FIRST DAY

1.
Who wanted me
to go to Chicago
on January 6th?
I did!

The night before,
20 below zero
Fahrenheit
with the wind chill;
as the blizzard of 99
lay in mountains
of blackening snow.

I packed two coats,
two suits,
three sweaters,
multiple sets of long johns
and heavy white socks
for a two-day stay.

I left from Newark.
**** the denseness,
it confounds!

The 2nd City to whom?
2nd ain’t bad.
It’s pretty good.
If you consider
Peking and Prague,
Tokyo and Togo,
Manchester and Moscow,
Port Au Prince and Paris,
Athens and Amsterdam,
Buenos Aries and Johannesburg;
that’s pretty good.

What’s going on here today?
It’s friggin frozen.
To the bone!

But Chi Town is still cool.
Buddy Guy’s is open.
Bartenders mixing drinks,
cabbies jamming on their breaks,
honey dew waitresses serving sugar,
buildings swerving,
fire tongued preachers are preaching
and the farmers are measuring the moon.

The lake,
unlike Ontario
is in the midst of freezing.
Bones of ice
threaten to gel
into a solid mass
over the expanse
of the Michigan Lake.
If this keeps up,
you can walk
clear to Toronto
on a silver carpet.

Along the shore
the ice is permanent.
It’s the first big frost
of winter
after a long
Indian Summer.

Thank God
I caught a cab.
Outside I hear
The Hawk
nippin hard.
It’ll get your ear,
finger or toe.
Bite you on the nose too
if you ain’t careful.

Thank God,
I’m not walking
the Wabash tonight;
but if you do cover up,
wear layers.

Chicago,
could this be
Sandburg’s City?

I’m overwhelmed
and this is my tenth time here.

It’s almost better,
sometimes it is better,
a lot of times it is better
and denser then New York.

Ask any Bull’s fan.
I’m a Knickerbocker.
Yes Nueva York,
a city that has placed last
in the standings
for many years.
Except the last two.
Yanks are # 1!

But Chicago
is a dynasty,
as big as
Sammy Sosa’s heart,
rich and wide
as Michael Jordan’s grin.

Middle of a country,
center of a continent,
smack dab in the mean
of a hemisphere,
vortex to a world,
Chicago!

Kansas City,
Nashville,
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh,
Denver,
New Orleans,
Dallas,
Cairo,
Singapore,
Auckland,
Baghdad,
Mexico City
and Montreal
salute her.



2.
Cities,
A collection of vanities?
Engineered complex utilitarianism?
The need for community a social necessity?
Ego one with the mass?
Civilization’s latest *******?
Chicago is more then that.

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer
is long gone
but this capitol
of the Great Plains
is still democratic.

The citizen’s of this city
would vote daily,
if they could.

Chicago,
Sandburg’s Chicago,
Could it be?

The namesake river
segments the city,
canals of commerce,
all perpendicular,
is rife throughout,
still guiding barges
to the Mississippi
and St. Laurence.

Now also
tourist attractions
for a cafe society.

Chicago is really jazzy,
swanky clubs,
big steaks,
juices and drinks.

You get the best
coffee from Seattle
and the finest teas
from China.

Great restaurants
serve liquid jazz
al la carte.

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they serve is Jazz
Rock me steady
Keep the beat
Keep it flowin
Feel the heat!

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they is, is Jazz
Fast cars will take ya
To the show
Round bout midnight
Where’d the time go?

Flows into the Mississippi,
the mother of America’s rivers,
an empires aorta.

Great Lakes wonder of water.
Niagara Falls
still her heart gushes forth.

Buffalo connected to this holy heart.
Finger Lakes and Adirondacks
are part of this watershed,
all the way down to the
Delaware and Chesapeake.

Sandburg’s Chicago?
Oh my my,
the wonder of him.
Who captured the imagination
of the wonders of rivers.

Down stream other holy cities
from the Mississippi delta
all mapped by him.

Its mouth our Dixie Trumpet
guarded by righteous Cajun brethren.

Midwest?
Midwest from where?
It’s north of Caracas and Los Angeles,
east of Fairbanks,
west of Dublin
and south of not much.

Him,
who spoke of honest men
and loving women.
Working men and mothers
bearing citizens to build a nation.
The New World’s
precocious adolescent
caught in a stream
of endless and exciting change,
much pain and sacrifice,
dedication and loss,
pride and tribulations.

From him we know
all the people’s faces.
All their stories are told.
Never defeating the
idea of Chicago.

Sandburg had the courage to say
what was in the heart of the people, who:

Defeated the Indians,
Mapped the terrain,
Aided slavers,
Fought a terrible civil war,
Hoisted the barges,
Grew the food,
Whacked the wheat,
Sang the songs,
Fought many wars of conquest,
Cleared the land,
Erected the bridges,
Trapped the game,
Netted the fish,
Mined the coal,
Forged the steel,
Laid the tracks,
Fired the tenders,
Cut the stone,
Mixed the mortar,
Plumbed the line,
And laid the bricks
Of this nation of cities!

Pardon the Marlboro Man shtick.
It’s a poor expostulation of
crass commercial symbolism.

Like I said, I’m a
Devil Fan from Jersey
and Madison Avenue
has done its work on me.

It’s a strange alchemy
that changes
a proud Nation of Blackhawks
into a merchandising bonanza
of hometown hockey shirts,
making the native seem alien,
and the interloper at home chillin out,
warming his feet atop a block of ice,
guzzling Old Style
with clicker in hand.

Give him his beer
and other diversions.
If he bowls with his buddy’s
on Tuesday night
I hope he bowls
a perfect game.

He’s earned it.
He works hard.
Hard work and faith
built this city.

And it’s not just the faith
that fills the cities
thousand churches,
temples and
mosques on the Sabbath.

3.
There is faith in everything in Chicago!

An alcoholic broker named Bill
lives the Twelve Steps
to banish fear and loathing
for one more day.
Bill believes in sobriety.

A tug captain named Moe
waits for the spring thaw
so he can get the barges up to Duluth.
Moe believes in the seasons.

A farmer named Tom
hopes he has reaped the last
of many bitter harvests.
Tom believes in a new start.

A homeless man named Earl
wills himself a cot and a hot
at the local shelter.
Earl believes in deliverance.

A Pullman porter
named George
works overtime
to get his first born
through medical school.
George believes in opportunity.

A folk singer named Woody
sings about his
countrymen inheritance
and implores them to take it.
Woody believes in people.

