Ernie Jitterbugs with Paul

As I stare out the window of a schoolbus driven for 32 years by a man falsely identified as Ernie, roadside reflections cast from the other side reveal images of life’s false realities. Both are real, but only one is true.

Ernie’s real name is John. No one cares. Neither does he. John was captive--- Ernie is free.

As the bus rolls on the endless highway, I gain access to Ernie’s MKULTRA-fueled vision of truth. It is colorful and warm. The muzak ceases as an unseen captain declares “Ship dead ahead governor” and our captain recasts our voyage to a fab submarine.

I’ve never said ‘fab’ before, I think I’ll use it again sometime.

A surrounding voice states "we are on the dark side and if you look inward you'll see a pig flying over the wall." I look inward and see our vessel precariously drift through the Sea of Holes in a cloud of Green—or is it the Sea of Green in a Mind of Wholes? I feel whole and as this surrealization continues, the world continues to expand through the telling scent of Jitterbug Perfume.

I realize that the present from Aunt Lynn in ’84 presents a new presence of mind for us all. Past gifts of kindness 22 years later become future impulse purchases for a college student searching through racks of dusty books for dusty answers to dusty questions that in the end will turn us all to dust.

I stop upon a familiar name--- Tom Robbins. My Tom Robbins is not a famous author—he’s a guy that I toked up with at a creek in the blistering Tennessee summer of 2004 (who just happened to be a teacher at the high school that I just graduated from). I should make some witty pun about high school but I choose not to because I learned more in that smoke-filled summer than in those four years.

My Tom Robbins taught me about the importance of me.

Their Tom Robbins taught me that immortality is a choice and that we can beet life. That’s B-E-E-T, but I’ll let you work that one out.

Unbeknownst to me (or to either Tom Robbins), the key is found in three postcards that rain free from the leaves still bound by this liberating book of Dance and Olfactory Pleasures. From these postcards, I start to construct the Seven Layers to the Meaning of Life.

Level One: The ever-present war that rages between Apollo and Pan for supremacy. Apollo has Diana while Dionysus backs Pan. Order against pleasure; sacred love squares off against the unchaste fuck. I remind myself that gods do not die until we stop believing in them and although Olympus is a world away, a single man-child on a stage in Athens must decide their fate. With this decision I too become a god because I believe in me.

Level Two: Washington’s San Juan Islands

Level Three: Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions’ “People Get Ready.” Marley may have sampled it, but the truest musical message ever was in the original.
When possible, get off the bus and get on the train.

Level Four: Your first fuck

Level 4.1: Your second fuck (and so forth…)

Level Five: Maurice, The Rocket, Richard, Slapper and (most importantly) Tenacity.

Level Six: My sister’s ultrasound this afternoon and the virgin knowledge that I am going to have a niece (this was written the night before she found out, but I’m sure that it is a niece). The love and greatness that child brings to the world even though she will not meet it for another four months. She will do great things. She will also have failures. She will live, she will love and she will create.

Level Seven: Smile-- you are loved and so are they.

The Prayer of the Pass(ed)over

You, like my own father, fucked up his own life by fucking the wrong woman while being fucked up. Now I am orphaned in a world of Wal-Marts and WMD’s, McDonalds and mass suicides, the killers on the Left and the killers on the Right, Baghdad and Blacksburg-- both are East of Eden.

Cain—the original tourguide—went out of business because of an oversaturated market. We all share his trade, marked by common paths full of double crossing bridges long burnt to rubble.

These days even Abel has a stand filled with brochures of maps to the stars—the closest any of us can hope to get to Heaven. He charges $3.75, the same price of the Chinese food dinner that now upsets my stomach and reminds me of you.

In our name you prey,

All men

Amandla!

Movement I: Invocation of the Muse

Be with my heart and mind
As I transcribe anguishes of my world
That move me to tears
Despite being distanced
By cultures, continents and eras.
Invoke the consciousness of the fallen:
Malcolm, Martin and Garvey—
Mini, Kuti and Marley.
Help me to realize that the question
Is not only, “What’s going on?”
But also, “What went on?”
And, “Why must it never happen again?”


Movement II: Chains

I see chains—
chains on the dogs
not being held back;
I see chains—
chains on the guns
held to my back,
target in line
no choice but attack;
I see chains—
chains on the fences
keeping me out;
I see chains—
linking the cuffs
you place on my wrists;
I see chains—
the same as my ancestors,
that I now inherit
along with their scars,
their tales, their pains.
Since my grandparents
first came to the land of the free;
I see chains—
of suffocation, degradation, isolation,
segregation, aggravation, alienation—
where the fuck is my emancipation?
I see chains—
10,000 arms marching as one.
We sing the songs
of ancestors lost,
but never forgotten:
“The Battle Hymn”
“Amazing Grace”.
At least in our toil
we have found a place.


