“cold winter sky—
where will this wandering beggar
grow old?”
— Issa


I. Stories

A ranch north of Spain,
his woman, their child... a dream
painted over, gone.
His... (unrequited)
...own tragedy for himself—
young death in Paris.
Quiet night at nine,
inside a café... gunshots—
being... nothingness...


II. Histories

A cold monochrome,
the winter hue of darkness:
umbra of despair.
Portraits of torment:
beggars, drunkards, prostitutes,
1901—
Lapis lazuli
thinned, turpentined—bleu de France—
ennui of sorrow.


III. Images

Melancholia
—the impotence of the will—
in Barcelona.
Barefoot on the street
corner, sitting on the ground,
he leaned on nothing.
A half-stringed guitar......
Germaine’s ******* distracted him..
he laid his revenge.


IV. Meanings

No can a beggar...
no steel strings a guitarist...
—a friend’s eulogy.
The cadaverous
curves of the bones torqued the flesh—
tedium of old age.
An allegory:
artists, poets, mendicants...
****** or broke oglers?


V. The Painting

His evocation:
the grave of Casagemas—
a guilt exorcised.
A mute’s discontent,
a blind man’s desolation,
an oil masterpiece!
An old guitarist,
blind, begging for an audience—
a blue Picasso.

CHAPTER ONE

My geographic movements during the past year could be called “A Tale of Two Couches.” So as June draws to a close, I assume the position here again on Couch California. I am back in Hemet, the place the smug among us call Hemetucky--as if there was nothing a couple of Mint Juleps and a **** of Blue Grass wouldn’t cure. It is the year of our Lord, 2014: so far an interesting year for women. There was a woman who wore socks to bed. There was always my long-time, here today-gone tomorrow, long time companion, currently teaching somewhere remote on the Big Rez, a southwestern Navajo concentration camp near the 4 Corners.  Next, there’s my current object of affection, that fine and frisky lady from The Bronx by way of Bernalillo--currently at home in Laguna Beach, Orange County. Trixie: my main squeeze at the moment.

And now, completely out of the ******* blue this afternoon, my cell phone rings and it’s ******* Juanita--my all-time favorite woman, Juanita Mi Favorita de La Quinta--a Coachella Valley town and desert wadi, extending its lucrative winter tourist season to become a significant, year-round retirement venue and a robust service economy feeding off it.  Juanita arrived there in the late 80s, in middle of her early forties.  She was unemployed, homeless, just a suitcase to her name and a two-year old toddler in tow. Her parents were there, as was her Aunt Peggy.  Juanita was always Peggy’s favorite niece, her favorite child, actually, Peggy herself being childless, never married.  Aunt Peggy put her maternal instincts to work on Juanita Rodriguez, her Sister Rosalia’s second favorite twin daughter.

Maria, Rosalia’s first favorite daughter, Juanita’s twin sister—MARIA: lives in Newport Beach and acts as an extra in many commercial ads shot in southern California and elsewhere, an irony never without sting for Juanita. “Que lastima!” Poor Juanita: as her would-be Hollywood Movie star aspirations disintegrated over the years, along with her unrealized lower expectations to be TV star, and even those semi-glamorous modeling gigs at trade shows and fairs—the elephant’s graveyard of the acting profession—failed to materialize, and now her celebrity habitat shrunken even further, to that sporadic but consistent mockery of stardom, I refer to any would-be thespian’s ignominious one-celled visual protozoan: The Extra Call List.  And—*******-- what happens next? Juanita’s sister Maria starts getting these parts, starts getting hired by filling out a ******* postcard, starts getting paid to look good in the background. *******: no professional education or instruction, no agent, and no need to **** off both the producer, the producer’s cousin Morey, the director and the director’s wife’s huge Golden retriever, Genghis--actually a mighty handsome animal--or needing to spill $4K on that Derma-brasion, Juanita inflicted on herself last year.

Juanita, as you already know, was the second favorite daughter and the second favorite twin of the family. She became the third favorite child in her three-child family upon the arrival of her slick baby brother Nico-- the Golden Child, who grew up to be a glib Merrill-Lynch stockbroker, office and residence, Beverly Hills 90112.  (Enter forcefully into the narrative, His Nibs himself, Sir Nicodemus of Hollywood, Juanita and Maria’s baby brother Nico. He speaks: “Excuse me, stockbroker my ***, as it says in a 11 point Rockwell Boldfont, right here on my gold-leaf embossed business card: Senior Large Capital Investment Counselor.”)

No, Juanita had a hard time just treading water in that Cleveland shark tank. And though she lacked nothing in the cuteness department, she had this one fatal flaw, namely, the gift of ***** and sass and a reflex to speak truth to power. Juanita: rejected by Rosalia as a threat to her hegemony as Boss of the Girl’s Club, was cast adrift on a tempestuous childhood cruel Montserrat sea, out there on the briny deep . . .  
                

                                      



High Seas: where many a tuna has a Sorry Charlie moment: “Star-Kist don’t want no tuna with good taste; Star-Kist wants a tuna that tastes good.”

Finally, Juanita is rescued, taken aboard the Good/Soul Aunt Peggy—that wayward bark Elisabeta Rodriguez, home-ported in Southside, Chicago, Illinois—the rescue at sea performed in classy, rather low-key manner; no Andrea Doria drama, but understated:

{Camera One, Helicopter above, zooms over turbulent ocean surface. Peggy, an oasis of calm, aboard the raft Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl and his crew, floats by, whispering, “Going my way, Honey? Climb aboard. Have a homemade oatmeal cookie and a small glass tumbler of Jack Daniels.” Okay, no, that’s not fair. Sure Aunt Peggy drank, but never got round to offering you a drink until you were well into your 30s. Let’s just say she offered you a warm glass of milk, the mother’s milk deprived you by your mother, her sister Rosalia. Dear Aunt Peggy: a seasoned survivor herself, flawed by early childhood deafness and grotesque speech.  Yet, she had refused to settle for life in an asylum. She made a go at life.  She learned; she prospered; she flourished. And when the time came, she was there for you in the Coachella Desert, there for her feisty niece Juanita Ann.  Aunt Peggy: a loving spirit personified, became Juanita’s special confidant and counselor, her personal cheer squad of one. Juanita, of course, a former cheerleader herself--an early hint of greatness to be sure, a highlight, perhaps the highlight of her life, shown off every Halloween, still celebrated at American high schools each Fall. She is the Principal’s secretary at a huge suburban high school in Indio. Each Halloween, if the date falls on a school day, Juanita arrives for work wearing that scrupulously preserved, vintage 1966 cheerleader uniform, looking real foxy still, snug now in all the right places. Eternal Truth: Juanita has always and will always be good looking. Life with Juanita is perpetual “ooh la-la.”

So, I am on the couch that afternoon, reading more of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, specifically the philosophy he calls “Praxis.”  Completely out of the ******* blue, Juanita calls me on a RESTRICTED phone, as I said, Juanita, a torch I’ve kept burning for years, flaring up like a refinery flame--oil still very much in the present energy mix--hope springing eternal as they say, and instantly my mission in life is rekindling our lost love. Juanita’s conceived her mission prior to her phone call:  using me to keep her son from being whacked by the local Eme--the Mexican Mafia—that ethnic-pride social club that the RICO-squad-- using family tree socio-grams and other expensively-printed graphics, the one RICO keeps trying to convince us is some sort of organized crime conspiracy. The Mexican Mafia: like everything else practical and utilitarian in this world: THAT’S ITALIAN! And, if you are starting to sense a bit of ethnic chauvinism on, between & below the lines, you are barking up the right tree.
                                                           ­     
      
                                                            
(AUTHOR’S POST-SCRIPT EDIT: And, an ad for dog food right here? Not the best choice of sponsors, perhaps, at the moment. Juanita was far off from the ****** ***** that start looking not half-bad at 2:30 in the glazy morning, not anywhere near those beasts you find lingering in the airport bars you usually frequent near closing time on Saturday nights. No, I remind you that Juanita was all “ooh la-la.” In my next printing—and my Lord, there have been so many, haven’t there, Paulie “Eat-a-Bag-of-****” Muldoon? I will change out the Alpo ad, plugging in a spot for Aunt Jemima pancake syrup or Betty Crocker whipped cream, you know, something more apropos.)

