The Trash Clown's Midnight Rummage

 

The Trash Clown's Midnight Rummage

The streetlights cast long, anemic shadows as Barnaby, once known to roaring crowds as 'Barnaby the Magnificent,' now the 'Trash Clown,' pulled his rickety wooden wagon down Elm Street.

Each wheel sang a mournful tune that echoed against the cracked pavement. Strapped to the wagon's frame was an object that seemed as out of place as Barnaby himself: a colossal, rust-streaked black anvil. It was heavy, solid, a symbol of a trade he'd long abandoned, a life of forging dreams now replaced by the detritus of others.

He paused at a battered green dumpster, its lid bent askew. With a sigh deeper than any he'd ever released after a circus trick, Barnaby pulled up his tattered, oversized gloves. The sweet-sour stink of forgotten meals and crumpled dreams assaulted his bulbous red nose. He rummaged, his once vibrant, now faded, polka-dotted costume snagging on broken glass.

He pulled out a crumpled circus poster, its colors leached by time and rain. After that, a deflated balloon, a single, glittery juggling pin missing his face, and a half-eaten bag of stale popcorn. His painted smile, cracked like old porcelain, seemed to falter.  Barnaby was lost in nostalgia there in the wrecked street-scene. He looked down at the heap of refuse, then at the anvil on his wagon, a monument to his former glory.

"See what I've been reduced to," he whispered, the words lost in the rustling plastic bags and the distant hum of a late-night car tires on distant pavement.

The anvil gleamed dully under the streetlamp, a silent witness to his fall from grace, a heavy anchor dragging him through the remnants of discarded lives.

Today's Poem - "Magnificent Nose"

 

Magnificent Nose

What do I see

instead of this, that:

because of matter of fact -

matter of false

 

her magnificent nose

protuberant and large, shapely

smells like no one else can

 

it’s her one and only promontory

a single sine wave in a vertically

uninterrupted silhouette

 

I wish to know her inside thoughts

the subtlety only she can sniff

thoughts and dreams left unscented

 

the sight of her magnificent nose

intoxicates me, spellbinds me

and I want to know more

 

Jesus would have wept

to gaze on her beautiful nose

Today's Poem is "For Free / Sky High"

 

For Free / Sky High

 

I pop up

as a wolf lopes past

Sky High and another and

another pops up

when I’m with you

I’m a metal man

 

airful or raffle; waffle or awful trifle

 

it’s a close call and it’s free

and the band melts in the sun

while you doze, fishing

when will we ever earn

We scrape the popcorn ceiling

with strands in the face

like a Zebra at the Fillmore

as useless as a dying wind

on a panda vacation

 

Edna is Transcontinental as well

her sympathetic anger crackles

as she peeks out a basement window

at the loping wolf who pops Sky High

a purple monkey riding on his back

says I wish Edna was my chick

 

the third time I say the magic word

the magic happens, magically

and the wolf timbers off into the distance

It is then that the anger subsides

after popping Sky High

Today's Poem is "Martha Stewart Living"

Martha Stewart Living

 

like a kettle aboil I patch my frauducide

with cantankerous souls

those dolls of foregone foregoing

 

and I call to Martha Stewart

 

your younger self is a drifting image,

your salsa recipe so over garlic ed

as to blowtorch the innocent bystander

within hot pepper moon blooms

 on the faces of crashed chips

tortilla ed with fumes of wonderment

 

I look into the too-many pasts to see my future

--that blind pursuit with no foreseeable outcome

that bores into the fabric of being

and the perceptions we live for; what else is there?

 

green galaxy herb stems who splay their leaves brightly

are star shapes set against the dirt horizon globes of

green fallacy ideas collapsing, slow and listless

 

and a summer day, 85 degrees, hot sun, certain birds

uncertain in trees and the goldfinch on the spreading

sunflower seed head swaying in a brief patch of breeze

I look into eternity at the gallop and fallout of insects

 

I look into her “Entertaining” book for clues

how to share flashes of enlightenment equally

so party goers drip with fantasy and bewilderment

as they sip their elaborately concocted frozen drinks

what descriptions of truth will flow from her leisure catalog

and into the sense screen of the assembled craving relief

beauty-seekers feeling for the mirror-self on the patio

and finding the reflection of something less

 