A Wobbly named Joe
organizes fellow steelworkers
to fight for a workers paradise
here on earth.
Joe believes in ideals.

A bookkeeper named Edith
is certain she’ll see the Cubs
win the World Series
in her lifetime.
Edith believes in miracles.

An electrician named ****
saves money
to bring his family over from Gdansk.
**** believes in America.

A banker named Leah
knows Ditka will return
and lead the Bears
to another Super Bowl.
Leah believes in nostalgia.

A cantor named Samuel
prays for another 20 years
so he can properly train
his Temple’s replacement.

Samuel believes in tradition.
A high school girl named Sally
refuses to get an abortion.
She knows she carries
something special within her.
Sally believes in life.

A city worker named Mazie
ceaselessly prays
for her incarcerated son
doing 10 years at Cook.
Mazie believes in redemption.

A jazzer named Bix
helps to invent a new art form
out of the mist.
Bix believes in creativity.

An architect named Frank
restores the Rookery.
Frank believes in space.

A soldier named Ike
fights wars for democracy.
Ike believes in peace.

A Rabbi named Jesse
sermonizes on Moses.
Jesse believes in liberation.

Somewhere in Chicago
a kid still believes in Shoeless Joe.
The kid believes in
the integrity of the game.

An Imam named Louis
is busy building a nation
within a nation.
Louis believes in
self-determination.

A teacher named Heidi
gives all she has to her students.
She has great expectations for them all.
Heidi believes in the future.

4.
Does Chicago have a future?

This city,
full of cowboys
and wildcatters
is predicated
on a future!

Bang, bang
Shoot em up
Stake the claim
It’s your terrain
Drill the hole
Strike it rich
Top it off
You’re the boss
Take a chance
Watch it wane
Try again
Heavenly gains

Chicago
city of futures
is a Holy Mecca
to all day traders.

Their skin is gray,
hair disheveled,
loud ties and
funny coats,
thumb through
slips of paper
held by nail
chewed hands.
Selling promises
with no derivative value
for out of the money calls
and in the money puts.
Strike is not a labor action
in this city of unionists,
but a speculators mark,
a capitalist wish,
a hedgers bet,
a public debt
and a farmers
fair return.

Indexes for everything.
Quantitative models
that could burst a kazoo.

You know the measure
of everything in Chicago.
But is it truly objective?
Have mathematics banished
subjective intentions,
routing it in fair practice
of market efficiencies,
a kind of scientific absolution?

I heard that there
is a dispute brewing
over the amount of snowfall
that fell on the 1st.

The mayor’s office,
using the official city ruler
measured 22”
of snow on the ground.

The National Weather Service
says it cannot detect more
then 17” of snow.

The mayor thinks
he’ll catch less heat
for the trains that don’t run
the buses that don’t arrive
and the schools that stand empty
with the addition of 5”.

The analysts say
it’s all about capturing liquidity.

Liquidity,
can you place a great lake
into an eyedropper?

Its 20 below
and all liquid things
are solid masses
or a gooey viscosity at best.

Water is frozen everywhere.
But Chi town is still liquid,
flowing faster
then the digital blips
flashing on the walls
of the CBOT.

Dreams
are never frozen in Chicago.
The exchanges trade
without missing a beat.

Trading wet dreams,
the crystallized vapor
of an IPO
pledging a billion points
of Internet access
or raiding the public treasuries
of a central bank’s
huge stores of gold
with currency swaps.

Using the tools
of butterfly spreads
and candlesticks
to achieve the goal.

Short the Russell
or buy the Dow,
go long the
CAC and DAX.
Are you trading in euro’s?
You better be
or soon will.
I know
you’re Chicago,
you’ll trade anything.
WEBS,
Spiders,
and Leaps
are traded here,
along with sweet crude,
North Sea Brent,
plywood and T-Bill futures;
and most importantly
the commodities,
the loam
that formed this city
of broad shoulders.

What about our wheat?
Still whacking and
breadbasket to the world.

Oil,
an important fossil fuel
denominated in
good ole greenbacks.

Porkbellies,
not just hogwash
on the Wabash,
but bacon, eggs
and flapjacks
are on the menu
of every diner in Jersey
as the “All American.”

Cotton,
our contribution
to the Golden Triangle,
once the global currency
used to enrich a
gentlemen class
of cultured
southern slavers,
now Tommy Hilfiger’s
preferred fabric.

I think he sends it
to Bangkok where
child slaves
spin it into
gold lame'.

Sorghum,
I think its hardy.

Soybeans,
the new age substitute
for hamburger
goes great with tofu lasagna.

Corn,
ADM creates ethanol,
they want us to drive cleaner cars.

Cattle,
once driven into this city’s
bloodhouses for slaughter,
now ground into
a billion Big Macs
every year.

When does a seed
become a commodity?
When does a commodity
become a future?
When does a future expire?

You can find the answers
to these questions in Chicago
and find a fortune in a hole in the floor.

Look down into the pits.
Hear the screams of anguish
and profitable delights.

Frenzied men
swarming like a mass
of epileptic ants
atop the worlds largest sugar cube
auger the worlds free markets.

The scene is
more chaotic then
100 Haymarket Square Riots
multiplied by 100
1968 Democratic Conventions.

Amidst inverted anthills,
they scurry forth and to
in distinguished
black and red coats.

Fighting each other
as counterparties
to a life and death transaction.

This is an efficient market
that crosses the globe.

Oil from the Sultan of Brunei,
Yen from the land of Hitachi,
Long Bonds from the Fed,
nickel from Quebec,
platinum and palladium
from Siberia,
FTSE’s from London
and crewel cane from Havana
circle these pits.

Tijuana,
Shanghai
and Istanbul's
best traders
are only half as good
as the average trader in Chicago.

Chicago,
this hog butcher to the world,
specializes in packaging and distribution.

Men in blood soaked smocks,
still count the heads
entering the gates of the city.

Their handiwork
is sent out on barges
and rail lines as frozen packages
of futures
waiting for delivery
to an anonymous counterparty
half a world away.

This nation’s hub
has grown into the
premier purveyor
to the world;
along all the rivers,
highways,
railways
and estuaries
it’s tentacles reach.

5.
Sandburg’s Chicago,
is a city of the world’s people.

Many striver rows compose
its many neighborhoods.

Nordic stoicism,
Eastern European orthodoxy
and Afro-American
calypso vibrations
are three of many cords
strumming the strings
of Chicago.

Sandburg’s Chicago,
if you wrote forever
you would only scratch its surface.

