Compassionate City, Continued and Gator Man Strikes Again

Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others. - Ambrose Bierce

Compassionate city, continued

The thing people need to remember is Louisville is, first and foremost, a port town -- spawned by the river and maintained by the descendants of slimy critters that crawled out of it. There is no amount of brand-name creating, gentrifying, or white-washing in the name of economic development that will remake this town into anything but the den of vice, passion, and delusion that it is. Someone really should tell the mayor he can change the window dressing all he wants, but the actual nature of River City is what it is -- beautiful and perverse, both corrupt and incorruptible.

Of course, if someone did tell Mayor Fischer all of that, he'd just run out and buy more paint to cover it all up. The most popular color used to cover Louisville's swollen twigs and berries is police blue.

This past Sunday I went the folks at Fed with Faith to deliver food, sleeping bags, sterno and propane, and thermal underwear to River City's homeless population. We went to a new camp* with supplies, and took down their information. I rode around with Jean, one of the founders of Fed with Faith, and did what I could to help. He's either discovered the secret to endless energy or he mainlines coffee, but I did have a good night anyway.

The people living in the new camp ranged in age from their late 40's to barely 20. Some of them had family -- we ask in case they turn up dead and someone needs to be called -- but most of them didn't. A couple of them are in the process of finding housing, and there were some other issues around self-medication that always rings familiar to me.**

We ran into another guy who was eating out of garbage can near the downtown convention center. He said he used to play in the NFL. He also said he lived in New Jersey in 1988 during an earthquake that opened a hole where the Taliban was. We also ran into a kid who couldn't get into the shelter because he didn't have any ID, but who had no business being out. We had to hang around a bit to make sure a group of guys from the shelter didn't jump him for the food and stuff we gave him.

I also met Bob and Chris, and Prince Albert^.

One interesting tidbit I learned about our "compassionate city." It's illegal to move a camp. If you're caught moving a camp, you get cited form illegal dumping. Let that one sink in for a minute. So, while being homeless isn't technically illegal, according to the LMPD Press Information Office, they manage to criminalize everything BUT, and dehumanize their fellow humans in the process.

But it's all about the brand... right?

The gator man strikes again

As a result of me posting the article LEO refused to print and me accusing them, rightfully so, of wanting homeless porn^^, I no longer write for them. I wasn't full-time anyway, just another hired gun, working piecemeal and being told to wait for the sweet by and by.  Of course, my work with them was getting hyper-scrutinized anyway, ever since I asked to be more than the mixaphorical+ brides' maid. The truth about freelance writing is the same truth about being an adjunct college instructor --

why hire you on full-time when they can screw you for pennies?

This isn't getting me down, however. Thanks to my break-up with LEO, I've decided to break out on my own. Just because I'm not getting underpaid by them to drag important news out of the muck and into the light, doesn't mean I can't underpay myself.

This time, however, it will be in form of a weekly podcast, The KENTUCKY MUCK. We're still putting our pints and quarts together, and you can expect to get word of it soon. The Kentucky Muck Podcast will cover News, politics, arts, and culture that need to be dragged out into the light. We will be engaged actively in #bevinwatch, as Matt "no-cock fight is too dirty for me" Bevin takes the oath of office and starts doing to Kentucky what Scott Walker has done to Wisconsin -- but with that carpetbagger flair that only comes wrapped in a flag with a prayer on its lips.+++

I'm also closer to announcing the first release of Dirty River Press, which will probably be a chapbook.

In our little south end bunker, we're also working on a storytelling podcast concept called Falls City Storytelling. That one will be fun of a different sort.

And there's more... but I hate to spoil a surprise.

You may have noticed I've put a donation button on the webpage. Back when  I wrote under the American Re:Visionary blog, I had a tip jar. At the time, I used the tip jar for travelling money. Now, I'm asking that if you like what you read that you help me continue to write it. The more you give, the less I have to work a day job and devote to you, Dear Friends and Readers.

Thanks. Expect more soon.
__________________________________________________
*Nope, not going to tell you where, and for all the reasons I mentioned in my previous post.
** I have gotten away (for the most part) from daily self-medication. But if there really was salvation in a bottle, I'd have found it by now.
^Prince Albert says he's a direct descendant of King Edward. He also claims to have walked 43,000 from Florida to Louisville. Having travelled and lived out some myself, I can see where it would fee that way.
^^I apparently impugned the "integrity of the paper" and probably hurt the feelsies of the gatekeeper in calling them out publicly. But since the current publisher claims to be a Liberal and does business like Jay Gould++, I feel less than terrible about either. Their current cover story -- about the methane plant deal in the West End -- misses the mark by about 20 football fields. But the lead is journalistically "correct." And, their concert listings will be spot on. In a related note, there was a huge Black Lives Matter protest at the Old Jail House in downtown Louisville yesterday. They protested in support of Judge Olu Stevens and his reported decision to dismiss a jury during a drug case on the basis that the jury was not racially diverse enough.
+ mixaphorical, adj: an apt mash-up of generally isolated metaphors. From PDOUWP, Compendium Ed.
++Jay Gould was a rank capitalist most famous for saying "I can hire one half of the working class to shoot the other." He did. It worked. It still works to this day, since capitalists and powermongers are not so much creative as they are repetitive.
+++ i.e., fascism.

