Back and Beautiful

I'm back from a beautiful location where I enjoyed good friends. Here's a poem by Cochise.

When I was young I walked all over
this country, east and west, and saw
no other people than the Apaches.

After many summers I walked again

and found another race of people
had come to take it. How is it?

Why is it that the Apaches wait to die–

that they carry their lives on their fingernails?
They roam over the hills and plains
and want the heavens to fall on them.

The Apaches were once a great nation;

they are now but few, and because
of this they want to die and so
carry their lives on their fingernails.

Beautiful Beaches

I'm thinking of sunsets and palms and my main girls dressed like savages. How wonderful.

The Pope Is Dead

He was killed this morning when his plane

clipped the wings of an archangel & crashed
into some tasty boarding surf outside Honolulu.

Heaven is in real time. Eternity seems like the present.

Wild grass skirts fly round on native hips.
Nets & fish flip in hollowed canoes.

The Pope owns an island on a whale's back.

His feet look as though he still lives.
The blood of Christ spews from the blowhole.

Slippin & Trippin

Days get harder all the time. No Boom Boom, though. We're still here. Well, many of us are. The world ended for quite a few on this day and every day. I am still not able to post an image. Help me Womba!
Here's a prose poem for the ladies.

Shotgun Annie

Years before she bragged she could kill any man, Annie never flinched when her mother blistered her ass with an egg-turner. She hid in the under-sink cabinet & touched the blisters with dish washing liquid. Thick lemon goo stained her panties.

“I wouldn’t marry a man wouldn’t dive into broken glass,” Annie told her only friend. “I’m a spider. I’ll kill my mates.”

Daddy gave her a shotgun for sweet sixteen. He thought it'd bring her out. She found it wrapped in butcher’s paper under a dead cow. Annie wasn’t afraid of decaying hide, wasn’t afraid to get her hands bloody.

No one noticed her until it happened. People heard the shots & formed a crowd. A severed hand, blown away at the wrist, lay on the ground. Annie prodded the hand with the shotgun’s smoking barrels.

Outta History

I have run dry of the musical history (if ya knew how long it took me to write even that...), so a poem will have to do. If you enjoy my art, I'm sorry there is none tonight. It wouldn't let me load for some reason. Oh, well. World's gonna end tomorrow and nothing really matters. Yes, you are already dead. Boom boom!

The Babies

One was left on a doorstep. The family thought at first it was a newspaper. After a few hours it was handed to police.

Next day babies covered every yard. One was even found under a cabbage leaf. “Just listen for lungs,” Grandpa said.

Before a week had passed, babies owned the town. Every house was full of screaming infants. Who knew what to do? Human Services came in. The workers became exhausted.

By the end of the month, most babies died without care. It was all the town could do to haul them away before the dogs ate. Little bones littered the fields.

The people left the town to the babies. Piles of baby bodies grew so high a hundred bulldozers couldn’t push them under.

Slippery History 2

This might get messy before it gets finished. I'm determined to push through, though a few gaps may develop between posts, and very soon the cronology will vanish, but hopefully return in the big picture.

The King's music played an important part in the family's daily routine. My aunts accumulated quite a stack of Elvis 45's, many of them reissued hits packaged with two and sometimes even three songs per side. By stacking five or six discs on the fat, seven inch, 45 accommodating changer, the girls could dance and sing along for twenty or better minutes at a time. This sort of concert, as a warm-up to The Mickey Mouse Club and American Band Stand, took place in granny's living-room each day after school. We listened to hits like (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear, Jailhouse Rock, Love Me Tender, and many others. The drums between stanzas on Hound Dog drove me wild, but my favorites included Trouble, King Creole, Crawfish, and Blue Christmas.

Granny programmed the morning concert. After everyone left for school or work, she loaded a stack on the Phillips changer and sent it whirling while making beds, sweeping floors, and washing dishes. If the stack finished before the chores, she repositioned it and repeated the sequence. Not a morning went by without the song One Night, possibly her favorite, playing background to the housework. Elvis's impassioned vocal on that cut is one of his all time best and still packs quite an emotional punch. I always loved the line, "I ain't never did no wrong."

