John Martyn - You Can Discover

Evening

nothing worthwhile in the mailbox a hint of wood smoke in the air as I pull my feet through the long un-mowed grass looking up at the last smudge of fading sunlight thinking that I should just keep on walking like John Muir with only a coat three books a loaf of bread and my faith such as it is instead of up the sunken stairs finding the lock with my key in the dark feeling my way to the bedroom turning on the fan kicking off my shoes dropping my clothes to the floor finding the sheets and putting my self between them hardly waiting to close my eyes.

Make it Rain

Gets You Out of Bed In The Morning

Working in the emergency room last night
listening to a woman screaming because she isn't getting
what she wants

I've known her since she was fifteen years old
and she's been screaming since
long before that

My daughter calls in the middle of the screaming
to ask if I'm alright,
a friend texted her a message saying
there may have been a murder on my street

I'm okay, I tell her, don't worry, I'm okay

Meanwhile, I'm writing up an evaluation about a man
who hasn't slept in a week and his poor eyes,
I want to cover them with my hands

I spend several hours driving when I leave that place,
and at long last find my bed

This morning, I don't want to leave it
but the female voice from my GPS says "bear up"
somewhere inside my head and I begin the day.

Saturday Feature: The Moon And The Melodies

Feels a little like Autumn today, the time of the year that stirs memories. I lived in this place for awhile.

Enough

feels like September
with the cool night rain
stirs memories, used-to-bes
other, better versions
of yourself

once you get into that swamp...

That Moon Again

The one in late July you've come to know
driving tonight through dark farms and woods
making a right turn directly into it's rising
nearly full, face to face, you hold your breath
an ache in your chest - tell the truth - in your heart
you still love, however choked and twisted,
you still do

Aaron Huey's TED Talk - Give Back The Black Hills

It's Sundance season. Prayers are being made. Dancers are suffering hard so the people may live.

Drop

Morning followed the reunion, the kissing of heads,
and it was even harder to rise than usual, my eyelids magnetically
drawn together, the pull of nonsense dreams, avoidance

All day that drowsiness followed me, called to me,
my highest ambition, simply to drop

My Little Hepburn

She strides around the corner
tall and sleek, a jet setter now in
big-lensed sunglasses under
her new Parisian sun hat

I wait, approach with a
single rose and a hug, and
am relieved to find
she still knows who I am

Saturday Featured Album on iTunes

Saturday's Featured Album: Everything Went Black

This was the first Black Flag record I bought. It's a compilation of the band's early years with its first three  singers. Short, sweet, raw and raucous. Enjoy.

 

Jason Isbell - Live Oak

E-Book Plan

My next big idea, as I sit here drowsy and psychically out of gas, is to write an e-book in August. I have never written an e-book, and I don't know the first thing about it. I'd like to learn, if I can just get myself unstuck. I have a working title - Crisis Of Confidence - and that's a start.

One Very, Very Impressive Kid

The courage to be.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

confined in blank space without knowing its dimensions
stifling or vast, the result is the same
motionless and stale
unless you count the futile
pacing and spinning

Killer In The Backyard

He trots past the screen door noiselessly
and it's his intensity, his hyper-awareness,
that lets me know he's there, I feel him

Traces of orange in his face
the rest of his body
the color of smoke and ash

He doesn't bother with stealth and the underbrush
he's bad enough to run the yards and cross the roads
like they're his very own
 

Two Pale Boys

Two pale brothers
splash and slip and laugh
together in a shallow July river
on a hot Sunday afternoon

Their father watches happily
this miracle and says thank you
to something

Here's iTunes Access to the Featured Album

If you liked what you heard below, you can purchase the album or individual songs here. Just click View above to enter iTunes. Thanks! Baby needs a new pair of shoes.

Featured Favorite Album: Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds -Your Funeral My Trial

 

 

Sarcophagile

I'm still alive in here
just wanted you to know that
despite the stoic beauty of my
sarcophagus, the stillness
and the silence

my innards are still moving
there remains some form of
brain activity, and I do
experience something resembling
an emotional life, muted,
blunted, sure, but here
regardless

I'd say hello, but it'll take so long
for the sound to reach your ear that
I can't help but drop into exhaustion
at the thought of it.

Doomsdayer's Holiday

Don't Shit Me, Murder Lives In Every Heart

I just listen to mine a little closer
like a kind of improvised road song
driving, I find so many reasons to hate

I watch you too and see you swearing
sneering, writing a little murder ballad
of your own featuring me

Trying Something

I'm not too sure how this works, but I thought this might be a good way to share access to the music that I really like. This iTunes-app-what-cha-ma-call-it only works in the United States though, I think.

If you happen to be passing through here, I'm curious to know what you think of this featured album widget and the featured album!

King O King

Gashunga

Drive grumpy for almost half of a seven hundred mile trip in a mini-van. The kids, all three, get along the entire time. Your wife does not nag you or practice even one of several in-the-car-habits that usually drive you crazy.

You are angry at the traffic which slows your progress. You want to blame them for the late start, for  causing you to be on the highway during rush hour on a Friday evening. You try to paint yourself, at least to yourself, as an abused long-sufferer.

Dusk falls slowly, pinkening the world, while the kids are singing and laughing. Your eyes detect single deer grazing at intervals along the highway's edge modeling gentleness. The whole thing comes together gradually to unlock you from this old and automatic anger.