Juanita, I really must hand it to you. You showed the greatest staying power, year after year as I moved further and further away from La Quinta, California. Juanita: you embraced what was good in me, ignored my flaws and strengthened me with your love for so many years. As far as you and Peggy, I guess it was a case of the “apple not falling far from the tree” one of many endearing Midwestern metaphors you taught me.  Peggy taught you, taught you to be kind and then you taught me. No matter what bizarre venue I pulled out of my ***, you showed above-average staying power, continued to visit me wherever I went, Casa Grande & Buckeye, Arizona, Appalachia, West Virginia, and even Italy, when I thought I’d try Europe again after so many years.  With each move, each time, Juanita renewed her commitment to the relationship. Meanwhile, I continued to test her, quantifying her dedication, undermining her sense of mission to disprove my worldview on the expendability of women. Surely, you know that one: the unreliability of women, women who disappear without saying goodbye. That old deeply etched conviction to never get attached to a woman, any woman, based on the empirical fact that women have been known to suddenly die, a fact seared into my still tender metal by the surprise death of my mother on 11 January 1962.

1962. It was already an insecure world, to wit:  The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khrushchev, in his time both Dr. No and Dr. Evil, namely the Premier whom we Baby Boomers saw as Boogey Man of All Time (Although Putin is showing potential, lately)—the Kennedy ****** (what else could you call it?). All these events scary, whether or not I got the chronology right . . . I remained on high alert for any threat to my delicate adolescent psyche.  My mother-Rosa Teresa Sekaquaptewa-died at 2 o’clock in the morning, screaming in agony while apologizing to my father for not having his dinner on the table when he walked in from work that prior afternoon. She’d already been in bed since noon, attended by two of my aunts--both my father’s sisters--who loved their Hopi sister-in-law, Rosa.  Also present was Lafcadio Smirnoff, M.D.--last of the house call medicine men--a dapper, mustachioed, swarthy gentleman, misdiagnosing her abdominal pain as a 24-hour virus, while she bled out internally for at least eight more hours, her whimpers alternated with screams, well into the wee hours of the morning.

I was upstairs in that dormer bedroom listening to her die. An hour later, Father Numb-nuts of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish teleported in, beaming directly into my bedroom from the parish rectory.  Father Seamus Numb-nuts, an illuminated Burning Bush . . . not quite the bush I ‘d conjured at other times, so many times alone with Gwen Wong, ******* Playmate of the Year, 1961, one of Hefner’s hot centerfolds. No, give me a ******* break, you momo! Whacking off is the last thing on a libidinous, adolescent guinea’s brain when his mama is being tortured and killed by God. Even Alexander Portnoy, Philip Roth’s early avatar would have drawn the wanking line at that unforgettable moment.

No, perhaps what I’d had in mind was The Burning Bush Golf Course where so much of Fletcher Kneble’s political mischief and government shenanigans got cooked up. You remember his books, some of the Cold War’s finest: Seven Days in May, Vanished, etc.

Or better yet, perhaps the greatest political slogan of the 20th century: “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” Thank you, Jesse. “Thank you, Reverend Jackson,” I slip into my Excellence in Broadcasting mode, my very own private Limbaugh. Announcing my on- air arrival is El Rushbo’s unmistakable, totally recognizable bass line bumper, courtesy of Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders band mate, guitarist Tony Butler: Dum, dum, dum-dum, Da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum-dum. Single, “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders
Rush Limbaugh Song– YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=SScW9r0y3c4

I become Reverend Jackson. I emerge from the vapors, an obscure abyss of deep family pangs and disappointments, ever-diminishing public relevance and fade to black (no pun intended) and media oblivion. The only thing left is that line:  “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” You will always own that line, Jesse--true political genius (to wit: Rainbow Coalition) Jackson that you are, despite El Rush-Bo’s virulent anti-Black animus, his predilection to mock you, Al Sharpton, Corey Booker, Barack “Hussein” Obama, and any other professional ***** in America. Isn’t it time someone came right out and tagged Mr. Limbaugh as the Father Coughlin of our time.

Meanwhile back in The Bronx, enter another man of the cloth:  It’s Seamus Numb-nuts, making one of his many well-documented spectral visitations, his splendiferous miracles and wonders. How much longer will the Vatican ignore this humble Bronx priest, this epitome of Sainthood; this reverent man, lacking only the stigmata for a unanimous consent vote? Quote the Numb-nuts: “God Works in Mysterious Ways.” An old standard to be sure, but a lovely, all-purpose bromide for explaining why evil exists in our world. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed; I lost God at that moment, consequently shooting myself in the foot--metaphorically-speaking-condemning myself to an unshielded life, life OUT THE BUSHES!  I went forth into the world without God, without that handy divine crutch, that Andy Devine metaphor for when one’s legs grow weary: a puff of smoke, a reverb twang and a nasty frog croaking “Hi-ya, Kids. Hi-ya, Hi-ya. Hi-ya.”

   Andy's Gang - Pasta Fazooli vs. Froggy the Gremlin - YouTube
► 3:55► 3:55
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35odPm7b3w Aug 8, 2012 - Uploaded by jmgilsinger
Froggy the Gremlin -Tuba ... Andy Devine (Aug 24, 1952)

Life for me became lonely and purposeless. And probably explains my susceptibility to military discipline and a subsequent career in clandestine government service. In 1968--the very day I turned nineteen, September 25th of that year—that fateful day when I should have shot myself in the foot—literally not metaphorically--earning that coveted 4-F physical rejection, a draft deferment to be desired, that 4-F classification of unfitness for duty, a necessary loophole in U.S. conscript service law.  The Draft: last used during that great commonwealth Cold War purge, that culling out of the unwashed, uneducated children of immigrants, that cut-rate, discount, lower socio-economic ***** bank—the only bank where after you make a deposit, you lose interest, to wit: most Black, Hispanic and Poor White Trash parents.  We were cannon fodder, many of us got to be planted at Arlington and other holy American shrines, still wrapped in black or olive drab leak-proof body bags, doing our generational bit to strengthen the gene pool left behind. A debt, some would say, we owed the country and, given the sorry state of the global wicket, increasingly an obligation to the species. And if I had to predict an outcome, Fascism in America will arrive riding the white horse of the environmental, anti-nuclear Bolsheviks. One could argue that Communism has moved so far left on the political spectrum that it’s now the far right.  Concoct a legislative policy goal, accomplish it legally as the bill becomes Law, signed by the President, endorsed and blessed by The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.

To wit: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough?” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an Associate Supreme Court Justice at the time, buttressing a majority argument harnessing the power of U.S. law as a legal means of purifying the race.  When euthanasia failed to win over American hearts and mind, the Federal Government played the war card again and again. Vietnam: undeclared and therefore unconstitutional--except for that Gulf of Tonkin ******* resolution. Vietnam: a cost-plus eugenics project, if ever there was one, although responsive, of course, to the needs of the Military-Industrial Complex.  ******* Ike: he warned us against Fascism in America. As usual, we ignored the man in charge.

Eugenics? Why didn’t the government just put all the retards on the stand, as John Frankenheimer did in Judgment at Nuremberg, a crafty Maximilian Schell humiliating a feeble-minded Montgomery Clift?  Why not, make everyone face a public tribunal, forcing all of us to testify in court, exposing our many substandard and borderline substandard cerebral deficits?  Why not force everyone to demonstrate just how ******* dumb we are, using some clever intelligence test, something l

I am he
   who blistered and
   purpled his aching
   fingers, upon playing
   the saddest, dissonant
   melodies out of
   his old, untuned
   guitar, whose strings
   of somber used-to-be's
   he ceaselessly strummed
   and plucked under
   the dullest starless
   night sky; and
   sing of his
   weeping heart the
   poetry of melancholy
   notes half-composed.

