From Alan Lomax to the commercial art and now the money machine.

At the turn of the century; when sound recording 1st became available to the masses, recording a song was an opportunity for folk to reach out; and tell the world something up front and personal.
It meant that people were able to put themselves on “The record” A way of leaving a permanent audio statement, an epitaph, an audio sound bite immortalising ~ life, mood, emotion captured and bottled for all eternity.
(A medium that conveyed messages from artists and storytellers of all kinds)

A recording was also a great addition to "The family album" something more tangible, a window to a real person, with a real life, a message and a point of view; a legacy, a blast from the past.
Few people expected sound prints to be re-designed, homogenised, formulated, copied, repackaged and that art and the message would be played over and over again by new artists in the form of "cover music" or that the style of the messages would become secularized, seperated into distinctive groups, or constrained by an elite clique or commercial genre.
Labelling and streamlining art & music mostly benefits the commercial art & music industry; and no longer the artists and creators.

I've no problem with good business, or the multi-billion pound industrys that have gained commercial success.

However the process of mass homogenisation, product synthesis, marketing, streamlining and then packaging fashion, sound and synthetic culture to sell a product, leaves very little room for creative people to just be creative.

A medium originally open to many for self expression, a historical record, an archive, a voice, a personal message;
Is now just a vehicle for advertising and perpetuating a genre of nonsense, so much so that there is now more white noise immortalised than messages.

To re-cap ~ I Think that creativity and expressionism; like story telling conveys moods and messages from the present and past!
Artists and musicians should have the opportunity to create and produce more information than they copy; thus creating a richer more colourful tapestry, whilst not devaluing the message of their predecessors!

Purcy Flaherty.

Stationed by belief
As hungry carts push on
Destined to the checkout lines with a fist of great deals
Forgotten once cashed
Repackaged in plastic wrap where flesh was once sacred
Commercial clichés provoking the same old reflections and interests
In the midst of clones and lapse of reason
Controlled and reduced to produce more and more
but the score lacks anything to do with the salvation found in art form
As chained souls morn in the ashes of the wake
We must transcend and break the links
For these ties are the kind that bind minds
I stand alienated and tongue tied as my mind's eye
sets the grocery store into flames
For the dependence and poison it bakes
While trains of unclassy gluttonous tarts
bump carts programmed to jump start
Relinquishing will and spilling milk
I cried out a river of chill

I have never been published
or won a prize,
except, yeah, yeah,
the one in the
Crackerjack box

but from that cheap plastic surprise,
much was learned even as a young boy

cull the chaff of life
from amidst the wheat

plant it well and deep,
then forget all about it,
except where,
t'was seeded

when eyes yellowed,
hair turned a color Disney repackaged as
frozen
white,
normally a gift of a hairdresser,
called mother time,
and your pink skin scaled smooth
now kin and kith of the kitchen grater,

then time is in,
cull your plantings

go back into that yards,
pull out the weeds,
uncovering what only time
can provide -

poetry planted and born from
the summary addition of thousands
of days of life,
well felt,
well received,
well recorded,
drawn from earth and water,
well lived

sometimes my nyc sidewalks uneven,
cause a toe snagging tripping,
this loss of balance,
adrenalin hot flashing,
similar to tripping upon a new poet

every time I say no mas,
I must choose tween
left or right,
one can
read or one can write,
but not
both

a voice on I stumble,
making me ever so foolish,
ever so humble,
ever so confused

so at 12:31am
at it again,
reaping what others have sowed

this woman by her own confess,
Trouble with a capital everything
T.R.O.U.B.L.E

only a grownup chile
writs me a poem
re crackers in her vegetable soup,
a naval battle akin to that of Midway,
that makes me crackers with delight!

saucy, that poetess
you better love her well,
she tells you outright
or she'll sell you, the reader out,
for the next one cruising along,
hence this poem, her good graces sought!

but to get certain memories I want,
but can't recall for I never had them,
she, for me doth record:

Imaginary space within a dream
floats in a subconscious sea.
Our affection grows from
tremulous beginnings
its dramatic unfolding
vestige of the soul whispers
and lingers in twilight and ice

Shared breath,
in time our leisured rhythms
savored sweetly match kiss for kiss.

Words in parody drop,
one by one.
enmeshing me in rippling sorrow,
once again you've moved
just beyond my reach.

curse the teachers and the genes
and my plain vanilla simp vocabulary,
that don't let me write like this,
but to my backyard I go,
where I cull what other's have planted better,
and harvest the new fruits of
crackerjack superior poets

This is not a new day, this is a day gone bad, rotting and stinking like putrid death, but repackaged, perfumed, and sold like cheap ***, for dimes or a sense of certainty or just company,

Surrounded and Alone-
The essence of city life

Out of windows, dusty, and brushing cotton flakes out of hair
In a cold room there is so much to do, like breathing,
Running hesitant tongue over stoic teeth,
Why use it? When communication is fraught with shipwrecking maelstroms of miss-understanding, miss- understood and miss-interpreted

                                   -heavy headphone armour on,
Check.

