the ancient egyptians believed that if the names of the dead were still spoken in the land of the living that they would continue to live on in the next life as well. with that in mind,

chris
austin
dave
rhapsody

i miss you all, and hope the next life treats you better than this one did.

Skeletal Closet Blues

I've got some men hanging from my branches, swaying side to side as I walk
Skeletal closet blues
I've got hounds gnawing and gnashing at my back, smaller ones lapping
up the blood
Skeletal closet blues
I'm running away
The blues will stay
And they'll follow
Ain't that a paradoxical
Half-maniacal
Walking death sentence
The skeletal closet blues

Liquor is Love as Water

There’s a ghost & he lies in my bed

He has a beautiful face

but lacks a beautiful name

He kissed me on the mouth

& told me that I myself was beautiful

By morning, his soul was gone

Fleeted with an apology

“Moving on to the next life, mama.”

Throw some change in my direction

‘Cause this scenery needs a fresh take

Everything adds up to dollars and sense

Each breath, mile, sip & smoke

Drags me back for the same price to the same place

I’d like to grow new skin

& exchange my used organs for new ones

like products sold on late-night television

with lifetime replacement warranties

But here you go darlin',

You can have my old ticker,

Free of charge

No shipping or handling

No cash on delivery

You can use it as a pair of shoes

Lace them tightly to your feet

So I can feel where you’ve been

You’ve been vomiting romantic words

Naked in your kitchen

Coming up as bubbles

& I won’t say much

Because my nerves are shot

& I must remain delicate

But you’re the type of bad habit

Mothers warn their daughters about

The kind of guy that'll make

a perfectly good woman go mad.

Do you love every dish

that’s put in front of you

with a side of booze

or am I the only one?

either shine or set

Weather Report

Woody Guthrie wrote This Land Is Your Land
in February of 1938,
hitchhiking through Pennsylvania
on his way to New York. He felt
the mountain range wind laughing.
Over lean miles, he lay on his back,
feeling for the rumble on coming traffic
to disturb the unstirring wilderness.
There was no road but his road,
as I-80 dreamt him along.

If you look for America there, you'll see it
passing you in scenes, standing like billboards on the highway,
moving pictures of the great, empty
Sunday supper.
The oak doorway straining in the
weather. The toll road charming your
last few dollars. The chyrons pronouncing that
the corners have been turned. It's like the
bookmark melting into the page. The field
slowly becoming forest.

My father brought pieces of America with him
when he left. There was the dirt on his boots.
He held onto the sky in his pockets.
He could throw it on the wall, and it would
slowly drip into a mess on the floor.
This was not something he would worry about.

Remember, these roads are still holding
a space for you. Remember that Woody Guthrie
stood
in the middle of Pennsylvania
in February
and he saw beauty.

Revoluting

Revoluting

by fLOT 

Coagulating sunshine and blue sky

Melted into my mind

Sentences framing words

Cancelling wanderings

I had scheduled

Little mental developments

Snowballing with gravity

Explaining what we all can see

Suggestions and suggestability

Propose ideas inside of me

I vocalize the floating systems

Allowing and debilitating actions

Concrete in my head developing

Explanations of the edified extrapolations

Fancy words sound good together

Voiding the mindless meandering

Pushing pulling lifting and culling

Ripping open new realms

Tipping over old carts full of cartographers

Mapping the revoluting culture and language

Against the moments we live inside and around

Barely understanding whatever we can

Happy to have that

Happy to have anything

1.31.11

Santa Cruz, CA

I Call This One Telling

houses lay unbroken
'til I 'grace' a new front door
you could be the newest victim
precious on the floor

spilling drinks in dining rooms
where mothers served your meals
new grounds for the fallen boys
and all their deals

put me in your mouth
and spit me hard against the ground
I've not been the worst mistake
since the last you found

ring the bells in town square
grace me with the fetid stench
of one more lonely hidden ace
on a picnic bench

she can say all he can sway
together there's a game
put the bloody toys away
award their fame

the loser and the gambler here
are skewed and so the same
the mark is stamped on champions
with dangerous names

they take the knives of suits and ties
and brand a grand new noose
they'll wrap it 'round your neck and claim
they hung you loose

forget the bloody bottom
when you see the shiny top
if bitter boys will kill you
for your bottle tops

no viet cong ever called me a cab

if it isnt this place or these people...the faces that dont match the names...i remember vinegar and the way she caressed my skin with that lint brush and limp wrist wore slacks to fit in with the neighbors...letting you smash yourself to pieces against my better judgement was a privilege i've pushed to deserve all my life...ive been waiting for something more...to look forward to daybreak with clay dust on my boots...

brand new brain same ol venom
and a heart i break out of habbit
disregard the moments where i swore i would recover
idiots play with the sharpest tools

An excerpt from a poem by God

Anything more than a dream
Is just a reality

Reflecting on the ceremony

I wanted my suicide to be more like a marriage
...With all of my friends there
Like lifting off to another world
We shake hands and say goodbye
Liars. Druggies. Tramps. Thieves.
Comedians, all, drinking the derelict night into oblivion.
As per our vows, death and I walk away into the shadows, lovers eternal.

Italics

Italics

We entered into italics

through the font door

bent on any emphasizing of

the unmentioned qualities of

a word inside a context or

text chopped up re-arranged

in a different order

some hop skotch hodge podge

indicating how often

Bill cut-up his words versus

Jack’s essentials of spontaneous prose roses

of cutting beauty in

immediate form never nurtured.

The way never changed (much any way)

after the original preconceptions

proved to be remembered

to paper’s posterity permanently.

