I'm a lay down for the train
go up like propane
like cocaine
like inverse
kleptomaniac
lint garden
in my obverse
hybrid
dessicated
sauerkraut
proboscis

I'm running a theft ring
out the back door of the Salvation Army

he screamed
into the ruins
of his coffee
cup

shattered there on the floor

shipped out
to the containment and relocation center
to be
shaved
tagged
frozen
packaged
and launched into oblivion

see what your comet hath wrought

*

I am devoting the rest of this blog to crazy
like back in the good ole days

why the fuck not

I think you will like it
better

embrace your blues
when they are
all you've got

you disappear into it and it transforms you

*

resist being waylaid by behavioral incongruities

*

all them mistakes you made make for a lotta blues

I am an expert in making myself feel bad

must do better must do more must

flip benighted

The hard frost cobalt
as my pace, theme and rhythm.
Myopia wins.

ones and twos

Never mind your blues.
Let the day be your water.
Time is but a blade.

distance

The morning moon rises.
My harbinger is elected,
Imminent calliope.

ripped

He sidled into the club
With that singular sense of self
That in the past was just smashing
His head into some fuckin wall,
bescrawled
above a urinal

smash it in there
shithead
where'd that
get you before

it got me a ticket
that said
I quit,
I'm afraid
To play
with the big folk

I'm a flea
The eagles
don't fly for me

Right turn, Clyde.

Phyrin Blanks found his voice yesterday
(finally)
Heaped under a pile
Of myth and allegory
At least he thought he found it
Never can be too sure
The world might say,
"It sounds fake to us."
Anyway,
How many more times can I lose this key?
Thought Phyrin,
while behind him, beyond
The pine and thistlestraw berm
That couched in his backyard
The long highway
rumbled and hissed
Same as yesterday,
And the day before,
and you get the picture;
Phyrin did. He took a pull
of Paisano
and mused:
The need to be technical,
he said to himself,
Technical expertise,
yeah,
so that's it
You've got to be so technical
if you want to maintain that easy inward way
Your own counsel kept,
not quite a secret,
Just invisibly trying to admit that
further reality
blue and silver
gold and red
aurally
arranged and fed
you gotta Let It In
to arrive at that weirdly
elusive yet no longer
deferred vista
That the all the world's
ambivaloids
but also the good folks at home
Just aint seen.

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed

Cheezymandias crows to the girls:
I'm all grown now,
and ready to glint
away nightly
like the purple cosmos,
that sparkly span
so vast and clean,
rolling out
across the iron desert

His shirt pocket leaking
amber petals, a red rain
trailing at his feet
of mossy green,
He says, I am replete
With the new information;
I have the magic lamp.
Rub it and see
Me as I am,
For once
and all

Far down below
that vast plateau
in the town
of darkling night
the ambivaloids,
cowl and shawl,
tend to their
minor mead
and cornstock,
kettles,
biding time,
laughing over that one fool,

that drunk damned fool,
did you see him?
he lost his shoes,
must have thrown them away.
drunk damned fool,
stems and mites all in is hair.
Look at him passed out there
beside the wash,
lolling
glassyfaced in the hedge
just past the old school,
scrabbling for his greasy
specs

Well, that aint our Cheezy.
Not no more.
No. Our hero learned about 100 years ago
All about the crashing and the burning
And the lashing and the yearning and the cashing in on
A certain singular but outlandish understanding
of
(drum roll please
but no. Cheezy don't kiss and tell
no more
and won't kiss
and tell
no more,
no nevermore)

Shit. 11 years.
I say
that's a long fuckin time
for to be down
in the blink of an eye.
Yeah yeah yeah
And all of that
And all of that
But those should have been good years
For to have cut from your hide
But no,
Mr. Hide, oh no, Mr. Hide
long time there, Mr. Hide,
long time there, buddy,
Love you long time,
Mr. Hide,
Me love you long time
Mr. Hide,
Mr. Hide,
Mr. Hide
Me love you long time,
Mr. Hide

Cue that guitarissimo

Oh,
11 years, up and walking like a man
11 years, up and walking like a man
Say hello to Satan
Give him your right hand
And the blues fell mama's child
And it tore me all upside down;
And the blues
Is an aching old heart disease
And if you aint ever had it,
I hope you never will

Anyway,
11 years comes crashing down
from out the balcony
But flipping catlike
at the last,
he claims the stage,
11 years
gone and down
and back and up again from eating sand
And being like, Me no understand???
And all like that.
No:
Now he's up and grinning like a fox
on furlough,
a very fox,
and one on furlough.

ah, the grief the love the rage
the needless rage,
the heedless rage
the baseless breedless rage,
and fuck,

page after self-indulgent
page
after page after page
they all drift away now
Like ashes
On autumn smoke,
a bonfire,
October leaves,
Burning.
Take a toke before you...

Cheezy now,
come on now
Cheezy now.

Come storming back
upon your thunderous steed,
no mere mare or stallion but
a bronco of deep maroon and gold,
and you with your guitar slung low,
just like one of the breed,
just like Mr. Chain Blue Lightning
hisself,
the very same

Get the wine and get the mead,
9 million barrelsful,
Quickly now,
it's a gonna be a feast,
a return unlimited engagement
of 11 thousand nights
or 11 million shows,
whichever comes shambling first
from out and down along
that dusty cimarron road,
surging and shimmering
clear away
and gone
from the past

the great engine is getting up in the morning
and etching yourself onto the day
can't you understand that
once and for all
and never forget?

the great engine is all that you do
nothing more, nothing less
can't you understand that now
once and well
never again to forget?

wheeling birds
wheeling stars
wheeling embers
fireflies
twilight
thoughts
human energies
whatever's all
in the sky
in the night
in the light
is the great engine
the one true
you and you

can you understand that
once now and
again?

oh, I just remembered

that the grind gets exponentially easier if you just listen listen listen to all the music all the music you can find for fuh fuh fucking free on the fucking Internet while you grind it; never mind easier it is the only way to bear it, the grind

this is a tandem thing now

I'd like to post some songs here

soon's I get my shit digital

*

art megalomania
was never a good
trip

grind grind grind this is a grind grind grind you've got to grind grind grind
to get through to the open land
cantankerous glutton you're a hard guy to feel sorry for
went back and read your letters and I have to say
they did not feel like me and they did not move me
you need to pen yourself a slogan that can wrap up the pas
match yourself like you are gas

*

patterns, I see what you mean about the patterns.
the great debt, the great karmic debt. the reds
the whites
the blues
the blacks
and green and gold

momentary blasts of eternity
sound
that's some slab
boy
that's some chunky
(come again?)