But what is sung is wrong, pursued by romantics old and new, this modern age is fractured and cannot be seen by a mirror unbroken, while comedy halls are bursting at the seams with self deprecation and I laugh at everything I don’t understand, and don’t understand why I laugh but-

But I’m fond of morbid irony: is it possible to commit suicide accidentally?

I ask the Eternal Cockroach as it salvages waste and it rolls its Eternal eyes at miss-placed Inconsequence. It rolls its eyes and sees the bottom of my shoe and ***** off to cockroach Hell or Heaven while the crushed and oozing carcass stains my sole.

And I don’t care if I asked a question or wanted an answer or, in the end, what I got at all.

Forget the bridge; I’m flying over this-

A poem, played out on stark eyebrows and two fine forehead lines, then quirked, ruining a long lamentation’s worth of time, to say nothing of the ruminating circle, the square that fits in it, those fine fired diplomatic lines, deluxe and then depraved and then forgetting what that means.

If anything at all

A New Year I don’t know what to do with, an old expectation I still harbour, though here ships can only be wrecked and left unrepaired save for chewing gum and spit.

Baby faced innocence wrinkles faster than hands in tepid bathwater; here,
Skin crawls with the tactile hallucinations of a spider’s breath; evaporating

The words, which are always contested even by themselves, that remain seated on a reluctant tongue, everywhere, where echoes of watercolour paint and bolognaise sauce compete for existential poetic perfection, here,

There, on cracked amber shores, ancient icons and ancient dramatic dreams, tumbled shreds of history textbooks and photographs combine into nostalgia, ready to catch a hot wave and jump into another word-

The essence of speech, like bread and potatoes, is starchy blandness- the plaster base of meaning, waiting for the frieze,

Really, it’s a tasteless memory that supports the world in its frame, in its seams, and cracks before it compromises-

I do not compromise, not because I am the best but because I fall apart without myself, and any compromise will mean death and that arduous reinvention of the smile, the hand, to wield pens and stroke guitar strings and make gear changes and fidget with hair and with fingers express urgent ideas in the shape of air,

Here,

The hollow house has already been burnt out, but an X was marked, so let’s ruminate around it still, and still before we pounce

On anything that gleams, anything that shines; hunt with snout in trough for lost treasure, those things that gleam and shine-but it’s a hoax

As fox masked bourgeois wolves run behind backs and pinch backsides and pick pockets. Steal pocket lint and ticket stubs and laugh, waving miss-fortune in faces, equally lost in the search for the words of missed discontent, but with money and our pocket lint and ticket stubs to forget it-

Until it just stops: Reach out, and bash them on the head- or start a civil war, it’s not always a choice, but now it yours-

To swing lavish hips in the garbage of history, or not

Don’t want or need to know what made this: put up a sign for the archaeologists of the future: don’t dig here, nothing worthwhile here, take the trowels and brushes and theories of Diffusion or Constructed Hegemonic Discourse (though Gordon Childe may stay for Tea, tea, that most holy incarnation of caffeine)

And go.

There’s nothing that one could want here that isn’t already known; when weeping, when looking in a hotel bathroom mirror and pulling at hair and eye sockets in mad disorientated frustration-
So,

I’ll be East of Eden, looking for East of Ordinary (if anyone cares) dropping and rescuing causes like pebbles and shells on foreign shores,

Sure, I don’t know what to think, but I’ll feel it anyway,

Spitting in open mouths next to ancestral verse, no reverence for irreverent history or this,
these narrow doorways and double standards are doing heads in;

shrink it, trim this mental overgrowth, neo-liberalise this stress, just privatise it all, and it becomes

Decrepit disconnections, miss-spelled and miss-meant; missing a lucid neologism and marvelling at its absent meaning. See, all there was to believe in was a circle pit that spun forever and insistent chords and the increasing pressure that ended in a broken nose;
                                                who knows?

Revelation: maybe I quirked that eyebrow, and disbelief simulated stimulating dreams-

I’ve seen promises made out of diamonds, wood, gold, amber, spit, so don’t ask me to repeat myself or this, to diagnose or understand it-

I’m sick with everything I cannot count or count on, things accidentally found and purposefully misplaced. I could lie and it would probably mean the same thing anyway,

See, there’s nothing new to see, to this or me,

This is not a new day, but one wasted in a cold room.

Nothing has meaning.
Everything is pointless,
an inane transient cloud.
A single breath of smoke.

Think of all the blood and tears
that you pour into your work.
What do you actually gain
from any of your labouring?
Generations flourish then fade
each one replacing another that passes,
leaving no sign they were ever there,
only the dirt that fell from their feet.

The dawn sun drags itself into the sky
then falls back down as dusk comes,
repeating its dreary cycle over and over
with the same numbing certainty.
The wind gusts towards the south
then changes and rushes north,
mindlessly blowing one way then another,
constant in its confused and erratic pursuits.

Every drop of water ends in the ocean
but the seas are never satiated and so
the rivers and streams keep flowing,
repeating their tedious cycles again.
Every aspect of life inspires apathy
and is filled with indescribable monotony.
Each dull thing bores the eyes blind
and deafens the ears with mundanity.