8.13.oh ate

fLOT

Rita Hayworth

I have this picture of Rita Hayworth

on my desktop.

She’s chowing down on

a sandwich

much too big for her mouth.

I love this picture.

Gorgeous Rita caught

in an unattractive moment

reminds me that we’re all ugly sometimes,

and we’re all beautiful, too.

Because Rita, she’s still gorgeous

but now it’s because she’s human.

She’s not just a poster on my wall;

a beauty of the Silver Screen;

She’s sitting on the beach,

stuffing her face because

she’s hungry

and it makes me feel good ‘cause

I get really hungry sometimes, too.

The Ballerina

The winter's thorns
stick her fingers through her gloves
she slow dances alone
in her bedroom at the mirror
she cuts herself out of all her pictures
and piles herself on the bureau
she doesn't want to see
where she's been before
the ballerina twirls on the music box
the yellow light softens the walls
and she thinks that someday
it'll kill the flowers on the paper
she takes off daddy's dog tags
slips them beneath her pillow
an ambulance blares a siren through her window
and the ballerina ends the dance
she sweeps herself into a valentine chocolate box
puts her background scraps in the trash
blows her mirror a soft kiss
that doesn't make the noise
and continues an open ended prayer

Constant Motion

In constant movement,

we stop for awhile

to contemplate Jupiter,

or point out Orion,

his great belt of stars

sparkling in the night.

We stand silent,

only for a moment,

in awe of the heavens

in all their infinity.

And, here, I think of the vastness

of the world around us;

The universe, forever pushing outward,

expanding farther into nothingness;

Conquering the outer-space of

outer-space

in some holy search,

like Cortez, mad on greed,

exploring South America,

looking for Gold.

Us, too:

forever wandering,

searching for gold

at the bottom of

pints of beer.

Or in the pools

of a pretty girl’s eyes

on a winter night.

days, they dance into
one another
the nights
swirl
sultry summers sway away
the trees, now a golden explosion
autumn leaves, confetti-like

and all the cigarettes smoked
and all the wine drunk
and all the music played
and all the spoken word

and all the wide-eyed tomorrows

Contemplation

in a building that's filled with info and knowledge, i am left feeling like a shriveled, dried sponge. i lag. each day here gets bleaker and bleaker. i desire bigger buildings, enormous knowledge, growth.

The Swirling Cosmos

I am all I need
Everything else is accessory
The world, it's sky, and the stars inside
They are all mine
And it will all reel back inside me
At the end of time

I Love The Memory, Still

Right or wrong, I wouldn't mind to see you
I wouldn't mind to see you
I wouldnt mind believing you
It's been so hard to reach through
Words are so brittle
Shattering in the air into dust
That gets caught on our inward breaths
We call it conversation
We say "won't you come with me?
Won't you have some wine? With me?"
But no one else says it like me, to you

Flirting and Agriculture on the Westcoast - or -how to keep warm throughout the trim season

He lifted her up

They climbed the ladder onto the dry shed roof
Big beautiful and freshly built
And sat there with the stars
Late in October
Smoking cut cigarettes
being strangers becoming friends

It's quite something else
The way the seasons turn out here
Everything is mostly evergreen
With an occasional deciduous treat
The flood of memories that rush in with the spotting of a yellow or orange leaf.
Can you still smell fall out there?
I miss each and every pile of brown wet leaves raked by the side of the road.
Here it all burns.

The seasons change out west is marked by harvest. Something equally extraordinary happens this time of year, as miles of brilliant color littering the Garden State Prkwy distract drivers from the monotony of their commute, mother natures beautiful locks of foliage attracting out of town oglers, the western lands are alive and buzzing with an influx of transient eager faces all on the same mission.

Come harvest time a certain caliber of folk are gathered together. Friends of friends of friends who may know a friend or two of yours, mostly strangers, travel from literally all over the world to become a part of this community. To live and work together, sequestered on farms hidden in the landscape at the end of private dirt roads in remote valleys. Families are born.

I guess you wouldn't consider it dissimilar to a typical working environment in some aspects. You are there to get paid, and you may not get along with all your colleagues. Some days are productive, some asi asi. But one overwhelming difference is that at the end of a 9-5 work day (so to say) you get to go home. During harvest you're already home.

You have chosen to become part of a whole. You work eat play and grow as one. You cook meals for your 20+- family members. You sort out misunderstandings and calculate costs. You roll your ankle in the mud. You fix atv's and generators. You tell stories. You turn buses into bunk houses. You fend off rippers and put out fires. You catch moths with the littles and welcome new family with hot tea and coffee. You sing and dance and joke and laugh. You fight. You take cigarette and beer orders before you drive into town. You help a family member get to the clinic 1 and 1/2 hours away for an abortion. You explore. You feed the livestock and cry when you lose a goat. You celebrate birthdays. You learn. You listen. You run out of water and refill the tank. You walk up the road to search for reception. You avoid poison oak. You climb up ladders onto dry shed roofs. You make family outta strangers.

3 to 5 months later you part ways
Pockets full
Lives changed
Strangers not so strange.
And you keep in touch and you don't forget.
maybe you'll see them around the same time next year
Or at a show or festival
But that's a whole other story revolving around an even larger family

You miss it when it's gone
You enjoy the freedom of the trade
Nothings really free though.
There's a lot of risk and even more money involved.
If I wanted to fool around with numbers and other peoples money all day I would have become a stock broker or investment banker
Whatever.
Not everyone loves every facet of their profession
I sure do love my family though
And taking chances
And ladders and rooftops and late October stars
And remembering the smell of fall on the east coast....