A Spring Fragment: A Poem

Each new sunrise brings with it another necessary reckoning.

The sparrows have returned from a winter of deep cultivation –

Earth-bound spirits are audibly relieved. Their groans

are heard among the screams and symphonies of sprouting spring leaves.

The street preachers and wandering drunks are out en mass

proclaiming the arrival of this new round of sacred entropy, saying:

The suburbs are not safe anymore.

Spring rains embolden normally manicured and cultured grass.

Rebellion breaks out in the form of crab grass and dandelions.

No amount of chemical lawn treatments will make the weeds spill their knowledge.

Williston Update: Heading Out

Dew is water to see,
Not water to drink:
We have forgotten water to drink.         
Yet I am content
Just to see sunrise again.
                                      -- Wallace Stevens, "Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise"

Image from The History Channel

The difference between traveling and going on vacation is the level of planning. The difference between being a tourist and being a traveller is the ability to roll with last minute changes and to think on your feet.

The bus to Chi-town pulls out of Louisville at 11:50pm tonight -- if the schedule holds. I'm in the process of completing last minute preparations.

A load of laundry.

Packing minimal provisions like trail mix and a few fresh apples.

Getting a new journal ready. Tying up the Cincinnati Day Book.

Trying to get some paperwork for a new gig tied up.

Keeping myself present, but remembering that life happens in all three tenses simultaneously: past, present, future.

There are still poems in the Cincinnati Day book that need to be typed. Some of them made into this blog. I'm planning on turning them into a chapbook once I get back from Williston. There are also plans for a limited, hand-made archival quality volume combining The Crossing of St. Frank, Whitman By Moonlight, and End Notes to the Deep Atlas of Time.

I'm looking for some freelance work and hoping to get some classes. I'm even looking at going back to school.

Right now, though, I have this trip. I'm looking forward to being on the move, and I'm hopeful that this trip to Williston will be fruitful.

And thanks to fellow writer, blogger, and highbrow/lowbrow culture devotee Misty Skaggs, I have learned that Larry the Cable Guy has decided to descend on Williston with his television crew, some brew, and truckloads of pork rinds to work on his latest project. In short, I'm now competing with a guy who got rich wearing sleeveless flannel and making jokes about the merits of incest.

It's a crazy, cruel world, Dear Readers.

I suspect we have divergent enough focuses that we probably won't cross paths. I also suspect that The Travel Channel security team and his entourage of faux-rednecks will create enough of a barrier that he won't interfere with my plans to find the kind of stories that don't make it onto NPR or The Travel Channel, or the pro-business scribblings Bloomberg.com

But we will see, Dear Readers. We will see. Stay tuned. Consider a small donation to the travel fund, and I'll mention you by name in the blog. Also, I'll send you a signed copy of Excerpts From The Cincinnati Daybook when it's ready.  

And I'll love you forever.

If that's not too creepy.

Gawd Bless!

Poem: The Learning Year

Grass needs cutting,

and the grease spot on the porch

needs cleaning.

I am losing the war of the fruit flies.

Waking from deep dreams not worth remembering

I shower, make coffee, ponder the raised garden beds:

comforting myself with the knowledge

that this is a learning year.

Wine fermenting in the basement –

months away from wanting lips.

Mead on the shelf,

aging into proper fullness.

The old cat is sunning on the back porch,

being taunted by birds he is too tired to catch.

Out of habit, I listen for the sound of the dog.

This poem needs writing.

There is cleaning to be done,

preparations for the coming celebration.

All my meditations are timed in head nods

and circuitous blinking of my left eye.

Western horizons expand in front of me.

In preparing to leave, I stuff dirt in my pockets

so I will have a piece of this place

so I will remember the way back

by the feeling of the dirt between my fingers

and its difference to sod beneath my boot heels.

Losantiville Lines, Down River Chorus: Version 2

DaveFest 2013

What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message. - Leonard Peltier

Every man is in his own person the whole human race, with not a detail lacking. - Mark Twain







Been doing more ruminating and focusing on where I am than I have been blogging lately. In terms of pattern behavior, this isn't anything unusual. I will, in the right company, blather on for hours. When it comes to blogging, though, I find much more sound that substance; which is to say, just because someone has space to blather, doesn't mean they ought to. I'm all for a free and unrestrained internet, but I do think that if some people spent more time ruminating and living where they are rather than spouting mental minutia to the wind, this non-extistant space would be a much more enjoyable place.

