Haunted Amerigone

     Every house is haunted and it isn't a joke. My family moved three or four times within Philly before I was 8 and then 3 times to different locales in the NE by the time I graduated high school. And by now I've realized that all those houses were haunted. And not just by previous tenants, they are haunted by 'America'. And the earth. This would ultimately be a materialist theory of life on earth, that everything that happens here happens in a material way and the concepts of god, money, goddess, prison, law, precocity, even language are all systems of abstract thought that conquer humans instead of the other way around. And invade our houses like spirits that need influence over us. We are weak spirits of human flesh, and this is dark Deleuze indeed...

4721 Baltimore Ave

S. 46th 

(Florida--)

chester ave

49th St

3820 Spring Garden       [bot]

Killtime warehouse        [fav]

Fakehaus

Powelton Ave                 [bot]

Budd St                           [bot]

Kingsessing                    [bot]

St Bernard                      [trade]

Kingsessing                    [rtn]

    Thus the Buddhist monks wear orange to house themselves in a color instead of a house. And thus the Communist Manifesto invaded Congress to a degree of paranoia called the Red Scare or McCarthyism. And thus poets go on and on in obscure language with one cute phrase after another, healing themselves one word at a time--if no one else. Or Stephen Foster, if no one else... The face of Frederick Douglas. Where do we American's live?

    I'm beginning to see why some Native American tribes lived in teepees and roamed the plains. And what kind of non-linear time machine sense it makes that an entire city block was burned down in 1985 in a beautiful black working class neighborhood in West Philly, by the authorities -the first act of war and beaurocratic control by FEMA? They dropped a military explosive, C4, from a helicopter and children were burned alive. I watched this smoke, not another smoke, rise from on top of my own roof a mile away. "They" let the fire burn. Some hip hop song had been playing the streets (people used to drive around every day playing songs REAL loud) "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don't care, let the motherfucker burn..." How was that sychronicity created?

    Aaah yes, but how mundane. We know that time, per se, doesn't exist at this level. Back and forth, no problem, old hat. One verse of 'Oh! Susanna' and we're right there, like a ghost, a flying Harry Potteresque ______________ wispy fast thing w ______________ threatening.

Cue the ominous music manipulating you to believe. It wasn't the Spector of Communism (or Corporate Capitalism) that killed God, it was the Spector of the spectors of Harry Potter, it was industrialization and the refined injection system of images known as movies. Even the name is so creepy easy ghostlike: movies: move-ease; the moving is so easy that moving moves. When nothing stays the same, even moving, then we're all ghosts. You're a ghost & I'm a ghost, & the & sign looks like a Dementor, & we're all struggling to get a name. If you're struggling to have a name, then you're a ghost. Ah yes, this is easiest of all to say, on the day after Christmas during Covid 19.

Well, I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee
And I'm bound for Louisiana
My own true love for to see
It did rain all night the day I left
The weather was bone dry
The sun was so hot I froze myself
Susanne, don't you go on and cry
I said, oh, Susannah
Now, don't you cry for me
As I come from Alabama
With this banjo on my knee
Well, I had myself a dream the other night
When everything was still
I dreamed that I saw my girl Susanne
She was coming around the hill
Now, the buckwheat cake was in her mouth
A tear was in her eye
I said, that I come from Dixie land
Susanne, don't you break down and cry
I said, oh, Susannah
Now, don't you cry for me
'Cause I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee

Flatness vs How Deep?

I was flatness as a kid, with the pals playing half ball (so it wouldn't go so far). About ten years ago I saw Billy Brennan, who was older than the rest of us and organized the ball games, at the Home Depot out near the Blue Route. He looked embarrassed to be working there but remembered me. I remember breaking a window with that wobbley rubber thing, the house next door. Give me 15 mns, we could drive over there and I'll point it out to you.