It is me--
   the lone guitarist
   on broken avenue
   who never stopped
   playing his love
   song of rue
   since you left--
   whose only lyrics
   is your name
   and your words
   he dearly kept.

(poems from the Chinese translated by Arthur Waley)

Last night the clouds scattered away;
A thousand leagues, the same moonlight scene.
When dawn came, I dreamt I saw your face;
It must have been that you were thinking of me.
In my dream, I thought I held your hand
And asked you to tell me what your thoughts were.
And you said: ‘I miss you bitterly . . . “

As Helen drifted into sleep the source of that imagined voice in her last conscious moment was waking several hundred miles away. For so long now she was his first and only waking thought. He stretched his hand out to touch her side with his fingertips, not a touch more the lightest brush: he did not wish to wake her. But she was elsewhere. He was alone. His imagination had to bring her to him instead. Sometimes she was so vivid a thought, a presence more like, that he felt her body surround him, her hand stroke the back of his neck, her ******* fall and spread against his chest, her breath kiss his nose and cheek. He felt conscious he had yet to shave, conscious his rough face should not touch her delicate freckled complexion . . . but he was alone and his body ached for her.

It was always like this when they were apart, and particularly so when she was away from home and full to the brim with the variously rich activities and opportunities that made up her life. He knew she might think of him, but there was this feeling he was missing a part of her living he would never see or know. True, she would speak to him on the phone, but sadly he still longed to read her once bright descriptions that had in the past enabled him to enter her solo experiences in a way no image seemed to allow. But he had resolved to put such possible gifts to one side. So instead he would invent such descriptions himself: a good, if time-consuming compromise. He would give himself an hour at his desk; an hour, had he been with her, they might have spent in each other’s arms welcoming the day with such a love-making he could hardly bare to think about: it was always, always more wonderful than he could possibly have imagined.

He had been at a concert the previous evening. He’d taken the train to a nearby town and chosen to hear just one work in the second part. Before the interval there had been a strange confection of Bernstein, Vaughan-Williams and Saint-Saens. He had preferred to listen to *The Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. There was something a little special about attending a concert to hear a single work. You could properly prepare yourself for the experience and take away a clear memory of the music. He had read the score on the train journey, a journey across a once industrial and mining heartland that had become an abandoned wasteland: a river and canal running in tandem, a vast but empty marshalling yard, acres of water-filled gravel pits, factory and mill buildings standing empty and in decay. On this early evening of a thoroughly wet and cold June day he would lift his gaze to the window to observe this sad landscape shrouded in a grey mist tinted with mottled green.

Andrew often considered Berlioz a kind of fellow-traveller on his life’s journey of music. Berlioz too had been a guitarist in his teenage years and had been largely self-taught as a composer. He had been an innovator in his use of the orchestra and developed a body of work that closely mirrored the literature and political mores of his time.  The Symphonie Fantastique was the ultimate love letter: to the adorable Harriet Smithson, the Irish actress. Berlioz had seen her play Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (see above) and immediately imagined her as his muse and life’s partner. He wrote hundreds of letters to her before eventually meeting her to declare his love and admiration in person. A friend took her to hear the Symphonie after it had got about that this radical work was dedicated to her. She was appalled! But, when Berlioz wrote Lélio or The Return to Life, a kind of sequel to his Symphonie, she relented and agreed to meet him. They married in 1833 but parted after a tempestuous seven years. It had surprised Andrew to discover Lélio, about which, until quite recently, he had known nothing. The Berlioz scholar David Cairns had written fully and quite lovingly about the composition, but reading the synopsis in Wikipedia he began to understand it might be a trifle embarrassing to present in a concert.

The programme of Lélio describes the artist wakening from these dreams, musing on Shakespeare, his sad life, and not having a woman. He decides that if he can't put this unrequited love out of his head, he will immerse himself in music. He then leads an orchestra to a successful performance of one of his new compositions and the story ends peacefully.

Lélio consists of six musical pieces presented by an actor who stands on stage in front of a curtain concealing the orchestra. The actor's dramatic monologues explain the meaning of the music in the life of the artist. The work begins and ends with the idée fixe theme, linking Lélio to Symphonie fantastique.

Thoughts of the lovely Harriet brought him to thoughts of his own muse, far away. He had written so many letters to his muse, and now he wrote her little stories instead, often imagining moments in their still separate lives. He had written music for her and about her – a Quintet for piano and winds (after Mozart) based on a poem he’d written about a languorous summer afternoon beside a river in the Yorkshire Dales; a book of songs called Pleasing Myself (his first venture into setting his own words). Strangely enough he had read through those very songs just the other day. How they captured the onset of both his regard and his passion for her! He had written poetic words in her voice, and for her clear voice to sing:

As the light dies
I pace the field edge
to the square pond
enclosed, hedged and treed.
The water,
once revealed,
lies cold
in the still air.

At its bank,
solitary,
I let my thoughts of you
float on the surface.
And like two boats
moored abreast
at the season’s end,
our reflections merge
in one dark form.

His words he felt were true to the model of the Chinese poetry he had loved as a teenager, verse that had helped him fashion his fledgling thoughts in music.

And so it was that while she dined brightly with her team in a Devon country pub, he sat alone in a town hall in West Yorkshire listening to Berlioz’ autobiographical and unrequited work.

A young musician of extraordinary sensibility and abundant imagination, in the depths of despair because of hopeless love, has poisoned himself with *****. The drug is too feeble to **** him but plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by weird visions. His sensations, emotions, and memories, as they pass through his affected mind, are transformed into musical images and ideas. The beloved one herself becomes to him a melody, a recurrent theme [idée fixe] which haunts him continually.

Yes, he could identify with some of that. Reading Berlioz’ own programme note in the orchestral score he remembered the disabling effect of his first love, a slight girl with long hair tied with a simple white scarf. Then he thought of what he knew would be his last love, his only and forever love when he had talked to her, interrupting her concentration, in a college workshop. She had politely dealt with his innocent questions and then, looking at the clock told him she ‘had to get on’. It was only later – as he sat outside in the university gardens - that he realized the affect that brief encounter might have on him. It was as though in those brief minutes he knew nothing of her, but also everything he ever needed to know. Strange how the images of that meeting, the sound of her voice haunted him, would appear unbidden - until two months later a chance meeting in a corridor had jolted him into her presence again  . . . and for always he hoped.

After the music had finished he had remained in the auditorium as the rather slight audience took their leave. The resonance of the music seemed to be a still presence and he had there and then scanned back and forward through the music’s memory. The piece had cheered him, given him a little hope against the prevailing difficulties and problems of his own musical creativity, the long, often empty hours at his desk. He was in a quiet despair about his current work, about his current life if he was honest. He wondered at the way Berlioz’ musical material seemed of such a piece with its orchestration. The conception of the music itself was full of rough edges; it had none of that exemplary finish of a Beethoven symphony so finely chiseled to perfection.  Berlioz’ Symphonie contained inspired and trite elements side by side, bar beside bar. It missed that wholeness Beethoven achieved with his carefully honed and positioned harmonic structures, his relentless editing and rewriting. With Berlioz you reckoned he trusted himself to let what was in his imagination flow onto the page unhindered by technical issues. Andrew had experienced that occasionally, and looking at his past pieces, was often amazed that such music could be, and was, his alone.

