Kalo Mhna! Where’s my panacea?
Another December to dismember,
but never forget to remember …
the days it was glad to see ya.
December’s Therapeutic Apathy
Poetry & Prose
The Last Grasp for a Gasp
The Last Grasp for a Gasp
Deeply lost in the woods in the unsettling comfort of your grasp.
The misunderstood remain elusive, purposely so …
and, there but before ego, grace falls in serpentine gasps.
The window will turn seasons again in a few moments.
Stay tuned—the show is about to begin!
A cast of characters scatter the dreams, laid out like serpents.
Radio Silence (Static, Crackle, Pop)
It’s a shame that all relevance is lost
in the to-each-his-own,
taking for granted the lost-in-translation
and the solipsistic lies we tell ourselves.
And in a world desperate for a unified sense of belonging,
we stand alone and wax indifferent about love.
Continue reading
Social Distancing Elegy
Social Distancing Elegy
Oh, children! Where are you marching off to today?
Oh, children! Where are you stomping off to today?
Are you going down to St. James Infirmary?
– (No, Lord, I’m staying home today.)
Will you go down to Maggie’s Farm?
– (No Ma, I’m staying put today.)
Let me tell you ’bout social editing
in the new math of justifying
the survival of the populist regime.
One soul dying … but it’s only one.
Ten souls dying … but not in my home.
A hundred souls dying …
– (Well, they were already gone.)
A thousand souls dying …
– (Didn’t know ’em. Save the other ones!)
Ten thousand souls dying …
– (Not in my constituency. Come on!)
A hundred thousand souls dying …
– (Gotta keep moving on …)
A million souls dying …
And it goes on and on … Continue reading
You Think You Know (You’re Not Clever)
You Think You Know (You’re Not Clever)
You think you know – You’re not clever
You think you know – You’re not clever
You think you know – You’re not clever
You think you know – You’re not clever
Sittin’ in the middle of your own paranoia
cause you ain’t got nothin’ to do.
Countin’ all the reasons for the change of the seasons
cause your window’s got a poor point of view.
Test your diagnosis in your clinical neurosis
and hypothesize your self-validity.
Politicize and ostracize the obviously
justified and label it impartiality. Continue reading
Otherwise, Other Lives, Other Lies
Otherwise, Other Lives, Other Lies
What we’ve known will always be,
even when we choose to forget.
It’s not about the silent distance
or the march of balanced offset.
The hour approaches
… and the dawn grows dark
…. and the eyes remain unspoken.
The “in a minute” lingers
… as the flame runs from the spark,
…. and the woke sip the lethargy of the moment.
Continue reading
For The Record And Pete’s Sake
For The Record And Pete’s Sake:
Age slips a purgative into our reality …
The mindset manifests in spasms of release …
But we are never really free …
until our existentialism is resolved …
and then we are still left forced to deal with one another.
My sister bought the first Monkees album.
We listened to it repeatedly.
We seemed to know all the songs,
cause we had heard them all on the radio and the TV,
our mainlines to all things Pop. Continue reading
Exercise Your Right To Tune Out
Is there some statement to be made?
A statement on what, exactly?
A social statement?
An artistic statement?
A fashion statement?
Some say that what’s needed is “perspective”.
More perspective … or more perspectives?
Hmm …
Perspectives are like opinions …
and opinions are like assholes;
everyone has got one.
If you don’t like the message,
exercise your right to tune out.
Continue reading
Snakeskins
This old snake has shed many skins.
He can not take them back.
In fact, he has no desire to.
Was the old snake comfortable in his old skins?
Yes, sometimes for a while,
but in time they grew old,
lost their vitality and betrayed him.
And so, he slithered away from them naked.
Old acquaintances still ask,
“Where have you gone?” and
“What is this new look of yours?”
They spit “We hardly recognize you anymore!”
They grew so comfortable with this or that old skin of his
that they took it for granted.
But this old snake understands all too well;
it is just his old skin they want, not him.
And so he answers “That was just an old skin.
It is gone and I am born anew, again.”
Some say the snake is just a trickster and a fake!
The snake says “No. You mistook me for my skin.
But it was just my skin not my nature.