(Not that the internet ever was or really is free; but it feels good to mention, in the same way it's far more satisfying to piss outside than on a clear autumn night than it is to not risk frightening the neighbors by using the indoor toilet.)

Henry Miller pointed out that some of his most productive writing time was spent strolling through the streets of Paris; and I have found this to be the case for me as well. Journaling, plotting, and planning continue down deep, though the top the of the waters have been still. So, Dear Readers -- those of you who remain -- never fear. Re:visioning and avoiding avoidance culture continues.

I was able to take a short road trip up to Mount Carroll (aka Paint City) for the long weekend. The Travel Angel and I rented a car, loaded it down with camping gear, homebrewed mead, and homemade pickled eggs and hummus, and set off for the rolling prairie lands of Northwest Illinois. Memorial Day Weekend up in those parts means a few things:

1. Flying flags and Veteran Ceremonies;
2. MayFest
3. DAVEFEST

Now, to cover:

1.  to all my friends, family, and former students have who have or still wear a military uniform: I recognize and respect your sacrifice in spite of not being able to support the cause for which your lives are put on the line. (If you think the armed forces are fighting for DEMOCRACY, Dear Readers, you're not paying attention. Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200.) For those who are still in uniform, I want you to come home. For those who are no longer in uniform, I'm glad you made it back. For those who did not make it back -- I remember and honor you the best way I know how.
2. Mayfest: a wonderful public event that is continually fun in spite of the interference of that most ineffective of organizations, the Chamber of Commerce. Now, I'm not singling out the Mount Carroll Chamber; that would be unfair. ALL Chambers of Commerce are cultural blights and community viruses. The Mount Carroll Chamber of Commerce has done more to hold back the development of the town than any other institution known to modern man -- and that includes the Church of God. The good news: my friends Marques Morel (Dirt Simple) and Bruce Kort (and The Infarctions) both played their music as part of the line up of entertainment. They live in the area, and are wonderful musicians. The bad news: the steering committee brought in yet another abominable tribute band. This time, it was an 80's tribute band. No one who grew up in the 80's should be subjected to that much reshashed hair air rock and techno-crap. Sister Christian is a old hooker in New Jersey. 80's nostalgia and historical revision will not change the fact there was very little good about decade that saw the decline of unions and the steel industry, the squeezing of small farmers, Iran-Contra, the aborted afterbirth of Operation Condor, and the extension of Pax Americana.
3. DAVEFEST: The weekend long celebration of my dear friend Dave's birth. A raging bonfire, cold beer, music, and the company of friends. This was Amanda's first exposure to Mount Carroll. I promised to introduce her to some of my detractors on the next trip, for proper balance.

Back in River City, we've been brewing mead, planting raised gardens, and pondering chickens. This, as I see it, is as instrumental to avoiding an avoidance culture as being on the road.

gardens; boxes built by an Amish carpenter, plants and dirt by the Tenny Ave Contingent

mead, the oldest known fermented beverage

[CHICKENS: PERHAPS FORTHCOMING]

 This time next week I'll be in Virginia, trying to squeeze time in with The Kid as she prepares to graduate High School. Proud as hell of that one. She's an amazing person who I would like even if I wasn't related to her. 

And after that: WILLISTON, NORTH DAKOTA to check out the tar-sands. In order to earn the Eden I want in River City, it's necessary to go forth into the world and do something worthwhile. I hope to go to Williston and talk to people, hear the stories, see how progress is hitting a place that was, it seems, pretty quiet prior. Still looking for cheap/free accommodations. Couchsurfing and camping are thus far my avenues of exploration.

I still have chapbooks available for donations to the travel fund. Shortly I'll be unveiling a new project. Stay tuned, Dear Readers. The ride can't stay smooth forever.

Losantiville Lines: Down River Chorus, Version 1

The world is already cut up and we are snarling over scraps
deliberately dropped by a pale paternalistic hand
to keep us wanting and to keep us from wondering
what it is on the table we're not supposed to see.
--'Philosophy of a Dog', Cincinnati Daybook

The semester is over at NKU... or, over for me, at any rate. The last class meetings were this past Friday. Endings are always a bit anti-climactic; at least they are for me. In a writing classroom, all the real work is done well before the official clock runs out.

I enjoyed being back in the classroom again, and hope to do more of it. Of course, I also hope to dig back into some good old fashioned honorable muckraking. And I am preparing for another jaunt -- the sometime ago writ of toot off to the northern country, North Dakota and maybe Montana. Specifically, I'm making plans to visit Williston, ND, and maybe Rigby which, according to some map or another, is the geographic center of the North American Continent. I would also like to visit the northern part of Montana I didn't get to see when I was out there last year -- that vast part of the state that's on the northern side of the Rocky Mountains, sweeping up to and past the abstract line that has been determined to be the Canadian border.