Returning to his studio there was a brief text from his muse. He was tempted to phone her. But it was late and he thought she might already be asleep. He sat for a while and imagined her at dinner with the team, more relaxed now than previously. Tired from a long day of looking and talking and thinking and planning and imagining (herself in the near future), she had worn her almost vintage dress and the bright, bright smile with her diligent self-possessed manner. And taking it (the smile) into her hotel bedroom, closing the door on her public self, she had folded it carefully on the chair with her clothes - to be bright and bright for her colleagues at breakfast next day and beyond. She undressed and sitting on the bed in her pajamas imagined for a brief moment being folded in his arms, being gently kissed goodnight. Too tired to read, she brought herself to bed with a mental list of all the things she must and would do in the morning time and when she got home – and slept.

*They came and told me a messenger from Shang-chou
Had brought a letter, - a simple scroll from you!
Up from my pillow I suddenly sprang out of bed,
And threw on my clothes, all topsy-turvey.
I undid the knot and saw the letter within:
A single sheet with thirteen lines of writing.
At the top it told the sorrows of an exile’s heart;
At the bottom it described the pains of separation.
The sorrows and pains took up so much space
There was no room to talk about the weather!

Black out, fade in,
spot light on the boy with his guitar.
Dim light, dim blue flush,
she sits in the corner,wishing on her imaginary star.
Same stage, same adrenaline,
same passion but time never intended for them to meet.
She plays on her role,
and he strums away at his gig.
Sound of guitar coming from his window,
no audience and no standing ovations.
On rented wings, she takes flight,
no rehearsals, no scripts,just tucked away passion.
In his camouflaged green,
he wakes up to his responsibility.
In her traditional prints,
she's all set for the working society.
The clock strikes twelve,
it's the end of two thousand ten.
He's at the eating place
and she comes by with her friends.
He's sitting at the corner
and she's at the other end.
Their eyes met for the very first time,
when they reach out to shake hands.
No lights, no stage,
no audience and that adrenaline.
Just the boy with his guitar, strumming
and in his room she sits, watching.
She talks about the plays, the roles
and in his room he strums, listening.
No lights, no stage,
no audience, just he and her,and their spoken adrenaline.
Twenty-six February,
two thousand eleven.
He and her,
like a match made in heaven.
You know what they said about heaven and earth?
A new chapter begins
for the guitarist and the wannabe actress.

Sitting by the window seat,
Holding a velvet guitar case.
His heart beats heavier with defeat,
And tears rain on his barren face.

He watches the road that's left behind,
And the smiles that make him cry.
The soulless bodies make him remind,
He made a choice of not saying goodbye.

Of all the things he saw in a dream,
The most he craved for love.
Then the clouds let out a gentle stream,
And drenched her photo in his glove.

Holding his broken red porcelain pieces,
The guitarist walks alone.
Over and over his heartache increases,
Over and over his hate has grown.

he guitarist in the city is cool

as he entertained the canberra crowd

with his excellent styles and fabulous riffs, yeah he is pretty cool

you see i gave him $2 cause he entertained us all

and he makes us feel so very cool as we bop our heads and play air guitar loudly

and i can tell you that makes him feel very cool

some look at me as being nice some look at me as being easy

but if people play the guitar as good as him, well, they deserve a few bucks

like i said, it’s entertaining

as he shows us how to party, yeah get down and ****** party, man

yeah mate yeah he is very cool

you see i go to poetry slams to feel cool indeed

and he plays his guitar for us all to hear

get down and party dude, right now

I was down on my luck** and had not returned to my job nor had any notion of returning again. I had a plane ticket for Boston that would fly me to Minnesota that was scheduled to depart in twenty days. I had still not yet bought the bus ticket to Boston. I had one hundred dollars to my name. My friend Billy had owed me one hundred dollars as well and gave me one hundred and thirty dollars in 1988 pesos coins as repayment. Knowing that it might be difficult to find a place who would honestly convert them and that their worth fluctuated, I would have much rather he paid me in US dollars but I took them in thanks and didn’t mention it. He knew what I was thinking and told me that if I couldn’t get a fair price that I could mail them to him when he got to Missouri and he would mail me what he owed in cash but until then all of his money was ******* in his trip home and even that was barely enough but that he had checked on their worth and said it should cover the one-hundred he owed. I smiled and we warmly shook hands to seal the deal.  We spent the day riding around in his wrangler and running some final errands for him before he would be gone.
The three years we had known each other might as well have been a lifetime and had felt just as full as one and had gone by just as fast. We ‘d drunk coffee and smoked cigarettes outside of Elizabeth’s bookstore. We’d watched in silence the beautiful women that would walk passed without much attention given to us. We, however, gave great attention to every ***** and bounce and shimmy. There were some gorgeous women that came to the bookstore those years. We shot pool with Bernie, who had the keys to the Mason Lodge and had many great conversations on the fire escape. We played games of chess in the bookstore. We drove around listening to the blues. Sometimes we got together, the three of us, at Billy’s and we’d make a fire and they’d drink coffee because they were old men and had had to stop drinking years before and I would drink some bourbon or wine after a cup or two of coffee and then we’d share a pack of cigarettes between us and we’d feel the warmth of the fire and have some good laughs. Bernie was diagnosed with a rare and terrible cancer in North Carolina on a trip to see his son in the Air force and had been brought back home a few months later and beside his wife and daughter and son fell silently to sleep and never woke up again. I hadn’t gone to see him but Billy said that when he saw him he didn’t mention his condition once and that he even got out of bed and sat with him on the back porch that looked out upon the open land and sky and they talked like nothing was wrong and laughed and said they’d see each other again. Bernie died a week later.
I hadn’t planned it this way but the opening to this story is very much dedicated to Bernie, and Billy, I hope you get safely back to Missouri and that your pesos will help me make it through the fall.
I had not told my mother or my love, Rosalie, that I had left my job. So I made fake work schedules and left the house and returned home at all the appropriate times with a lanyard I had kept from work hanging from my neck and hung it on the doorknob when I got home. During the day there were several options to occupy the eight-hour shifts. The town ran very much so due to the college and I would go up there and browse around the old books called the stacks and take a few with me out onto the grass of the quad and read them. I would read for hours. I got restless every now and then and would even read while I walked in circles up and down and back and forth the crisscrossing paths under the trees of the quad. This was great until I got caught for taking these books from the school at my own leisure and soon it was revealed that I was not a student there and they told me not to come back. Some days I would run along the riverside. I enjoyed long walks on the train tracks around the city with my headphones on and taking pictures. I always had my backpack on, even if nothing was in it, but usually there was a book and a pair of Rosalie’s ******* and on occasion I would take this out and close my eyes to smell them and I would miss her very much. We lived with a few towns between us and she was a very busy and dedicated young woman. She was working in nursing homes and taking care of home patients and going to school full time on top of it and doing clinicals and taking care of her little brother because it takes a lot sometimes for a man to be cured from his drinking habits, which was very much true in their fathers case and her mother was a wild and paranoid woman who refused to believe that her boyfriend was beating Rosalie’s little brother while she was away at work. So Rosalie took great care and love for her brother and also custody.
I, however, had not been so responsible with my life. When I came back from the Army it was not as a hero but I could tell a great hero’s story because I’d known them all but mostly they were characters in stories I’d read in the barracks, or secondhand tales given in extravagant detail during chow and none of them were true but they sounded quite exciting. It made the time at bars when I had gotten home less lonely because I could tell a tale in first person convincingly enough that many an old vet, with his own made up fantasies, would act like they believed me and would share their stories and we didn’t have to sit there thinking about the buddies we lost or the women whom had fallen out of love with us one time or another or the families we were avoiding. I liked going to the bars, but I wouldn’t have had anything to say if it weren’t for those stories.
I met Rosalie a month after having been discharged. She sat in Elizabeth’s bookstore and was studying for a class. I was with Billy at the time and we were outside smoking cigarettes when we saw her walk in.
“Did you see that?” Billy said. I saw her all right. She had gone inside and we were still sipping our coffees and smoking and I was still seeing her, no matter what else walked by or how pretty the sky was or the warmth of the sun.
“That’s a good girl right there,” Billy said, “not like most of these others we see out here, kid.” It annoyed me a little that Billy was still talking about her, egging me on a little. As I had said, I had seen her and he was disrupting my fantasizing and I had known she was a kind girl and I wanted to save my dream of her for a little while longer before I brought it to her.
“I know,” I said.
“Well, go and see about her then!”
“I’ll go”
I had no intention of letting her pass by but there was thunder rumbling in my chest and butterflies in my stomach and I had suddenly become cold even though it was sixty-five degrees out on the sidewalk and something was keeping me from standing. “I’ll have one more smoke and then I’ll go in for more coffee and see her then.”
“Tonto’s nervous! Ha ha ha!” Billy got a kick out of the thought and patted me on the back. “If you want,” He said, “I’ll go say hello for you.” He was still amused.
“You’re twice her age Bill,” I said, “she’d probably call the cops on your old ugly mug”
“The cops may be called because of how well endowed I am and she’ll be screaming and the neighbors will worry about her and call the cops on us”
Billy was always talking about his manhood and I never knew any good rebuttals because I was honest with myself and so I never had a response. I let him brag. All I knew is I had one and I knew it wasn’t large but none of the women I ever slept with ever said it was too small and they all enjoyed lying with me afterwards and talking quite a while before falling to sleep and sometimes the *** had been wild.
The cigarette was finished and I was still nervous but I didn’t want to hesitate any longer. I don’t even think she’d even seen me when she walked into the store.
I went inside and ordered a coffee and looked over to her. She was on a laptop and had a pile of books beside her and some papers and she looked up and our eyes met. I held the glance with her for a little longer than a moment. I was a little embarrassed and she was beautiful and I was wondering what my face looked like to her and if my eyes had been creepy but she lifted a corner of her lips and smiled before looking back to her work and then my shoulders relaxed and I realized I had held my breath. I laughed to myself at my own ridiculousness and let it go and then walked up to her and extended my hand and she took it with a smile and I looked dead into her beautiful hazel eyes again with confidence and we’ve been in love ever since.