I have always been just a snake.”
The lesson:
Never chew over dead skin; you will get skinned.
For skin, like clothes, makes neither the man, nor the snake.
In fact, this old snake isn’t even a snake!
He is, after all, just a cool cat and a Dadaist-cum-Sartrist!
Love Erupt
Love hides well in the shame of misplaced givings.
Love cowers in the face of a brutal ‘no’.
Love whispers from the dying throes of embers.
Love runs for sanctuary …
… and surrenders only when ambushed.
In the hope of what might be …
With the wish of things to come …
And the passion of a haunting desire …
Will dissolves …
… and the orderly becomes disordered.
Only then is love consummated.
The mind agrees and the heart nods in kind.
And the soul breathes a gentle flame.
Erupt appropriately at your discretion.
Darwood’s Field Notes On Dadaland
Darwood’s Field Notes: The Eventual Demise of Dadaland
The county pig lives in the village! It serves the good of the community by gnawing on rooftops and prepubescent annoying children. At City Hall, the town jester hunts his prey with a Geiger counter and ukulele, hoping to ensnare civil servants in order to sing to them.
In the village square, the heretic vomits on pedestrian consumers as they exit a pharmacy. A hermit, dressed in orange, watches from a safe distance, fondling his turnips. At times, he waves nervously to a priest who is fishing for compliments from his cathedral.
At the steps of the palace, a royal guard clips his toenails and sells them to the hungry and the poor. Inside the reception hall, the King lays in state, farting silently. And, in the adjacent courtyard, the town crier shoots bare-footed messengers who have gathered for communion before embarking on a pilgrimage to the post office.
On the path to the community abattoir, a streaker sits in a small park studying a Fall fashion catalog from a mail-order cheese-maker. An old hag sits above him in a tree blowing a whistle. A groundskeeper is observed planting sardines in the rose-garden … and in time, some firemen arrive and begin hosing off the sidewalk pavement from the previous evening’s defecation rituals. A temperamental mutt barks in the distance before being pounced on by a rabid armadillo.
A long procession of duck-billed platypi, not to be confused with chicken-beaked platypodes or faux anteater-snout wearing platypuses, march towards the post office. They honk in unison as they pass a little girl named Dadiana who is scolding a large tree for its vanity. Her older brother, the village sophisticate, rolls around on the ground beside her, laughing obnoxiously at his own jokes.
Yes! All was well in Dadaland … until the day a cargo freighter fell from the heavens above … flooding the village with its hold: an assorted mix of pink lawn flamingos, toy bowling pins and tin soldiers. The village was never the same … and in three days’ time descended into the annals of mediocrity as just another lost Atlantis cum Washington.
Oh, such was the glory and cautionary tale of Dadaland, the lost paradise. Such a cavalcade of exceptionalism, the world would never see the likes of again.
PS: Please contact me, if you would like to license this work for ‘Hollywood treatment’. Cheap rates.
PPS: To learn more about ‘dadaland’, please listen to the ‘Dada Venduza’ soundztrack for free on Spotify.
Substitute Sales
“Substitute Sales”
I have no peace of mind.
I have no piece of mine.
I have no peace of mine.
Substitute rooms for sale …
My dreams have become bothersome,
both in fact and in fiction.
They betray me with the truth;
a false reality I denied long ago.
Substitute coffee for sale …
And what am I to think of love?
The most loving remains unloved.
The zealot slowly bleeds to death
of ruptured rapture.
Substitute hearts for sale …
There is chaos in the world.
You know it. I know it.
We like to think saner heads will prevail.
Bullshit.
Substitute moons for sale …
Everything must go.
All sales are final.
Sol But No Rhythm
“Sol But No Rhythm”
For the first time in months, I sat on my balcony,
in my woolen clothes, and drank in the Sun.
Sol … but no rhythm …
Please understand,
I am NOT patient; I am stubborn.
Please don’t confuse my smile for my defense mechanism.
An inner storm always rages; it is a force of nature.
I cannot control it … but it is who I am.
And yet, I am too stupid stubborn to come to terms with it.
So I think to myself …
“why hide when you can simply masquerade?”