People wait for trains
to enter the city from O’Hare.
Frozen tears
lock their eyes
onto distant skyscrapers,
solid chunks
of snot blocks their nose
and green icicles of slime
crust mustaches.
They fight to breathe.

Sandburg’s Chicago
is The Land of Lincoln,
Savior of the Union,
protector of the Republic.
Sent armies
of sons and daughters,
barges, boxcars,
gunboats, foodstuffs,
cannon and shot
to raze the south
and stamp out succession.

Old Abe’s biography
are still unknown volumes to me.
I must see and read the great words.
You can never learn enough;
but I’ve been to Washington
and seen the man’s memorial.
The Free World’s 8th wonder,
guarded by General Grant,
who still keeps an eye on Richmond
and a hand on his sword.

Through this American winter
Abe ponders.
The vista he surveys is dire and tragic.

Our sitting President
impeached
for lying about a *******.

Party partisans
in the senate are sworn and seated.
Our Chief Justice,
adorned with golden bars
will adjudicate the proceedings.
It is the perfect counterpoint
to an ageless Abe thinking
with malice toward none
and charity towards all,
will heal the wounds
of the nation.

Abe our granite angel,
Chicago goes on,
The Union is strong!


SECOND DAY

1.
Out my window
the sun has risen.

According to
the local forecast
its minus 9
going up to
6 today.

The lake,
a golden pillow of clouds
is frozen in time.

I marvel
at the ancients ones
resourcefulness
and how
they mastered
these extreme elements.

Past, present and future
has no meaning
in the Citadel
of the Prairie today.

I set my watch
to Central Standard Time.

Stepping into
the hotel lobby
the concierge
with oil smooth hair,
perfect tie
and English lilt
impeccably asks,
“Do you know where you are going Sir?
Can I give you a map?”

He hands me one of Chicago.
I see he recently had his nails done.
He paints a green line
along Whacker Drive and says,
“turn on Jackson, LaSalle, Wabash or Madison
and you’ll get to where you want to go.”
A walk of 14 or 15 blocks from Streeterville-
(I start at The Chicago White House.
They call it that because Hillary Rodham
stays here when she’s in town.
Its’ also alleged that Stedman
eats his breakfast here
but Opra
has never been seen
on the premises.
I wonder how I gained entry
into this place of elite’s?)
-down into the center of The Loop.

Stepping out of the hotel,
The Doorman
sporting the epaulets of a colonel
on his corporate winter coat
and furry Cossack hat
swaddling his round black face
accosts me.

The skin of his face
is flaking from
the subzero windburn.

He asks me
with a gapped toothy grin,
“Can I get you a cab?”
“No I think I’ll walk,” I answer.
“Good woolen hat,
thick gloves you should be alright.”
He winks and lets me pass.

I step outside.
The Windy City
flings stabbing cold spears
flying on wings of 30-mph gusts.
My outside hardens.
I can feel the freeze
deepen
into my internalness.
I can’t be sure
but inside
my heart still feels warm.
For how long
I cannot say.

I commence
my walk
among the spires
of this great city,
the vertical leaps
that anchor the great lake,
holding its place
against the historic
frigid assault.

The buildings’ sway,
modulating to the blows
of natures wicked blasts.

It’s a hard imposition
on a city and its people.

The gloves,
skullcap,
long underwear,
sweater,
jacket
and overcoat
not enough
to keep the cold
from penetrating
the person.

Like discerning
the layers of this city,
even many layers,
still not enough
to understand
the depth of meaning
of the heart
of this heartland city.

Sandburg knew the city well.
Set amidst groves of suburbs
that extend outward in every direction.
Concentric circles
surround the city.
After the burbs come farms,
Great Plains, and mountains.
Appalachians and Rockies
are but mere molehills
in the city’s back yard.
It’s terra firma
stops only at the sea.
Pt. Barrow to the Horn,
many capes extended.

On the periphery
its appendages,
its extremities,
its outward extremes.
All connected by the idea,
blown by the incessant wind
of this great nation.
The Windy City’s message
is sent to the world’s four corners.
It is a message of power.
English the worlds
common language
is spoken here,
along with Ebonics,
Espanol,
Mandarin,
Czech,
Russian,
Korean,
Arabic,
Hindi­,
German,
French,
electronics,
steel,
cars,
cartoons,
rap,
sports­,
movies,
capital,
wheat
and more.

Always more.
Much much more
in Chicago.

2.
Sandburg
spoke all the dialects.

He heard them all,
he understood
with great precision
to the finest tolerances
of a lathe workers micrometer.

Sandburg understood
what it meant to laugh
and be happy.

He understood
the working mans day,
the learned treatises
of university chairs,
the endless tomes
of the city’s
great libraries,
the lost languages
of the ancient ones,
the secret codes
of abstract art,
the impact of architecture,
the street dialects and idioms
of everymans expression of life.

All fighting for life,
trying to build a life,
a new life
in this modern world.

Walking across
the Michigan Avenue Bridge
I see the Wrigley Building
is neatly carved,
catty cornered on the plaza.

I wonder if Old Man Wrigley
watched his barges
loaded with spearmint
and double-mint
move out onto the lake
from one of those Gothic windows
perched high above the street.

Would he open a window
and shout to the men below
to quit slaking and work harder
or would he
between the snapping sound
he made with his mouth
full of his chewing gum
offer them tickets
to a ballgame at Wrigley Field
that afternoon?

Would the men below
be able to understand
the man communing
from such a great height?

I listen to a man
and woman conversing.
They are one step behind me
as we meander along Wacker Drive.

"You are in Chicago now.”
The man states with profundity.
“If I let you go
you will soon find your level
in this city.
Do you know what I mean?”

No I don’t.
I think to myself.
What level are you I wonder?
Are you perched atop
the transmission spire
of the Hancock Tower?

I wouldn’t think so
or your ears would melt
from the windburn.

I’m thinking.
Is she a kept woman?
She is majestically clothed
in fur hat and coat.
In animal pelts
not trapped like her,
but slaughtered
from farms
I’m sure.

What level
is he speaking of?

Many levels
are evident in this city;
many layers of cobbled stone,
Pennsylvania iron,
Hoosier Granite
and vertical drops.

I wonder
if I detect
condensation
in his voice?

What is
his intention?
Is it a warning
of a broken affair?
A pending pink slip?
Advise to an addict
refusing to adhere
to a recovery regimen?

