Darwood’s Field Notes On Dadaland

Nuclear Dada
‘Nuclear Dada’ by Jay Schwartz @jschwartz63

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

'Dada Sale' - Jay Schwarts
‘Dada Sales’ – Jay Schwartz

“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

Snow Jaywalking
“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

Dada Goddess - Dada Venduza

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

homeless

‘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

Ballet_de_la_nuit_1653Seance 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 …

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 …

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Dada Gothic: Accommodating Commodes

Dada GothicAccommodating 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)

'Parrot Dada' by Jay SchwartzPolly’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.

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A Phoenix Imploding

Prodigy-InfernoA 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

Abstract Art by Naomi JohnsonMusically 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.

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