Today's Poem is "The Mineral Song"

The Mineral Song

I always like the chalcedony

It’s so pretty and tumbled-y

It’s the rock for me, it ain’t phoney

Gimme some more chalcedony

 

Feldspar’s a rock hard not to take

It’s an aluminum tectosilicate

Gimme some I just can’t wait

Put some feldspar on my plate

 

I really like to see the gypsum

at White Sand missile range

I’m going today to get some

Fossils there are awful strange

 

Molybdenum? Bring to get me some

My molybdenum deficiency

It’s worrying me, I need me some

Molybdenum

 

Somebody told me its gold – not true!

Naw, listen friend,  that’s iron pyrite

You identify it on second-sight

Pretty but worthless, you doggone foo’

 

Minerals, minerals, yes sir-ee

Dig some up and you will see

Their usefulness to you and me

It’s a mineral reality!

 

Today's Poem: Song of the Something

 

Song of the Something

It’s Their Fault!

 

Rub past flack mind charms, in tingling silence

Inside outer skins hard selves twangle gravity

as steep-side rut collisions go millions of dark miles 

 

A hopping future mingles inside a black swarm

its softened-coonskin leather glove stirs your eyes

as star-lined connectors multiply firy sparkles

 

Run as fast as you dream to let the harshness in

as you harbor fixations in solid innertubes of false solitude

that protrude in oddments of immersive fleek sameness

 

Public computer throughputs and psychic gag collectives

will comport pre-sportive snorts of wisdom sooner or later

to extol your weather joneses through limped-shut eyes

 

Interval wind farms scramble sentient technology

as snake innards hydrate fixatives in false privacy

too close to arithmetic grove galaxies.  Now, it’s your fault

Today's poem is "Beyond the Hot Dog"

 

Beyond the Hot Dog

Though I stockpile relish, mustard, and buns

I run out of hot dogs each Wednesday

and persist in my depletion, dog-short

 

I make bean sandwiches instead, mm delicious!

A fluent, warm continent of rainbow flavor

Wild with joy I ingest the organic bean dog!

 

A new mustard-based condiment regales me

It is a tantalizing beanologist flavor shortcut

whose radiant luster electrifies my tastebuds

 

I also devise an elemental bean hot dog relish

A relish whose parts per million elliptic-orbit

like natural spice planets circling hot dog suns

 

Recondite sourdough toasted sesame buns

condition the magic zestiness of The Bean Dog

Taste the Future! Taste the Future Now!

Horseflies - today's Poem (it's a sort of art object)

 

Cosmos

cosmos     

blue bowl on white-wood windowsill holding the sky

hemisphering an ocean below as elbow-leant head-held

chin-upward I think you are here, blue eyes each day

sealing a cosmos before me in a beautiful swirled bowl

my world left empty, a potential you to fill my portal

on the world where below bright cosmos blow sunny

ever after where my eyes follow the walkway into

the wider, wilder world beyond

Today's Poem is "Sonnet 259 – Special Edition Cheese WaffiesTM"

Sonnet 259 – Special Edition Cheese Waffies^TM

 

He eyes the label: Guru Product Line 5

Confection of deep, pressurized selections

specially wrought for Cheese Waffie ^TM’s Nth Year

 

These Cheese Waffies^TM are denser than others

says snacking Elmore to no one in particular

in a tooth-digging act of dental torsion

that only with sharp traction might he bite,

chomp through corrugated crusty layers

into intense neo-faux cheese filling

a tight, compact waffle with cheese-ish spread

 

A denser chow he cannot imagine

in this or any year no better snack

Elmore draws one from the special edition bag

and for a moment knows pure victual bliss

 

Ambassador of the Sun

Ambassador of the Sun

An essential comedy is

all extremities

rocks, streams and forests

in our absence free

 

In imagination’s death

Earth will prosper

elixirs and bitter tastes

unmeasured near and far

 

Liberty unaccounted  

 

Firing Squad

Firing Squad

Firing squad 1 set up to shoot prisoners

Firing squad 2 set up behind them

and squad 3 behind them

Fire 1! Fire 2! Fire 3! shouted the Komisar

Then squad 3 was set into a circle and fired again.