Travel enough and you begin to realize that the lines on the map are more of an idealized abstraction than a reality. It is our insistence on making them hard lines that they become and stay hard lines. Ask the Dakota Indians, the Lakota or Sioux where the boundaries are, you have a very different map.

The truth is that maps are constantly being drawn and redrawn. The maps in our heads, private and collective, are always under revision, and are under constant threat of erasure. We map out our individual landscapes and change them based on changes in employment, marital, relational, and any other number of personally significant mile markers, totems, and landmarks. We redraw collective landscapes based on war, and the exchange of property and the delineation of those multi-national corporations whose arbitrary lines are not the same as those inscribed on geopolitical maps.

These revisions and erasures happen all the time.

And yet there is no end to the call to defend these lines. I can't help but notice among Facebook memes the harbingers of doom and death. So much money is made on the backs of our cultural fear and paranoia, and yet rather than look to see who is profiting (Defense Industry, gun manufacturers, makers of better police gear, private security and private army corporations, big oil, lobbyists, and the politicians who are more effective beggars than any panhandler I have ever seen or met.) we perpetuate the cultural death march.

Though I have spent the winter more or less stationary, I have spent the time wisely; and I am looking forward to what life has to offer and to teach me. Being a traveller is not always about being on the move. Sometimes it's about standing still and feeling the rhythm of the world as it reverberates in your bones, calling out those ancient songs and poems that only your voice can give life to.

Location:Louisville, KY

Poem Draft: Flamenco Sketches, Part 6

6.
This winter has been good for the grave diggers.
Nostalgia begins from cinema-made memories.
When we are old, we will have the certainty of our age
and the absence of clarity
that will lend it all a divine finality.
Dig a hole and fill the hole.
Be a hole and see a hole.
Spring peeps sing on frozen branches.
Ice storms blow in from the West:
Kansas is buried. Iowa is bogged down.
Violence is percolating in the wealthy cul du sacs of Colorado Springs.
Messiahs wander the high plains of Utah
searching for heaven and easy women,
praying for spread eagle legs of fire and of smoke.
Here in the valley, we wait for Spring.
The city is gray and the lights burn bright
as the mountains in the east are leveled
one foot at a time in the name of neon gods
whose names we never bothered to learn.

Location:Cincinnati, OH

Repeal Day Landscape

The world is seen best with natural light.
All the lines are crisp and clean first thing
in the morning: blue winter sky seeping in
through half open blinds, all sleepy houses,
the outstretched limbs of trees stripped naked,
leaving no protection for the squirrels scurrying
for winter stores in the lingering autumn.
Yuletide is coming. Christmas decorations adorn
the more festive houses on the block,
and the mall Santas are checking their beards
against altars to Rockwellian archetypes.
The garbage men have not yet arrived.
Possums and office workers have scurried
underground and away. It’s still too early
for all but the most dedicated daytime drunks
and commerce continues unhindered
in spite of the unemployment rate.
Crumbling blue collar houses cast deep shadows
in relief against the December blue sky,
etching themselves between the cracks in the street
the city never has the political will to repair.
All the starlings have gathered, taken final counts
and are waiting for the first real northern wind
so they can stretch their wings out
and be carried away the way children are told
all prophets and holy men are carried away
in the whoosh of a wind before the arrival
of the cold dark days in which every errant ray
of sunshine is a savior, Spring is a freshly planted messiah
rooted deep in the moist earth
and fed by homeless saints at midnight
when all the good folk are tucked safe
and dreaming of permanent sunshine.


*Image by Amanda L. Hay

Location:Louisville, KY

Pre-December in River City

The dog has finally stopped whining
and the cat is upstairs resting.
Mid-morning Sunday, sounds of the street
filtering through closed window blinds.
A morning chill takes the soothing temptation away
from my second cup of coffee. I am cold, I think.
I should drink more water so I can stay warm.

The tone and shade of the light seeping in is a snitch,
tells me the sun is still shining. My fingers feel the cold,
like they have since the year I lived in New Orleans
where there is no winter – just a damning
and permanent tropical spring.

The neighbor’s chickens in the dirt alley behind the house
pay no attention to presence or absence
of the season’s waning sun.
Winter is creeping down the river,
spreading through the tectonic root structure
carried on choppy currents atop unusually low water levels.
The last birds of the year are amassing,
sending out their acrobatic messages to each other
and to the four winds, calling out
for weather updates and last minute
flight trajectory alterations due to climate change.

After spending years studying the seasonal patterns of birds,
I am learning to smell the air and to feel the subtle shift,
looking to see the signs and slight indications
that will send them off in an anti-gravitational mass.

The seasons of a man’s life should be so fluid—

fluid as that moment between breathes
when, with wings outstretched
like a hundred thousand christs
they will take flight without any concern
about their place in larger order
or if their wings are as grand as their brother’s
and no question as to whether there is a perch
awaiting them after they are exhausted
from a thousand mile flight
dragging the weight of the summer sun behind.