*

the old old ways the old old ways
signal back, indicate
show don't tell
don't feel like hell
don't drink too much
don't think too much
lurk
work
don't
be a
jerk

*

some things you should crush out dead
like your last cigarette
and other things you think you've killed
you realize later can never die
never go away
these things that are a part of you
that are more than just you
I'm talking about the big picture
the big groove
the big spinning platter
round and round
cathedral canyons
craters
of sound

*

it is a storytelling device
and a meditative device
and your dogged savior
it is
your guitar
and you own
it

they don't believe it and she don't believe it none of them can see it but I have always been able to see it when I have looked for it and what's more now is that can see it as I hear it and do it. only he knew who he was dealing with. it was ok. lots of people had the same knack. the thing was to blow out the whole huge tapestry and panorama. i said for me it is mainly a narrative tool, a tool for the waking dream. there is a lot that goes into it, a lot of absorbing. to take notes on it like this and like those over there is really really boring and not cool why do you do it well it is just a way in on a tired day but you know what they say practice makes the man they never believed him they thought he was crazy because it drove him that way once but he believed it and it was an act of belief that sealed it

oh fuck it can't you see that I'm just trying to purge out the page

crude and humble Aslan Billy Bibbit analog tapes Radio Shack the blues personal shapes own your influences be that human song yeah yeah yeah it went yeah yeah yeah and no no no

there it is there it is

forty lines, he said
alright you write em and I'll sing em up for ye
no, he said you've got to sing them in the cave
what cave
the cave by the meadow
what meadow
the meadow by the blacksmith's
what blacksmith
aren't you the blacksmith?
no, the only thing I've ever been handy
with around the house is a guitar
look at these fabulous lithe long-legged creatures
I can't see them
you have to be asleep to see them
asleep where
asleep on the berm overlooking the road
5 am creeping slow in the snow
the new morning snow
good night kid you got a long
way to go till morning but let
that song be your light
red blue and green
synesthesian late bloomer
is all I have been
forget that past
put in in a webcast
lash yourself to the mast
and give them the show
pseudonymous
pure
hidden
obscure
and with
terrible allure

you too can be an anonymous loser
with rage problems
and a pseudonymous champion
and echo channeler
it's easy all you gotta do is
believe and stop cursing it

I shaved into the face of radio

Pixillated by decibels
They all got crazy themed
In the synesthesia
They all got clinical
Lycanthropy in the masts
They all got subsumed jejune
In mercenary gloom
They all said terrible things
Screamed them really
In the three forty a m

And it was all because of fear
And burnout and fear of burnout
And it was all in the song
Of her and for her and another
For her and
You changed the names but
Not the ideas; you shaved into

To the face of a late bloomer and said
Hey, at least I still got

My radio

woah now

that was fast
I have so much to tell you about
and so much left to tell

does it

still respond

yes it does

it was a good age

for soulful introverts

suoena ropmetxe

need to change strings all
damn if I aint been the 50 dolla beeter
of hot sweaty
i used to what happened
you could all day till shred
it still wouldn't what's
going to get is else
and cares who if you playin
it's I do these but no
tired cube boring cube this is
don't you  how I should
just go now want
now good no this
then
transform
no
delete

every fifth word

saltare

Woodshed One (WS1) closed with my purchase of a sweeeeeeet used Martin DCM acoustic-electric, bought in the western part of the state, just over the mountain, where I seem to get all my good guitars and dogs. I ought to move there some day.

An account of buying the guitar and moreover all that led up to it is something that might bear more telling here. But not today.

As WS1 closes, my hands and ears are back in it.

Now for my mind and dreams.

Thereby, by the power vested in this File of 313, i.e. the spot exegesis of the forthcoming ode and canticles of MaughtPassaconnaCraughmby, I herewith declare by THIS word that Woodshed Two (WS2) is now officially on.

Wherein I reach for and attain new, unforeseen levels of acumen compentency ability technique execution and all that good stuff

*

Stamina. Stamina is your watchword and key. In performance and in outlook.

Hold. Hold.

*

musicthewordsoundsjustlikemusicmusicthewordsoundsjustlikemusicmusicthewordsoundsjustlikemusicmusicthewordsoundsjustlikemusicmusicthewordsoundsjustlikemusic

be more like the dolphin

The same experiment was repeated with humans, and it took the volunteers about the same length of time to figure out what was being asked of them. After an initial period of frustration or anger, the humans realised they were being rewarded for novel behaviour. In dolphins this realisation produced excitement and more and more novel behaviours - in humans it mostly just produced relief.

and again

Advice for gentlemen:

Fuck your wife, but don't fuck with your wife.

*

Meta-cognition, the old thinking about the thinking, uh huh, that's the spark for it

*

The quest. The quest.

the keys

The keys are within you; you need only to find them.

your word of the day

It's all about passion, boys and girls. And being passionate. Finding that passion for that particular thing -- whatever it is for you -- and holding on it. Feeding it.

That is all.

*

The three visual artists I was ever real friendly with (2 guys I used to run with and 1 girl who broke my heart all to pieces) were all kind of ruthless characters. Brilliant, charming and ruthless. Fucking Capricorns all. Probably not, but it sounds better that way. I speak to none of them now. I like to find them online though, from time to time, to see what they're up to (they're all still in the game, big time). Creepy, right? And pathetic. Taboo even, in a certain sense. I still admire them all, but I think it's very likely that all of them think rather poorly of me -- if they even think of me at all. For various reasons and causes that I'm not real proud of. The one guy, a sculptor, I'm afraid he might think I owe him money, back from a deposit on an apartment we once held (which in fact I might, but I mean... hell); the other guy, the abstract expressionist (but also a hell of a draftsman and also a hell of an opportunist), I was friendly with at that particular point in time when I went batshit crazy for a few days and some ugly drama ensued; the girl who aspires to paint like this guy, well, I tried to give her those paintings back, she insisted I keep them out of some misplaced sense vanity, and I subsequently wrecked 'em in a drunken fit of rage and self-immolating despair. Then told her all about it. Nice guy, huh? For all of that, we parted on better terms than could have been expected, but then a few years later I drunk dialed her a couple of times, and for that I am ashamed because it is LAME.

But to hell with all that. What guy aint done that a time or two? (If you say it's you, I say you're lyin'.)

the word

1:49 pm

You need to think about this every day: that the word is what you're involved in, is what's paying the bills. And so it should pay the bills.

No matter what happens, your involvement with the word is key. Will be key.

The word has distinguished many a song. Never forget that.

*

It is an Alvarez Regent dreadnaught that I bought from a guy around here for $55. He had it advertised on craigslist last Friday along with a bunch of other guitars and parts of guitars and other junk.

Now, the first decent acoustic guitar I ever owned was an Alvarez. I think I must have traded it away eventually toward a better guitar. But I always liked that first guitar, even though the nut eventually came to buzz.