Everyone was dead and bull-dozed into a big hole.

Let this be a lesson, said the Komisar to no one.

today's poem is "out of jail"

 out of jail

       on July 4

            sky above

                   birds on wing

                            feet above the ground

                                        I feel like flying

                                               and I'm alive

                             but I drop

                       to one knee

                 to cry

          where do I go

                  and what

                       do I do

                             now

I want to see a river flow

    hear soft wind in the trees

         feel sunshine

                and fly away

                    far, far away

                           to glory

Two Imaginary Lawn Chairs in Chianti

 

Two Imaginary Lawn Chairs in Chianti                                         

 as a day’s sun’s heat reissues from the ground

            Tuscan grass darkens around us

-any sunset minus a confluence of phenomena

is only so glorious

a setting may be renaissance perspective perfect

sky Sistine Blue, genius rainbow colors freshly mixed

and all the world’s glory doesn’t matter

as I take your hand

and see into the promised land of your twilight eyes

 

gilded ages are resolved to dusty beauty like postcards                                                  Chianti wines open pandoralike to mix with sky

they pour single notes, mix with your voice

and nameless colors elongate - infinite, articulate

 

time stops, time starts, time forgets -

throw away your scorecard of indifference

                                   and rate the sunshine

faraway blooming over rolled Etruscan hills

                 in the movement of subtle sensation

 

nothing but hills of fading light soon            and

without you I lean dreamless,  foreign,  dimmed

shoulder to a crumbling wall                  

                                               where leaves fall

today's poem Away From Bogs

Away From Bogs

and from swamps, dog days

and the buzz and yap  

to shirk unrest and malaise

beyond failing precincts

beyond the limited self

to bright havens we go

in search of herbs, curatives

in forests, meadows, fields

to seek rest and peace

to put awareness on pause

today's poem is two poems, Greeting Card and Old Photographs

 

Greeting Card

 

Too soon summer falls to winter and leaves us

before spring again trickles back into summer

Long, hot days shorten; nights lengthen, our world ebbs

as sun, earth, and moon stream in fixed progress

 

You are not getting older, you are seasoning

 

 

 

Old Photographs

 

Approximate souls lit on paper

embodied in momentary ideas

Ages of frozen time are perused

snapshots, portraits, studies

groupings, divisions

seen through moving contexts -

phantoms become physical

 

Someone something somehow somewhere

in light’s passage through air

where physical artifacts store memories

accurate but false, misleadingly true

boxed, indexed, stuck, lost, ignored, or forgotten

 

Eyefuls of daggers, of clouds or of nothing

commemorative two dimensional renderings

keepsakes of empires sent to fade

personhood stolen and sealed away

essence and presence wed

 

Out the In Outbox - today's poem

 Out the In Outbox

 

Cold and unbelievable, slowly crumble

sidewalks shed thawing morning ice  

aggregates and disbelief causes disasters

as if a dark force erupts within ice particles

 

For shards of ice fly in turbulent air

Within the raw reality of polar beauty

in the frozen air appears without warning

where there is in no case non-life factors

today's poem is "Poetry Festival"

 Poetry Festival

 

Creative writers in a state of brain death

neglect to tailgate the poetry festival

 

Their readings echo tinnily in a labyrinth

which on first blush seemed navigable

 

but the lack of Dionysian frenzy blinds them

all walking identical paths suddenly are lost

 

Their mishmash words drone haltingly  

as panels debate orthographic conventions

 

Someone nervously mentions the Minotaur

in the drifting haze from a subterranean river                     

 

Out beyond the literary muddle profuse fireworks

crackle electricity in stormy bright white pulses  

 

Mayhem! Chaos! The beast is loosed on the crowd

Poets scuffle and run knocking each other down

 

The festival like a San Fermin raceway surges wildly

as the Minotaur gores, stomps and snorts angrily

 

From a swaying flagpole above the battlefield dais

I survey bloodshed, screams ringing in my ears

 

A great bronze-sheathed god leeringly appears

There is no escape from the cockpit of death now

 

Clubbing, spearing and hacking life from the bards

The steely attacker seeing red is bereft of mercy

 

Relentless rage pervades the closing ceremony

leaving plentiful food for vultures, flies and rats

Listen: 1st post - It's No Secret, Marty Balin

 

Listen: It’s No Secret, Marty Balin

At age 18 I was unprepared for the sheer passion of Marty Balin singing “It’s No Secret”.  With Jefferson Airplane backing him at full-blast in a dim, worn-out psychedelic ballroom, this performance whacked me upside my head. 

