Saturday, October 16, 2021

A Message to the Serious Young Artist

First, you'll be tested

to a point where it will

be tempting to give up.

This will happen many times.


Nobody has an obligation

to push through,

but if you believe you are

the real thing,

you just will

even when you don't want to.


This is how you discover

who you really are.


This is when you have to use

the very skill you claim to possess

to weave a world in which

you are among the very best.


This is not done with words

or even with external achievements.


This is done in secret,

over time.

It is done in the details

that you spy

which others overlook

but are precious and important.


You who see the game

the wide lens unframed

depth of the whole thing,


you are the one

who disturbs the force around you,

yes.

Your energy might effervesce

your way might confess

what you've seen

who you've been

who you are,

therein is the test.


Can you endure

the spellbinding poetry

magnetic to the vagrant eye?

It tells tales of all parts of you,

these are the voices from which we shy away.

But they that seem to beam

from within you

and into others around you,

as if reading, as it were,

between the lines;

what is that text, exactly,

which is written in actions

giving a metaphysics

to our hearts and our minds?


Might that not be

the eternal poetry of time?

Something endless,

in your chest and mine?

Whilst I rhyme and write lines

you solve some other predicament

happening now, in our time,

and so we are the same,

at service to life

and each other

in our own way.


Can you endure

the loneliness

the vague psychosis

the alienation of a world of folk

who think they'll call

you're bullshit?


Are you so sure,

is ultimately the question.


Are you so sure

of your intent,

that it is indeed divine?


Do you have the courage

to look into a dubious eye

and speak your whole

complex truth

in a glance or a smile?


Did you hear the laws spoken?

did you ever walk alongside lightning?


Did the pigs fork you

like animals at a formal dinner?


Did the great minds of each time

each era,

did they sound like family

of some other sort?


Did you think that maybe

things could be different

that you had and have the answer

with no way to deliver it?


Did you dream big and feel a fool?

Did they laugh at you

and energize your ego

and make you better

with their ugly, shitty love?


Did you learn to love them, too;

those haters, losers,

those liars afraid of their truth?


If you didn't,

you are not you.


You are some version of them,

a shade of gray behind the wind,

of a storm that always comes

and says it is innocent.


And that is okay, too.


An artist is one who

breaks himself

to be true

(not to know the truth).

He may never express it

as we egoic do

(writing and painting and dancing and song)

but if he does it

that deep work

where the gears of infinity lock

and work their magic into life

then he has made art

and he will be art

because courage to be true

and being it, through and through,

is to be nearest to your essence

that of God's light.



Friday, October 15, 2021

A Frontman's Woes

I miss you, stage
I miss you, audience, energy, madness
drunk fans in the front giving me swigs
offering me tokes
I miss you, lovely night trips
through mountains and highways
at night.
To big cities, to small squares
in the center of small Sierra towns,
I miss you, music,
I am sorry that I was made
like this:
not a banker, not a lawyer, not a salesman,
not a businessman.
I am just a performer,
out of work,
who has tried to deny to himself
how much he loved it,
those nights,
your glow and sweat and laughter,
oh, what it was to love thousands at a time.

Friday, October 8, 2021

Extra Sensory Perceptions of an Eavesdropper Spirit

They give me their secrets,
The logic they bury
The visions
Tossed to dreams
By the suppression of day
As if s gravity
Felling truths
We have chosen
To ignore in our days.

They show me
The things they see,
But more importantly,
How they see them.

A Friend's Encouraging Words

Sure, man,
Life is a prism
But accept the prison
Constraints and limitations of life
We all live in 'em
For the love of livin

Every man here
Is here
Now that's beginning
Something like family
Thinking
And having visions
Of acquisition
So we can flex our giving
Our search for our position
Not just our gifts within us
But for the compass
That magnetism
Of
This life
This swirling prism
This light
Sometimes a prison
From which we seek flight
Like a bat at night
Into gamma
Into that place
Outside of light

It might be our disgrace
If i heard them right
But there's a direction
To every hibernating bear
Or bird in flight
You can spy it right there
In the details of life
The truth it's come to glare
It's so blazing bright.

I won't say
That we leave the maze
Energy plays
And blossoms in ways
That no sage could say
We trough our dreams
Upon a page
Upon a caveman's cave
Through the tincture
Of the flowers
Dirt and stones of the day.

Strong Women

The whole song of life
Singing in your gentle sights,
Dreams interweaving

Quilts
For a comfortable ride
Where grandma tells stories
And still laughs
With her eyes.

Something about 
You ladies,
Some of you
See through tragedy

Some of you fight
Tooth and nail
And now the quilt
And then the needle
And the thread
Stories at night
Laughter
And a real live fire
Burning inside us all.

And we'll sing
And we'll laugh
And gratitude
Will slowly
Melt us to mud
And the future
Will dance 
In the rain.

Transformative Path of the Masterless Prophets

The dreams of the men
Who slept in the manger
During the winter
Were mostly 
Nonsense.
Yet, among them
Was a young addict
An educated boy
An awakened soul.

What he missed most
He couldn't let go
And what he let go
Haunted him,
What he saw both amazed him
And came to
Crush him.
Pulverize him
To steam,
Invisible steam
To cycle through
From the ocean
To the clouds
To the snow and the rain
All his pain
Squeezed out
He thought he
Would not survive
The whole 
Transformative pain.

But said haunting ghosts
Dove fast through
Sparing no time
To catch the young man
Who gave 
With all his might.

To have seen love
Walk like lightning
Upon the shores 
Of outstanding sight
Depth of night
Milky breaths of cold
Shining fire 
From the mind
To the skin
Of the ocean
And shimmering, again.

And then the sound,
Water bubbling,
Sipped by the sand
Waves gulping
Foam Cymbals 
Thin water stretching
Like a hand up the
Spine 
Inside the dress
The salty of dance
Was the sand 
And the smell of moon
Peppered with brine.

You Blessed Nothing

Hold onto this string here.

There you go,
Now,
Watch out
For that right there
But the past, too,
Is s screaming car.
That angry driver is you
One day
Acting like an asshole
As we All do.

It's inevitable.

Here are some tips:
Listen to music 
And don't just hear it.

Study language while you're at it
And come up with theories
If you're going to go crazy.

If you like going crazy
For some reason.

Mathematics or Jesus
can center you.

Even the heavy metals
Of the netherworld 
Do not compare 
To the atomic bomb,
They say.

I dunno if i agree.
Heartbreak;
Mind shattering fury:
If they don't breed the very devil
They breed something
That dies for a while
Wilted as if exhaling life
With all its strength
Ever so slowly
And determined.

So the mathematics 
Will help you count
While your down
Taking a breather
Wondering if it's all worth it,
And 
"What the hell, man? I thought we were cool de la?"

But yeah, it's a wilderness out there.
Don't let the right angles
Confuse you 
Don't let the perfect teeth
And shiny tech 
Eat you up as Chew your mind
You're a god damn monkey
With some vague notion of why life is
And is about,
And you'd probably not die for it.

Why should anyone have to 
if they come in peace and mean no harm?