What is his level anyway?
Is he so high and mighty,
Higher and mightier
then this great city
which we are all a part of,
which we all helped to build,
which we all need
in order to keep this nation
the thriving democratic
empire it is?

This seditious talk!

3.
The Loop’s El
still courses through
the main thoroughfares of the city.

People are transported
above the din of the street,
looking down
on the common pedestrians
like me.

Super CEO’s
populating the upper floors
of Romanesque,
Greek Revivalist,
New Bauhaus,
Art Deco
and Post Nouveau
Neo-Modern
Avant-Garde towers
are too far up
to see me
shivering on the street.

The cars, busses,
trains and trucks
are all covered
with the film
of rock salt.

Salt covers
my bootless feet
and smudges
my cloths as well.

The salt,
the primal element
of the earth
covers everything
in Chicago.

It is the true level
of this city.

The layer
beneath
all layers,
on which
everything
rests,
is built,
grows,
thrives
then dies.
To be
returned again
to the lower
layers
where it can
take root
again
and grow
out onto
the great plains.

Splashing
the nation,
anointing
its people
with its
blessing.

A blessing,
Chicago?

All rivers
come here.

All things
found its way here
through the canals
and back bays
of the world’s
greatest lakes.

All roads,
rails and
air routes
begin and
end here.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
got a *** rap.
It did not start the fire,
we did.

We lit the torch
that flamed
the city to cinders.
From a pile of ash
Chicago rose again.

Forever Chicago!
Forever the lamp
that burns bright
on a Great Lake’s
western shore!

Chicago
the beacon
sends the
message to the world
with its windy blasts,
on chugging barges,
clapping trains,
flying tandems,
T1 circuits
and roaring jets.

Sandburg knew
a Chicago
I will never know.

He knew
the rhythm of life
the people walked to.
The tools they used,
the dreams they dreamed
the songs they sang,
the things they built,
the things they loved,
the pains that hurt,
the motives that grew,
the actions that destroyed
the prayers they prayed,
the food they ate
their moments of death.

Sandburg knew
the layers of the city
to the depths
and windy heights
I cannot fathom.

The Blues
came to this city,
on the wing
of a chirping bird,
on the taps
of a rickety train,
on the blast
of an angry sax
rushing on the wind,
on the Westend blitz
of Pop's brash coronet,
on the tink of
a twinkling piano
on a paddle-wheel boat
and on the strings
of a lonely man’s guitar.

Walk into the clubs,
tenements,
row houses,
speakeasies
and you’ll hear the Blues
whispered like
a quiet prayer.

Tidewater Blues
from Virginia,
Delta Blues
from the lower
Mississippi,
Boogie Woogie
from Appalachia,
Texas Blues
from some Lone Star,
Big Band Blues
from Kansas City,
Blues from
Beal Street,
Jelly Roll’s Blues
from the Latin Quarter.

Hell even Chicago
got its own brand
of Blues.

Its all here.
It ended up here
and was sent away
on the winds of westerly blows
to the ear of an eager world
on strong jet streams
of simple melodies
and hard truths.

A broad
shouldered woman,
a single mother stands
on the street
with three crying babes.
Their cloths
are covered
in salt.
She pleads
for a break,
praying
for a new start.
Poor and
under-clothed
against the torrent
of frigid weather
she begs for help.
Her blond hair
and ****** features
suggests her
Scandinavian heritage.
I wonder if
she is related to Sandburg
as I walk past
her on the street.
Her feet
are bleeding
through her
canvass sneakers.
Her babes mouths
are zipped shut
with frozen drivel
and mucous.

The Blues live
on in Chicago.

The Blues
will forever live in her.
As I turn the corner
to walk the Miracle Mile
I see her engulfed
in a funnel cloud of salt,
snow and bits
of white paper,
swirling around her
and her children
in an angry
unforgiving
maelstrom.

The family
begins to
dissolve
like a snail
sprinkled with salt;
and a mother
and her children
just disappear
into the pavement
at the corner
of Dearborn,
in Chicago.

Music:

Robert Johnson
Sweet Home Chicago


jbm
Chicago
1/7/99

Candlestick lit,
predatory form divorced
Daybreak take your feet
Assault me with rough dissonant hands
Take from me your bright request
Down in the valley curtains part
The thin plane light overflows
Without light-seeking caresses in the clear sky
Bold accommodations of the sunbursts
To Save

Appalachia
The displeased living hear of me
With Vivomantic symbols
After blackened nights begin
Fornicating on your birthday
Off his downswing that has passed...

"How the call it is unfulfilled
your mind, thoroughly healed
Terrestrial white feathers
And tame plains lament
Yet less tame after
His darkness heals you".

That summer day when the rain shaded shallow
And as dull walls divorce the Bejeweled earth.
You don the nakedness of supernatural awakendness
Painted by these symbols Aiseralam spoke...

Appalachia
The displeased living hear of me
With Vivomantic symbols
After blackened nights begin
Fornicating on your birthday
Off his downswing that has passed...

Candlestick lit,
predatory form divorced
Daybreak take your feet
Assault me with rough dissonant hands
Take from me your bright request
Down in the valley curtains part
The thin plane light overflows
Without light-seeking caresses in the clear sky
Bold accommodations of the sunbursts
To Save

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

Unmoved by your arrival from the west coast,
ten thousand little things are different.

It’s October and the trees are on fire:
a forge that you won't notice, 'til you're gold.

Your Kicks don’t leave footprints on these cobbled streets;
even the children have old, leathery hands.

Try to paddle-board the Eno and the bass go belly-up:
that river’s for scattering ashes and making moonshine.

All they sell at Aldi is ethnic shampoo,
so now your hair twists like the roots you’ve lacked

'til now, because all you’ll ever need is two hands:
for prayer, and work.

Life moves on like a cigarette’s drag,
while somewhere Hope’s fiddle strums;

Take off your headphones and
go put your ear to an oak.

Born in these hills, taken away
when I was three.
Son of a coal miner who took
my mother, my brother, and me.
Drove west to the ocean, Pacific.

The kids there called me "hillbilly" and "hick."
Said I talked funny. Punched me, kicked me,
generally tried their best to make sure
I knew I didn’t belong there.
And I did not.

Eventually, though,
I learned to speak like them,
dress like them, act as if I was not
from Kentucky, my daddy
was not Appalachian, that
these mountains had no part of me.
My only recourse was
after the pledge of allegiance…
I never sang the “Oregon” song.
I sang, "Kentucky."