Forever the cat, dreaming he was a dog.
Forever the dancing baton in a requiem.
Forever an undressed window looking out into the foreign.
Curtain-less.
Shameless.
Soul but no rhythm.
Poisoned by white tempo …
with increasingly fading vision …
and the buzz of white noise in my ears.
Not even sure when my heart skips a beat or two,
but surely it must …
Death, always advancing, never seeking an element of surprise.
And me?
Too stubborn to accept the calm before the storm.
A misappropriated cliché:
That which doesn’t harm you, kills you.
Soul … but no rhythm …
Why aren’t I Miles Davis?
A better question yet …
Why aren’t I Jay Schwartz?
Each Day A Choice
Each day … we have the choice.
Each day, we have the choice to reject hate and bigotry in our lives.
Each day …
Each day … we have the choice.
Each day, we have the choice to reject those who spread, tolerate, condone and refuse to deny hate and bigotry.
Each day …
Each day … we have the choice.
Each day, we have the choice to justify the idea that we are ‘human’, not animals and certainly not sheep, chicken or parrots.
Each day …
Each day … we have the choice.
Each day, we have the choice to be thankful for our humanity.
Each day …
Each day … we have the choice.
Each day, we have the choice to prove who we really are.
Each day …
Each day … we have the choice.
Each day … we have the choice to fail as humans.
Many do … Don’t be one of them.
Each day … the choice is yours.
Aubade for Forced Poverty
‘Aubade for Forced Poverty’
Force me into ‘the red’ …
Force me to beg ….
Force me to work ‘black’…
Force me into the roofless darkness …
Force me to agree to the financially irrational …
Force me to ‘human slavery’ …
Force me to turn ‘enemy of the state’ …
Force me to foster hate …
Force me to ‘cancer of the mind’ …
Force me to leave all behind …
Force me to starve …
Force me to roll over and play dead …
Force me to the ‘no loitering’ corner …
Force me to a vicious circle of forced poverty …
Force me to ‘no way out’ …
Force me to leave my home …
Force me to eat my bones …
Force me to pay false debt …
Force from me my bread …
Force me to lose sight …
Force me to ‘plight’ …
Force me to see you turn your eyes away …
Force me to lose faith …
Force me to sing a self-composed requiem with no ending …
Force me to hear no voice from heaven …
AND THEN the bank says to the client …
“We are ONLY responsible to the tax office, not you” …
Force me to leave dehumanized and empty-handed …
Greek Government
Clique Government
Reek Government
Seance For An E-Ghost
Seance For An E-Ghost
Created in a digital moment …
Here and then gone …
Errant misgivings …
Reaching for what was …
Realizing you’re gone and have left nothing …
I wonder now what happened …
Sighing, longing for the presence perhaps taken for granted …
Here and then gone …
Errant misgivings …
Reaching for what was …
Realizing you’re gone and have left nothing …
I wonder now what happened …
Sighing, longing for the presence perhaps taken for granted …
Time passes obviously …
An ache bellows for words not yet read …
Yearning desperately for fragments of short-term memories …
Lord, I am dazed and confused …
Oh, how I miss you …
Return.
Wherever your are … I hope you are rusting in peace …
Dada Gothic: Accommodating Commodes
Accommodating Commodes
Oh Accommodating Commodes…
My, how you have reconciled your fate.
Conditioned to forgive and forget
so that you may be visited again by bum dignitaries
and crowned with their indignities.
Where is your individuality?
– long ago flushed out and smothered
with the loose vowels of holy rhetoric
by those up on high …
Do you take heart in knowing that at the tail end of your existence
you will have dutifully served your function …
without cracking under the excretion of your karma?
What is this righteousness you feel
in extending a policy of laissez-faire to the derrière?
Perhaps you fancy yourself a grand pedal-stool of sorts …
a throne in the company of the elite …
… a noble, yet humble, reflecting pool to moonbeams?
Oh accommodating commodes …
Alas, there is no virtue in self-repression.
And in the end, … I must confess …
you are just full of crap.
Polly’s Cadence (In Dada Flat)
Polly’s Cadence (In Dada Flat)
“Polly wants a cracker!”
A call is made.