The reason for my trip to Minnesota was to see my old friends from the Army: Grady and Hank. We hadn’t seen each other since I was discharged eight years ago and they reached out to me when they could but I wasn’t very good at keeping in touch with them. After I left the Army it was hard for me to talk to them. I felt I was missing out on something and I didn’t want to think of them dying without me and I didn’t like those feelings so I tried to pretend they didn’t exist but they kept me in the loop of things and always asked how I was doing no matter how well I stayed in touch with them or not. It meant much more than they’ll ever know that they did. So when they said they had both gotten out nothing was going to stop me from reconnecting with them. They said they were going to drive east to see me. I called them back.
“Let’s not hang around here in Maine,” I said, “it’ll be the middle of fall and there’s nothing to do around here. Instead of you guys coming all the way out here and then staying for a week let’s make the whole trip a seven-day adventure and you ******* can drop me off home when it’s over?”
“That sounds all well and good Russ but how the hell are you getting out here?”
“I bought a ticket, I’ll be there on the twenty-second of October at eleven.”
“That’s what I like hearing old pal!” Grady said through the phone, “Now that sounds more like the Russ I know. You’ll find me at the airport at eleven. I’ll bring a limousine with a bar and buy a couple of hookers for us”
“No hookers, Grady”
“Yes, hookers!” Grady said, “do you still do blow?”
“No”
“Good. Me neither. Honestly, I don’t do hookers anymore also. But it sounded like a proper celebration didn’t it?”
“It did.”
“Well, then its settled Russ. I’ll see you on the twenty-second of October at eleven PM sharp in a long white limo and I’ll bring the *****, the blow and the ****** and it’ll be like old times.”
“Sounds perfect Grady, I can’t wait.”
We hung up.

The plan was I would spend the night at Grady’s and the next morning we’d get Hank and we’d head for Chicago as soon as we could. One of their friends, Lemon, would be making the trip with us and would be there at Hanks when we got there in the morning. Lemon was an excellent shot with the rifle and a better guitarist and Grady told me I’d get right along with him. He told me he was at the range and the Sergeant was yelling in this black boys ear that he couldn’t shoot worth a ****.
“MY ******* GOT BETTER AIM BOY!” “I CAN HIT YOUR FAT UGLY MOMMA IN THE EYE AT TWICE THE DISTANCE” “YOU COULDN’T HIT PUBERTY IF I DROPPED YOUR ***** FOR YOU!”
The Sergeant, Grady said, went on and on at the top of his lungs yelling at this black guy and we all stopped and stared at him.
“As the Sarg kept hollering the kids rifle kept popping off shots at the target and you’d hear him grab another clip when the other ran out and reload it and then keep shooting but none of us could tell where the shots were going. The Sarg was so loud and the shots had such a rhythm all of us at the range stopped and looked over. There wasn’t a single bullet hole anywhere on the target except directly in the center where every bullet he had shot had gone through and nowhere else.
“Finally Lemon ran out of bullets and the Sarg quit hollering and he called him to attention.”
“Where did you learn to shoot a rifle Jefferson,” The Sergeant inquired.
“Sergeant, I have never shot a rifle before in my life”
“Do you think it’s funny to lie to your Sergeant?”
“No, Sergeant”
“So why are you lying?”
“I’m not lying Sergeant”
“What did you do before you enlisted, Private?”
“I worked on the farm for my father, Sergeant”
“At ease soldier, Staff Sergeant Dominguez would like to have a word with you.”
And that’s how Lemon went to training to become a ****** but he broke his leg in training and got sent home.
“Well ****,” I said, “He must be one helluva guitarist.”

We were to spend a day in Chicago and camp at the Indiana Dunes and then drive to Detroit and spend a day and camp there and then head to Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia if we had the time and then go to Boston and they’d drop me off at the train the following morning and I’d go home from there. But all of that was still twenty days away and I was down on my luck and had to save every cent I possibly could for the trip. Rosalie was excited for me. She knew how much I hated being home and that I stayed around to be with her even as much as she said that I shouldn’t let her stop me from doing what I wanted with my life but I really had no clue but I did know that she was the love of my life. She was happy to hear of this adventure and supported me but she didn’t know how broke I was and I hid it well by cooking all of our meals with things at my mothers apartment or my fathers house depending on where she came during her once-a-week sleepovers. She was proud of me for how well I had been with managing my money. There’s nothing to it, I told her.
The summer had been one of the best summers I’d ever had. Rosalie and I got to spend a lot of time together in-between our own lives and every moment had been cherished. I worked often and hard for twelve bucks an hour for more than forty hours a week but had nothing to show for it now. I’d gotten in trouble with the law and the lawyer was costly and so were the fines and the bail, even though I got the bail back I had to dump it into my beautiful old truck and then some because I hadn’t taken the best of care of it. I also spent most of my money on dinners out with Rosalie and I liked buying her little brother things every now and then and I had a terrible habit of buying books. Also, I had a habit of going to the bars on weekends and I wasn’t a modest drinker.
The last paycheck I got was for five hundred dollars and I spent it on a room for a long weekend at an Inn by the ocean for Rosalie and I to end such a good summer properly. Money is for having a good time and is for others. That’s how I’ve always thought it should be spent. When you’re broke, it’s easy to find lots of good times in the simple endeavors and I enjoyed those but I also enjoyed getting away with Rosalie. So when I say I was down on my luck do not think I was unhappy about it, I had lots of good luck before I’d gotten down on it and Rosalie is possibly the best luck a young man could ever come across. Still, I only had one hundred dollars to my name and three 1988 pesos coins that I’m not sure will be worth the other hundred and with twenty days to go. It’s going to be pretty tight.

I want to talk about our time by the ocean now...

(c) 2015

There is a melody that sings,
of a dream lost in time, with music
that fits the space  
that can’t be filled.
She is as real to you,  
as the wood in your hands
and at night, beyond the timbre of your guitar  
that murmurs melodies about a world
too many understand.
What once was elegant boulevards
in Madrid, are now  
a melodic strain  
of fleeting moments, trapped  
in colorless discontent.