But, my father, he wouldn’t change.
He was proud of his heritage.
He played banjo; he played mandolin;
he went fishing, a lot.
Grew the best garden in the county,
ate soup beans and cornbread.
He did not give a hang for their Yankee ways.

I hated him. I hated my father.
until I returned to these hills.

Now I see them,
I see him,
in me.

Five thousand trees between his knuckles
Crushing the bark, choking the oaks
Straining through leaves with makeshift sieves
Angling to find an ankle or two
Praying that even a toenail would do
But all to be found was her mountain laurel crown
Still tangled with strands of burnt-birch down

On the mountaintop
Where all things are made new
We'll grow old and young

In the forest shade
Where Nature hides her treasure
Our songs will be sung

When the sunlight fades
Constellations fill the sky
We will find our truth

And when new day dawns
We will greet the morning light
Full of life and youth

     In the cool autumn sun
     We'll make two into one
     And we'll let loose our joy
     As our fears come undone

     We'll write a thousand hymns
     Knit a fabric of our dreams
     And live to see them all fulfilled
     And bursting at the seams

the summer heat is oppressive
it's so hot and humid in the south
you become drenched with sweat
just standing still

the running streams of mountain water
rushing through rocks and then crashing down on ya
the chill of the waterfall freezes the intensity of explosion
on your skin as the water beats down on ya
there's nothing like it in the world to standing underneath a waterfall

I hug the wall of stone and feel the cold slimy surface
and my hands run through the moss growing on the side

what an amazing reprieve on a hot summer's day
God bless the mountains of North Carolina
God bless Appalachia
God bless this place called
home

home of my heart
where living waters flow

Maybe it's just because the color of these hillsides
is a shade or two darker than the sky,
but I am unwittingly content with these fiddle strings,
nodding on the porch, under Christmas lights
on a rainy July evening, peppered with the scent
of apple cake and something smoky
while our bare feet are stomping to my grandfather's lullaby--
a familiar melody that I've never really known,
plucked and bowed, more sentient that I'll ever be.

Staring at gravestones
Wondering what it is to
Exist, no longer.
Smell of sulfur,
Feel of bone;
Still as water.

firespray
vagrant pines
little black gnats more plentiful
than stars to empty sky
reach. catch a flame.
sprawling for the day
when fire breathes its own life
not the wood I pile,
lay down
to rest
I lie here
will die here
and it is well with my soul
because on occasion there is beauty
in all that simply is

Spoilt wind driven veronica , castigated in blistering Summer swelter . Blue lace in harried July repose , a thundershowers grace upon a parched , grateful basin .
Streams collect on the valley floor , seeking their terminus ..
The clap of thunder addresses the meadow , seemingly forever into the darkened landscape ...
Tree frogs proclaim their appreciation , field crickets and cicadas sing familiar ballads ..
A shy Moon reoccupies its rightful purview , wood ducks return to their evening quarters .. Sleep well Mourning Dove , rest in peace Appalachian hillside ..

Blue the mountains
holding close in view
sacred smoke of yesterdays
blue fog shrouded trails
beneath the rhododendron

falls of sweet blue water
replenishing the rivers
sapphire lakes reflecting
splendor of the bluest hills
above the peaceful valley

hear the sacred music
of the blue ridge mountains
magic in the songs of old
forever blue my appalachia
blue the hills I used to roam.

r ~ 7/4/14

Cold is the night of the Kentucky frontier.
The shining light of a hopeful traveler searching hard for what he would hope to be the nearby coal mining town.
As vain as the idealism in his heart.
His hopes of a better life shadowing reality.
His future is filled with the crunch of boots and slicing of shovel blades.
The black heart of the mountains crying in anguish.
He was not the first.
Nor the last.
He was simply a product of his culture.
But one day would serve him well a reminder of his risk.
A flicker of light within the tunnels erupting the burping rumble of natural retribution.
Hellfire and brimstone coating the entire mine with silt and ash.

As was the life in the Black Appalachia.

The witches and waitresses
of the Appalachians
follow only one
God.
I have seen her on occasion
carving midnight embers
from her spine
illuminating a divine magic
found only
in the season
of the Gemini.
She hunts by moonlight
chasing the sweetest
perfume of the mountains
indulging in the whims
of the lilacs.
In my dreams
she spins
with the moon
dancing circles
‘round my room.
The dirt of which woman
is made
will be sifted
in the hands
of the Appalachian
Woman God.
And in my sleep
I witness
the creation
of Wild Woman -
a divine prophet
setting the countryside
ablaze
in a rebellion
of foxfire.

I know
NOW
after
all these years
how
it was
You
trapped me

...You won
me
over 
all else

...You
were gifted

I
searched
the world over
for...

someone
possesing

KNOWLEDGE....
all
...the right words

You
became
all of me.

How did
you do that

....when
you had
never ever
even
stepped
one foot
out of your...
...Appalachia

*******

MAGICK!!!
...Not the good kind.

...Hillbilly
GREATNESS

you
were
bought and
you
were paid
for
EVIL intention.

... all you
will ever
be.
in
my mind

good riddance
*******
hillbilly.

Mist moves through early morning
Swirling a top the remaining craggy Gods
Standing tall to form the Appalachia
PawPaw trees hang heavy
Laden with fruit, ripened by Eastern sun
Precious ecosystem sustaining what shouldn't grow in this hemisphere
What's left that has not been removed
By blasting coal extraction
Towers above us still, breathing deep
Guarding us in silent repose
Footsteps weave to and fro
Sweet grass brushing sensitive skin
My laughter echo's through the Old Oaks
Honey bees gather pollen
Buzzing happily by my side
We must protect this special place
Turn away from stripping her of her glitter
Of her shine
Clean air, healthy soil
She can recover, she will survive

Is there anything more lonely than the sound of boy playing a banjo on a spring afternoon? Oh yes, yes, it’s the sound of girl playing a banjo on a spring afternoon. A boy would lean back on the porch chair and let the instrument fall and rest on his chest to feel the raindrop-plucked vibrations, one by one. This girl, she sits on a kitchen chair, but not in the kitchen, and folds herself over her Daddy’s 5-string. The banjo rests on her blue-cottoned thigh, the lower metal edge firm against her stomach, her slight ******* pressed against the upper wooden rim. If you were standing in the doorway of the workshop you’d see her blond hair falling, falling over her face. There would be that dead-centre parting and just visible the edge of her wire-rimmed glasses.  Then, the denim jacket worn over the kind of summer-blue flowered frock pulled from her Mummy’s clothes that with her passing have now migrated into her bedroom. The thought of clothes is what there is close to hand at the break of day.