Then flatly I am hearing my friend from the corner house, Vernon Johnson, tell me that he's different because his skin is black, to which I felt stumped and speechless. I think he showed me his hand, or something like that? No, I don't really remember looking at anything but his face. Maybe I'm only imaging looking at his hand. The funny thing about faces in memory is that they are ageless and his face looked to me to be middle aged. Around 35. Old age is another face then, isn't it, a mask that goes over top of the ageless face? A mask that is like camoflage to the younger peeps. Don't you turn into a ghost, basically, if that ageless face--the one that youths see in each other--if the ageless face is like an angel? Faces = angels and ghosts.

I realized a couple years ago that Vernon must have got "the talk" that day cuz kids don't normally relay info from an earlier day, not when they are about 6 years old. But then again, kids normally are pretty uncensored, they don't care about talking. Say whatever. Whenever. The beginnings of philosophy, if not squashed by adult faces.

Then even more flatly, 16 year old me is up on a tree limb 30 feet or so above a pond and me and Paul Schneider chicken out from jumping. I think I was in front of him on the limb. How deep is that water after all, hard to tell from up there. We lost track of each other after that.

There are no essays for flatness, no poems, no logic, no words. The textures change slightly, allowing for love, I suppose. History and time fall away. Memories... Mother forgot, Father leads the way across a desert. At 90, he's doing pretty well though he lost his pot belly in the last couple years and I gained it. I've started eating more meat and he stopped eating much at all. I need bigger pants, it's a size/personality crisis. Size vs flatness. Laughing Schumann mutters in the morning behind his piano. But John Coltrane isn't laughing. Not yet anyways.

And so I enter the cave of love, heading towards grounding as flatness envelopes both color and size, freedom only plays with texture when the stranger feels welcome. And please don't actually say "welcome", in order to make that happen. I didn't know until recently that anyone could really want me and that politics hardly matters. I feel sadness occasionally. "Love before Politics" is the new motto.

 

 

The Lamb Lies Down

 

The key

is to leave me out or

to take you in.

Mirroring the dream,

dream in the space between.

Some pay money for this

and so I collected it. I wish

I could wear sneakers but I

can't. I'm always working working

like a dull boy. No running,

no jumping, leave and the prodigal

son returns without someone's

daughter, flowers in his hair,

dreams in her eyes, and a dog

by her side. The lamb lies down,

which part is extra? None,

no car parts are extra in

the fall of American idealism.

News Fast

 

Each moment

everything looks different

the movie doesn't

agree with itself

depending on how long it is

anything matters

in and out of focus

depending on the camera

history is boring

remembering dates so

lets have a backwards date

fuck upside down

kiss the brain or

the sky

i'm not clear on this

time for a news fast

at least one day.

Thus Mearthoon

 

The word community as a way to discover where the disease is located. So lets assume that each of these is a community. Where is the disease located (hint: may be a trick question):

-in the cell.

-in the organ.

-in the body.

-in the family.

-in the clan/small group/team.

-in the neighborhood.

-in the institution/large group.

-in the city.

-in the megalopolis.

-in the watershed/drainage basin.

-in the island/penninsula/archipelago.

-in the continent.

-in the planet/earth.

-in the universe/mass. (...oh we better put the Solar System 1st or maybe 1ster then that should be the Earth/Moon duo, which does not actually have a name! But wouldn't that be a personality all of its own, in some order of magnitude or other? Yes, we are looking for the identity, personality of disease itself, so let us consider:

-earthmoon

or perhaps better named:

-Mearthoon

(Sounds goofy I know, but what else? And actually, would there be life on earth without the tides causing (or at least contributing to) the form of those grey zones between water and land such as marshes, clouds, rain, snow, glaciers, ice caps? Yes, we discover that the moon itself is materially speaking a cause-out of many-of formation of identity. And in this way, could we say that the Earth resides within the Moon? Thus M'earth'oon.)

 When everyone was speaking in tongues, together, at the same time-not one at a time, they could only be speaking of love. It sounded like a river, the river of humanity and it made some want to be ruthless dictators, some want to be mothers and some want to run and hide under a volcano across the high seas. And some wanted to form armies of it, claymation, that would roll into the great Goddess's womb, through that singular canyon of delight, not stopping to tarry but hurrying along, their blood boiling.

