Thanks, Levon

 The world was spotting with rain as I pulled into the library parking lot. I reached down to get my umbrella on the shotgun floor and saw that the case containing my cds was there. I keep it in the car because I prefer the sound of them plus I like to touch some form of the music before it is played, if possible. I unzipped it to see what was there and it opened to Dirt Farmer, which I had not heard in quite some time. For some reason the disc skipped to Ana Lee. I listened to the trac and started to get out of the car to go do the research I had in mind on the Hmong. I had the door open and started to open the umbrella but something told me no, not yet. I had to fit myself back in awkwardly as the song finished and hit the back arrow to hear it again. I listened to the song repeatedly and it began to have a very emotional and even spiritual effect. Then I noticed the time on the radio clock and realized shit I’m late to pick up my son, I had been sitting there for at least 70 minutes listening to Anna Lee over and an over as if in a trance.

The following day at the computer bank at his school on the default browser I saw that Levon Helm had died. I didn’t even know he had been sick.


                                                                           ***

What had been in my head before the song played was the concept that one could have many souls and that there was a difference between finding the one you wanted and the one that is your destiny. Helm’s voice on the recording to me was like the call out over water to the lost soul that had rushed back to the spirit of earth. The sense of holding on to it so long in that moment to the coincidence that also happened to be so close to his passing did not strike me as it might have in the past. We are blinded to what we are connected, how were are put together, and the love that binds. What you hear at any moment in the human world of sorrows is the music of the soul’s farewell, especially now as the rains come harder and the waters rise faster than in our darkest dreams.

On this song there are no drums. On this song America is a fiddle and the play is the wave of her people rising and falling on the crests, coming in and going out on the tide, each identity glistening for a moment beneath the moonlight until it returns with all memory and flesh to the deep. The voice of survival is a keening for being in a universe where beauty flickers in the shadow of mountains about to roll over us, chance about to take us through deadly shadows, and liars lead us to countless wells of poison. For the spirit of the dead is always rising and the song of the dying never ends and sometimes we hear it beyond the brain’s battered scaffold of words.

If we do not need to sleep to dream, if we do not need our eyes to see, then if many souls spill out when I die will the one that has names be me?
Thanks, Lavon.

 ***

 I was reading my copy of Fury on Earth years ago on a bus rolling through Ballard. I was distracted by this very attractive dark haired lady. I had seen her probably four or five times in different places throughout the city. She wore a beret and had this moustache and a goatee. Totally far out. Right about then the guy in front of me turns around and starts jiggling. Having grown up with a pal with gran mal seizures I knew what was happening. Still, I hesitated waiting for someone else to act as he fell to the aisle of the bus where he convulsed like someone getting flack treatment. I looked around, nobody moved, bust comes to halt as someone yells "driver this dude is like tweaking out". Shit. I get down on the floor and kneel above his shoulders. He is maybe 28, thin, sun glasses on his head which I take off andput in his jean coat pocket. Lift him up on my lap since he was bouncing his head a bit, hold arms under his bicepts trying to keep him from thrashing too hard against the seats. I'm like man, you pick the shittyest places to convulse! Soon as the bus pulls over everybody gets out. I stay with the guy till the EMT arrives. They come in and get him and while transferring to mobile gurney as he starts to watt out his wallet falls to the street and this fellow who'd been in the back of the bus reaches for it. I step on the wallet with my foot. Hey man that's my brother I'm goin' to take care of it for him. Yeah right. I take it from under my foot and put it in ampty jean pocket of seizure man and button it. Seizure guy starts to realize he is going to ER sits up and starts protesting. Cops arrive. Well, I guess, I did my do. Where's my book? I have to pound on buss door cause driver all happy no doubt is going out of service. A quick look inside and I see my Fury On Earth was gone. Got it for 3 bucks at Foozels. Finally get another bus. On way see goatee lady walking down the street. She's got Fury on Earth and she's reading it as she walks. I thought of getting off the bus and talking to her. But I started having a gall bladder attack. It was like a spear penetrating frong the right side of my neck all the way to my right hip. I didn't know what it was at the time. Blinding pain. I remember trying to imagine if there really were any scientific way of accessing metaphysical powers. I thought of William S. Burroughs in his orgone box and tried to picture him there. His image morphed into a naked version of goatee lady. Some wild electronic pulse of pain was shooting through the air. It was my punishment for not getting off the bus and approaching goatee lady. I never saw her or my book again.

