When the door appears

(I know it is safe for me to write here. They won't know. They laugh that I write and don't read regardless. I just just crazy and confused and self-absorbed. I am safe here for awhile)
†*************
Today the quiet of the house saddens me.
I feel alone and for the first time I feel the black void.

I don't know which way to turn. The further I travel the darker it wraps around me.
At first resistant to those around me telling me that I have meansprits and I must change or it all will be lost.
(No one else sees that and I don't know why. I doubt my understanding of the most basic reality..me)
Cursed as a hoarder. I only want a few things to survive.
I only know how to change our things for money to live, but how long will that last.
I stand mocked when I point to a wall and say "but this is good? And these?"

I have taken the plunge of the Damned and I am almost shattered.
I am running out of places to turn.
I am not being heard and I have not given them any reason to fear me.

Losing the battle.
The silence deafens.

And even the fear of a Comets doom offers no fear, offers no relief, offers no release.

Whether it comes or not. It is coming.

My youngest blood  churned NY war and bathed in fear. tightens his jaw as he walks away. Another last hope sinks and I think more of the serenity of the cool and the mists and redwoods overhead.

I don't even look to see their ancient tops. I am happy to sit among them and listen.

Viewing Heaven

As I rolled over and read my messages this morning, I saw one from a old bearded man.

Today, if you pray, you may save a moment for Nepal.

Viewing Heaven

*****

If there is a heaven on Earth

For some, it must be a warm glow soaked

Sunday afternoon, without a care

And a hand grasping a grape jelly jar of deep gold bourbon

A scene of rolling hills spread out

And the silence of a Sunday afternoon bourbon

On a hillside in Kentucky.

***

For others, heaven is a tussle of warm cotton sheets

And the snuggle of a cat that has jumped at a flash

Just a few, too few, not many times.

Together laying there in the silent understanding

Of mutual love, with the road

And the roar somewhere far away,

an infinite journey

to take maybe tomorrow,

maybe some other day.

***

Finally

For a few

From the peaks

of dream mountains,

to the ancient temples below,

Heaven fell today.

Amid a linger of incense and flutter of prayer flags

Monks cry.

With those that felt heaven fall, they wander battered streets

To search for the buried and crushed.

Soul spirits that held strong as gunstocks smashed them

Uselessly.

Soul spirits that managed a prayer of peace and love.

Hands clasped in solace at the silence of the world outside

And worn smooth by the simplicity of life.

Today heaven fell not by man and marching toy soldiers,

But heaven came down by a restless surge in the earth.

By a rock, a boulder and power of a restless surge.

They will cry and dig and look tonight for a simple place

To watch the prayer flag flutter and the incense curl burn swirls

And sweeten the air they breathe

And find somehow amid their dusty tears, to be thankful

For the living and the dead.

And maybe heaven tonight will be a sip of water and a spoon of rice.

Waiting for summer

Red blooms burst ripe from spring juice cactus.

Blue hot falls from blue sky,

Center of a match flame

Yellow petals fly free and flitter

like snowflakes,

silent in warming eve.

 

And we know summer heat

Is soon to follow.

We prepare to burrow into the cool sand.

Please Spring, just a few more moments

Of your damp chill kiss

The day I learned the Castanet faded

(First draft)

Down the road alone.

Yesterday I learned of the passing of the hand fashioner of the castanet. Another loss in evolution. Snap

Going going…soon gone, 

Castanets and flamenco.

The low pitch castanet clack of the seguirillas. Flemish themes of loves, Flemish themes of the mischievous, of the playful. Sung slow and sexy and somehow out of the fires of hell, it was borne in a Flemish hell, a Flemish Hell of Bruegel.

Seguirillas with Sentiment, Seguirillas sung in ancient folk tones in ancient poetic form…swirl of the tailed gown, swirl of the ruffled tail gown, songs sung in low pitch to the snap clatter snap of castanet. Arms move like waves deliberate. Eyes, like birds watching prey, never losing sight and pray, dance gypsy. Flamenco is like a gypsy, like our true selves, no boundaries. 

Just distinct deliberate movement. Movements with purpose. 

Arms moving like undulating waves, intentional, conscious.

Repeat.
Repeat like a replayed song on repeat and snap flash, snap flash, flash fire : 

Do not lose hope

In canto jondo

in ancient Flamenco song

from Lorca who heard

the rhythm of the birds.

To Falla

Who heard the ancient words as

gypsy
most pure

primitive and ancient
and pure and then snap

snap snap

Clap a vision

The purity of ancient song released my visions.