Location:Louisville,KY

Singularity and the Freewheeling Critter: Ray Kurzweil at the Kentucky Author Forum

My view is that consciousness, the seat of “personalness,” is the ultimate reality, and is also scientifically impenetrable. -- Ray Kurzweil

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- Albert Einstein




Although I haven't read much of Ray Kurzweil's work, I was familiar with him. He famously declared, via the title of a much lauded and much criticized book that "The Singularity is Near." His many accomplishments have been overshadowed somewhat by his status as a futurist -- which, in an age where people still seek certainty and the surest way forward in order to avoid scuffing their shoes, makes him fill the Edgar Cayce/Nostradamus role whether he ever meant too or not.

Singularity,as Kurzweil defines it, is the point where technological evolution and human biological development merge. Pragmatically,this would mean that instead of needing a hand held computer to communicate,play Angry Birds, and search Google, humans would have access to these capabilities via extra-biological implants.

His predictions take certain things into account, of course, like all predictions. No matter how much you attempt to claim the cloak of objectivity (which, to be fair, Kurzweil doesn't seem to) those ol' a priori arguments never go away. While he acknowledges that there will be moral and ethical implications that need to be addressed he ... at least conversationally (I need to read his work to be more sure of this) seems to assume that with greater access to information that humanity will be able to handle the lines that will inevitably be blurred -- indeed, lines that are already being blurred, such as our cultural concepts of privacy, and the ever raging concern over intellectual and creative property rights

which just an extension of the same ownership by Divine edict obsession that the early Europeans settlers carried with them.

He also dismisses the notion that these technological extensions of self could become intellectual and critical crutches. I thought of a comment by a student at Arizona State University; the student claimed there was no need to remember certain things -- like state capitals or the year the Civil War ended, for example -- because Google was so accessible.

And NO, I'm not saying that rote memorization has anything to do with being intelligent. But it DOES exercise the brain, make it work in ways it wouldn't normally. And having access to certain pieces of information without technological extensions could come in handy. Say, when the WiFI goes out, or if you're somewhere where there ISN'T ANY WIFI.

I did appreciate his vexation about language, though. He called it humanity's first invention, but acknowledged the problematic nature of language...in that it can describe and reflect but that there's always a risk of something being lost in the translation. Language is necessarily reductive and inherently culturally biased. We're still grasping at language to adequately describe aspects of the human experience that can't be empirically studied. Kurzweil says this is tied to our individual "personalness" which is "scientifically impenetrable."

That's how I define the purpose and function of poetry, and of the arts in general, actually. Poetry (and art in general) is the attempt to reflect, describe, explain, or be critical of individual and collective experience. Science has it's uses, though. And I enjoy finding the mystic buried in the empirical. This gives me hope that we might stumble as a culture onto the truths that lie at the heart of existence, that we might be able to see them without interpretation and without ego.

But it would still be helpful to simply know that Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota.

Location:Louisville, KY,United States

O Losantiville, Don't You Cry For Me: Asynchronous/ 2 Poems From the Road

I am open to the guidance of synchronicity and do not let expectations hinder my path. - The Dalai Lama

I woke up this morning to snow -- a light dusting on rooftops and car windshields that's lingering even though the snow turned into a cold rain. I woke up mindful of loved ones up and down the east coast, and mindful of the people I don't know who, even when the weather is fine, have trouble finding shelter. I'm mindful of people like Roger, who I met in the Chicago Greyhound Station and who I will write about in an upcoming post.

While my time in Cincinnati hasn't been bad, and it's taking me longer to scratch up money for the travel fund than I would like, I have been busy trying to find the good work of the world to do while I am here. I'm making some progress in that regard, and I'll write about that as it presents itself.

 Central to the ideas laid out from the onset of this blog, nearly 10 months ago, is the belief that philosophy without application is a mental puzzle, a brain teaser, and nothing more.  It's easy to say among similarly thinking friends that you need to put up or shut up. But it becomes a different discussion when you start preaching to someone besides the choir.

What this means for me is that I have to dig in, while I'm here, and find a way to positively impact the world around me, even if that means contradicting some expectation or another. Yes, I'm looking for teaching work -- and writing gigs. Teaching is part of the good work of the world, but there are other things. I'm still looking for other things to do. And from what I can see, I don't have far to look.

Not by a long shot.

Whitman By Moonlight, The Crossing St. Frank, Plus 2

On Monday, November 5th, I will be adding a new chapbook, Whitman By Moonlight. This one will be for sale or for trade or in exchange for donations to the travel fund. I still have copies of The Crossing of St. Frank.