Put it all back, put it back! I yelled, startled and not yet involved.

3 1/2 Beach Poems

How to be in the world

is a bigger deal

then it first appears.

Coming of age

might happen all

of the time just

like there's a baby 

being born somewhere

in the world

not too far away.

We might talk about it.

Wether the ocean is warm

enough for swimming

today.

 

*****

 

According to

my Dad, they used 

to have trash 

cans on the beach

but somehow 

the bags would 

get out and

there’d be trash

all over the beach.

They don’t have 

them anymore and

the beach is 

pretty clean.

 

*****

 

I’d like to start a poetry

family but the kids keep

multiplying like stars.

Suddenly I noticed the moon

was up and the earth 

fell away

over the round edge.

Falling 

falling into

your arms, where else?

Whose arms, 

she said! 

 

*****

 

a poem is words

I should understand

but don’t,

my old Pop said.

He turned 90

this year.

 

*****

What is it?

Omg she answered me!
    What is that feeling of maybe she is “the one” that comes in the written voice of a person? It seems like you can hear the humbleness, the sexiness, the wisdom, the … in the voice resounding in your head as you read. And I haven’t met her yet.
    And then when she answers, I hear all kinds of other stuff that may or may not be there. Emotion seems to be separate from words somehow. Floating like a mist that gathers and disappears. And then the only way to find out for sure is to reply. Haha. Enormous risk. Entering the realm of the unknown. Soldiers and maidens, goddesses and gods, unicorns, monsters, Freddy and Jason.
    I was getting an order taken at a coffee shop yesterday and the person was hardly visible behind a screen and her mask, and being Georgia, she had that southern accent. Which seems to exude hospitality in its every intonation. But she was also very very quick about it, her words right behind mine. So it was insistent to move along, but at the same time like “I am so happy to be serving you”. Funny combo, and efficient. Very efficient to obtain results. Made me want to buy one of the cute trucker type hats. A blue one to be exact. The logo was an octopus and its head said Tybean Coffee. My favorite type of coffee shop, a real turn towards the creative, not a Starbucks sheen to be found anywhere. The bathroom was back by this bar where stickers were everywhere, comfortably. One said “Six String Spirit, Southern Soul,” or something like that, and you could tell the music was still echoing in the walls with a real intent. A little bit dangerous. Something might happen.
    I guess I still want to get me one of those hats. But I probably haven’t paid enough dues. Shopping kind of sucks in America. I don’t want to be a tourist in my own country. But maybe it isn’t my country when I’m in Georgia. Something about that accent I suppose.
Something about that accent I suppose.
    But back to the she, who answered. I answer and am I saying too much, not enough. Too right, too left. The ex-waitress who is staying at the condo next door at the beach here is so friendly, she’s a real talker and its quite enjoyable. Reminds me of my party days. You could hang out with anybody, and challenge them in friendly ways, of course. You could find out stuff. Partying, traveling days. We’ve been getting to know her, she’s full of wonder at life. She gave me a shark’s tooth from the beach, she had so many of them. I gave her one of my fold books which she loved, she said. Short poems that are disposable. A little four page book made out of a piece of paper. You just can’t fit very many words on there, how valuable could it be? But the waitress, I noticed, being from S. Carolina managed to tell us both about a massacre in her town, of black people demonstrating about exclusion at a bowling alley, and ask about the riots in Philadelphia, as well as talk about her mother passing away from cancer, and the glory of the sunrise as well as a lightning storm the other night. It goes on and on, I suppose, if possible.

 "Eileen" is a very good book, quite effective at certain things that Ottessa Moshfegh seems to have wanted to do. Bring you into the body, and a bad feeling body of a person at that, looking out at a difficult family life. I wondered as I went if she meant the whole thing as a metaphor for America or something but .. eh, doesn't matter. Because the whole experiment worked and I'm sure Moshfegh is a better writer even, for the effort. That body pulled along by the main character Eileen, manages to move on to a better life through a series of triggering events at the end. But along the way, the vignettes are filled with self observations and world observations and exclamations that astounded and delighted me because I just don't seem to encounter many writers (so far) who embrace this darker side of human feeling. Which is, after all, way common for myself and friends. Who actually feels that great all the time about living, especially when living amongst other people who may hold power over us and not be using said power for the benefit of all. A brave book.

