~for Woody’s pilgrimage, his exodus to Egypt~


I’m the mother of your maidenhead.
I’m the widow engorged in Ganges flames,
seeded, raised, in the coal pit born we were,
first mined, sent cross country by red rusted freight
car to the birth sac where we came~conceived.

simple, your beginning, is our end, they could
not never cut this cord tween us with an instrument
of hardened steel, cause it was god-birthed in a
steel furnace in the three river city, where we were
molten formed, fired woman, fired man, too-blackened.

you say come worship me, but I cannot, we are too
samed; the flesh of metal, the black blood of a mountain
seam, if we were to worship in our own imagery,
a sin, of ten commandment status, not a trifling,
imagine, a golden calf, an idol of our own making,
what glorious fury’d consequential if I bent knee to
love an undulating woman, a violation of volition,
between us, there can be never, the tangential of free will.


11:18pm Sat Jul 11

When Leonard Cohen Met Charlie Daniels, The Devil Went Down to Georgia

~~~
The Devil Went Down to Georgia ¥
https://youtu.be/wBjPAqmnvGA

Charlie Daniels, the country music legend who died July 6, 2020, was part of the 1970 Leonard Cohen tour. (see notes)
                                            
This one is a gift to a recovering addict and a poet, for whom that peculiar, par-articulate, addictive passion, thank the Lord, got no cure.

                                                      <£>

two country boys, ok, so different countries, but both intimately
a-cquainted with the Devil, his song & music-making-copious
a-bilities, his other trois backup ***-sin-tants, The Sin Sisters,
a/k/a wine and women and sweet poetry...

now the Devil mostly gets his due, you pay his price twice, in daily
wear ‘n tear on body and soul, always trying to keep one step ahead,
taking his best, sometimes leaving the rest, but ha! not always cause sometimes a...

bargain needs keeping, gotta keep your word honest, still if you can find a wile e coyote-wriggle-way to be a tad faster, keep them ten  fingers crisscrossed, you might steal a tune or three, before you chanter la finale, sing/pay the last installment...

now these boys were multilingual, one spoke french, the other, southern, but two-gether, they could harmonize the Lord’s Prayer on a banjo, fiddle and a guitar, in une langue ancienne#, formerly spoke in those United States and Canada, now only in the heavens above...

cannot truthful say I ever saw them play on the same stage, no matter,
cause the parallels are clear as a night sky starry moon, the stories they told, in lyrical verse, different cuzins, slightly incestuous, and
infectious too, cause you catch yourself singing redneck in a foreign
language and you’re liking the way women looking at the big star on
a tour bus...

now the devil wanted these bad boys real bad in his pantheon, went
down to Georgia and back up to Montréal au paradis, said to them “no more diddling, just fiddling and singing, time to make that finale payment, principal and interest, come to collect my country boys  and all what they got left...alors allons en enfer mes bébés..”##

now the sounds they made was just too good, the Lord heard it, it was like Picasso painting the sky, and came to collect Charlie yesterday, (07/06/20), Leonard had come up earlier, and if you need to learn how this story ends, well, there’s a poem listed down below avec tous les détails.

but as my straight laced pappy, use to say in his German accented english, in his morning suit, striped pants and Homburg hat, all’s well that don’t end in hell

or something like that anyway.

“you have taken my voice, no longer can I...”

~ for Rachel of Ireland, who asks and is granted endless words~


oh my lord, oh my lord, oh my lord,
you have taken my voice,
no longer can I thread these words

oh my lord, oh my lord, oh my lord,
you have taken my insight,
no longer can I hear my eyes visions

oh my lord, oh my lord, oh my lord,
you have taken my mobility,
no longer can I shake to music of sky

oh my lord, oh my lord, oh my lord,
you have taken my strength,
no longer can I bend knees in praise

oh my lord, oh my lord, oh my lord,
you have taken my taste,
no longer can I sing a greater part of me

these first words, my sacrifice of morning,
no more to follow, for I am speechless,
the eveningtide will find me bow-broken

you have taken my all that you have given,
tender it well to another, for we are temporary,
your gifts are everlasting, and together, we say

selah, amen.

the remains of the day, of lost chances, opportunities gone astray
and now irretrievably demised, a quiet day, of writing, thinking,