When Kath woke this morning, when the morning woke Kath, the valley air was already as sweet, as fresh as any April morning could possibly be in this green hollow of her home. She had lain there feeling the air caress her forehead. The window, always open beside her tangled bed, let in the ringing song of the waterthrush. Newly returned this handsome brown migrant warbler, his whitish breast streaked with brown, more thrush than warbler, she’d watched in the stream yesterday wading on his long, pink legs bobbing his tail like a spotted sandpiper. Soon there would be a nest somewhere in the beech and hemlock hollow along by the stream in the interstices of some fallen tree.

Ellen was due home this morning. She’d hear the Toyota from way up the track, driven overnight from Philadelphia she’d have stopped and stopped. Tired and so tired, she’d go from truck stop to truck stop, the radio her only company and the thought of Joel between her legs arching into her to keep her warm. But she’d drive with the windows down swallowing the night air as the ***** brown car swallowed the miles. Kath would have the coffee waiting, potato cakes on the stove, she’d have a fresh towel placed on her bed, underwear warm from the dryer, spring flowers bunched in mug on the window sill.

Ellen would never come right in when she arrived home, but sit down with the dogs on the porch step and gather herself, watch the mist rise down in the valley, drink in the bird-ringing silence. Kath would steal open the door and crouch beside her with Mummy’s coffee cup thrown, glazed and fired at Plummer’s Fold. Head resting against the porch supports Ellen would allow the cup to be placed between her hands, her fingers uncurled then curled by Kath around its rough circumference. There would be a kiss on the back of the neck and she’d be gone back upstairs to sit with her notebook, those new lyrics she’d been fashioning, her Plummer’s Fold diary – yesterday had been a rich day as she’d walked the bounds of Brush Mountain on the Big Tree Trail singing and plucking an invisible banjo all the while. Those songs of her great-great uncle she’d discovered in a pile of Library of Congress recordings just echoed through her, had become part of her. They were as much a part of the hinterland of Brush Mountain as the stones on the trail. Garth Watson’s voice, well she knew every turn and breath. She’d been listening to them since she was thirteen. She saw herself at the old Victrola blowing off the dust, placing the forgotten disk on the central spindle, scratching the needle with her finger to test the machine, gauge its volume. Then, that voice surrounding her, entering her, as lonesome as the scrawny girl just out of junior high that she had been, the dumb silent girl from the backwoods with that cute clever sister who played guitar and was everybody’s friend, who the boys rushed to fill the empty seat next to her on the school bus.

They’d recorded this song on their Lonesome Pine album. Kath had it all arranged, had it all imagined, brought it to that session at One-Two Records. She had been so scared Ellen would smile gently and say ‘Kath, not this ol’ thing surely. Why I remember Daddy singing this song into the night over and over.’ But no. When Kath had sung it through, looking into the bowl of her denim skirt, she’d raise her eyes to see tears running down Ellen's face. Everything between them changed at that moment. The location studio in The Farm House disappeared and they were girls on their home porch. In an hour they had it down and Larry had said. ‘My God, Holy Jesus, where did that come from’. So they went straight home and listened to those old records all night and most of the next day. They rewrote the album they’d spent a year planning (and saving for).

So now when they came together on those country fair stages, in the cafes in Baltimore or Philly it was that haunting Appalachian music that ran through their songs. Kath still shy as a blushing bean, hiding in the hair and glasses, reluctantly singing harmony vocals, Ellen– well, that girl had only to look wistfully into the audience and they were hers.  

And so they were living this life holed up in their family place, keeping faith with Plummer’s Fold. Daddy was in a home in Lewis now. He’d taken himself there before his dementia had taken him. He played his girls’ CDs all day long on his Walkman, had their pictures in his near to empty room – just a rocker, a table, a pile of books by his bed with Dora’s wedding quilt.

This music, this oh so heart-breaking music, the loping banjo, the tinkling, springing, glancing accidental guitar and their innocent valley voices. They’d exhausted the old records now and, their education in the old ways done, were back with new songs and Kath’s ideas to only record in the Fold and build songs with soundtracks of the world around them. She’d been laying down tracks day after day whilst Ellen was on the road with the Williams Band and often solo, support for the Minna Peel as ‘an outsider folk artist from deepest Appalachia.’

Kath wouldn’t travel more than a day away from the farm. Every show was an agony, except for the time they were performing. She couldn’t bear all that stuff that surrounded it – all that waiting, the sound check, more waiting, that networking **** One-Two constantly wanted her to be part of. She’d ***** off as the guys gathered around Ellen. She’d take a book and sit in the Toyota. She couldn’t do people, though she loved her folks, she loved her sister like she loved the trees and stones, the birds and flowers on Brush Mountain. Always shy, always afraid of herself ‘Too sensitive for your own good, Kathy girl’, her Daddy had said. Never been kissed in passion, never allowed herself to fall for love, though her body drove her to feelings she had read about, and thus fuelled had succumbed to. There was a boy she’d see in Lewis just from time to time who she thought about, and thought about. She imagined him kissing her and holding her gently in the night . . .

I want to first thank all my
supporters and readership.
I will read as soon as
I have the time and I can
give your work the attention it deserves.

I've been overwhelmed.
I have to make my presents this
Christmas. But I found out I'm in
excellent company...

FROM APPALACHIA WITH LOVE

Gra'ma Annie had a mission
to help children in need
she lives up in the hills
where they grow their food from seed.

They have no running water
no facilities indoors
still heat and cook with wood
don't buy much from stores
there are folk so destitute
they still have dirt floors.

Li'l Annie was a scrapper
90 pounds if soaking wet.
But her heart is just enormous
as big as one can get!

She found out 'bout a drive
for children overseas
in Africa and Asia
Haiti and the Belize

How the people in those countries
had no presents for to give
their children at Christmas
they could barely live!

She contacted the charity
and said she'd send some toys
as many as possible
to the poor girls and boys.

Annie had no phone
so she walked far and wide
and asked all the hillfolk
throughout the countryside
to whittle and to paint
toys in which to pride!

Those people got together
and carved ponies and dolls
that had joints that moved
and real hair that falls!

They whittled and sanded
painted with rainbow hues
and when they had delivered them
it made world news!

The children overseas
who got them still recall
they kept their homemade presents...

THEIR FAVORITES OF ALL!