Steal Away to the Mountain

  Our last hope, after all. Steal away the children from the mind control machine, before it’s too late. A complex formula, I’m sure, and probably too late.
    And the bravery of the everyday moment!
    Caught then somewhere between becoming a person and actually being a leader. Being myself, I suppose, but killed, assassinated before a word can leave my mouth in defense. No use trying then, just run away.
    Does the mother miss the child when she needed to erase them to live? Where was the father? Is a scream living, or healing? There is no penance enough when the future is burning. (The future is the penance, I suppose.)
    When a leader is made by assassination, many more spring up. In the shadow of the 60’s and then Chapman shoots Lennon in ’80. Me and my friends went down to the steps of the art museum. All these other people were there. This is before cell phones and internet—we just knew to go there. My friend took a photo that I still remember of a young woman just looking at her hands. I’d like to see that again.
    And how to make a life just watching the shit show? Small talk gets difficult. Cynicism as signs of life. Was the Pied Piper weeping as he walked and played that magic tune? I think it was either a she or else anonymous. Later, the myth makers couldn’t say, just a Pied Piper. Twinkling eyes, no doubt.
    I’m trying to recruit the peeps for my mountain and they’re threatening to lock ‘em up forever and throw away the key. Or threatening them with the work gang life. Work for them is digging endless ditches in the hot sun or else we’ll be foraging for berries in the hills somewhere and sleeping on the cold ground, on the run. Catch a chill you can’t shake off. I think my brother went that way. I just never saw him again.
    So I’d just ask Homer Simpson how to come back from war. And hope Athena is on my side. I do know that as I work, either pulling the oar or renovating that bathroom, or whatever--I work with every other worker in this world. I’m in the kitchen or down in the ditch too. One long trench, a man with a gun over there, watching. We owe, just owe and owe. We don’t own.
    So how far will the children wander from our home in the hills as we work to resolve these tragic differences between mom and dad? Every new person we meet is either a mom/dad combo or a dad/mom combo. The transformation will be complete soon enough. No time for small talk, just the Pied Piper’s endless tune. I never could learn that song. If it is a song.
    My mother, for instance, just likes a little kiss on the lips, never a hug. I get the feeling she might start crying and then never stop. We’d be there, shuffling our feet, reassuring her for hours, postponing lunch. Saying sorry. Somebody go make some sandwiches.

We make the ancestors, or not

 

We make the ancestors, or not. 

Its the mothers vs the ancestors or

Parents vs ancestors:

That toddler moment when I realized that

my parents were super powered.

That’s the moment when I started

carrying the weight. Like they carried 

those stones over to Stonehenge

and set them upright.

It’s not the setup, everyone knows

the Solstice is great,

the Sun coming and going.

It’s the carrying. And carrying what.

Either visible or invisible or

even inside out. A murderer carries

something inside out, lets say.

A mother carries a baby:

a winged cherub who floats away 

always on Wings of Desire.

But the rest of us?

Looking for superpowers.

It starts with carrying,

and dusty roads near sundown.

Moon rise. Animals sliding back

to burrows, nests. Hopping or

flying, held by earth’s instant arms.

What is in human arms?

Standing up, I'm watching

the world, fingers light and grasping,

knowing what to do. The fingers tell

the mind via the heart. 

Leave it be, move on,

don’t pick that up,

put that down

carry air for once

in your short life. 

 

Love is Air

     There are so many things I want to tell you about, _______, but I can’t. Now and forever more. There will be a time when we can converse again but I don’t know when. This is how time is heavy, the things we would like to have said, would like to say again. We are repeating stories to see if there's any thing new in there or just for the sound of your voice mixing with my voice. The reverberations are the echoing that goes beyond the words or the meaning and only singing begins to vibrate in concordance with those tones, those intonations that I remember and wish I could be remembering more. Singing! And so we must a break create. I’m sorry, I’m sorry! A break, create, in the song.