If you're more of an ebook reader, you can now purchase St. Frank on amazon.com for Kindle:





2 Poems From The Road (Not in the chapbook!)

Shadow of Our Fathers

Downhill side street

leading to the cemetery on Boot Hill.

This place is watched over by it's dead

and the dead do not care care

that the living are waiting to roll them over

and move in.

Do not let the city fathers know, and

do not tell the church matrons either.

The sewing circles and kaffeeklatsches already

have a notion; and they are dangerous enough.

They whisper among themselves with eyes cast towards the ground.

Old men rooted on coffee shop stools know, too.

They grumble back and forth between news reports

that blame the President for the drought

and gastric rumblings they dare not blame on the cook.

There is talk of jack-booted thugs trying to nationalize the granaries,

but only from the agribusiness barons.

The dead do not care – so we necromance ours upon them.

Just one more layer of make-up on the corpse

so we can tell one another “He looks asleep.”

It is true then: the dead do not watch us

though we try and see through their dried eye husks

and tell ourselves the vision is crystal clear

as the fog wraps around Boot Hill

temporarily saving the dead from our intentions.

Three Days in Litchfield

Feet bleeding through my socks

the smell of fir and field grass

and new morning dew

pressed into my skin

with lavender scented Epsom salts.

Bone sore, from the top of my neck

to the tips of my toes,

bobbling like and old man

locked in a cheap motel –

waiting for some signal from the weather

hoping money doesn't run dry

like this past summer's rain.

The television for a companion

Gideon's book for recrimination

and Whitman for salvation.

The plumbing is good.

The bed is bug free.

There is rain coming

and the Carlinville train

is 10 miles away.

Crossing the Madison Street Bridge in Chicago at Midnight

I'm not so used to cities at night anymore.
The vast silence of steel and false night lights
gleaming in the darkness –

some apocalyptic dystopia
some photographic negative
of minutes spent scurrying
in the name of family, of god, of country
and credit rating.

Not so used to tall shadows created by dead things
that themselves are shadows – monolithic memento moris
leftover from forgotten dreams of some
Victorian Age notion of progress built
out of 20th Century materials
to become the icons of the new millennium.

Not so used to feeling crowded in on a deserted street,
These shadows, they have eyes

and they are always watching
and they are always waiting.

I don't know what it is they are waiting for
or why they insist on watching –

maybe they are waiting for my death,
watching for that opportune moment to pick my bones clean
like road kill on Old Route 66.

There are no questions here.
No one asks where it is I am going or
where it is I have come from.
My presence goes unnoticed.
There are no familiar faces in this city
upon which I might call on this chilly night
beg a couch and a few swallows of wine,
some warmth and conversation, trading tales
and the sweet lies that make of a man's daily life.

There are no doors open to me here.
Only a 24 hour chain donut shop –
and even then,
I must be careful not to offend
the impatient Middle Eastern man
who works the counter
blaring gangster rap.
Crossing the Madison Street bridge at midnight,
light reflecting in ripples on the waves
passing bus rumbles and shakes the bridge
creating ripples in the Earth
that cannot be erased
unto the last generation.

Street construction does not slow the steady rot underneath everything
man's hands have made.

I am not used to it. I find myself begging
for stars and for the breathing shadows
of more natural landscapes.

Nearing my 40th year I have begun to see
what it is I need. And it's not
any of the things I have been told.
Punch drunk clarity comes at almost two in the morning
sitting in a donut shop
as the city sinks into it's own arms
like a last call drunk.

Walk the streets, pedestrians disappearing into other shadows,
into older shadows. My own shadow, fractured as if
through a dark kaleidescope, four or five times –
A Schrödinger's puzzle.
I consider the possibility that they're following mw
intending to do me harm.

But I choose to dismiss this as paranoid delusion:
my shadows could never harm me
since it would hurt them in the long run.

I stop short of reminding myself that people do that very thing
all the time.

When I was young, I ran away to the city.
I craved the vibration, the cement, the anonymity.

Now I want to breathe big
and fill my eyes wide with green spaces,
acres of sky ascending and dissipating into nothing
into energy, into the cosmos, into stars, and into the ripple of planets
in Einstein's giant gravity blanket.

Now I want to walk in large strides
and I want to talk in large strides
and I want to traverse it all,
even the most inaccessible places.
Now I crave a western expanse.
Now I crave the Appalachian hills.
Now I crave rolling prairie
and nights re-splendid with a thousand million stars.

Now I crave a world in which
a man might breathe and live and love
and find solace in things that grow,
peace in warm fire,
among the songs and company of friends.

My soul speaks, sings out to this place.
It is waiting for the song to return.

I want to believe in all that is grand.
I want to believe in all that is beauty.
There is energy and beauty, where there are people scratching,
bumping into one another on the street, rubbing against the sidewalk,
opening and closing doors – in the same way atoms bounce,
and in the same way that neutrons bounce and bump.