I am a Province, a State, a Municipality, and a Region.
I am a Soldier, a Pilot, a Minister, and a Legion;
I am a black man, a white man, a brown man, a woman,
A French man, American, Canadian, and Roman.

I am a rap artist, a singer, a slam poet and guitarist;
I dabble in the dark arts accompanied by a Marxist.

I'm a barista, a gas man, a secretary, and Tsarina,
A King and a Queen and a janitorial cleaner.

I am a "lover," a "hater," a "here now" and "there later,"
I am Luke Skywalker, yet at the same time, Lord Vader.
I am a driver, a walker, a rider, a stalker,
A conservative liberal and a well-learned straight-talker.

I am a salesman and clerk,
A criminal and a serf,
The proud owner of a weapon that, while it kills, saves the Earth.

I am a drinker and smoker,
A consumer and broker,
A bomb-maker, con-artist, Priest, and interloper.

I am a Citizen.

Religious and secular,
Macrocosmic, molecular,
Suit wearing, uncaring, emphatic, irregular,
A "packie," a ****, a Scrabble fan playing Yahtzee;

A Jihadist, sadistic, addicted to Herodotus,
History is repeated by the philosopher that thought of us.
The eroticist literature towards which we've all lusted;
It looks like the bullets machine-gun is busted.

Indifferent, ecstatic, illicett, erratic,
An infant, a senior, a young man with bad-lip,
A black man, a white man, a brown man, a woman,
A Jew and a Christian, a Muslim musician,
A monarch, elitist, pro-abortion defeatist,
An anarchist, Black Panther, and a rich plutocratic;
I am a citizen,
And as one,

I'm elastic.

A picture says
A thousand words
I'll give two thousand
And paint a better picture

I thought about you for a while today,
Imagined all the things I’d like to hear you say.
You said many things I wanted to be true,
And when I fantasized I said, “I love you, too.”

If only I could feel the things you feel,
Are you just a friend, or will more be revealed?
I know I’m not the perfect specimen.
But I love you now, and I will love you till the end.

And when you think of me,
Remember me with kindness.
If you go away,
Please, close the door with tenderness.
And all you are,
Is everything you could have been to me.
I know you would,
If only you could love me.

I sat in silence with my thoughts today.
And then I practiced all these things you’ll hear me say.
I never knew I had such feelings inside.
I would have said before, if it weren’t for my pride.

The truth is more like that I fear too much,
And do women like their men to be tough?
I wonder maybe if there could be a chance,
If I am bolder, so I’m here to show my stance.

And when you think of me,
Remember me with kindness.
If you go away,
Please, close the door with tenderness.
And all you are,
Is everything you could have been to me.
I know you would.
If only you could love me.

I knew that if I wore my feelings on my sleeve,
There was a chance that things would change and you would leave.
One in a million lucky few can feel like this.
I want to thank-you.
I love you.
You’re worth the risk.

My heart’s not broken, but it’s fortified.
You’ve taught me lessons, you brought joy to my life.
You’ve shown me kindness, and when to let go.
And lots of other things, I think you should know.

I have to tell you all these words I’ve said
Have just been swimming loudly ‘round in my head.
I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.
I am in love, even though you’re probably not.

And when you think of me,
Remember me with kindness.
If you go away,
Please, close the door with tenderness.
And all you are,
Is everything you could have been to me.
I know you would.
If only you could love me.

I knew that if I wore my feelings on my sleeve,
There was a chance that things would change and you would leave.
One in a million lucky few can feel like this.
I want to thank-you.
I love you.
You’re worth the risk.

Was writing for a musician friend, a guitarist, to see what he could do. Negotiations are on the table. Lyrics completed dec. 29, 2015. All copywrites reserved by the writer.

Strumming on his guitar
He plays a rhythmic blues
He sings out his outburst
To the crowd he doesn't face

1975 Art Institute is tactic for Odysseus to put off dealing with real world also investigate range of visual techniques gay instructor fruitlessly endeavors to ****** him he enjoys several affairs with beautiful girls yet Bayli haunts him main building of school is connected behind Art Institute of Chicago Odysseus spends lots of time looking at paintings Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” Gustave Caillebotte’s “Paris Street Rainy Day” Ivan Albright’s “Portrait of Dorian Gray” Jackson *******’s “Greyed Rainbow” Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Black Cross New Mexico” Francis Bacon’s “Figure with Meat” Pablo Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” Balthus’s “Solitaire” Claude Monet’s “Stacks of Wheat” Paul Cezanne’s “The Bathers” Vincent Van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait” Edouard Manet’s “The Mocking of Christ” Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s “At the Moulin Rouge” Robert Rauschenberg’s “Photograph” Mary Cassatt’s “The Child’s Bath” Peter Blume’s “The Rock” Ed Paschke’s “Mid America” Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” Jasper John’s “Near the Lagoon” and John Singer Sargent James McNeill Whistler Diego Rivera Marsden Hartley Thomas Eakins Winslow Homer his 2nd year at Art Institute involves student teaching during day then at night working as waiter at Ivanhoe Restaurant and Theater gay managers teach him to make Caesar salad tableside and other flamboyant tasks wait staff are all gay men once more Odysseus experiences bias from homosexual regime he is assigned restaurant’s slowest sections it bothers him the way some gay men venomously condescend women and their bodies Odysseus loves women especially their bodies he thinks about how much easier his life would be if he was gay in 1976 the art world is managed by gay curators gay art dealers he wonders if he could be gay yet not realize it can a person be gay but not attracted to one’s own ***? Ivanhoe hires variety of night club acts one night he watches Tom Waits perform on piano in lounge Odysseus feels inspired in 1977 he graduates with teacher’s certification he considers all the sacrifices teachers make and humiliating salaries they put up with he does not want to teach candidly he feels he has nothing yet to teach teaching degree was Mom’s idea Odysseus wants to learn grow paint after Art Institute he flip-flops between styles his artwork suffers from too much schooling and scholastic practice it takes years to find his own voice he has tendency to be self-effacing put himself down often he will declare what do i know? i’m just a stupid painter one topic artists do not like talking about is their failures how much money they cost creation requires resource paint and canvas can be expensive how much money is spent on harebrained ideas that never pan out? most artists resort to cheap or used materials few can afford their dreams he gets job selling encyclopedias that job lasts about 5 weeks then he finds job selling posters at framing store on Broadway between Barry and Wellington Salvador Dali Escher Claude Monet prints are the rage his manager accuse him of lacking initiative being spacey after several months he gets laid off he finds job waiting tables during lunch shift at busy downtown restaurant other waiters are mostly old men from Europe they play cards with each other in between shifts teach Odysseus how to carry 6 hot plates on one arm and 2 in his other hand the job is hectic but money is good experience educates differently than books and college a university degree cannot teach what working in the real world confronts people learn most when they are nobodies he reads Sartre’s “Being And Nothingness” he wants to discover who he is by finding out who he is not often he rides bicycle along lakefront taking different routes sometimes following behind an anonymous bicyclist possibly to come across new way he does not know or to marvel at another person’s interest

truth is this life is too difficult for me the violence hatred turf wars tribalism laws judgments practices rules permits history i’m not prepared emotionally to withstand the realities of this world not equipped psychologically to deal with the stresses of this world not prepared emotionally to withstand the realities of this world not equipped psychologically to deal with the stresses of this world i’m sorry am i repeating myself i apologize i’m not prepared emotionally to withstand the realities of this world not equipped psychologically to deal with the stresses of this world god please protect teach me strength courage fairness compassion wisdom love i’m not prepared emotionally to withstand the realities of this world not equipped psychologically to deal with the stresses of this world