letting emotional waters fall over me, draining away the oils of mischance and in the few minutes before the morrow commences, the eyes tear, and the heart too, for there is so much pain and confusion that cannot be done away...and there are needs unmet...one feels lost by a wayside, at a remote railway station, awaiting a once-a-day train, that is always late...

Accused of being generous, and my guilt at this false accusation, makes me tremble, for what I wish for all of you, is the small and the greatest, both be satisfied, but not by taking, but by giving...my poor clarity pains me, but I compose not knowing the secret chords required to please...but my thoughts are of you, alone, solely, my concerns have fallen to a siding. We are all so far from each other in physical distancing, yet so oft, when you write in poem, in message, in shotgun short comments, you evoke my depths, provoke my raw, unprotected, unmasked emotions to rise up from gorge and abyss...hear your cries, the spoken and the ones between the lines, well hid in the spaces between the words, where the kernels and the residuals of the important things exist.

it is almost 11:59pm, July 8th. it is already tomorrow for many of  you who race ahead of time’s relentless measuring, and for some the evening young, you puzzled at this nearly midnight missive, will wonder what has.overcome me.

pure unadulterated emotional fluids, many flavored, washing away the veneers, the coverings, and wanting to fix things that my intelligence says you cannot, yet the urgency of my desire is so great, that I can barely swallow.

perilous close to revelatory disclosures, I will cease here, seize here, what cannot be spoken of, and to think upon the notion of a successful life, it’s constitution, composition and break off pieces of me, that I can give away to you freely to patch the holes, mend the readings, via the ether of skin comforting even if imaginary.

I am drifting into the tender part of the night, when deceit is pointless, and I argue with conviction with myself that in our lives that it will never be too late, but I know I contradict my prior musing...somewhere between the fact that time is a wasting commodity, precocious and precious, lives this idea within, that there is nothing that cannot be navigated, recompensed, even forgiven...the argument goes on, the tide of battle switching back and forth, and for now I must be satisfied with the meagerness of I can’t give up, be at ease by acknowledging defeat, not just yet, and the fast arrival of a clean slate is a chance, a draw, a ticket to ride, and, reaching is a wonderful idea, full of compromise, extra effort, and tomorrow I may yet reach one of us, by reaching inside of what churns within, and have the perfect words you require, desperate need, come forth easily...

“of late, I have been falling in and out of love with words.” (Pradip)

Dear Pradip,

yeah had them symptoms too, pizza and penicillin, lost my sense of taste and smell, but neither helped, guessing gets tougher, when older, all those associated, assorted, amazing never ending, abracadabra, baptismal-bathing-broadening, buttered-up jobs & responsibilities when your suddenly taller by a new generational addition to the family tree, which means much more concerning, burning worrying words, you dare not say aloud, cause Shiva is too interested, and has too many arms, in interfering with your many small pieces of composure in pandemic days.

Sorry, buddy got no solution, maybe rubbing alcohol, maybe hard liquor, prayers on knees to a 57 variety of deities, try a different temple, start the week on a Wednesday, learn to rhumba, practice meditation way out loud, be annoyingly concerned bout everybody else, offer to do all the kids homework, buy the wife a new dress so you can have an argument regarding wasting money, so you can kiss and make up, heck and ****, you could even write crazy words in any order your personal dictionary commands, reorganizing them in reverse order, and then slapdash them together and call it stew,

don’t matter as long as you got the jaw jawing, the eyes winking, the people looking at you like you gone cuckoo mad, tell your children how much you love them in the middle of day, wave to a neighbor across the street, the gossipy one who always spying on you, sing some cowboy ***-on-little-doggie lullabies, interspersing a Yellow Submarine, croon A Long and Winding Road, and Do Not Forget to include Let It Be, preach with a whang damnastic fever to the street peddlers, then ask for a better price, by now your not-so-well repute will precede you, everyone be offering a cool drink, or hot tea, fresh paneer, really big discounts, the most comfy chair, asking what else ya need, tell ‘em a pen and some paper, please, and everyone will be relieved! cause you back to merely, plain, ordinary crazy, simply composing that wonderful poetry you love to
w r i t e
and everything is
r i g h t
in the world.

other than that, got no consoling words. Sorry.

Sincerely,

The Natster