And it all came rushing. The rhythm of the castanets brought a memory of a little restaurant in dark street fog of North Beach. Crowded wood tables of their only dish of simple fish cluttered paella and full glasses of fruited Sangria were pushed back to the walls. Cooks became dancers, bartender set aside the bottela for a worn guitar, fingers snapping gut strings, hands shake clacking castanets and we were mesmerized and safe from the cool night fog wrapped in the now moment of the gypsy flamenco. The group assemble forgot all but the night and saw the swirl and the flash and all became exotic.

Vision of Hemingway rough drinking on cobbled Spanish alley streets while a war raged in burnt hills. Smash drunk, comrade battle drunk arm in arm and singing of Spanish women fighting alongside poet freedom brothers.

And the gypsy danced while they drank to forget the blood.

Vision of old friends in Barcelona watching a turtle crawl, claws clacking on textured cool concrete, slow sliding under a bush as the heart fade feeling of a lost love moves back but is never gone,

Vision of Nazi teeth clattering in lonely nights, frightened by gypsies, frightened by their dance and clack snap of the castanet that lead gypsy spirit anywhere. Heil and no respect for the state, for the line, for the boundary, for ours, for theirs. Heil and no respect for anyone lifted to a god. They only followed the ancient song rhythms of the birds. Heil and boots marched unison empty. Nazis squirmed, and forced them singing, dancing, swirling red tail dresses, arms waving overhead into fires. And the Nazis died and the gypsy slap dances and fingers pluck taut strings

But they never died.

Visions, a mind rush of thoughts about the Las Ramblas in Barcelona and parrots in gilded cages lining the street, and drunken red wine afternoons fading with friends in green spaces.

 Along side the lap, lap, lap rhythms of summer slap waves, of mediterranean waters against crusted pier posts.

Today, the loss of the castanet man brought vision to me. Maybe it was the primal rhythms of birds. Maybe the next time we meet in the falling rain to the sss sss sss of the drops and splash of tires on asphalt.

Friday Night Music: Swapping Senses

Someday I will capture music in my words.

Maybe it as simple as writing a song, but music today stirs more than memories. It is immediate. It is physical.
Music today will punch you and enter crevices in your self that long remained dark.
Someday I will capture music in words.

***********************

2 by 4s slap
Dancing in haze
Shaking your blood
From a mad pounding calliope
To a liver shatter bass.
Everybody jump

Everybody get down on it

And all rattle to a Matt of ruff sponge.

And in the back, munchkins sing

In astronomical harmony.

*******

We later break for coffee and the sun rises quiet.

Leonard, I didn't even know

********
I didn't even know (but he must have been a child...)

On a day we questioned the color of a dress,
somebody's dream died.
Maybe from a different time.
Maybe from a different space.
Maybe the dimension of reality crossed imagination.

*****************************

He had been a child, running dirty brick streets, playing with a stick.
He held tightly to imagination. 
Swings became ships and clouds attacked with fury
Like his child's mind, he played a soldier and a spy, a poet and a spaceman.
And many shared in his imagination. 

And many shared in his magic
that made them think for just a moment that it was possible to live long.
For so many, he opened the door a crack and their imaginations flowed in
Rushed in, like a river of dreams.

**************

and on a day we faulted the skies for the winter's snow,
and blamed our eyes for not seeing gold, he knew he was ready to move.

Proud he was of a child's eye of magic he'd carried for many of our 
Earth Years, knowing it wasn't even a time speck in the age of the stars that surrounded us all like so many clouds overhead.
But for a moment in time that never existed in his mind,
his spirit lead so many to believe that there is a tomorrow and a tomorrow and a tomorrow...

In a Land where even Assassins dance

Some mornings even grilled sweet yams and maple

Remind me of Paris mornings and bridges over silent waters                   

To return, to stand wrapped snug warm in my leathers

Alone at the point,

She told me I have to leave it all behind                                             

Focus on my Buddha and leave it all behind.

Leave all behind, the things

Shiny detritus gathered along the road

That flashsparkle caught my eye

chisels deep grooves into recollections

Carved into a sandy beach, a canyon, a soul divide

Gathered now, spread dreamdusty on dusty shelves.

And just go to a snowy hillside where I ate my first valiums

Or stumblelatedrunk down dark stairs to watch them dance mad

Wrapped in music that scared me.

And I think of every thing Lemon Drop Jacqui muttered

On quiet nights filled with static and her voice and static again.     

(even that letting go hurts to think about…where will it go?) 

She taught me to let go before I make my first step.

To Paris, to somewhere.

To finding my own personal Buddha before I leave.

******************************

Time and waves pass.

A smile.

What seems a quiet place

Metal buzzes deep in your head

even now, the light flashes

When your eyes close.

Some days, a happy place,

All the houses up the hill freshly painted

sand is bright, brushed breeze smooth.

Parrots line the gutter

Even in this land, the Assassins dance.

it is as you wish

Until you share with an absinthe stranger

that even images of pretty girls skin

wrapped in gossamer silks, wind-blown

in sand caked curves

Suspended in warm clear pools of water

makes you sad somehow.