MY FATHER "NEVER HAD A CHRISTMAS"*

My father was a child
in a place called Isle la Monte
winter's are quite brutal
in that part of Vermont.

His family were farmers
they lived off the land
they had gardens and stored their food
they worked hard with their hands

They had to really struggle
to make the frayed ends meet
dad walked 14 miles total
through the snow and sleet
to get to his schoolhouse
sometimes with frozen feet

Every year at Christmas time
his mom would be in tears
she would never say much
but stated that she feared

there would be no Christmas
no presents and no tree
it was always the same.
Grandpa would agree.
So the children went to bed
every Christmas eve.

But they weren't sad
because they always knew
that Santa was coming
and so they weren't blue.

Sure 'nuf in the morning
they'd tumble out of bed
and in the once-bare corner
there was a *tree instead!

There were many presents
most carved and painted things
grandma got the practical stuff
no perfume or rings.

But the Christmas meal was cooking
and all through the home
the smell... that sumptuous dinner...

well. That's another poem...!

But before the feast was eaten
grandfather said Grace
and thanked the blessed Lord
and ALWAYS SOUGHT HIS FACE.


SoulSurvivor
Catherine Jarvis
(C) 12/23/2015


MERRY CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY!!!

I still have presents to make...
see you SOON!


~~~<☆>~~~

America, Why I Love Her
Written by John Mitchum
Poet/Actor

You ask me why I love her? Well, give me time, and I'll explain...
Have you seen a Kansas sunset or an Arizona rain?
Have you drifted on a bayou down Louisiana way?
Have you watched the cold fog drifting over San Francisco Bay?


Have you heard a Bobwhite calling in the Carolina pines?
Or heard the bellow of a diesel in the Appalachia mines?
Does the call of Niagara thrill you when you hear her waters roar?
Do you look with awe and wonder at a Massachusetts shore...
Where men who braved a hard new world, first stepped on Plymouth Rock?
And do you think of them when you stroll along a New York City dock ?


Have you seen a snowflake drifting in the Rockies...way up high?
Have you seen the sun come blazing down from a bright Nevada sky?
Do you hail to the Columbia as she rushes to the sea...
Or bow your head at Gettysburg...in our struggle to be free?


Have you seen the mighty Tetons? ...Have you watched an eagle soar?
Have you seen the Mississippi roll along Missouri's shore?
Have you felt a chill at Michigan, when on a winters day,
Her waters rage along the shore in a thunderous display?
Does the word "Aloha"... make you warm?
Do you stare in disbelief When you see the surf come roaring in at Waimea reef?


From Alaska's gold to the Everglades...from the Rio Grande to Maine...
My heart cries out... my pulse runs fast at the might of her domain.
You ask me why I love her?... I've a million reasons why.
My beautiful America... beneath Gods' wide, wide sky.





[topp]

homage to Wallace Stevens

I - My Focus pistoned up the rise
      and all at once, the Rockies -
            silhouettes against the western skies.

II - On the road to Boulder
      a pleated ridge crawls north
            like a blue whale bound for the open sea.

III -  Appalachia's intoxicating verdure
      never fails to induce in us
            a certain mellowing of the spirit.

IV - You 'conquered' my North Face, did you?
      Why, I should skewer your arrogant ***
            like a holiday lamb culled for the sacrifice.

V - Lewis and Clark looked west
      surveying the Bitterroots' frigid expanse.
            Farewell Northwest Passage!  

VI - Pueblos stranded on Enchanted Mesa -
      their rock stairs crumbled to the valley floor.
            Should they dive to their death or starve?

VII –Touristas at Big Bend Park
      wonder at its pastel window -
            its romantic haze a toxic gift
      from stacks across the Rio Grande.

VIII – The once mighty Ozarks humbled by age,          
      dwarfed by the youthful Rockies.
            Listen up, youngsters, your time will come!

IX – We de-bussed to seize the dolomites
      with our hyper-kinetic shutters.
            Pausing for a draught of Italian air,
      I felt the whack of an Alpine snowball.

X - Before Oregon's crater had its lake,
      the mountain scorched the village below.
            Today its azure waters preach only serenity.

XI – Looking down from Shissler peak
      to the golden meadow below
            where the elk herd calmly grazes.

XII – Do mists veil the Blue Ridge Mountains
      or are there really no mountains at all -
            only clouds decked out in mountain attire?

XIII – They say that peaks more steep than Everest
      soar up from the ocean floor.
            Who will scale their sunken heights?

May 28,  2010 – Boulder Colorado

Strawberry ***** veins,
pronounce "Appalachia"
(correctly?)
Take care of me.

Almost heaven, West Virginia
Printed on mudflaps
That reek of Appalachia
It is almost heaven
Not to have you
Holding me back anymore
It's almost heaven
To forget your face
Your stupid workouts
The 300 ways you found
To never say anything
That pinched drawn unhappy look on your freckled face
I feel grateful
And I'm thankful
To be a human again
I hated the way your
Silences sauntered into a room
Ten minutes before you did
I hated the way stale I love yous
Hung around your head
Buzzing like flies on the dead
I hated the way dreams were something to be laughed at
And subsequently given up on
It's almost heaven to have mine back again
I love the way you dumped me
Through text
Like a little kid
Like Sorry this is what my mom wants
Like Sorry not sorry
I'm not sorry you left me
It is almost heaven where I'm at now
I peed outside twice
In West Virginia
And you weren't there to be embarassed
By an Appalachian woman
Who wants to have almost heaven
Every day for breakfast
And truly-loving-life-in-love-with-a-musician
This is what heaven is
Every day for lunch
And maybe just beer and a song for dinner
I'M SO HAPPY
It's almost heaven not to have you
It's heaven to feel alive again

Running through ancient Appalachia
Frolicking without a care
She had never felt more joy-
Never felt less aware.

As they followed the waterfall trail,
There was no time to spare-
Time was irrelevant,
As they were breathing in clean air.

Treetops swirling into one another,
Breeze slow and soft,
Sweeping salty tears off of her cheek-
They were lost.

Lost in their own minds,
Nothing left to exhaust.
Inspiration was the mountain peak-
Floral scents aloft.

Driving in a spiral
Down the rugged cracked road-
They pulled off to the side,
Anxieties and heart rates slowed.

There they found two cement half-
Pipes peering over the mountain side
They climbed down, sat in their grasps-
Contently contemplating their lives.

She turned to her love
To ask what he was doing.
He said “writing down ideas”

There, she saw her fate.

Story Book Land
The awful truth in this world at one point evil put upThis post open season on women and children nowCasey’s trail has provided a predators hand book onHow to avoid jail and punishmentStory Book Land
I would like to speak to the other side of the story in a hovel somewhere in southern Appalachia a young
Mother has left this falling down shack because of fever and delirium she left behind a toddler in this