All that has once been will be again.
Every single thing that takes place
is merely an imitation of another.
There is nothing original on earth.
Some people might claim or insist
that they have something new to offer,
but you can guarantee that all it will be
is a rehashed and repackaged cliché.

All that man achieves will pass away
and the supposedly great things
that will be accomplished in the future,
will also fade  into nothingness.

Holding onto reality with both hands
His social life in a cup of coffee as he waits
Swamped sinking lifeboats
No longer accepting applications
For jobs that have sailed away

Buried alive, a napkin waiting its turn
To be plucked out and used
Then thrown out
Lucky if recycled and repurposed
To a younger man’s vision

Torn apart, his skills repackaged, Frankensteined for each resume
The boring job of cutting checks means he was
A bookkeeper, an accountant, detail oriented,
Friendly to external and internal users or customer service driven
Or any combination of above.

Leaving his car at home, he walks,
Afraid of running out of money for gas and repairs
Wondering what pieces he will put together today
Reducing his years of experience to a tweet
Comprehensible to the child in charge of his future.

the readout simply showed,

    i am the brand name.

it was the ubiquitous, and as

     was i.

production and consumption

     are protected.


i am the being from which the experience is squeezed.

     i am the experience repackaged and sold.

altered by demand, altered again by experience.

     then squeezed, then sold, then squeezed, then sold.


hyperreality affords the assurance of eternal life.

     i am information, in its creation, in

its propagation. the plot has been tossed

     in favor of the house of character,

atlantic, and pacific.

I thought You were filled with light.
I was just a pathetic,
Unworthy,
Insignificant pupil,
Bathing and ravishing in
Your words,
Your warmth,
And your love.
I believed You to be illuminated from within.
And when I had You,
You were all I needed.
When I ate,
I thanked You.
When I prayed,
I praised You.
When I was miserable,
I would rest on my knees,
And plead, “Why?”
Because, You would know.
Then, one night, deep in prayer,
Exploring You,
Contemplating You,
Learning You,
Knowing You,
I realized that You were a mirror.
And the cracks showed.
My faith’s leaves witnessed winter.
As I birthed sorrow and grief,
I watched tears rain onto you,
And you looked into me, curiously.
I saw you not as a sun,
Not a reaction,
But the reflective plane
Of a false prophet. 
What you knew is what I knew,
Cleverly repackaged,
Recycled,
And chewed into something I had
Always wanted.
Your ideas,
The concepts you shared which I thought
To be yours alone,
Were mine.
I wanted to hear me,
But from someone else.
What do you know?
What you know,
Is what I know,
And I know nothing.
I am infantile in my perceptions,
Primitive in my conjecture,
Handicapped in my understanding.
I wanted to believe I was brilliant,
And you made me think I was,
By being me.
As you expressed concern,
The world trembled.
I tore away,
I realized I was drowning.
I was suffocating in an infinitely reiterating
Record of my own delusions.
The world was as I had seen it from birth,
But you dressed it up in prettier colors.
You saw my void.
You saw what I wanted,
And you acted the part.
I just didn’t realize I was writing your lines.
The euphoria was a hallow can,
And the truth rattled inside like an old penny.
Your smile turned crooked,
Your voice, once a song, was now a snarl.
Your arms, once a meadow, now vines,
Attempted to wrap around me.
The thorns scratched and tore
As the stalks tangled around my limbs,
Tore at my soul,
And attempted to ensnare my love.
I denied you, the vines burned away,
And the sheep’s clothing slipped off.
The banshee wailed,
And the night quivered.
This wolf,
Her mouth frothing with
Panic and anger,
Her fangs gleaming
With the light I now realize
I was emitting,
Her ears laid back,
Her face twisted and mutated
Into some horrifying grimace.
The melancholy turned to fear,
As this delicate,
Intricate flower’s petals fell off,
And the stem became a spear.
You attacked,
The offense of a thousand resentments
Pouring out into a bowl of confessions.
You wanted me dancing in your palm,
And you thought demoralizations
Would provide the beat.
Your claws raked against my ears
With the desperate scratches
Of a predator losing its meal.
I freed myself from the rusty,
Screeching jaws of an old trap
You’ve set before.
My fear,
Now contempt,
Now betrayal,
Now resolved.
I was done,
I was ready to eat my folly,
But, you wanted me to fast.
You wanted me in your future,
I wished you free of my past.

I despair as a writer
when I think
that conversation,
the spark of humanity,
our golden embroidery
on life,

is unremarkable.

these days,
voices are
shallow melodies
with accents
on repeat:

I want you to listen
and believe,

but who really knows?

or is distinguishing
the repackaged
plagues of similar beliefs.
The differences
are basically the same
and it's time consuming
to critically think.

So exhausting

to feel
like I must hurry
to get a point across
before the nodding
glance to the black screen,

relieved of wondering:

Have you been listening
at ALL to my word
drawings and logic trees
derived from headlines,
videos, and abstract
malcontent?

I'm learning to be quiet,
or dramatic.

Nothing in between

but revising
a philosopher's tractatus:

Whereof one cannot speak,
One should remain silen..salient.