The guitar I got Friday has been put back together better than perhaps it first was, or so I like to think. The guy could certainly have sold it for more than he did. He could have asked more for it; but, that he didn't was part of the charm of the whole thing, the whole arrangement. It all seemed, as they say, meant to be.

The key thing is, these old Alvarez models have solid spruce tops and real rosewood fretboards. This is a big deal. A crack in the top of the guitar has been meticulously repaired (you can hardly see where); and the heel of the neck finely cut and re-glued.

The fucking thing has .012's on it and has had for over a month, according to the guy, and it seems solid as a rock. It's not a piece of junk; it's a real instrument, albeit a cheap one. And everyone's gotta have at least one cheap one, a beater. There is a certain charm to the cheap ones, a certain ineffable charm. Because if you can make it all sound real and right on cheap one, well, then you know you're onto something.

Yeah, it's my beater. But I could tell right away, in that way that you always can, from the very first E played, that the thing had some song in it. It's also my lone 6-string acoustic at this point. And I'm hanging on to it. I'm taking it camping next month, sure. Also, it means I can work on getting me fingerstyle chops together. Also, now I don't feel so antsy to spend 3x as much on a brand new cheap guitar. Oh no: I'd like the next 6-string I get to be a good one. A real good one. Like this one. Till then…

*

But I'm fucking kicking myself for ever selling off that old Taylor. How could I have? But I sure did. Because I quit, I fucking quit for years, I gave up, gave it all up, gave everything up, resigned, became resigned, gave in to my own complacency, chickened out, backed out, shut it down, shut it away.

And now I'm back.

And that is the great lesson: that you can come back, you can bring it back, you can bring yourself back, you can rise anew, you can return more powerfully than anyone could have ever imagined.

Like he said.

*

When I walked up to the dude's house last Friday eve, the dude with the guitar, the living room was pungent with the scent of incense, like he'd just smoked a fattie.

Too bad he didn't know exactly who he was dealing with. I'd have brought a six-pack of Coronas or fifty extra dollars, or what have you.

But I aint that lucky. Or at least, I wasn't.

stringent

9:27 am

It's hard. You've really got to be clinical in the way you choose to administer the discipline. Now that makes a lot of sense. I want to come in here and start writing right away, just to sort out my thoughts. It only took about 7 years to figure out that the Internet is for shit, just like TV. Except at least it can be read. No, see. It's just another tool. Like the man said, it's in the way that you use it.

It seems like there must be a perfect series of moves, that if I could just make the right ones, unerring, no false steps, maybe I could get to where I want to be. You have to be stringent in your administration of discipline. Maybe that's why I'm here. Maybe it's that I need to learn that lesson, learn it and hold it once and for all, before I'm able to advance.

un poco triste

Today I feel a burden
of regret over
past apathy.

A gnawing awareness
of every day
I've wasted.

We live in dark times.
We crave absolution.
We craft dark rhymes.

The Devil will account
for every malefactor,
great and small.
 
The best
you can do
is whatever  

you can do
to keep a sense
of hope alive.

We live in dark times.
We crave absolution.
We craft dark rhymes.

galaxies galore

11:19 am

what a morning, a tremendous morning, a tremendous tremendous morning

I don't want to explain it all at all, I don't want to jinx it. But of course there is no jinxing, just like there is no spoon harhar. Having to come into Work is kind of jinxy but not really the key is to stay grounded and realize that everything is indeed arranged just so and you just go with that

But remember you're just writing this in Word it's not like it absolutely must go up on the fucking blog, so write whatever, and that of course is another key. The other key is

(I have it all mapped out in my mind)

You know, in the last analysis you end up defining for yourself what it will be to "make it" and for me all it's going to involve at this point is my little analog tape recorder from Radio Shack, the old fashioned kind, notebooks and pens, my beat up old laptop used exclusively for Word, my Yamaha 12-string and my good old grey '87 Strat.

The thing about Strats is they get better with age, they really do, they really really do.

(Guitar. What a word. My favorite word. Aw yeah, babe.)

If I can write 'em all as fast as I wrote the one I wrote this morning they are going to pile up fast buddy and the riff for this one is really something that just came from a chord progression I was playing purely to practice switching clean and crisp from barre chords to open chords letting every note ring pure how lame is that but there it was. Then I came up with a line that the cyborg would speak and took it from there. Aw yeah babe.

Not going to divulge lyrics here. That was the great mistake of Maught Braughmby, in a certain sense. Wasting those kinda bullets in blogland is a big no-no. Blogs are for stupid self-referential bullshit. Never forget that.

So, roughed out probably around 15 verses. And just go from there. It's the Beizart thing but I'm a re-tool it all as I go. Making it up as I go. If I think too much about this I'll begin to have a(nother) nervous fucking breakdown. So: a little each day.

(Yeah, buddy. These are the Lessons. Put one foot in front of the other. And soon you'll be walkin' out the door. Aw yeah babe)

So anyway I came up with the riff and recorded it and then sang it, and I can't lie, it is pretty good.

Actually, it is the fucking Deal, baby.

But. The key being, you gotta keep going. Like the man said, way back in the day at some student art exhibition, The real shame of it is that he didn't make 50 more of 'em, just like this.

**

But golly, I could get a lot more done if I didn't drink at night while doing it. Stick to beer and sip slow, I guess. I start drinking that fucking Pinot and next thing I know I've just drunk a whole big bottle. Except: I won't lie, last night I really meant to, I really just felt like getting fucking ripped.

Great, great.

And so on another note: I finally figured out that memorizing the lyrics to the ole cover songs while driving in the truck is the way to take it. Because not knowing the words is a Major Problem. Because the other thing is, you really do, you really really do at some level have to be The Human Jukebox. As long, of course, that you're playing songs that you like. Because otherwise, as the sage must know, it aint really workin'.

And there are a veritable houseload of good cheesy songs out there for to play in bars and such, a veritable houseload. Because, at long last, playing out as much as much as is possible (an admitted known unknown) for $ is the next step, purely because I would like to be makin' more money for to buy more instruments, a good digital recorder, a killer amp, etc. See, and talking like this is what makes me nervous; it veers toward the territory of Wanting The Wrong Things. The key of course being to do what you can do, to do it Now, and to eschew trying to rig your shit up with preconceptions, preconceived notions: a strange turn of phrase, that, but there it is.

And I think you know what I mean.

But, nonetheless, I'll be damned if I don't do this thing. One or two fucking gigs is all I'm talking about. I've got a few local places in mind. Have to hit their open mikes first, and will have to, you know, kill. Which is not necessarily easier said than done; thing is, you can't be terminally under-rehearsed, as I often was, back when I was Being Stupid. As I may have mentioned.