Movement III: Cry Freedom

Shrieking cries;
Tears rage;
Whips crack;
Pain-filled lashings;
Suffering innocence—
This is the solace
that our dreams offer.
Amid their haunting,
I hear the cries of my people:
We shall overcome!
We shall overcome!
We shall overcome!
Freedom!
Freedom!
Amandla!
Freedom!

Undreampt Dream #2

I awake in a dream to find myself in a beautiful Southern garden. Moss grows with the perfected randomness found only in the precise confines of nature. Vines grow upon trees rising to the sky like souls feeling a first glimpse of redemption after being released from the captivity of a dying body. The trees’ scars tell America’s lauded, yet blemished past as they blindly observe the present through their knotted-eyes. I see amazing flora, some that can only be described by a loss of breath and the resulting gasp for air. Brilliant daffodils rage war with a patch of spring’s recent bounty of lilies. The victor’s bounty is my awe and the possible pollination via a curious bee.

This garden is novel, yet familiar. Much like the first glimpse of home after returning from the City when your attempt to ‘find myself’ did not occur as expected. Much like the re-christened Home, this garden tells of my life through its contradictions just like a man is composed of his lofty yet unobtainable values that universally clash with the moments of guilt that follow the self-satisfaction granted by a wandering hand - - and a wandering mind. My life is assuredly told through the rose bush, one with Satan’s spines and porcupine daggers as its only tenants. There are no rosebuds. There never have been.

The bush’s dis-symbolism is found in the two emerging blossoms. One is deeply flawed and uneven. The color is not uniform and the aroma is not welcome to the olfactory system. Several parasites are living within its catacombs - - they ravage and rape, rape and ravage the sweet bud. A complex security system of thorns inhabits the spine of the flower leaving the curious hand little choice but to feel the prick of its idle protectors.

The other bud is seemingly flawless and its beauty is best described as the sustained comfortably uncomfortable sustained silence that accompanies a nervous first kiss between future lovers or a man’s first glimpse of his bride as she approaches the altar. The rose spirals in marriage with Fibonacci’s golden rule, as each petal assuredly cascades into the next in nature’s finest symphony for the senses. The spine is inviting and the absence of thorns is likened to an invitation to the finest ball.

I begin to sense Eve’s tempting serpent and I know that I must experience my own fall from grace, thus completing the mold originally cast by my own namesake. I reach towards the bush with a trembling hand that can only be described as an 8.3 (Rictor scale, of course). My mind weighs the benefits of my polarized options. Uneven hue or deep crimson? Disordered chaos or Olympus’ finest orchestration? A parasitic playground or the grandeur of the gods? My choice is obvious and I reach for the flawed beauty of the first bud. Each hue a new color to cherish. Each chaotic petal creates unimaginable curiosity and intrigue. Each parasite one being that discovered its beauty prior to me and will now share in celebrating the rose.

The Undreampt Dream

I take my first step into surreality and sense that the world has changed. Despite my intuition, I cannot decide what has been altered. I continue my walk only to see my friend Mehri waving from across the street. She yells “I love you,” and her words escape from her mouth. I am able to see the orange hue of love and the letters are in a script of pure fancy. I return the message of love and create my own stream of words for the world to see. Unlike Mehri’s, my words have a little more yellow than her deep hues. Despite my astonishment, Mehri continues on her way without hesitation. Her world is already full of wonder and Athens is her personal Disney World: full of fantastical creatures and complete merriment. Perhaps that’s where she got her name…

I continue on my path and come across the infamous Preacher Jed. The Preacher is rattling off damnations to all of the Brothers and Sisters of life’s congregation. His words, supposedly those of God, begin to rise as expected, but then they hover as if on the plateau of purgatory. When Jed says “God” the word seems full of jags and is the scorching color of death. It glows with a fiery intensity that does not befit the word “God”… at least a God of peace. It becomes evident to me that Brother Jed’s God is the same one that would lead His children into the desert to wage a Holy war in His name. I realize religion in the wrong hands holds the same evil as death itself…

Hecklers surround Jed and they shout torrents of equally vile words in his direction. “Fag,” “fucker,” “right-wing nut-job,” some rise and some fall. Some are the color of charred dreams and hopes, while others appear the putrid color of stadium mustard coalesced with twice-eaten pea soup. These words have no intent other than hate and they rise up and detonate like the exploding missiles that FOX News refuses to show. Fearing for my safety I seek shelter from the storm of hatred. The onslaught brings to mind the old childhood rhyme: “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” How wrong we all were.

I flee in fear and see words all up and down Court St. “Welcome,” rises up in the comforting blue of a spring morning’s sky and rejoins its family. “Flowers for sale” seems to be written purely out of hope and it floats in a vibrant flurry of greens and yellows (for we all know that hope floats). Everywhere greetings and friends… Athens.