***

 How clear are your eyes that do not see? How strong is your voice that cannot speak? How pure is your heart that cannot feel? We have ten thousand pictures for each of the ten thousand things and can place the most beautiful image of your mother in every falling snow flake. When your phone rings the tone can be Nick Cave’s The Weeping Song. You never have to feel bad or even nervous and best of all you not only never have to tell the truth you never even have to face it. Tomorrow I am going to the river as one time I went there and met the murdermen sacrificing small animals in stone circles and sticks on Jacob’s Island, brother, they had painted their faces and said they were of the zodiac. Can you capture and distill the chanting women on that hill who held their hands across the road in your headlights and your cousin reached over with her foot and floored the accelerator? Remember how they follow you back into your cage of logic. Soon the hand held device will be the person held division and all the cracked magma and fallen wax will be ought but lint for designs and blood selling. She puts down the sleek and shinny electronic everything. She looks up and for a moment can’t remember if it is Austin or Dylan, can’t remember which mall she is in. Something lifts the fog for only an instant and she says, to no Austin or Dylan in particular, “last night I had a dream. Everyone was sick. All the women looked like Tilda Swinton. Sad, intelligent, beauty. I got to the hilltop and there was a vast crowd there. Everyone, really. Slowly an old man made his way among them and washed their feet. Ultimately he came to me, had me sit on a rock. He took off my shoes with this odd balance of power and grace. He held a rag in his hand. It was filthy from all the other feet and as I looked at it I could see all manner of lower life forms teeming about in it; and yet, I was not disgusted. I felt like I was accepted accepting. He looked deep into my eyes and asked me if I were ready. I wanted to say yes; I mean I think I said yes, and then I woke up.” The no one in particular she was talking to did not hear much in particular of what she said. Her device vibrated. Some one just facebooked her a picture at Kafka’s grave.

***

There 's this smoothy called Maker's 46 up in the cabinet there, went back to hide she did after being chased by a pint of guinness, she's laughin be careful now boy you'll wake up with the purple nose. I'm not one to think the politics of self deception an act of mercy, she says, warnin me off. Still, I respond, taking her by the neck, the real gold's not in guilt, it's buried elsewhere, in grit of this grief. Ah, sometimes you just have to reach for the pity....

And out she pours. All promise and dreams, a quiet fall to earth by this dimension's smallest stars, coming in from everywhere and the sweet singing darkness of the universe..

FTowers. Darkness, crowds. Code words, conflicting reports and sttled images. Experimentation on a grand scale. Alternate endings to alternate realities. We may never know. A bird flew in the back of the car flapping in panic, but landed briefly on the green foile candy box given by a friend in Shanghai. Foreboding is monetized outside the gates of eden. Nothing will ever bring back the illusion of unity or utopia. Its too late to fall in love with Bonnie Rait. Dark Towers, compounding psychological oppression. We are in the blinds of unmindful minds. Thunder, lightning, open wide the barn doors. Let the horses trample your pity. The name that cant be spoken is on your lips. Sleep will move you through these souls. They will recognize yoinu for what you could never understand in their dreams. There are too many hidden programs on the plate. and still contracts are drawn up to quantify the immeasureable. i am bound in the throes of passionate absurdities. The insult of forgiveness thickens yet in those eyes. As the bird flew out of the car my relief was welcomed by rolling thunder. Infinite uncaptured magic was in the air.

 * * *

 The Mighty Dolan knew it was best to keep to a single sheath, though many were those that would draw him out. By the waters he watched the sun gleam off the wavelets to end in a dance of dappled glimmers on her face. “Can you tell me the best way to cross the stoney bridge?” He hesitated, as Dolan rose to suggest, “The best way is for me to lead you through the traffic and hooligans on their way to the match.” And, hopefully, to the knotted branches along the bank where this time some year ago Dolan found solace in the quiver of some sweet Sally not seen since. He held his arm out to her and she took it, with a slight nod of her head and a blushing smile as she turned to look at the river. He took a deep breath and surveyed the cataract of the city line, pining for a dusk that could not come to soon. He could smell every flower. He could hear every bird. He could feel the sun itself moving through his body.

The Mighty Dolan was now in firm command. The world was his blossom, forever calling to him, Dolan, rise up, rise up and home hither. Rise up and bring life. Flow into me, flow into me, until you can flow no more.