There is a pulse where people are singing.
There is a pulse where a woman takes down her hair.

My soul speaks, sings out to the this place
because there is a rhythm under the cacophony
and some folks call it human.

My soul speaks, sings out to this place.
It is still waiting for an answer.

I want to believe in beauty
in spite of what my culture tells me –
and I am finally beginning to understand
that all that's beautiful
and all that's ugly
begins in me
like it begins in you.

Southern Jaunt: Synchronicity Extract

Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Yesterday I thought about Odysseus -- specifically, Odysseus Among the Lotus Eaters.  It's a story I return to often in my thoughts. Certainly the epic poem, it's variations and permutations will cross my mind simply because it's one of the greatest poems ever written, translated, and rewritten. The classic epic poems (that includes Gilgamesh, Beowulf,  and The Illiad,)  mirror something I see repeated in poetry, in stories, in songs, in movies -- though to varying degrees of success.

The image of the Lotus-Eaters has, for many years now, served as a personal metaphor for the hypnotic way with which daily life finds a way of interfering with the living of it.

I've been back here in Paint City for nearly a month and half, trying to get my divorce finalized, writing for the Prairie Advocate -- finding the same epic stupidity among some disgraced and not-so-prominent-as-they'd-like-to-think folk and losing contact with a relative thanks to one noxious political troll   -- and enjoying the company of friends, the sound of music and poetry, the creation of art... reflections all of beautiful things, of necessary things.

Paint City is becoming a place for people to come and hear good music -- not only the myriad of local, talented musicians, some of whom have been playing as long as I've been on the earth, but musicians from elsewhere. This past weekend, a brother/sister duo from Nashville came into town -- their dad Forrest is a local musician and pretty cool guy -- and played two different venues as well as gracing the 5 Minutes of Fame Open Mic that, in spite of the Bears/Packers game, still pulled a respectable crowd. It's nice to be here and see the natural outgrowth of people's passions become positive energy.

There are some growing pains and the usual naysayers and spoilers -- but that's not the focus here. I will say this, though. If I've learned anything, it's that synchronicity can be a powerful force. When it's turning positive, it's best to work with it, so that when it turns negative (and it will, at some point) you're in a better spiritual and mental place to deal with it. There are some folks here who, in spite of how good things are going, still try to strangle it... some with good intentions, I suppose. But stupidity and short-sighted aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

There is a sort of lotus-eater effect of being in a place like Mount Carroll. You have to make your own fun, create your own life, in a place like this -- because if you don't, you're stuck living someone else's life, having someone else's idea of fun, based on rules dictated by choices that are not your own.  There's a sense of independence that goes along with the interdependence, the sense of community. And when it works, it works well. It's a kind of narcotic for weary souls, for people who want to believe that utopias exist and that it is never where they are. It's invigorating, really. Sort of refreshing.

But only for a while.

Then there's the rest of it.  It's been said over and over again by a bunch of people, none of whom have probably lived in a small town in recent memory, that small towns are a microcosm of the larger world; the idea being that everything that happens in a city, in a nation, in the world, happens in a small town, to a much smaller degree. That assumes, however, that your point of view is global. For the most part, people paint their views of the rest of the world the same colors they see off their front porch. And everything that happens, from the latest teen pregnancy to whoever's name is listed in the Court House News, becomes as important as -- say, an attack on an American Embassy in which four people were killed. The only difference is, of course, that Tripoli is a place most of them have only heard of in The Marine's Hymn, while an unwed mother is a social dilemma that, Once Upon a Time When All Was (Never) Perfect, was handled more discretely.

You know. Shame. Social isolation. Judgement. Exile. Real high American Ideals.

A small town is an extract -- the whole universe boiled down and put in a particular environment. Sometimes the combination works. Sometimes it doesn't. Small towns are fading from the map because the commerce and traffic that created them are changing routes. Mount Carroll is surrounded by towns that are dying off -- both literally and metaphorically -- and like the lotus eaters, there are folks around here who, while they may not be content, are content in the knowledge that there's nothing to be done.

That's why the synchronicity here is important; there are good things happening, but the idiots are never far behind, being critical and saying that it can't/shouldn't be done. Or worse, they're holding onto an idealized version of the place that may have never existed. Because utopias don't simply exist, and they are rarely made. None of it's perfect.

Paint City still holds a lot of mixed memories for me; and the longer I'm here, the more I'm steeped in them. That's part of the reason why, when people ask me why I just don't stick around -- and they do -- I can never give them a concrete answer. The rest of the reason is that in spite of a few assertions lately that I'm not doing anything worthwhile, that I am accomplishing nothing, that I am not impacting anything for the better -- I happen to agree with them. Somewhat.

What I do is worthwhile -- at least to me. And I accomplish quite a bit -- though not by any standard that my critics will understand.

But the world is a big place and worth living in. And sometimes you have to wander around a bit to see how it is you fit into it.