You wait for a response.
I comply in earnest.
Behind the wool, you gloat blindly.
Knowing enough words to nod along, I do so … knowingly knowing I know nothing.
Point Counterpoint. A methodological approach to string theory resolves to the root of us all. Klimakatastrophe … deservingly so
You want dogma, a rationale of semiotic obedience.
A feathered response is in order:
There are no more prayers, only the chanting of reverberating sounds in the wild; the vibrations that ricochet off your sensitivities … forcing you to move.
You want belief, perhaps in distended words unspoken.
Yet, I have only the faith of habit found in sustained accidentals and enharmonic phonemes … and wings to sing of.
And oh how I’ll sing one day, despite your efforts to make me talk.
A Phoenix Imploding
A Phoenix Imploding
Fanning the flames of a prodigy’s inferno, self-pity looks on as art burns.
Anger consumes reason.
Bitterness ignites the mind-set.
Consumed with the rage over jilted aspirations …
The eye stutters …
The tongue is blind …
Speaking in volumes of disdain, spitting dissension.
Wracked with spasmodic thoughts on unfinished words.
Impotent intentions char on slow burn.
Wisps of smoldering passions dissolve into ‘misforgivings’.
A primal scream of guttural inflammation belches forth raw talent.
“Such a waste” cries a vanishing muse …
Choking on bile …
Lashing out in all directions …
Twisting, jerking, shrieking, mourning the living and grieving over stillborn dreams.
A phoenix imploding.
Why so much anger?
The will to cause such pain.
Too busy blaming ancestral arsonists to reach for a glass of water.
Choosing instead to smother candescence with incendiary fury.
Burn that ‘self-loathing’ down …
……………………………………………………………………
Suggested Viewing
Suggested Reading
Musically Yours
Musically Yours
There are times when there is vision in the music
… but not when the music itself presents a vision
… or is even visionary itself.
Oh say can’t you see that some chords unravel and some scales are unbalanced?
Have you ever met an arpeggio that unfolded into a non-linear arrangement of an unsequenced rhythm?
I have … and was seduced by it … willingly.
The I In Me They Never Bothered With
The I In Me They Never Bothered With
They see my gender.
They see my color.
They see the clothes I wear.
But …
They want to know my ‘likes’.
They want to know my contacts.
They want to know my religion.
They want to know my income.
They want to know my sexual preference.
They want to know my political affiliation.
They want to know my citizenship.
They want to know my heritage.
They want to know my family and lineage.
They want to know my genetic code.
They want my body.
They want my soul.
They want my spirit.
They want my blood.
They want my conformity.
But …
They don’t want my mind.
And they never once even ask my name.
Dancing On Broken Toes
Dancing On Broken Toes
How easily do our airy flights of fancy escape the gravity of our mundane lives.
We reach with dreams of fickle laced lightness for that which lies beyond our corporeal grasp.
The ‘what ifs’ come with practice, spring-boarding from disillusion and delusion.
We hang ourselves on a whim, a promise, a commitment … a figment of our imagination.
We dance. Our toes break.
Poetic License And The Beads of Sweat
These words ~Where I leave the loose ends
Of my day with lazy boots
They yawn at me
Two round circles
Eager to let go of where I have been –
Looking back across my week
Words are all I have had
They answer my most uncomfortable questions
They dream with me
They sing with me –
– Nicole Rushin
(excerpt from: Before There Were Words)
Here at the Wooly Yarn, I am rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of this blog, having started it on December 31st, the last day of the year and the eve of the next. While balancing in that precarious moment of temporal limbo, I made a New Year’s resolution to try writing the equivalent of one post a week … with some possible time off for good behavior. As my next post represents my 50th, a milestone in its own right, I am safely well on my way to achieving this goal and then some.
Since we are also well into the Holiday Season, and since last week was Thanksgiving, I want to take a moment to reflect on and reply to a comment left by a fellow blogger, Nicole Rushin, who also happens to be a phenomenal poet. As such, I’d like to dedicate this post to her and the artful inspiration she provides at her blog, ‘Writing As Loud As I Can’. If there were ever a great name for a blog, that has to be it.
Loitering Words 