***

 We didn’t know what we were doing when we should have; though of course, we actually did, and that is why we asked ourselves what was wrong with what we were doing, if anything, so we told them what we didn't know after the fact that we did when it most benefited us to avoid hard time, but let me say, senator, we never say to ourselves is this legal or morally correct; rather we ask ourselves have we crafted the policy and regulatory architecture that allows us to inhabit a position of benign innocence in such a way that your obvious irrelevance can be disguised in these proceedings as a pursuit of truth as opposed to the amazing felching act by Senator Demint. We have done everything we possibly could to insure that we don’t so much remain a mystery as an enigma creating more than a man behind the curtain but an idea that drives our very financial institutions. What we have been able to do, essentially, is craft an entirely revolutionary economic nexus in which we ask ourselves for loans that have negative interests. That is; we borrow money from ourselves, are paid a premium for doing it, squander it in such a way that it is all but impossible to determine what happened to it, walk off with hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars stuffed in our own pockets then come back here to report to you fine footmen who mostly tell us you wish you could run the country as well as we run our banks; pretending of course not to know that we already do. The great leap is making sure the shark is jumped from people believing we are a vast criminal enterprise to people believing we are the true stewards of liberty. Thank you senators, the checks are in the mail, each one including a job recommendation for any lobbying or financial firm you wish to work for when you tire of such artless pimping in public.

***

 You think they don’t know who you are but you pretend to accept the opinion they share about you. They feel so superior to you that whatever opinion you have of them is irrelevant. Leaving Raleigh Studio you meet a boy with down syndrome who has three bees in a mason jar. He follows you to LaBuca on Melrose. He is actually quite charming and sits at a table outside with you. He laughs like a mad scientist when you buy him an oyster. After he calms down he says, “it is time.” He gets up, takes a few paces, and goes on his way. You wait for him to turn around and wave but he never does. On the table you notice one of his red curly hairs that fell from his balding head. You put it in your wallet with the penny you swallowed and shit back out as a kid that your old man carried with him till the day he died. You are reminded of this somehow when your son asks "dad, play that song about the kid who's knees hurt really bad again."

They are still there.

ET

I was born just a few minutes after Emmett Till died. You get a rumbling of things some times, things you thought you sensed without knowing, things you knew without thinking. You have those instants where everything seems to expand and collapse simultaneously. Like when Mikal had not seen nor heard from his brother in years until one day there was a knock on the door and there was Gary, with his fingers threw the ring of a half guzzled six pack...who barges in the room, lowers the shades, peaks out and says "you don't have a gun, do ya?" Before he even says hello. So who are you now? I got up this morning and had me some Identity Flakes for breakfast, there are some left over if you are empty. Some people believe in flashbacks. I saw Dylan once in the Alexis hotel dressed up like a woman smoking Virginia Slims, having what looked like whiskey. I wanted to say something stupid, but all I could think of was that National Lampoon record or was it Firesign Theater that back in 74 imagined ahead of time a washed up Dylan appearing on late night television like Johnny Ray. Hi, I'm Bob Dylan, remember me. And then starts hawking moldy hits from the sixties. There are those times when you feel infected by the personalities of others, other times inspired. And then there are those woeful moments when you feel a crushing demand to impersonate yourself. So, take on Isis, with two parts Little Egypt, as was foretold to you by Rolling Thunder when you had all but had it.

Imagine

Imagine you took brush or chisel to hand accepting that whatever moved you was the grace of god and that any and all appreciation, understanding, and success ofnthe work was in the provenance of the divine. knut hamsun did not create Johan Nilsson Nagel. it was the other way around. the poisons we carry with us, especially the ones we cannot name, will cast a spell on the canvas, clay or page. the daemon is known by many words and yet he only speaks the language of mystery. there is an actual energy in the emerald portrait...but not for all...adoration,s enlivened by the pulse of money, for leviathan likes his prey looking up, regardless ofmwho takes the hammer to balzac,s hands or the pieta. art is our only transubstantiation.

The Shadows of Their Heads

Reality is a very sinister version of Gilliam's Brazil (and that is just political reality without the spillage of apocalyptic consequences. I remember a school when I was a kid where they got busted for locking the unruly in a coffin like box in the basement. It seemed like a reasonable idea to someone. One really has to wonder about the real purpose of the Justice Depatment. The relationship between Hasan and al Awlaki and the second shooter at Ft. Hood would be a turnkey event. Hasan is paralyzed from the waist down. Odd how he has been kept alive, and it will be odder still when we discover what his true function will be. And ours.