My ecstasy is derailed as I see a lone child in tears. He tells me that several of his classmates had called him “retarded” as he left school that afternoon. As he says “retarded” the word slowly emerges from his mouth in the form of a black cloud that spells out “R-E-T-A-R-D-E-D” like a sky-writer gone terribly wrong. The cloud does not rise to the sky, nor does it diminish. The words have made a permanent impact and stay with the world just as they stay with the child; infinitely.

Words have power, and although I may have never experienced the weight of the world, I am all too familiar with the weight of the word. I took this realization as an opportunity to experiment. “Cunt”—the word comes out a peach color- - a peach that has gone rotten. It falls slowly to the ground. “Peace” – the word comes out blue with red tints on the perimeter. The blue is a calming effect that is accentuated by the urgency of red that surrounds the ideal. This word chaotically swims up to the sky as if it were sperm trying to impregnate a world that is in need of rebirth. “Fuck”— gaudy neon lights emanate from my mouth and ascend with the haste of children running for recess. Apparently ‘fuck’ isn’t a bad thing after all (who would have thought?). Finally, “Nigger”—the word falls from my mouth and crashes through the sidewalk that I had been standing upon with the velocity of Wyle E. Coyote’s heftiest Acme anvil. For the first time I can smell words and I begin to sense the unbearable fusion of sulfur, a veal farm and the putrid stench of Auschwitz several days after one of its showers. The word looks similar to the tears of Christ or the lost innocence of a child seeing his mother commit the second half of a murder suicide. It has its own sound, three hundred years of oppression and hatred released simultaneously in one condensed blood-curdling banshee shriek that has no comparable equivalent. Pure pain; pure hate; pure evil. A single word contains a greater power than any weapon the human race has ever constructed. There has never been a weapon of mass destruction that carries that absolute power to incite panic, destroy nations or create exponential causalities that equals the intense and extensive authority that words maintain. Nor will there ever be...ever.

Damn, I need to stop falling asleep while watching The Yellow Submarine.

The Divine

I believe in the Divine.
I have loved her deeply.
I know her night-time prayers.
As she prayed to Her god
I worshipped my own.

I have known the Divine.
I have hated Her deeply,
loathing Her devout faith.
Jealous it was not my own;
envious of Her hope.

god’s love knows the Divine;
mutual salvation.
I have no such havens.
I walk through the shadows,
toiling in the darkness.

I may find Her divine
and his supposed glory.
Still, I am assured that
I will never forget
Her beauty; my Divine.

Brendan's Lament

There are twin brothers
that construct and
deconstruct all of us.
If you look close
you can see the
brothers raging war.
The destructor is
always the victor: always.
Raping and
ravaging the happiness
from an otherwise
utopian world.

This is a place of life abundance
and yet there is death.
And I wonder ‘why?’
The ever-present creation
and its equal devestation.
Again—Why?

Akita- meaning the searcher
of the divine Creator.
This was my vision of God
and now I live its name:
searching for some reason
in the pains that we face
and asking – Why?
– Why must he have such control?
– Why does death reign with an unfair and uncorrectable absoluteness?
– Why is there a child that cries in the wake?
– Can the tears of one child negate the joys felt by a thousand others?
The answer becomes obvious.

Akita a place of an undeniable
presence of the Maker.
Children laughing; blossoms bloom.
Life – Death.
Unmistakably both are present.
It pains to realize that
there is darkness
even in the light.

Somewhere a child weeps
for his lost mother.
He remains, yet his innocence
is now a distant memory.
Like the parched mouth
longing for the renewal of water:
but there is no water.
I want to understand.
I want to help the child,
but I know that regardless
of what I do or try to say
my words are meaningless.
And so the child weeps.

Somewhere is the Father.
And His love is with
the weeping child at all times.
The child cannot sense Him
and so the child weeps.

Here lies the weeping child,
unaware of the love that still surrounds.
I offer one thought that
the child must remember:
that even in the death’s darkness
is the light of God.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This poem is for Brendan. Please pray for him and his family.

11.02.2004

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Escaping America’s optimism,
I find myself bemused.
No thought for my future,
for the future is no more.
We the people?
We the people?
We the people
have been forgotten
as we lurch towards
non-existent dreams.
Sadly, I find solace
that I am not alone,
but the comfort,
like our freedoms,
is fleeting.

Help! I cry out,
my pleas are thrown
to the pyre and
quickly forgotten.
Again—Help!
it does no good.
I get down on my knees
and pray to the heavens,
but the heavens
now serve another.

We have been forsaken
by all that we have
known as sacred.
Our country;
our planet;
our heavens
have been decimated
to memories
and hellfire.

And death shall
have no dominion
in a world in which
fear and disarray
reign with the same
absolute power that
freedom and liberty once held..
We cannot hold
allegiance to trepidation
and tyranny.

Revolt!

Defeat.

Efforts are refuted;
the puppet prevails
in a battle against
what was once
his source of power:
We the people.