 Anyway, I aint gonna lie and say I'm not kinda skeered and uncertain as to how exactly it's all going to go. This shit sure aint getting done all by itself is all I know. 'Cause you know, you've first got to apprehend the songs and acquire a certain foundation of technique, and rightexactlynow I haven't quite done either, and I can't quite say how long it's going take before I'm really truly ready. After all, I've only been back in zee black for about a month here, got to remember that, got to keep remembering that. I'm still way deep in the Woodshed here, but it's getting more interesting by the day. A lot more interesting. As the strengths build and the skills coalesce, it gets more interesting. By exercising it every day you exude your own metaphysical paraffin, sweating it out like lamp oil, which you then burn; endeavor to coruscate, in some small measure, and then you go back and fucking burn it some more until it won't stop glowing

Aw yeah babe. That is exactly what you do

**

Er, yeah.

**

Got to get back on task here but at least I got this mental and emotional party train back rolling and, like the ballplayers say, untracked, now

**

Also this morning, after roughing out the cyborg's (first) song, I realized that the problem with one of the other ones (Stump Sprouts, if you must know) was that I've been playing it way way way too slow. Crash along with it fast and with a muted sense of smoldering mingled with the regret and voila there it is. Or at least, there the shape of it is.

The neighbors must think I'm a fuckin' flake, and good God, what if I am. A man lives in a house for nearly 5 years and then one day Boom all he's ever doing is playing acoustic and electric guitars, playing harmonica, singing. Carrying on like a fuckin' Teen Ager. But you see, that's the key: to attack it every day like you did when you was aged, say, thirteen fourteen fifteen and sixteen, except, and here's the catch: Knowing What You Know Now.

(And there you have it, friends and neighbors, The Secret To Being A Real Artist. Tell 'em you heard it here over it File 313; but then, if you're one of the three out there who might be reading this, you prob'ly don't need me to tell you. Bat, for sure, I know you don't.

And so much for all that; that's the gyp and the paradox and the irony of it all…why, it's a gyparadoxirony…harhar, I got a million of em folks a million of 'em I tell ya a million)

Whatever, at least I'm singing kinda low, not caterwauling like some emotional wreck like back in the old days, oh no.

(Also not screaming and howling no more at walls and worse in a rage of brutal self-abnegation and lost lonesome despair. Which I have done my fair share of over the past, oh, 5 – 6 years, because I'd Quit Playing, all because I'd been Wanting The Wrong Things. And Hadn't Figured That Out. But then we've already covered that particular angle. No sense going backward too too much here. Oh no no no)

(Yet, my only hope for any of these boring ridiculouso rants is that they're somehow therapeutic in a way that's Necessary For Me…good grief…)

Or maybe the neighbors can't really hear and don't care. I will and do shut the windows when I think it's getting too ridiculous.

But hear this: a man should sing low and cool; that's just the way it has to be; the faster you learn that, the faster you'll obtain, sonnyboy, the faster you'll obtain, the faster you'll obtain.

 

**

Er, yeaaaaaaaaah. Say, it's feelin kinda jinxy in here, Maughx; you're really giving all all all away here, aintchee, a bit too much in the telling. But then, fuck it, you know I don't stop, I don't want to stop, I just wanna keep on going

And you are not helping the cause nor the plan one bit by going on and on and on here while other more mundane yet nevertheless vital and workmanlike tasks awaitchee.

Do your chores first, then you can play.

It is ever the story.

**

3:34 pm

Woah I really hesitate to post all this crap because I feel it is LAME at a very fundamental level. But will post in the interest of moving right along and why the F not. It's blogland, baby, so show the folks yer ass with aplomb; it'll all be gone by Sunday anyway.

Let it be a lesson to me not to be such a tool.

**

I know some people like to disparage that myspace music but I think at a certain level it's pretty decent as a way at least to hear what everyone doing. Big news flash, I know.

It's been opening up my horizons at least.

Galaxies and galaxies, baby, galaxies and galaxies and galaxies galore.

discipline

10:00 am

Unstinting in each now. Is how you’ve got to be.

Sitting here in cube, ugh. But. I am going to get my mundane shit done now.

Fuck that Internet. I tire of it. The sage is strategic in his use of it. And I have a plan.

And if I can implement that plan, I will have a stack of lyrics by the time that I’m really ready to bring ‘em out.

(shed that cladding, the useless past. or is it the opposite)

(whispering sense of embedded meta-doom)

But here’s this, though: it’s a hell of a lot easier to write, period, kid, a hell of a lot easier, now that I’m not charging myself with being That Kind Of Writer.

I mean, sweet Jesus, the idea of writing novels, and not just novels, but in the end, novels in verse, about mythical failed guitar players. Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun.

Writing about making music is a lot like writing about having sex. Boring!

So then: I’m gonna try to avoid getting into the particulars of daily practice, because I think it detracts from what I’m about. But what I can tell you is that I’m focused on technique, real technique, now, in a way that I wasn’t before and haven’t been heretofore. And part of that sure is coming from being confined to practicing acoustic on a 12-string, because that instrument is in a lot of ways twice as demanding. And that cheap Yamaha sounds better than you might think.

But then, that’s the way it is with guitars and guitar playing. Requiring a subtle kind of precision and an almost effortless kind of strength, you want to be deft fluid firm precise

Er, right.

Yeah. So that’s why I’m going to have to go back to GC one of these days and check that $200 six-string Yamaha. Because I think there might’ve been something to that cheap mother.

And it’s good thing I haven’t bought another expensive guitar yet anyway because I’m not sure at this point what exactly it is that I’m going to be wanting. There’s a vintage music store out in the western part of the state that, for instance, has a 12-string Guild that is The Deal, and you know, something like that might really end up being the thing for me. Because, shit, 12-strings are the deal but they are a lot harder to play well; but then, that’s what I’m presently about through a kind of chance and happenstance.

Uh, right.

But see, getting your wire and wood skills together after a long long layoff - not to say a nearly terminal layoff - well, getting it all back and then some via the exclusive acoustic use of the 12-string is one the best things a motherfucker can do. Because you’ve got to be stronger, better, faster, more precise. And then, when you take that back to playing, say, your Stratocaster (which I do), then you see just how much farther along you’re getting in terms of being A Monster On The Electric. Because, let’s face it, Rock Music, baby. You know, that element. Hardcore troubadour and all like that. That is The Deal.

(a certain mad scientist ethic, believin in things only I can see)

Because at this point, for me, not being All The Guitarist I Can Be is definitely not gonna cut it. And that idea quickly leads one into this head of, committing to a lifeling pursuit of the mastery of the guitartial arts, sort of thing. Which you clearly need anyway, no matter what happens, because there’s a hell of a lot of good guitar players out there, a hell of a lot of them, who will always be better than you. A lot better.