    Some say that no one knows about love, really. But I'd say we all know about love really. From just being born and the first breath of air! Such a gas, really, not kidding -that this thing called air is unknown and then, ALL over and inside as well! I’d say love is air. Especially the inside part, if you know what I mean? But can we breathe with that forever is more the question - or become separated in our minds and limbs and finally our hearts? Finally our hearts. A broken heart could just be the broken part giving up on rhythm of muscle lust to meet blood to vital oxygen, that love juice in air, ah yes, sing! sing! Squeeze air with words with vague but connected meaning towards the outside air, squeeze and push as if there were extra space in outside winds, the dream leads the way. The mind’s dream circles again, remember!? The words are a scent of a dream.

 

    We are but the dream of our grandparents and the words of our parents. We are the dreamland of great grandparents and errant uncles and all those they met and breathed air with until, lungs full, they talked about the weather. We are the intention of great great grandparents, all 16 of them exactly, quite a group though most hadn’t met but their air invariably did, the air meets all air, is all air, and rides the land like wild horses or worms or fungus anywhere. Or maybe the land is held by air, the earth gloved in space by velvety loving air, who knows how that one gust of wind started and where its going as it tosses branches of my tree this way and that and is gone again moments later?

    Who knows when love comes and goes, but a child knows, if not an orphan to an institution at birth. If they got at least a semblance of care then the person is off to the races, running, jumping towards love of life. And possibly someday love of another and love of groups and of the earth itself. The earth is the hardest to attain, pulled as it is by the love from outer space, the stars and moon, the planets and sun which whirls it deftly around its finger like a wedding band beyond any mere gold or silver, even diamond encrusted. Diamonds are forever, my ass! You’ve never seen the love from space, quasars and black holes echoing pure power, more pure then anything on earth could begin to imagine. Which is why Satan was invented I suppose, a false prophet of anti-love, he was never really fleshed out in the Bible anyways, a half hearted attempt to resonate with the love and loveless and sheer power of outer-space. The way the speed of light is the limit of everything. Ah yes _________ dearest, we were just getting started with  questions and statements of love. The earth is only the tail of that particular tiger. 

    Or perhaps the tail of the lowly worm as well! We crawled along in the dirt of the last couple years, stopping our love and starting and not talking about shit we should’ve said. All having to do with other people by the way, we can’t hide in closets forever as you know, the air is stale, the dirt needs fresh air or dust it does become. And death is dust, a powder this earth will become in the fires of climate change, can you feel the coming dust of tomorrow? Time to start talking then! Out of the closet, into the earth air fresh from warming cold arctics, the scent of melting snow and ice fragrant with aeon’s ago air trapped and closeted air mixing in. Yes, we may have Mississippi sun glaring in Philly today and arctic ice air from 10,000 years ago mixing like old timey jig dancers, the fiddle has been earth wide and plays the earth and air song well! Ah love, can we ride that song into a maturity unknowable to institutionalized orphans who think anarchy is but the inability to speak across distances with love? When they separate the government of humans from each other, from sharing air and love, when tear gas must fly !!! that is when air must be known as love and anarchism will be known clearly as the love of non-hierarchy. No hierarchy between love and space, between air and earth, between God and Satan and Goddess.

    And marriage should know at least a little of this, no capturing… no closeting, the only way out is through flesh and blood, and words of love air. Break love to make love ______, is that what they say? And thus for the hearth of earth, the place where all words are possible and desired! All words are both desired and Desire, perhaps. So, where and when is that? Ha ha ha and lolz on top, where and when is all I want to know of you and you and you and them and those over there. Connect the dots like a gust of wind over a calm day at the Bermuda Triangle, wherever that is exactly. Hopefully not a lonely place, or a place without a little spending cash.

 

 

-Pics are taken of my tv screen, from the movie "Love and Anarchy", by Lina Wertmuller. One of the best movies I've seen in quite a while. The anarchist assasin wants to get Mussolini, but stops in his cousin's whorehouse first, where he falls in love and learns all kinds of stuff. It is a truly gorgeous movie with depth and comedy both.