Everyone in the house seemed excited when Elvis sang on TV. We watched the old Philco set from couch, floor, or rocking chair huddled together, often eating homemade fudge, wrapped, during winter, in blankets, or doing a little Elvising in the wind of a two bladed window fan during warmer months. For me, if Elvis was on, I was on.

Here's my band.

Slippery History

I've warned, since I began, that my musical history is coming, so here's the first page. I'm gonna keep going until I finish or die. Don't miss the picture at the end.

My Musical History

I can't say what music I first heard because radio or television played constantly at my granny's home, which housed my mom and me, three aunts, and, depending on military commitments, dad and an uncle. My first musical memory involved hearing The Crabby Appleton Theme while watching Tom Terrific cartoons from a wooden playpen in the middle of the living-room. At the time (probably 1958) we lived in a log cabin at the intersection of Oak Grove and Hiwassee roads. I remember sitting with my youngest aunt on the high bank that led from the front yard down to Oak Grove road as she practiced marching band songs on clarinet. One evening during a storm the whole group, with me on granny's lap, sat around the living-room listening to our huge wooden cabinet radio until a power surge fried the electronics and permanently turned it into furniture.

Later that same year, Granny moved into a new house on the Old Athens Road beside the western entrance of Greenwood Circle. The music there came from a 25 inch Philco b/w television, unknown brand radio, and a Phillips Electro 45 rpm record player. As long as my teenaged aunts lived in the house (the youngest one left in 1963), I listened to their records and watched whatever the grown-ups watched on television. After seeing Elvis, I started carrying around a plastic, toy guitar strung with four red nylon strings that I plucked while singing mostly disparate lyrics and moving my legs in a way (which I referred to as Elvising) that resembled the Funky Chicken. Everyone in the family seemed to get a big kick out of it, so I did it a lot. While visiting a friend in the hospital, I slipped away from mom, who later found me doing my act in the room of some poor fellow recovering from the resent loss of his legs. Mimicking The King's songs and moves always made me feel good, so I wanted to spread that around.

My newest synth.

Ready to Peel

Remember, ya can't step on a banana peel if you smoke it. I leave with a poem and a picture.

The Origin of the Moon

A fissure has opened

in Vito’s head. It has
funneled to the skull.
Gnaw marks scar
the bleaching bone.
The running hole
is filthy with roots.

Slanted to the crown’s

left, it draws his left
eye to constantly strain
in search of the self.
The right one moves
erratically, as in dream
sleep, confused by
information splits
causing a serious
navigational problem.

A violent typhoon roars

in Vito’s brain, skewing
his thoughts in circles.
Calm central communications
never make sense. Vito’s feet,
blindly confident, search
for ground. Each watery step
turns his ankles as brain wind
pushes against a soft outlet.

A tumorous membrane,

forming balloon-like from
a frothy sore, rapidly inflates,
resting yellow & fragile
on a cushion of hair.

A cemetery has pulled Vito in.

He walks among the graves
like a mourning relative. Light fades
as the sun droops. Granite heated
tombstones buffer against night air.
Vito rests at one, his fingers searching
for a date, the sun finally gone,
replaced by twinkles.

Body fluids have shifted toward

the tumor. Vito grabs it & pulls.
It pops free & rolls into space,
reflecting the sun. Vito feels
the slimy hair, his eyes
relaxed, asleep.

Vito awakens cold.

Heat has left the stones.
The tumor, a sick harvest moon,
undulates uncertainly beneath the stars.
Vito shakes off the dew, his arms
slinging round his torso,
thankful for even a cold rest,
though he worries the magnitude
of a new heavenly order.

“All telescopes will turn this way,”

he says to himself. “I will
learn of tides, maybe get a talk show.
I’m sure this is not the end of
salvation, mythology, or television.”