(This is all foolish bullshit, Maught Procrastination.

Stream of consciousness is all the media feed I need. Seriously, fuck surfing the Internet. A Caucasoid gotta be strategic in his use of it.)

OK, fuck it, get to work.

*

3:02 pm

Discipline.

With any, I could eventually score that whole stupid fucking Jacob Beizart thing, all of it. The fucking robot, the fucking humanoid, all of it. Complete with ambient noise and guitar solos. All of it.

And I just may.

ahem

9:55 am

Oh, did I ever have a post last week, I was out in a biggish city by a big big lake, but then my laptop shit the bed, all corrupted, but oh, did I have a post. I'd even posted it, then I panicked that I'd written something to incriminate myself and, well, I hadda go back in there and delete that shit, because I can't have that. Not that I'd written anything all that incriminating, but still. But I tell you, it was a grand post, written with a head aflame, in airports and hotel rooms, oh the things I wrote. Alright, it wasn't that great. Kinda great. Might try to recapture a few vignettes. Later. When I'm not At Work. Got to get my Adult Crap done so's I can Play Later. Yeah. You should see the calluses on my lefthand fingers. Really ugly. But remember: right hand technique is what gets you there. Really, you gotta have both. I might yet buy that $199 Yamaha if it seems that there's songs inside it. Oh, it's been a crash course right back into the fray of it all. Getting my shit back together again. Hear my train a 'comin. A certain "mad scientist" ethic. Believin in things only I can see. Got to do it though and really sorta didn't today. Fuck, I hate it when work derails the plan and this week work is derailing the plan.

*

1:49 pm

Stream of consciousness is

all the media feed I need

The Internet, I hate it,

it's makin me stupider

checking in

Because I don't want this blog to check out.

I'm not feeling as apt to explain everything as I was last week.

But things are going alright.

Here deep in the woodshed.

You'll have to take my word for it.

There is no mystical horseshit about writing and playing songs, it's all about development and repetition. And practice.

Exile: descending into it, living it, returning from it. These are the themes.

I'll take my lemons and fold them into a chrysalis.

I'm just going by feel.

scope

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

woodshed within yourself

What I can tell you is that I'm deep in the woodshed again for the first time in a long time.

One other time was the winter and spring of '95 in the Midwest in a 7th floor dorm room and an acoustically inviting stairwell, where I sat on the stairs and picked and strummed and sang and everyone else be damned. No one seemed to mind.

During the subsequent summer months, the woodshed shifted to a second floor shotgun apartment above a convenience store and a bar in northern New England, right across the street from a coastal river.

That period of woodshedding mainly ended when I decided to move back to the Midwest at the end of the summer, after which my life got way too desperate and morose and complicated. By the end of that year I'd run off the rails down South only to end up back in New England for all of '97, my musical pursuits all in a shambles. A fucking shambles like my life at that point. So it seemed; in many ways it surely was. I can remember feeling like a huge fucking failure at everything I'd tried, and so I was.

Another time in the woodshed (it occurs to me now) was for a few months at the end of '97, when I'd been going to the gym and lost a bunch of weight prior to moving to New York City, a move made about 2 days before New Year's. Making a living in that fucking city was nearly impossible for me and my playing at this time was largely a by-product of my drinking and carrying on like a fuckup.

Back then I was always putting the cart before the horse, never really taking the time to hone my skills. Never making that vital commitment to daily practice which is what drives it all. Always stepping too far, too far ahead of myself, premature. Wanting the wrong things. Though I played with a certain energy, I was indeed at that time a very sloppy fucking guitar player and singer. Uneven at best, a total suckjob at worst.

It's hard to write about it and it's hard not to write about it, but that I am at all right now tells me something.

When I stop playing, I go dormant. It's not like I'm looking back with regrets because it's my past and I can't change it but right now I want more. And I'm prepared to have more.

What it comes down to, if it involves the arts, is that you can only expect to excel at the medium that's easiest for you to stay up all night doing -- whatever it is puts you outside of time, entranced and in focus. For me it involves the guitar and, in symbiosis, typing at the keyboard; but the guitar is the main thing, the momentum, the bloom, the chemistry, the blood.

***

[Then there's a part here where I lecture about how a "day job" need not be a soul sucker. Not a bit. Quite the opposite, in fact. Just has to be the right job and you have to know how to work it. But fuck all that.]

***

Good God, the temperature is in the 80s today under lucid skies and a high golden sun. All the trees finally coming out, flowering.

Good God, I just went down to Guitar Center to play the acoustics since with their yearlong interest free financing I realize I can afford to get a decent one i.e. one priced more than a grand and holy shit it was a Taylor that grabbed me. Only thing is, my old acoustic was also a Taylor and I sold it a year ago on the basis of (as I told the people closest to me) my "just not liking it."

(There was, I should mention, quite a bit of truth in that assessment. I never did like that particular guitar. Chemistry with guitars is a funny thing. Just like with people.)

My plan at that time was to buy an expensive laptop computer for My Writing harhar. I sold the fucking Taylor to some kid for $700, then frittered away 3/4 of the money while ostensibly "saving" for the laptop, and finally ended up buying my present 12-string acoustic for $279 (it must be said: a killer ax for the money; a vital ax for me as it turns out and one I won't part with willingly), because not having an any acoustic whatsoever was way too depressing.

But a year ago I wasn't in the woodshed. It was all pre-epiphany. I was still conflicted about the whys and the wherefores of playing. Still wanting the wrong things. Still lost.

Anyway, I can only imagine what they'll say if/when they find out that here we are a year later and I'm into another $1500 fucking Taylor guitar. They'll think it's pretty fucking flaky is what they'll think.

But to hell with all that. I'm pretty much keeping this whole thing on the deep downlow anyway because it's just in people's nature to consider it all a pretty fucking fruity business, this business of playing and singing.

Let 'em figure it out if and when I ever get this fucking thing rolling the way I want to, this time around.

My head's right this time, is all that matters. Other than the work, you know.

(Good God, I hope it is indeed only you, Bat, who really knows who the masked man is here. Talk is cheap and ambition ugly. The difference for me this time that I'm working within a certain scope.

Like the ballplayers say: stay within yourself.)

wherein I say this

What I can tell you is that I pretty much quit for 7 years. Despite this period of self-imposed exile, I think I've improved, tangibly. At least in my mental and physical approach. Or at least my potential for improvement has expanded. If that makes sense.

Chief among my problems in the tailspin period -- back when I was playing, the first time -- was that I was terminally under-rehearsed, not to mention broke and addled. Somewhere along the way I forgot that practice is the soul of it all, the big wheel at the center that makes it all go.

Or maybe I just failed to learn that particular lesson all the way. Nothing could be more true.