buy divinity purchase devotion earn reward points own 4 bedroom loft with roof garden deck porch pool parking in paradise’s gated community pay for exclusive membership into sainthood become part of inner circle influence determine fate destiny of everything step up to the plate sign on the line immortalize yourself feel the privileges of eternal holiness i’m living inside a nightmare inside a nightmare inside a nightmare hello? i am dizzy in my own self-deceptions lost in my own self-deceptions alone in my own self-deceptions there was a time once but that time is gone there was a place once but that place has vanished there was a life once but that life is spent remember when things were different truth is i’m weak skittish anxious alienated paranoid scared to death pagan idiot stop

breath deeply push stale air out imagine kinder more respectful loving world please god do your stuff angels throw your weight around clean up this mess planets align stars shine ancient spirits raise your voices magic work there are words when spoken can change everything words rooted to spiritual nerves if voiced in  particular order secret passwords capable of setting off persuasions in the mind threads to the heart if a person can figure out which words what order tone of voice rate of pronunciation time of day then that person can summon powers of the supernatural Isis goddess of celestial sway of words whisper secret earth water fire air reveal your alchemy winter spring summer autumn teach about passages patterns sublime eastern western sun fickle moody moon unveil your heavenly equation north south east west  beat the drums blow winds show the path to healing path of the heart blood dirt hair *** bare the mystery of your trance dance the ghost dance sacred woman with ovaries cycles flow smell beautiful girl eyes sweetness strange awkward skinny scruffy boy great bear spirit bird jumping fish wise turtle where are you why is there no one to back me? jean paul sartre what was your last thought before you died? was it nausea? nothingness? or a wish?

I have a friend who plays guitar
I've worked with thousands ... but none quite like him.
His chord choices, the melodies and the riffs that he plays
They can only come from within.

He's been out living as a big rock star
But that's not quite the world that you'd think.
It's a rugged, rough struggle of perseverance and passion
And your life flashes by in a blink.

He isn't a shredder as are many these days
Never cramming notes where they don't belong.
He is tasteful and creative, a sound so original
His strings envelop the songs.

He has no need to display some arrogant plumage.
He doesn't show off with any thousand-note solos.
He doesn't do intros that are way too long.
His moody style transcends virtuoso.

He is my friend and proven it so
Once guiding me through a valley of black.
Not with his music, although that helped.
He did so with his hand on my back.

A music teacher once told me that
"Music is the silence between notes".
If that is true, then his silence is golden
As I love every song that he's wrote.

So all you pickers, players and shredders
in garages or with gold albums on the wall.
Take a lesson, from this humble man
You needn't over play at all.

But don't think that he is timid or without some flair
Don't make boastful quips that you think are so witty.
If the mood and the moment strikes him just so
He can make that guitar sound like Godzilla destroying a city.

I am so proud to call him my "Brother"
Such a musician, such a friend.
His music and his camaraderie have both touched my soul
and I hope that neither see's end.

I knew from the start
Sweet melodies would follow
His fingers plucked hearts

I'm not afraid of being called egotistical

For having convictions, for feeling like I matter

But not in that "it matters inside"

Like I'm some hipster flavor of the month

Because if Kim Kardashian is relevant I'm ******* relevant

Tell me what sandwich Kanye ate after he wiped his *** today

Tell me how One Direction smoked ***, and wrote a good song finally

Tell me how Arcade Fire thinks electronic music is lesser when they

Record their tracks using a DAW

Tell me how you think Jimmy Page was a sloppy guitarist and then show

me your discography, I probably don't like it as much

Tell me I'm wasting my time, and then go clock back in at work

I'll do the same

Because if Kim Kardashian is relevant I'm ******* relevant

Tell me writing is a subjective craft

Tell me my writing *****

Tell me I'm not touching on any real points

Tell me I'm being too specific

Tell me I don't express myself enough

Tell me to shut the **** up

Tell me I'm a voice for the people

Tell me I should calm down

Tell me to keep writing and working with no recognition

Because if Kim Kardashian is relevant I'm ******* relevant.

Tell me to ignore those facts and keep going anyway

Cause I'll do it, and I'll write this ******* poem about it

His fingers tickle
nylon strings, as they gift him
joyful harmonies.


*v.g

Hair like sunshine dust,
Shining like a gleam of light,
I could play with them forever.

Voice so addictive,
Even drugs can't get me so high.

You set me free,
Free from the worries of the world,
I feel like an autumn leaf,
Flying from one place to another,
Not caring about the tree.

When I look into your eyes,
I see a blue lagoon,
Deep and peaceful,
Calm yet powerful.

The guitarist,
To my heart strings,
Is you, my dearly beloved.

The front man does the singing
The drummer provides the beat
Then there is the lead guitarist
Still the band is incomplete.
There is a certain member
Who we often underrate
He's there in the background
The one who plays the bass
Sometimes he goes unnoticed
By the audience and the crowds
And can easily be forgotten
As the rest all play out loud
But he holds the band together
The band should all be proud.
If it wasn't for the bass player
They would be gone like a passing cloud.

the base drum beats
bump... bump... bump... bump... bump...
the base guitar plays one note
brung... brung... brung... brung... brung...
the rhythm guitar strums one chord
strum... strum... strum... strum... strum...
Then the lead guitarist rings out in epic
greatness, as the lights turn up
you see him ripping up the guitar with his fingers everywhere at once
playing a great solo
moving across the stage
curly hair all over
breathing hard.
the Singer starts his song
clear but unique
no other singer could sing like he
but it's not the reason I love AC/DC
it is because of the guitarist
ANGUS YOUNG!
a inspiration above many!

Took a cherry blunt hit with yellowed fingers
The song writing sensibility lingered
Poured black coffee and wrote a tune on being comfortable at night
How a bad tooth kept me down
Teenage greasy haired full blown depression
Guitar in hand or within reach obsession
Chain smoking , acrid breath
Strumming through ashtrays to build a cigarette
Hiding in rooms
Scurrying away from crowds
Always the subject
Self medicated loner
Writing poetry then burning it
Having a friend then ruining it* ...

When we walked up to the door of our favourite coffee pub
You tangled your fingers around my own
And with a twist of my wrist
We went in

We order our usual from the usuals
The baristas never changed though the drinks did with the seasons
As I pull out the exact change from my coat
You shake some melted snow from your hair

We grab a seat at a nook by the window
There was a ring of dried coffee on the table
I fill it in with my mug
You joke it’s my OCD but I say it’s my love for the unappreciated

We listen to a woman with a guitar at the makeshift stage
She strums off a couple chords and sings with her lips
She fades into the background as I turn to look at you
Your eyes are closed to turn up the volume

I close mine too and let the music direct me
My mind swims like a trapeze *******
I sway with the strings and strums
Your hand grasps mine as I fall into the safety net

The guitarist is packing up
Our coffee or what’s left of it is cold
You lean over and
Two angels kissed like sinners
Two sinners kissed like angels

I argue the point and take a stand.  How is eating food and sliding a fork in and out of your mouth so much different than a kiss?  It is a sensational thing to be fully present for either but if I cannot be kissed I will eat like it is my ***!
A hard chair.  Sit upright.  Dress right..or undress just right.Heels of course.  No Tv.  NO PC.  Silence or the Cocteau Twins Treasure.
Treasure is the third studio album by Scottish alternative rock band Cocteau Twins. It was released on 1 November 1984, through record label 4AD. With this album, the band settled on what would, from then on, be their primary lineup: vocalist Elizabeth Fraser, guitarist Robin Guthrie and bass guitarist Simon Raymonde.
The album reached number 29 on the UK Albums Chart, becoming the band's first UK Top 40 album, and charted for 8 weeks.[9] It also became one of the band's most critically successful releases, although the band themselves have expressed dismay at it.  Know your ******* music!
Sit proper and nice.  Make a nice table setting-IMPRESS YOURSELF!!!!  I mean **** who is in your mouth??  You have more sensations all over than you use..I might spank you if you do not do a nice setting and snap a photo..you know I want to sea green IT!!!
Now take the time to feel the complexity of the flavors built, skill involved-maybe a ******* KILT!
Feel the sliding of the FORK IN AND OUT..little strokes in your pout.
Let is slide so slowly out..feel the edges..nice and smooth..let it slide feel that tine groove.
Chew so succulent and slow..feel the textures and LET THOUGHTS GO
Feel the flow, taste everything within it sink below.
Belly warm, food is desire..imagination and being present is all that is required~

The best way to treat myself is some fine dining.  Living watercress & Italian parsley- balsamic vinegar salad on the side of a tempting dish of white beans with sun dried tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, celery, cilantro,orange peppers and some garlic and chili paste with a lemon slice I ate right away and dashed the whole thing with a drizzle of balsamic.  I did not taste test anything.  I know what a good balance is.  My meal was a 5 star worthy dish.  I ate everything on my plate.