And you beg a generous friend to not share and he screams back in love

FUCK YOU! YOU ARE NOT OLD YOU ARE NOT DEAD

I decide where I send love.

You can’t refuse. You can’t say no.

'... even if your love makes you happy warm,

You still cringe inside, just a cringe, just the tiniest tear seeps from inside

When images on the screen,

showshare a pressed cheek with new love

Or two sit smiling in a tree branch.

All proclaim the beauty of love

And the tiny tear comes, colored tinge with sadness

And you move on.

Some parrots fly away, leave the grey vacant hard of a concrete gutter.

You know when the last one flies away, you are done

And you walk black heavy coated down streets brown with swirling leaves

And it is done.

And maybe in the morning it will be a room without shadows

Sun brights in every corner…shadows flee

And fresh ginger and bananas

That take me to a hillside of the Wye and I  stare down at an ancient abbey.

Just taken from the News in May

With more death of children in the city of Peshawar, I am saddened by the loss of so many families.
The cheers of children playing soccer on a field in Lahore were silenced by those same extremists who caused the tears of loss in Pakistan.
We must stop the fighting.
We must save the children.
*****************************
With some of the events that have taken place in Lahore in the last few days, I wanted to bring this piece up to the top.

I took a Daewoo bus
back to Lahore
feeling Tears and Joys for going
back to Lahore.
To the warmth of a home
and an empty field
there were few cheers going
back to Lahore.
There is Peace there now
said young Ibrahim
the eldest of six boys going
Back to Lahore.
A tourist unknown, from an oft traveled path,
dreams of the foods and the spirits leading
Back to Lahore.
Long life and prospers going
Back to Lahore.

May 4, 2009 8:28 AM


Youtube reading

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkBDleINsgM

A silent moment on a Day of Thanks

Hummingbirds flit overhead,
searching for honey drop.
Bouganvillea leaves gently float
to the still cool of water below.
Branches gently rustle...
against the blue sky crisp ceiling.
 
I wait for tomorrow
In a calm air
With anticipation of finding
my drop of honey.
********

Happy Thanksgiving to all I love and to those I have yet to meet on the journey

Just this morning

I asked for coffee as the first bird woke-
I could hear him cooing over a lost mate,
Last year there were two.
and over the dripping of the fountain,
he eats, cooing and watching the skies alone.
For a sign

***
It is Sunday and it is too early.
(Whatever that is)
and I am thinking of eggy-weggs,
mixed with whatever.
and toast in the silence of a cooing and dripping
and a red sky.
My mate said just a few more minutes
and I started my own water.
Breakfast to follow...
****..
Eduardo Barbudo, 1982 October

I have always loved Melanie.

I have always loved Melanie.

but she is old now

and her voice, her story

just a memory.

The key faded and worn, the candle cold.

**********

Where are those days?

Where is the wind,

the breeze? 

Do Redwoods still tower over us somewhere and whisper

secrets of a simple past,

of some time passed?

How it just doesn't seem fair

feeling the chains now hanging heavy

an steal those quiet moments quilt-free

where we just were and there was little more 

on the other side of just that moment 

other than just another moment

Just a moment waiting to happen and be whatever it became.

We spy darkness in the distant

and it steals the moment

so we can do one more motion before it 

wraps us like a blanket

on a cold desert night.

somewhere even hummingbirds sleep

When I should have been writing about a street corner.

*****************************************

The number dwindle
The clock ages almost cross 12
And the radio talks about a bell jar.
The desert is still and warm,
somewhere even hummingbirds sleep.
Your eyes blur
when you think about travel
and if you let it all get away,
somehow you woke up and you had let it get away.
Treasure the warm moments you have remaining,
and try to remember a time, an undertow
a slight fear.
As the room empties, the parties thin
and a slight fear that your words will stay in place
until next time (whenever that is)
Blurred eyes, a desert waits in the distance
and a Night Ride when you had somewhere to go

Leaving London

London Heathrow 5 AM
At home they dance on Saturday Flight
Into Sunday.
Dull Pounding in head
from the hour
and tourists dream of seeking jewels
future ancient visions
Ah, here we are
Standing stiffly by some place,
any place, hoping to catch a view.
And future memories
catch up to the past.

A plane roars in London.
London Heathrow 5:10 AM

March 28, 2009 9:49 PM

Thoughts of a God that crucified His own Son.

I was inspired to pull out an older piece I had written awhile back when I was in a strange place. Maybe I was channeling e. e cummings. Maybe I was losing God. Maybe I was coming off drugs. It was awhile ago


Thoughtfully inspired bliss

                                  amiss

Christmas spreading muddy joy               (Psst, do you hear the
                                                                   angels sing?)