In my head, now, it all starts to get a bit involved. But that really doesn't matter. Remember the little stories I was writing over at the other blog about the Magic Guitar Player and all that bullshit? That's all very telling.

almost a post

It's not necessarily a sign of getting older per se: I've always been one of the few to show up at "Guitar Center" dressed like a reasonable adult.

At least, mainly. Excluding that phase in the Nineties where, I'm ashamed to say, I wore a leather jacket, vest, and harness boots.

Kids and musicians and writers, always tempted to put on a costume.

Well, fuck it. Whatever you've got to do, I guess.

and again

the answer might be slide guitar
the answer might be how easily it all got written in a dream
the answer might be snow sun wind rain grass asphalt flowers etc.
the answer might be 35 years old
the answer might be to drink slow and easy
the answer might be pot
the answer might be forward reminiscence
the answer might be sit and type until a trance takes hold
the answer might be in the fingers
the answer might be unfurling

or it might be
now

the b and the d

How are you enjoying the flight?

I find it to be alternately sublimely terrifying and emotionally disturbing but mainly boring and depressing.

How are you enjoying the pornography?

Ultimately, while very susceptible to feeling both aroused and repulsed by what it suggests, I find it to be very boring and depressing.

How did you find the company of any number of average American citizens? (in the airport, on the flight, at the conference, on the streets under the gorgeous California sun, overheard outside in the motel court while you lay wiped out from work and jetlag watchin the free HBO and hoping like hell you weren't really getting sick because it was going to be a long and brutal flight back the next day, a Saturday, the worst day for business travel because of all the very public amateurish pin-assery in play at the nation's airports? I'm not a wholly seasoned traveler, but for better or worse over the past year I've become much less rank. However, even when I was arank amateur, I tried to hold down the dumb shit. Tried not act like a total freakin dope. Tried to be cool. People gotta try to be cool, is the thing. More people gotta. Oh whatever)

60-40 ratio: idiotic, boring depressing - basically OK

How have you found your own behavior to be in any number situations and conversations?

Same ratio.

Qualify the many varietals of fools in early 21st Century American culture.

Harmless fools, vile fools, self-aggrandizing fools, blithering fools, old fools, fat fools, young fools, drunk fools, unwitting fools, unwilling fools, shit-eating fools, desperate fools, satiated fools, craven fools, plodding fools, temporary fools, complacent fools, strident fools, spectacular fools. Folly is a cornucopia of the human situation. My ally it is, and a powerful ally is it. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Folly around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.

How did you find this blog entry?

tha b and tha d mutha fucka, tha b

and

tha

muthafuckin

d

it can

The dream's imagery was sharp and lucid.

I said OK but can it go on for 50 thousand words.

I said it can but you would have to find just the right ones.

Then you said writing is the only form of telepathy you can bet on so you better get betting.

I said OK but it's hard in the morning when you got other drudgery to do and also a bad habit of screwing off on the Internet.

Then you said fuck the Internet at a certain point you just have to make yourself do the thing.

I said OK but what the thing is certainly isn't what I'm putting into the file that is 313.

And you said, it's not, but it's close. And besides --

Then I cut you off mailed in this stupid blog entry because what the fuck and whyever not

folly

I can honestly characterize the recent behavior as that of a dervish with broken glass dangling from the blood of its face. Its mangled face. I can honestly say that. I would say that.

But does that characterization in any way help to mitigate what you have in the past described as the "extreme spiritual parsimony inherent" in your recent catalog of affliction?

Firstly, I've never heard of any temporal or temporary condition, as implied by your term "affliction," as lasting for a period of roughly thirteen years. Honestly. A span of that term, to me, speaks more to a kind of doom. And doom is no catalog.

You're speaking subjectively again. Mistaking your subjective reality for a general objective principality.  Let's not go backwards here.

Secondly, have you ever been whipped in the face? Like a real bull whip like this one here in my bag. [Takes out whip]. Braided leather. I found this at the dump. You get really mangled when its in the face. Would right now be an OK time for you?

[He cracks the whip into the therapist's face, the first of thirty lashes to the man's face and body. The therapist screams and gibbers before finally expiring.]

Ohhhhhh....you thick? I thorry....

you thick? I thorry....

you thick? I thorry....

you thick?

[He runs and dives through the pane glass of the window behind the desk, shattering the window and he flies through and out.]

FINIS

the target

sad desolate too aware a prisoner at the bar on his cellphone at the bar calling anyone he ever knew no one's home no one's home I'm an actor you know and my speciality is actin stupid playin the fool but I got money dredged out of our joint account well fuck her she threw me out let her figure about the rent they say there's a river to the East I wonder what it's like at the bottom feeding him drinks as long as he can pay the million light year eyes osciallating slow and inevitable toward the blackout maybe the last blackout what has always saved him and may save him yet one last time is he's a handsome devil and he knows it. hey. who's this cat at the bar with the slicked back hair and the tatted forearms. Name's Legere, he drawls. Buy you a drink, pardner? Slicked hair turns to him.

new licks: 1

Lights on:

Damien Legere snapped awake in the hotel room provided by the agency and determined (before even taking in the precise quality of the room) that what he needed most, in that exact instant, was to light and smoke a cigarette. His visceral urge to smoke was rapacious, even feral. The most deeply present itch in a body he dimly sensed now as rife with such urges.

Chemically imbalanced.

Pleasures of the flesh.

Weird, he thought. I wonder: why?

Whatever.

Gotta get me some butts...

And a drink. Whiskey, yes, he wanted whiskey.

Drinking and smoking. Yes indeedy. This ought to be good

used to be

I'm a cannibal
An unhealthy animal
Who yearns to die
On his own damn time
You're head's out of reach,
Baby, so is mine

I don't want to frighten you
But it's something that I'll do
It gets easier all the time
And I want to make you mine

I want to spend the night with you
You are many, I am few
You are like 2 thousand strong
Why can't we just get along?

I'm a bucket
You used to fill me with your rain
I gladly would be filled again
But that's understood
Since you drained away
I feel like I'm no good

9

Here I sit in my broken chair, my wings are broken and so is my hair.

song 953

Wish I knew how to startle you tonight
Your hair's a mess
Your eyes are glazed
And your lips are stained with wine
You attracted me because
Your heart is dark like mine

Redemption means get wrecked tonight
Because you're fed up with the times

So lonely was I, living all my talk
Searching down those avenues
I always had to walk
Processing my soul
I never felt so dim and stark
Beaten down those avenues
I always had to walk

Come back

So dark, so sad.

You can apply that

The ideal thing...is to listen. Because it's not a given that you do listen. Not all musicians do. To learn how to be open to what is actually taking place as you're supposed to be playing. Think of those great Eastern players who can breathe in through their nose and out through their mouth. You can apply that. You are listening to everyone else but playing at the same time. That's something to work towards. It's like any technique. You have to remind yourself constantly of the basic laws that are going to make it work.