There are no words for the songs plucked out on the heartstrings
of the melancholy man with deeply sad eyes,
but he sings those songs to the stormy skies
through the tears rolling down his craggy cheeks into the world's oceans,
and those same tears slipping off of the barely beating wings of the tired wrens.

He thinks himself a strange man,
with not a single instrument to his name,
yet known as a musician,
and he breaths out in cold clouds his sorrow,
but the sparrows,
those little birds, let his breaths of freezing billow
roll off of them as easily as the starlight that the sad man can't see.

What a man, so heavyhearted,
who does not know how to play his own heartstrings like a harp,
how to play his heart like a drum,
how to play his brittle ribs like piano keys,
so heavyhearted that he cannot bear to give anything else the weight to exist,
so heavyhearted that the rest of him blows away and he is but a heart,
old and cheerless, without its own reason to exist.

I want to live on a beautiful island
Where it's warm all the time
And on this island I want it to snow
Three months a year
And I want those three months to be
November, December, and March
And when it snows I need it to be seventy seven degrees
And I want the snow to stick
Here I imagine Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, and Zach Gil will sit around playing music
They'll play from noon to around ten
That's when Kwali the local pool boy ends his shift keeping the oil out of the ocean
Kwali he plays the Ukulele and sings about beaches no one's ever been to until around midnight
When the perpetually burning bon fire dies down and the island falls asleep
As for the rest of the music here on the island
Every morning there's this old steel guitarist
He's from just south of New Orleans
A place called Under Pressure
Really it's just the hull of the broken fishing boat he was born on
But he calls it home all the same
And a kid who used to play trombone for the high school jazz band
But he picked up the harmonica after he found out chicks don't dig trombones
And the two of them sort of play old dixie
With a steel drummer who never seems to find his shirt in the morning
But you never really mind that
And on Sunday mornings this really old woman
Ssays her mom was Harriet Tubman
Which we all know is a lie
But she's got scars from head to toe so you might as well believe something
Man she wails
For two straight hours
She wails
Wails to God, to the heavens, to Jesus, Georgia and the first row of church
And when she wails her tears are a lost language from the tower of babble and we all understand it
And on Wednesday
Wednesdays
We waltz
We waltz to really old records
That we play on the only turntable on the island
That Mr. Lee drags all the way from his house to the community center with no walls
And the whole island shows up in summer dresses and Matthew Mcconaughey shirts
Even the one we call grandma
And her husband who everyone calls Uncle for some reason
Come dressed to dance
And we all leave our slippers at the door this place doesn't have
And the sand warms our feet while we waltz
Sometimes it's the Tennessee Waltz
And sometimes it's the Viennese Waltz
But most of the time it's just the waltz we all learned in eighth grade
Either way
Every Wednesday there is a beautiful girl
She's five five, maybe, five eight I don't know
I've been lying on my drivers' license since I was sixteen so I don't know how tall people really are
She's got south pacific features
But with my track record by the time I actually make it to my island she'll probably be a red head
We waltz
We waltz until the records skip
And our legs turn to Jello and all we can do is collapse in each other's arms
While the ocean tickles our toes
Our finger tips tickle each other's palms
And we let that guy in the moon do the rest
So when you see me set sail
If you can catch me you can climb on board
And if you can't
Then
Wave goodbye

The graduation party
with fried aubergine, croutons and rye whisky
has raised the hairs of the alumni.
Kismets  afoot about forming a band,
named after actress Alice White,
intuitive bluesy Psychedelicia.
Devonport's dappling on bass
and Schemtar's already on drums.
The devils in the details with the lead singer,
for the want of a lead guitarist
they are gyved.
But if they practice like clockwork
the turnaround will resonant .

I have an old guitar named Gypsy Queen.  Normally this would not be much of a momentous occasion, lots of people name their guitars, but Gypsy is hand made by me.  Many moons ago when my ex wife was pregnant with my only child, a daughter, I took an adult education night class while I was attending college as a day job.  Our instructor had recently taken a trip to Canada to buy wood as he made his living building custom guitars and he had some of the most beautiful birds eye maple I'd ever seen and also some very good spruce for the top of the guitar.  We met at the local high-school's woodshop classroom.  I knew all the power tools there having taken wood shop twice in middle school and again in high-school.  From raw lumber I fashioned her pieces, sides, three piece back, neck, keyboard (made from some exotic ebony my instructor had), and top.  While my wife was patiently waddling about the house I shaped and sanded those pieces on our living room floor.  The interior struts, the binding, and frets for the keyboard had to be created as well.  When I finally got her glued and assembled she was quite a sight, almost perfect in every way, and the quality wood she was made from was so beautiful I had never seen the likes of her before.  Most of the people in the class didn't get that far not having the skills with the tools or the coordination necessary to succeed.  Still she needed to be lacquered and finished.  All told, special tools and accouterments, cost of the wood, glue and sandpaper, plus the frets (nickeled silver), and the grover tuning pegs she cost me about $160.  But almost 500hrs labor went into her creation, whole free weekends spent sanding and shaping.  It was a year or more before I finally got her lacquered and she was so beautiful I could scarce believe I had made her, totally from scratch.  I had even inlaid her mother of pearl keyboard art, god she was a sight.  Both she, and my daughter, are now close to 40 years old, and she still plays like a champ.  Ask any guitarist about guitars they use a lot, see how many survive that long.  She's my prized possession to this day.  Her custom bridge is shaped like a bird (something I've never seen to this day anywhere else) and I'd put her sound up against any expensive Martin made.  Plus she is so much prettier.  She's old and her finish is crackled some but her neck is still true and her action is superb.  Through the years she has brought me so much joy, I'm so glad I took that class.  I hope she survives till I die cause I want to mix her ashes with mine before they get spread around by my friends.  I'll want something to play in the afterlife.
...
http://i1178.photobucket.com/albums/x370/toreinss/IMG_0325.jpg

Our goddess lives under a banyan tree
Deep in the forest. She paints
And sings songs, to put herself to sleep.

2. Royina, your dad paints too.

Tuesday evening, he paints skies
And at the dinner table, you wonder
Why he has blue on his throat.

Wednesday, he paints the sun.
His fingers are red with the flames
He doesn't read letters addressed to him
Because he's afraid
Of burning them black.

Friday, he doesn't paint.
Just sits by the lake, on a secluded bench.
Feeding pigeons. And hearing them coo.

3. Royina, remember the boy who held you
Last time you allowed yourself
To be kissed?

He played a guitar, you told me.
And he had long thin fingers, which fluttered,
From string to string.

He wrote you a letter when you left.
And you folded it eight times. Then put it
In your pocket. Tell me, Royina
Did you put it in your heart too?

4. What is it with creative people, Royina?

The writers and the guitarist and the painters.
Do they look at you like you are the magic you are?  
Do they tell you, no, you're not
Who you think you are.
There are so many shades under your skin
Let me peel off your inhibitions, and I'll show you.

5. Royina, their letters never reach you.

And they wonder why, homes are still called
Addresses.