Cold helpless situation but tonight when she drifts into trembling frigid sleep she feels herself being lifted
By powerful arms the body is huge but immediately she feels a great wave of warmth peace and love
Then she hears the laughter of children many of them as this divine personage sets her feet down she
Alights on this golden concourse then she sees what all the excitement is about this great figure glowing
In white linen is leading the children he walks or glides to her side just as she starts to take his hand she
Sees the nail print she knows who he is her mother sang of him and told her wonderful stories of how
One day they would go to be with him he held her hand firmly with a tenderness that was almost
Overwhelming they had gone a distance he released her hand and said now children go and play among
The wonders created for you and after awhile I will call you follow my vioce it will lead you to a hillside there spread out on the
Rich grasses my little lambs and I will tell you extraordinary wonderful stories so the children turned to
Look what was before them flowers so lush they bathed you in their fragrance their beauty filled you
With awe this was the only the beginning of splendor that knew no end they dashed through the flowers
It was hard to tell who laughed the hardest the flowers or the children then they came to the trees one
Of the older children asked Mr. Pine is it true that on ridges you can make the most beautiful tunes yes
Little one but here it is a little different what songs do you like wheels on the bus this little light of mine
She picked something all together different but he just rolled with it he did it with the finesse of a circus
Clown they all laughed he did many others to their delight then he said children you might like my
Neighbor Mr. Oak he has some delights you might delight in so they rushed to see what they would find
He seemed gruff and stern at first but then when he bowed down sweetly they noticed something funny
About the Spanish moss it was not that at all but a rainbow of flavors all cotton candy every one grabed all
They could get then just a short distance down the rode a sign said critter holler was it by Roberta’s
House ? well off they dashed they loved it immediately because all the animals were just babies young like
Them the mothers and fathers grazed up on the higher lush pastures I will go where he leads I will
Pasture where he feeds me, some of the children were old enough to remember that song a little child
From Florida was just timidly staring and from behind a fawn put his wet cold nose in her hand as it
hung down she squealed with delight a darker child born on the African savanna was drawn like a
magnet to a baby Zebra he played with its mane it playfully shook its head back and forth his smile even
made heaven brighter if that’s possible In life the boy was Maasai a great people his problem he dreamed of being a Maassai warrior
At to tender of an age the lion only knows one law that is **** to live the boys claw marks and bite marks
Vanished from his body as he left the fallen state of earth and traveled to the sacred holiness that is the
Total reality of heaven but as he looked on the baby Zebra he was all Maassai the wonders of his
Birthplace filled him to bursting the little Zebra was his touchstone all of heaven and a piece of earth
Coursed through his veins he will be forever defined on a grander scale so will Caylee for a brief time saw
Grass and palms now glory will endow her with privilege a crown immortal indestructible she wears it
Well it honors Gorge and Cindy her mother will be cleansed by terrible and secret fires best left to the
Purifier who never lets evil go unanswered.
someone saw a handsome man standing at a distance there
wasn’t a mouse with him but could it be Mr. Disney it was a great possibility all things are possible here
earths tears are gone forever and all you will ever know is the greatest peace and love the other side of
the story.

What am I to do when you are hundreds of miles away
Hiking the Appalachia
Living off the land and proving your manhood

The dog cannot hold me and warm me at night
The ******* will seize to amuse me after a week
The empty seat at the table will irk me
I could go on but I think you get the point
I need you

If you really must fulfill this quest
Just know
That I will watch the door awaiting your return
That I will hug your pillow every night
that I will wear your clothes to feel closer to you
Ah, I could go on but I think you get the point
I need you

It's cranberry sauce
That’s it, I’ve done it
My brain is mush
Heartbeat through a megaphone
I’m pulling on my pant legs
Tightening my veins around my bones
& I think the thermometer in my brain needs reprogrammed

I. Now I’m a cozy embryo
With cotton in my marrow
Last of my breed so the bad men can’t see me
I’m sitting here in my own bullet train
Flying through metro lights at night
With coruscating sodium vapor
Vibrating in my peripheries
My appendages do not exist

II. We are the carbon monoxide leak
We are the cold coaxing hypothermia
Still trying to define the agony of existence
& Beauty of meaning through definition

III. “If you don’t get old, you die”
Shut up & pay your taxes old man
I can stay young for as long as I want
I am healthy
I am eternal
I’ve got all the cotton in the world

IV. I wonder if all sentient life deals
With the same paranoia as humans do
It’s the reason we never shut up
& hold love for vague idols

V. I like smiles
& I like sadness

VI. What does loneliness see when it chases its
Shadow?
You’ve got a mouse in your hand that cannot know that you are
Sentient.
You are a wooden giant from outer space that burned upon
Entry.
Where does apathy sleep when it has had too much to
Eat?
Why can’t you see your house from three million miles
Away?
If you need help breathing then you deserve to die in
Appalachia.
If I lie here long enough under enough blankets, then
I'm not real
Is it possible to save up enough money to avoid humans
Altogether?

Just like that, the spiral ceases
We were packed
Like sardines
Wrapped in butcher paper
Blind night vision
Then deer in headlights
Kissing the pavement
Mutually requited
Uninterest

My persona would be red clay along the river shoreline .  My hair , the green grass infused field . My body is akin to tall Pines , Mountain Chestnut , awe inspiring Oak and Pecan Trees..
The salt of my physical being , the child of histories shed tears anchored within the very blood that flows through my circuitry .
Her waters are my soul revealed , Appalachia begat a grateful son of Georgia that seeks the shoreline .. Called across the surface of the sea to the waiting arms of my Creator .. Sky blue eyes on watch forever* .

the morning is infused with possibilities,
before the humid heat of the South weighs
me down.

I long for the mountain streams of Appalachia,
and standing under a water fall on a hot day.

I live in the city, but I carry the mountains with me
in my heart.

The mountains are home of my heart, where I can always return to
over and over.

A home of my heart to welcome a new day,
time and time again.

Nothin' hurts like heartache
a longin' that you just can't break

Woman, you did me wrong
I am gonna mend my ways

I ain't been home in so long,
never to dance with your hips swayin'

Let me go home where I belong
back to the mountains of Appalachia,
where cicadias sing and
women are sweet like moonshine