-- Eric Clapton

fill this Internet

harsh simplicity

a metal hairbrush
a metronome
blood in a dumpster

insanity

cockroaches the size of large mice scale the chipped and filthy walls of a rented room in the city
now and then lighting aloft to hover in nauseating partial loops
on crude scissory wings

the room's occupant, naked but for dirty white socks with holes at the toes,
stands shivering and sexless erect on his bare gritty mattress
in the noonday sunlight streaming through the room's shadeless windowpane

to corral one of the bugs
with a red plastic cup
of the kind found at keg parties

the skin of the prisoner's palm thrills beneath the dungbeetle's dank crawly feel

he slips it live into his mouth
swallows

it is almost too much to bear

he feels a stirring
in the soft tissue
just beneath his sternum
and thinks of how he too
was once just a fetus

E7 riff

revised

You got way too many questions in your head
And yet you are not question-fed

You think too fast
You learn too slow
I'm talking about you
But also me, I know

You wear plain clothes
You got plain hair
And you expect me to care
I do, but let's be fair

I love you
But we're both just squares

So chain your heart to my bed
I'll carry your picture in my head

Maybe someday we'll be wed
And be together when we're dead

G riff

[this is an old old one. found in old notebook. silly shit]

I'm going out to where the ends of the earth meet
I hear they feed you there
And you can find a place to sleep for cheap

I've got my bag packed, I'm ready to go
My broken hands by the door, you can have them tomorrow
I won't be needing them where I'm going to go

Your pantry is empty.
I ate all your food.
It was not nourishing
It was not good

Please don't be sad
I'm only teasing
Nothing is hard
Everything's easy

I'd ask for one more game
of cat and mouse
One for the road
But these cats are old
And the mouse have all
left the house

I remember when you said it was cool to be righteous

allow

Fundamentally a slacker in the low cycles, that'll never change. Wax and wane, bi-polar ambition.

Need to adhere to a certain sense of whimsy. Get whimsical about past failures, past shortcomings. Really, it seems like that's all that's left sometimes.

The germ, the insistent impulse to do the thing will never leave. No matter what you do; slack off or get down to work. So might as well work. And not worry. Serve the trance.

When the thing starts to take on a life of its own, then and only then can you really run with it. A certain workmanlike discipline however can be thought of as a learnable attribute. Perspiration. Anyone can do it. A matter of choice, nothing more.

Take action. Be hard-headed.

Practice.

intercalafragilistic

Again. Try it again. Just once more. You can do it.

Snow, the willing snow. Dream the willing dream. Transparently. Dream hard, walk gently. Say gently. Do gently.

Frozen mind. My mind. My mind is frozen solid. But my heart plays the blues all night long. Strike, reverse, switch back.

Don't think. Bear down. Do right. Do what you should do. Do it right. Observe a few rules. Have some fucking discipline.

Everyday. You need to do it everyday. Whether you want to or not. You know you want to. Plus, you can do it at work.

Cry the willing dream. Walk gently in the snow. Go gently where you have to go.

Roethke. Dylan Thomas. Don't want to be too much like those guys. Except in meter if I could. Never mind that.

Winehead. Could be the name of a guy in some book. A book that I write. Like that's going to happen. Why can't it happen? It hasn't yet. But so haven't lots of things, and they can still. If I want it to and I want it, too.

No one cares, no one knows. Except me. OK, quite a few people care, but they don't know. A couple of people know. One or two and me. This is ridiculous.

Lottery winner, already near the apex. People getting blown up, getting wasted daily -- all over the world. Smarten up. Being an artist is over-rated. It's a curse. I've always fancied myself an all or nothing type of guy. But who knows if I really am. I'm clever like the moon. I'm here half the time. It's all about percentages. It's all about the horses.

The million yard gaze, the drunkard's eye. I've seen you, boy. Never let me drink bourbon; Scotch I can do. Drink rum and rage like a sailor said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw I hate drinking diaries. I'm cutting down. I'm cutting down bodies from the trees. Laying hands. Sending them back out, long past the fields. Aint it something

It's always something -- and it's always some bullshit. Truer words never were spoken to me.

No, we don't have Diet Sprite. This is bar, not a fuckin candy store.

Transmit the narrative. Going to be 35 in about a week. Drive the speed limit. You better stop fucking around. Except fucking around is what I do. OK, but write it. You can write some of it here. At least to get you started on your way. Slap yourself around a little. You can take it. Pick those feet up motherfucker.

Why can't I just blog like a normal baseline college-educated North American slacker with pretensions to this and that. I woke up, my head felt OK, I dithered my way thru morning exercises and a shower, I shoveled the driveway and let the dog run out back, it was snowing like a bastard, our plumber was coming to thwart a toilet that no amount of plunging would help, I drove to work, I put down an enormous deuce that I'd been saving (see: toilet, plumber) in one of the far remote bathrooms because when it's a bad one you don't want to potentially get busted inflicting that on the guy who sits in the cube next to you or any of your bosses, I ate a Lean Cuisine [Chicken Mediterranean] for lunch and an apple and a minor fuckload of Hot and Spicy Cheezits, I should be cutting down on me drinking but it's Friday and I'm probably going to get lit tonight because chief among my favorite pastimes is getting lit and zoning out listening to me old iPod. Next week however I'll be back to my new thing which is no drinky Sun - Thurs or Mon - Wed or what have you, when you go for about 4 days in a row dry you start to get terribly lucid and anxious to write, by you of course I mean I, and since lucid and writing and not unhealthy is what I want to be I should probably start. Normal blogging, I say. That's what the fucking people want don't you know. No they fucking don't. Hey at least I aint

I'll say it again. This is ridiculous. I don't believe in Beatles. I just believe in me.

So, this is what this file is for. What an Internet, what a world, what a world. You can call me Mike. Mike R. Okozzum.

Good thing you don't have to be funny. Or I'd be livin in a box. Under a tarp.

I wish I was a German Shepherd

Mr. Tribe of Night

1.

tensile
secret filaments

anemone-like
radiating in quantum
around the head

astrally
fuck yes

elongated
is your
wavy bloom

winding
shifting
covert

you are yet
what
can't be seen

2.

Who hasn't gathered a few
regrets along the way?

Skulking uphill
in a gray driving rain.
Weary, lightheaded.

Mr. Tribe of Night.
With that hungry
feeling.

A thousand wasted nights.

Well,
you did it to yourself,
fool.

So better
let it count.

1998

1.