Sure, I knew that people could get worked up and express emotion, but this was incomparably more intense and overwhelming than any previous artistic proclamation of emotionality I had ever experienced.   It was the pure expression of distilled, undiluted LOVE that I heard in his song and  voice. It fairly turned me around and shook my whole rocking world. I remember thinking something like, “Holy Smokes, now I GET this song!”

I believed Marty: he absolutely cut through the murk¹ and communicated real feeling.  Friends, this is a rare thing when a person can summon strong emotion and then communicate it effectively to another person. It’s even rarer when the hearer can feel that emotion 53 years later.  The lyrics are pretty simple, “It’s no secret that I love you, yeah I love you”, but I could internalize it whole and feel it.

I can still feel it.

Beyond the fact that in the original recording of “It’s No Secret” (from 1966’s Jefferson Airplane Takes Off) that Marty fairly leaps off the turntable, grabbing your collar and proclaiming his love and the necessity and primacy of love.  One can hear the so-called Summer of Love straining to jump off the vinyl, but not quite reaching an adequate pinnacle. Still, this initial blast of unfiltered love is astonishing to hear.  My “live” hearing of Airplane’s jumped-up 1969 live version is an after-echo of the feeling the hippies were trying and mainly failing to get at.  Love. I could vibe it there at the Aragon Ballroom.

There are live versions of the Airplane and Marty unchaining his heart on this song, notably on the volcanic 1969 live recording, Bless It’s Pointed Little Head.  There, Marty and Grace Slick are off to the races, duetting madly. It’s a fairly Olympian speed-acid rendition. Though this recording is better than good, it pales to what I heard when as a college freshman, I hitchhiked home to see Jefferson Airplane in Chicago. Many things stand out about this experience (such as being absolutely transfixed by Grace Slick) but the intense emotion delivered by Marty Balin and the wild range and dynamism of his tenor took the melting icing off the cake.

Marty Balin is something of a dis-remembered hero of the rock sixties. His songs perfectly captured the ideal of love writ large. On the Airplane’s breakthrough album, Surrealistic Pillow, his two ballads, “Comin’ Back to Me” and “Today” were its most powerful expressions, even in a setting featuring the hippie warhorses “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” (featuring Grace, not Marty).  Marty’s was the voice of real and complete romanticism.

One can add in the Summer of Love echoes Marty later recorded, like his solo record, “Hearts” and the gigantic Jefferson Starship hit, “Miracles” as evidence of his continued emotional effectiveness.

Jefferson Airplane was originally Marty’s band and helped establish the sixties folk-rock, psychedelic and counterculture scene as they recorded hit albums and played the Monterrey, Woodstock and Altamont festivals where Grace, not Marty consistently got the spotlight.

It’s somewhat difficult to remember what things were like way back when “It’s No Secret” was recorded, but the romantic sound of Marty Balin’s voice points the way. Marty Balin was talented, extreme and authentic. He captured, sang and probably inspired the dream of the Summer of Love.

1.  There was a lot of murk in 1969 psychedelic ballrooms

today's poem : man standing on his head at the end of the world

 man standing on his head at the end of the world

insects buzz hover dart vanish

past arboreal ashfalls’ burnt taste

spire weed breezes tingle lips, nose

grasses and evergreen scrubs below

shudder with birds wings flapping

inner and outer dimensions interswirl

air past ears skin of arm hair tickles

looped steepled globed circle-horizons

tiring, head-top set in tufts of grass

roseate view of sun through eyelids

the abracadabra of this world, those

litanies of sorrows and joys mingle

mangle memories like wash water-wrung

laundry of long ago water rushes afar

sleeping head clears breath outside-in

dreams mixing with emptied worlds freeing

streams running distant water falling

throwing everything at non problems