Sticking Out

I'm thinking about things, but not well enough to write about them. Hopefully my head will soon clear and allow some real discourse. Until then...

Head Hunters

Every night we look for fresh heads.

Ripe ones come off the stalk
like eager sprouts & roll along or stop
depending on excess neck.

We call floppy eared heads Elmers.

They get punched & kicked a lot.
Some guys bash em with sledges to see
how far the eyes'll pop. The record's 3 foot 3.

I like cold misty nights

when I drop my clothes
& carry a woman’s head
across a farm's sacred ground.

Being old vets of the block,

the chickens keep their necks
close to the roost. Their tight gullets
swallow hard beneath the ax’s song.

But handsome heads turn up everywhere.

You can fill a football stadium with em.
I wish it were better sport to find so many.
Every night we look for fresh ones.

Short and Sweet

I have a nasty, piercing pain in me gulliver today, but at least there's time for poem and a picture.

Religious Crisis

If God is dead, who

was that I saw at your house
yesterday morning?

Not Comfy

Today is Jack Bruce's birthday. I'm happy he's still around. Though known mostly as the bass player for the late 1960's band Cream, I like the multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/composer that he was (and is) at the very same time. With lyricist Pete Brown, Bruce wrote many classic Cream songs like Sunshine of Your Love, White Room, Swlabr, Passing the Time, As You Said, Deserted Cities of the Heart, and I Feel Free. In addition to his bass, cello, and vocal work, he was also, at least in the studio, the band's keyboard player. To a large extent, it was Bruce's compositions and keyboarding that turned balanced the band's bluesbreaking free-form improvisations with studio work that sounded more like an electric chamber orchestra, in the same vein as The Beatles and Zappa, than some guys who came up playing in pubs.
Bruce's live improvisation is some of the most lyrical I've heard. He doesn't play lines so much as he plays around, sometime all over, a line. Frank Zappa said that Bruce was busy, didn't care to play the root, had other things on his mind. All true, but all exciting. Listen to the result of their jam, Apostrophe', and you'll hear it. With Cream Jack Bruce drove Clapton to places he would never have ventured alone.
Bruce's groundbreaking solo album, Songs for a Tailor, presents some of the most interesting song forms of the period, including his subtle version of Theme from an Imaginary Western, a song covered by his producer's band, Mountain.
If you love music and/or bass playing, you gotta give ol Jack a try.
Happy Birthday, Jack Bruce!

Here's a poem from my archive. After that a picture, and so long.

A Snowy Evening

We slaughtered a cow in the barn

while still light enough to divide,
then went our ways, each with a share,
sorry to kill but thankful to eat.

The grey dusk pelted white flake

before becoming invisibly dark.
Nothing hurried headlights or the few trucks
passing deserted fields & knotty pines.

My own sense of sleep weighed the air.

Head, hoof, & shoulder rested easily
in the bed behind the cab, but inside,
words cheated me with silence.

Near home, I stopped to survey a bridge

I had to cross. Covered by wood & snow,
it waited deep as a hole in night.
I considered the other side.

The steady truck engine

forced me to make my mind.
As I drifted closer & closer to sleep,
I drifted closer & closer to sleep.

Introduction

Hi, folks. I'll be posting stuff as it comes to me. Check often because stuff comes to me all the time. I'll go on and put a few things here to show ya what I mean, and then...you know the rest. kf

Underwater

In the years I lived underwater,

I feared crabs more than spiders.

Often I would wake to see

my shoes hermit away, little

shells left by where they were.

Now I live in a box of corners & shades.

My shoes remain stationary in sleep,

but sometimes grow webbed in the toe.

Where the division of light & darkness is

so distinct, it frightens me to worry the morning.

Everything here is surrounded by air.

It offers little resistance or buoyancy. I feel

like a pearl diver unable to come up.

My only hope is that

birds are the fish of heaven.