A victim of the insane. Myself, yeah,
but also this ruinous city of beasts.
I stood outside Grand Central
smoking a butt, staring in my lazy way
at the whirling traffic,
streaming crowds,
shiny demons;
the icy trickle in my gut
not of pilfered Stoli (yet), but of utter dearth.
Dead humans. In me, in them. Same.
Nothing good grows
in concrete, nothing pure is born
in stillness. Far away
and gone then rode
the last cries from my lightning glissando,
chased down from Eastern mountains
and beaten into slave songs.
Shattered guitars
mulled into corn cakes
for the prisoner, dumped penitent
from his hospital bed.

A broken shell
cracked now and forever,
cradled in a barman's
trembling
hands.

2.

Sucked down to sleep you go,
pickled,
sprawled
and battered on a peagreen
divan (yes divan)
handed down from some clan
of homoerotic madmen and striving
batshit artists,
a cursed couch and wrinkled,
rancid with sweat,
your sweat,
the tepid issuance of your blanched
midnight hours,

too few. Sweltering drops
of crude, look, it's
you streaking the curving
caked up back of sodden sleep.

Scholiosis, you drink
too much, is what
a friend once told me; your head's on fire,
is what the shrink said; and it was (and is)

My Strat is gray, no longer shiny;
her cherry lights is all but gone. Now she
just a subway minstrel, picked
up, beat down
and left for dead on the L train, nostrils
slashed, an ordinary slattern. Oh,

I am Midnight Dragon seed,
quite a tall boy, but with ashen feet.
Falling hard is sweet
and easy

your head don't feel it
when your heart gets
so wasted, lost and found
and lost

again.

go home

or Jane if it please ye

Crap runs downhill.
Dies on a barstool
with a bright lemon
rind grinning in its maw.

Work is walking John,
black blood in his face,
ice flecks in his mane --
he's going to make it.

Bright line of the noon
horizon
versus a bent knife
thrown spastic

at dusk,
in oily fog. Thud.
Swallowed up
in marsh muck.

Pick.
Go on,
do
it

I am an idiot

Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea — he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility…

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

3 days dry

Speck of an ego.
An abhorrent sense of self.

Feeling unfairly singled out
for being electric amplified wasted,

roughhoused past
one hundred hangovers,

the glory and the doom.
Running the elusive lingo,

treble lines amplified,
oscillating fast and wide

in wavelengths you'll never
understand. Me neither. So

depressingly common is it, and
nothing's more boring

no one ever really quits

his gin-soaked mouth a bleeding storm drain of cryptic fuckheadology

*

woke up, ejected from the edge of unconsciousness no less than four times, in a panic, his mind swirling with the colors of galaxies, crab nebulas, space dust, infinite terror. these visions no doubt a product of the silently flashing TV in the darkened bedroom; nonetheless, you can't see that shit and not fear that somehow maybe you're losing yourself

*

found in trance. in transparency

far too nothing

Killed my old blog dead, I did.
Awhile back now.
I was so compelled for reasons I'm loath to cite,
because I chose them.
That guy Craughmby was a drag anyway, but he is me
(and we are all together).

Candor is what counts.
File that away.

Fuck it,
I don't feel
like working; I feel like
straightening my head out.
Yeah. I

keep going around
with these broken lines,
the brute routine, day in and day out.
Everything you do and think,

I mean everything.
For instance,
beer is like water
and I yearn for feelings gone
that can never be again.
Who the fuck wants to hear
that?

Better to substitute disguises
made from words, magical
self-conceits leavened by crumbs
of strange being, devout desire.

Crippled guitar sounds
bleeding out, backward emotions
trapped in the bare air,
sounds of ore,
cauterized,
immune
to logic.

(OK, you have your anonymity back:
now what the fuck did you want it for?
For explaining
how crippled triangulate
methodologies of seeing, wanting,
but not doing can color an entire
human experience?)

show, don't tell.

delete

corporation t-shirt

Creeping miasma,
blob of human paste;

You are as plankton
lurking in green light,

Asphalt seas.
You're losing it down here.

Twirling flakes,
death in the parking lots.

The wind is wide white
and howling glory,

Breeding dread in certainty.
Fuck that shit

Basics

Mind imbroglio;
an everyday predilection
for smoke,
for impairment.

How easily I might have stepped off
in one ice-clad blue winter night,
away from your complex,
your hysterical chambers.

Always the refrain: keep
walking the path, all alternate
routes are
occluded.

Where you
would be
cannot be
known.

Tuscon, Arizona; California grass

A slack-faced apparition of pointless revelry
deflated. A bilious premonition of cross-eyed,
callow ambition. Torn up scraps from one of her paintings,
a raped and sullen Pleiades littering my tattered carpet.

Were all lines
I could have used
back in the day.
Were lines I did indeed use,

I did indeed,
I did indeed

*****

I feel a blessing here. Funny, I've been gone for years. But I'm turning on the radio and they're playing songs I used to know. So I'm happy all the way home. Thinking about the past. Yeah, I'm happy all the way home. Turning out my blues. I feel monotony. While the guy I used to be, he'd be drinking at the open feast, I've got my head bowed for the least of my brothers all the way home, thinking about my past. Yeah, I'm scrabbling all the way home, churning up my blues... The Lord carries all our hearts; we're created on the road. As for the burden on my back, I gladly bear the load

the mail

urgently written
sent
and received
it was

(and it was all about
me)

file 313

An arid, monochromatic winter, unleavened by any sense of crisp or clean

Is what I’m talking about

Be a good reader of books and of times;
have scansion; be honest.
And if you must misbehave,
don’t kid yourself

Is also
What I’m
talking about

The important thing to note about here
and other places like it elsewhere on this
goddamned fucking
Internet

Is that
it is for me and
it is for you,
whoever and wherever and

whenever
and (oh) whatever
you
or I

might
be.

salted wounds
salted wombs

salted earth
salted hearth

On its face, American culture has
been so mean
so base and
so violently idiotic
for so long

That catatonia,
ambivalence,
wanting to hide,
clam up and get wasted

Are all understandable
reactions

And I will tell you today
that I feel that I have
heretofore made out of failure

an art form, a paralytic-minimalist performance methodology
of kicking back into slack
perfected by rabid monks, sung by the decadent
foaming mouths of deaf-mute tone-poets

[I used to play guitar and sing. the day I stopped was the day
I discovered that what I was doing absolutely sucked
more than it
absolutely didn’t]

I'll tell you that a sad realization to have on a Friday afternoon is that you’ll pretty much have to
stop drinking if you’re ever going to accomplish much;
drinkin is a writer’s worst enemy, son. And best friend. And worst enemy. And also
a great friend.

[well, the Friday afternoon before an ice fishing trip is not
the time to take this particular horse of ambition by its reins
but I will be driving tomorrow

so that means I’ll be mainly straight]