And now the sun would speak my name.
Casting out it's fainting shadow.
Bled its blood across my back.
Ghostly, I'm ghostly.
So ghostly.
It's not the same anymore.
The shape of the grind,
has sewn its thread to me.
Teasing.
Tasseling.
Teeheeing.
I forgot all this time,
to keep myself together.
Keep the floors without grime.
Keep a sharp mind always.
But it comes back to me.
Rumi.
Rilke.
They are in the room with me.
But all this while,
I've been in the vehicle.
Rusting and speeding.
Centuries have gone.
Whole doctrines have changed.
I've hung all their banners in jest.
Drank the wine from their bosom.
But a curtain is up.
The show is on.
Send those same prayers.
Winged.
They make me winged.
Lay down, easily.
The bus at a stop.
The forced day of smiles.
These are nothing.
Walk, with a hand..
Through the halls of trees.
Feet tromp over,
Blossoms fallen to dust.
One day I may return...
crumbled in the dirt of your fingernail.
Cleaned by the red worm.
Sprout again,
Like golden rods and poppies.
So breathe in deep.
This is like you thought...
Your one
Big fat
Chance.
Pay no mind to this steel frame.
These bricks and mortar.
This conversation about weather.
This churning buttered burn.
We are but astronauts on land.
They cannot calm our wind.
In past the room
Where, slowly, without the mornings coffee,
They tied a sash on you.
So many times I sat,
With my legs nervous under the table.
Tilting my head around the corner.
Squinting at the mid-day's sun.
No, I'm not the achille growing in your ground.
Not the scar from your first life's song.
The office men spark their stogies.
Overcoat and slain.
In one welling gush of the sand that we are...
The lazy sights and mold
Build themselves concretely
Within our catching tone.
Dress sway.
Boots scuff.
Smiles forced.
No sash we need.
No trivia we answer.
Speak rhymes with your toungue
And walk in the proud test
Of the nonsense fighting bull.
My eyes today, seemed to move with weight
Lifting them up from the ground
To the back of the room
Felt like a pile of one million slaves
Arms, boiled and numb
Spine, withered and scarred
Another dance I could not do
So in the morn'
Drunk with sunrise blue
I found I could no longer swim
No longer take air through my gill
Am I petals of mill man's son?
Bearing the fruits of a wayward orb?
Lay those books across my chest
Weight of words
Blood in bath water
I'll cross over with my hands
Praying through creation
It's only the people
Making the days feel like cogs
A consciousness of blank minds
And I am just as much one
Forever in tread
Sqinting for an island that is not there
Lathered from the oil of the hours.
My usual face down.
Splattered man take heed.
I would give no sky to your limit.
Same sticky blood spilled across no tables.
Tie the boots.
Strap my medals thickly.
I smoke of misting musty musk mask.
Out across those wooden dreadnought selves.
Break me open in the same shook day.
"Listen well," she'd keep saying.
Take no oil from the lighthouse stove.
You are not spirit.
You are not so frail.
Do you swear this hand is a praying one?
Landing on liquid nests of rope.
Sew that twine to me.
Keep tight that newborn run.
Well, I think it's time to begin this thing again. I've been distracted as of late. One of my dearest friends in the world, Sue Van Schoonhoven, was killed in a car accident last week in New Mexico on her way back to Oregon. She was a true kindred spirit and soul mate of mine and also wonderful music companion. She practiced with us at many of our early Test Audiences practices and often recorded with me at home. She was an amazing singer and songwriter in her own right and the first person to ever encourage me to pursue music. We played in a group together for a couple of years and recorded a demo together in 2001 and I was so excited to have her singing with me again in the last couple of years. She was planning on singing some back up with us at our White Eagle show in Portland in April. Sue was a bad ass. Not only as a musician but in her bite for life. She fiercely encouraged me to be myself always. We spent many hours playing and talking about music and I thought it would be that way forever. I played the first song she ever heard me play and the latest one I was hoping she would sing with us when she got back, at her funeral on Thursday. Neither was the same without her. She was such a comforting voice in my life that I have this need to call her so she can help me deal with her death. She was the person you call in all situations. I will miss her so much. The world seems less without her.
The tower fell at 4:05.
No, 4:07.
I remember wanting to be exact.
It had been two days.
Nights were fine.
Comfortable even.
I had forgotten that eventually...
Something...
Without its own choice...
Would depend on me.
Should he smoke a pipe?
Or keep a head warm in fleece?
Should he draw pictures?
Fill cavities?
I started,
Not as a warrior,
But as a shipmate.
Who was I to read luck's compass?
Speeding.
Bleeding.
Misreading.
And as the same beams cracked.
Foiling all plans yet again.
I remembered a home.
A weathered salty safety.
Haunted.
Halting.
She lay down those coins
So that I might view the body
It seemed slain
But keen to return to an origin
the ground
beat soil
crushed decades of neutrons
And how, one wondered
was it that she did not know
Was she sculpted in crow's nest
Lazily soaking sun on beaches
Pacing to Billie Holiday
But I could not laugh
With my usual coward's hackle
I've done nothing
I saw no need for pictures
Though I knew
Eventually words would form
Eventually sound would skate
Purse your coins
I float freely
while still in flight
I shook my wooden frames
so the story is always the same
ingest one black flame
and all the others catch
don't put those shows
behind the curtains of safety
your mild manners and well-kept room
this is not me
this is something they created
raised up from the sand
from the same energy that has always been
Are the hairs too long?
Are the steps too slow?
Are the songs not pretty?
Row your craft with ease.
the water is rough all on its own.
Once the smell had left the hall
I considered the shapes of frames
The collection of dusty jackets
The buildup of heat that must be in the car
Had it been a different age:
I would have set my wares in the palm of your hand
Painted murals around the bottom of garbage cans
Lost my mind in a digital bonfire
Set forth for the gold rush
Gotten my picture taken with the bearded lady
Traded farm work for meals
in the house of a grandmother not yet born
But in this one:
Stay steady, child
May warm nourishment fill your bowl.
I swallowed milk and aspirin
Something to soothe
Fixating my eyes on a tree that marks your name
Open my ears to your sentence,
"The spray of oranges is a cliche."
But not to hurt feelings
Another day was left over
Still bitten with the grass
Of a field where we lay
Where streams had come and gone
Wondering what three things,
as you said,
You had bound yourself to
And so my books are on the lawn
Everywhere is the same
Nowhere is right