Childhood has never been safe. We all walk along a raging sea wondering if that moment has arrived when nature finally understands us, and we rush out into the spume, arms stretched out, the wave threatening to take us back out to the deep, as we scream our life to life. Behind us it is all glass for a moment, before the next wave comes accompanied by indelible recollection. They start by telling you it's your fault, you made this happen. The moon whispers herself to the waves, the light of dreams makes soft the great rocks. What is it they wanted anyway, what power shines inside innocence that can be harvested by highly intelligent agency? Oh what sway cannot by had by guilt as they breed fresh monsters in you. Invisible scars never heal beneath official dispensation. Oh what a happy accident for those who escaped. Who wonder still, did I, really? Or did they just let me? There is a thunder that comes from below and you can feel it without any shoes. The voice of the earth to breach echo in your bones. And yes, it is a bright shinning asylum that gleams like no other structure made by man. That we know of. If there were any others, they would have been blotted out. We lived forever once. But only once. And pain was not something you caused any other being, but rather the pulling away of everything from everything inside of you and all you could see or imagine....or remember. Like when you asked the FBI agent if you could hold his Tommy Gun. Like when you asked the priest if he felt sad without a girlfriend. You all saw your mothers at one time or another, on their knees, trying to make sense of some fledgling garden she had to put together, like a wounded bird singing as it falls. Your brother, you sister, your best friend were illuminations of pure, unbound soul. But you saw it coming. You saw the dark hand and the iron rose for you knew that word they used damned back the deepest of darkest blood: sacrifice.

The shadows of their heads dance across the feet of the statued saints. The incense and wax, the walls and organ timbres stained by endless petition and repetition for mercy, dear god, mercy. The other shadows that dance on the rose window above the tabernacle are from the branches of the ash trees reaching out toward the setting sun that glows up past the gulleys of the dead volcano. You saw every living thing as spirit and every object as a jewel, and each and all with it's own fascinating joy and best kept secreted sublimated horror. You wanted to but you knew you never could, you dreamed of it, but you never did, really, join in. Everyone disappeared inside these spellbound bodies.

Everyone became a slave and there was no where to hide. You don't want power. You don't want beauty. You don't even want love. There is nothing that survives the wanting of it. So you remember, singing in the choir. You remember letting out your voice like a valve opening up to unsteam your heart and your remember the beauty of a world that disappears as you behold her and vanish into her dust.

Subliminal Political Religious Somnambulism

Partisan politics is like religion. You promote your beliefs and deny all forms of contradictory information. Facts and testimonials that refute your wishful agenda are either ignored or sidestepped by character assassination of whichever message bearer most conveniently fills that role. One is not automatically intelligent because they are not a rightist. I know republicans who are in most other ways quite intelligent and resourceful, but they listen to Rush Limbaugh (some will say "just for the entertainment value", but when I challenge them on it and ask why they think it is funny, and they let all the race cards fall out of their deck, then I am able to say...so it isn't for the entertainment value - that is how you view women and minorities). Very large and powerful structures exist designed to tell people what they want to hear. Other structures exist within those that artfully engineer what people think they want.

Imagine you go to a cafe. There are two items on the menu: Pork chops and clam chowder. You do not like either. Before you got to the cafe along the way there were a variety of subliminal advertising schemes aimed at you as to preferring pork or chowder. So much so, that - by the time you sit down at the cafe, you are thinking, gee, what do I want, pork or chowder (forgetting that you do not like either and would normally only eat them if it was being served at your grandmother's insufferably hot apartment). The next great step is to chose one lest you look indecisive or leave since you have been convinced of your own hunger. So...chowder it is! Eventually, you run into someone who hates chowder as much as you do and says "I hate chowder, I ate pork!" Well who do these fuckers think they are, anyway, acting like they are too good for chowder! But for an "h" it doesn''t matter what you ate. So it is like religion. You are born into this crappy belief system just like the guy who walks into the crappy cafe. Jesus, wow, he sounds good, but what about the Prophet, blessed be his name, or gosh, look down here at the curved side of the menu at this Buddha dude, and who holy moly - who is this Shiva, anyway? Trouble is it is usually fed to you before you can even talk and say "Why do you believe this shit?" Nothing against Jesus, orThe Mahdi, nothing against clams or pigs, either. But people start taking it personally and that is when it gets serious. Religion does to politics what Call of Duty does to remote warfare. Normalizing extreme behavior does not happen in the crappy cafe, but it makes it possible by making sure that people who are unhappy with the choices are not given an alternative and not even served and that people who swallow what they hate learn that it is best to defend it rather than explain how they ended up with luminous worms crawling in their feces before they flushed the toilet. I've always been a chowderman, always will be! Stupid pork eaters, can't they see what stupid fucking idiotic morons they are? God, my stomach hurts. Why are my stools so gray? Godamned leftist communist takers, fucking freeloaders. Idiotic low information right wing brain washed fascist zombies. To hell with pork!

I know you smartassed pig eaters think I'm stupid but deep in your hearts you know Chowder is the best, you really do. And fuck you if you don't like it! chowder, christian, atheist, republican, pork ribs, democrat, Rosicrucian, kumquat, veggie dog, it's a war of ideas being fought over the illusion of your right to choose! Those who actively engage seem mostly to be limited to changing hypnotists or, if they aren't insured, developing a taste for their own vomit and moving on from there.