The Stone House in the Wood

    Once there was a boy, with two younger brothers, who lived in the wood in a house made of stone with his mother. His father had been chased off by his mother not very long ago. 

-You good for nothing! Scram! -she had shouted! -I’m the most unhappy person you could imagine. I need freedom from your boring ways!

    So the father had left, sad and lonely, out the back door and wandered for a year until far away by the ocean, a fisher woman took pity on him and gave him room and board in her cottage with a cute thatched roof. Which, of course,  turned into a loving if feisty marriage. They were always shouting at each other.

-I’m the one who took pity on you, you need to shape up and ease my loneliness! -she would shout with an annoying edge.

-But you’re so wealthy from all the fish mongering at the market that you should just relax and enjoy my company! What’s your problem, fish woman, fish are good! -he would whisper and then shout back. 

I’ll go to the market for you from here on out -he added and so placated her and they began to enjoy their fish together at the thatched cottage by the sea.

    Meanwhile, back in the wood, the boy and his brothers missed the father and were getting tired of being called boring by their mother in the stone house.

-We’re not boring, we’re just kids! -the oldest brother would say.

-We’re not boring, we’re still learning about the wood. -said the second brother.

-We’re not boring, plus we don’t even like this stone house! -said the third and youngest brother.

    But the bored mother would only say -I think only another woman can help me with my situation, its a spiritual thing, you wouldn’t understand. What would you know of such deep and wide reaching matters, you’re just kids!

    So the three boys sat down by the fire one night and over a cup of steaming broth they discussed the dilemma.

-She’s right -said the oldest brother -We know nothing of women and their dilemmas.

-Yes! -said the middle brother -how can we help her and ourselves at the same time?

-I know! -said the youngest brother, who had only recently began to talk and was hardly walking -We’ll go find father and ask him!

-No -said the oldest brother, -I’m the oldest and I’ll go alone. I can’t get through these woods and watch out for you two at the same time. There’s wolves and bears and snakes out there.

-O my goddess! -said the middle brother. -Yes. Snakes!

-And wolves! -said the youngest brother.

-And bears! -said the oldest. -But I’m a fast runner! I’ll leave tomorrow morning at first light.

    So the three brothers worked together to pack the oldest brother’s satchel and at the crack of dawn, he set out, down the path and out of sight around the curve. The two younger brothers stood in the doorway watching him go and began to feel even lonelier. But soon enough a gigantic thunderstorm gathered its dark clouds overhead. It seemed for a few minutes as if it might be a hurricane the winds were howling so. But instead the rains just fell in sheets and the stone house grew very damp.

    And yes, over at the cottage by the sea side the waves grew very tall and very nearly washed away the fisher woman and her newish beau, because their cottage only had a thatched roof. But it held and the rain washed away to the sea. A rainbow came out after that. And the silver tongued father and the fisher woman knew everything would be ok.

First bird of spring

First bird of spring.
Woke up with a whole philosophical piece going in my head, composing itself. It had to do with the zeitgeist and how talking to any one person was actually talking to a corner of the zeitgeist. (I think related to my convo with Jay Mage yesterday, very philosophical and political too.) That it matters what happens in any conversation because the zeitgeist can change, does change, is changing. And - at this point I'm extrapolating - one of the reasons we can be scared of talking in public is because we don't know what the repercussions might be. We can feel the power, in the zeitgeist, and don't want to antagonize it, in a karmic way. Because of course, that is true, there is a relationship between the energy going out of oneself and the energy coming back in. From the moment early on of postpartum with the mother, we learn this. Indeed it is hard to get to the place where we don't actually feel this and we can do some thinking for ourselves. But thats what thinking is for, thinking for each ourselves. And then, ultimately, back to thinking together in new ways. Indeed, is there any such thing as "entertainment"? As one recognizes thinking for its potential, and its place amongst the whole of life, it gets harder to leave anything alone, as a space for "not thinking". It begins to look like everything is either a statement or a question, or a ____?