I saw His son's face
          bleeding on a button
                          somewhere.

Did he really just forget?

A man loves to send his son away
to die.
Does he forget?

I have his son's name written somewhere.

Check my spoon.
(Could you eat without a spoon or would you die like His son?)                                                       
                                            (Psst. Look at him squirm...Why are those damn  angels singing?)                     

                                                                     I am repulsed by their joy.


A sponge reminds us, reminds me of the pain,
in vain,
for dopes
who molt STUPIDITY.

Like a thousand birds,
strung out,

spaced on a wire.                                   
                                                         (Pssst, I have been spaced on a wire)

Shitting on the statue of fleshy cold marble,
"The Boy who Died in Vain."

Maybe not in vain.
        Maybe in Detroit. 
                    (A city dreams do not even venture to go.)

Worlds change so quickly

12 hours ago
Colored words and anticipation of joy
Like Christmas
Scented my thoughts,
over the rattlebuzz of my old bus.
Slender white fingers
One million lights of L.A.
Sparkling like jewels
At my back....
The twinkle of Sunset Stars
And the richness of indigo
And a dream woman
In lace and velvet
And cool moss
On an ancient forest floor.

12 hours later.
Old gnarled women gumming pork rinds
and snarling at punchfist children.
Fat tattooed men
wrapped in "Born to Kill" tease
saunter to piss.
With road travelers
Screeching 'round me
Old engines sputter and roar weakly
And the color is gone.

And the dreamscape vanishes
and jeweled fairies and satin-cloaked Wizards
fade to worn grey.

And a Bunny's pain fades
For a moment, released its' grip by fitful
Sleep.
I need coffee to finish the trip to the desert.

Being the Fire

It is December and it is cold
The tribe is cold
And many surrounding us 
need the warmth and light
Of a fire
To hold back the shadows

from the edge of the dark unknown of forest
To hold back the chill

Tell someone today that you love them
And you will be the fire

Anticipation of Joy

To know true joy,

You must know sorrow.

I have had enough bad dreams,

To see joy breaking

Like a palette of color,

Like a sunrise

 

In a child’s eye.

 

 

               

 

 

-Eduardo Barbudo from Liberdad de Sueno Libre

 

Quick...Someone take a picture!

Quick
Someone take a picture!

To capture a moment, to catch smiles
Dozens of new family hap-hazard mix
Emptied both hither and yon to gather
To think, to be able to look back.
Remember what a year it has been?
I am Thankful. I give Thanks. I have Gratitude.

First, I am still alive and most of the same people chat-talking with me last year,
Still share with me this year.
Few are gone; few chose to be there, few offered little resistance
because it was time 
and I am Thankful.
I am Thankful for that.
Being alive is important and beats any alternative for me, today.
I can’t predict next Thanksgiving, I can’t predict tomorrow,
But I made it to today and I am filled with the Gratitude that joy brings.

Quick
Someone take a picture.
Happy Thanksgiving
(I thought about random writing random blurbs from random commercials or even copying the words of others. Instead, I saw these words floating past and I grabbed at many of them.)

For sure, Four shoes

                                              For sure, Four shoes

Two comfort lay long side like old Lovers
Journeys oft shared, laces lost 
On some adventure night long eve-memory past before.
Paired friends, age-frayed, edges worn, and toes gray green-stainedFrom a million blades of dewy new grass.

Their life together, their travels on dusty roads 
Quick turn escapes on soggy fields of play
Nearing the end, stain-faded.
Yet each nick and dog-eared edge and worn corner
Holds tight a lucid memory of time shared with the wearer
Just a moment, a smile, a tear, a fear.
holding soaked in their canvas sides, the chemical of soul that slipped them on each day
cursing a devil denied and ready stepping through lives trip ride passage.

To their right, a shine glow pair, dyes bright, edges sharp ready,

New Shoes.
Colors and trim sharp defined, shape taut. 
Laces, white with anticipation of roads to run, fields to cross and dances to dance.

New Shoes!
Never to replace the old but sharing a new world, new journeys
Filled with place spaces not even dream imagined.

New Shoes 
Heading to a New World, leaving quick behind their novelty of pride and arrogance.
Hoping for a day they too lose their laces, their corners fray-age
While their colors fade to the time stain brown of untraveled roads.
 
New Shoes 

That hope to share a tear, a heart-beat yearn, soaking with sweat chemistry visions of world’s they want to travel through every moment.
New Shoes 

Dreaming of the day that they too will be replaced after being shapeless scarred and worn with age.
Filled with the truth of what they have seen, of roads they have traveled and of dances they have danced.

New Shoes 

Sit in excited anticipation of sometime in some future, where they rest paired to the left of new shoes.
***************************************************************************
Picture by Aaron Null of Vervor Design, but most importantly, he is an active member of Camp Ego Trip.