Oh, and if you haven't yet, stop by and "like" my new Facebook page. You can also follow me on twitter @amrevisionary.

Southern Jaunt: 22 Years and Counting (Memoriam) /

But the love of adventure was in father's blood. -- Buffalo Bill


I wore his name like armor. - Elena Bell

22 years gone and I still remember
that though some are set above 
given higher rank, higher status, more prestige,
they are not better people --
just blowhards with brains of butter. (partial poem draft from Travel Journal)

I woke up this morning with a knot in my stomach. I've felt it coming on for several days, like the onset of a flu. Like standing in the tracks in the path of an oncoming train. The last time I remember hearing the sound of my father's voice was in a dream, maybe 5 years ago. I was so unused to the sound of it, so accustomed to the idea that he's dead, that it frightened me awake.

My first real bout of insomnia happened not long after his death. My senior year of high school is blur, primarily because I was a shell-shock zombie. What I do remember involved my daughter's mother ... which, being candid, I would rather forget ... and very little else. My reaction to my father's death was to run. I ran from the hospital room because I couldn't look at his fresh corpse in the ICU. I ran from sleep because I couldn't escape dreams that condemned me for being  weak son. I stayed away from home because I couldn't stand to watch my mother mourn, take the emptiness of the house in my father's absence ... though the house itself started to take a shrine-like place in my mind. When my mother sold the house and moved, I felt (at the time) like something was being taken from me, even though I didn't live there anymore. Now I understand that shrines are only useful when they help us live better, not when they enable us to envy the dead. Now I know it's possible to remember without worship. Now I know the voices of the Elders are not dreams that frighten us awake in the middle of the night. We are the voice of the Elders; their words and ours  combine into the stories, the songs, the poems that record our personal and our collective histories into the consciousness I like to think of as The Long Memory.

And in spite of everything the GOP'ers tell you about the evils of the estate tax, the only thing we can pass on to the future generations that any real value or any real meaning is The Long Memory... because it is ours to continue and pass on, and it is theirs too -- whether they know it or not -- from the moment they are born.

My bouts of insomnia are infrequent these days. When I have a night or two when I can't sleep these days, it's usually tied to the fact that I'm in one place too long... a built in alarm clock tied to my itchy foot. According to My Dear Sweet Ma, I get the itchy foot from The Old Man. He was able to soothe his in his relative youth, and settled down in his middle age.

As you might have noticed, Dear Reader, my trajectory has been a bit different.

Today I am mindful of The Old Man and of the many other Old Men -- and Old Women --  who ought to be remembered this day. Of the lessons my dad tried to teach me that actually stuck, the one I always seem to come back to is embodied in the phrase

Every man's a VIP.

I thought about that quite a bit when I was out on the road these last 7 or 8 months.  And while I'm not entirely sure that he would agree with my interpretation/assessment of what that phrase means, I do know that he was less interested in how much people had squirreled away than he was in how they behaved.  For his part, he treated people decently until, in his opinion, they did something to deserve harsher treatment. He could be temperamental, and knew how to hold a grudge. His reaction to his own physical decline colored most of his reactions to everything else -- anger and determination. He would be the first person to point out that life is almost always unfair; but he never seemed to stop expecting that fairness would win out.

There is no greater example of this than his love of football; specifically, the Bengals. Any Bengals fan -- any real fan, at any rate -- will tell you that being a fan is about more than painting your face and screaming like a banshee when they're playing good. It's about holding your head in your hands when they're playing really, really BAD... and then watching them again the following week, find hope where the talking heads, pundits, and spineless, gutless bandwagoneers insist there is none.

One overly concerned individual, in regards to my name changing/identity politicking in my online life, made mention of the fact that in changing my name -- or in expressing a desire to change my name -- that I am, in essence, spitting on my father's memory.

I thanked him kindly, not pointing out the only thing I spit on are flags, sacred cows, and -- whenever possible -- in the coffee of certain local political figures.

Regardless of my nom de route, (that's s pronounced 'root' from the French meaning path, and sounds like the English term for the underground  inner workings that make trees grow tall.) I could never erase The Old Man. And the only way I could ever disrespect his memory is to live in such a way as to abdicate my ability to think and to live to anyone or anything that does not deserve my fealty. And although my dad was, in the traditional sense, very much a patriot, I like to think he would understand that I am, in my own way, a patriot. I love my country, because a country is made up of people, not institutions. I despise the institutions and machinations that are undermining it. He might disagree with every belief I have come to hold as true based on my life experience; but he would absolutely prefer me to reach my own conclusions than to trust something so important to mediocre machinations. He would prefer that I retain my right and my ability to determine for myself who my enemy is, rather than listen to people who value their opinion over my experiences.

And for the record, the only union strike I ever heard my dad be critical of was the 1984 MLB strike. And he was a Republican most of the time.