dmseay

the troops were led across Russia…burning wheat along the way…starvation was the hope…boy when a plan backfires…

the Greyhound bus dropped-off women…children…drunken refugees…white men who’d hoped for more…and rap artists muttering to themselves…into the night…the early morning while the clean of America lay in comfort..
snug as a bug in a rug…

and where will the departing go to…dingy motel rooms…truck-stop showers…24- hour diners serving pie alamode…maybe a shelter for those without…or under a bridge on the far side of town as rain comes down….drowning nothing..

not hunger…not pain…not torment from long ago…not arrests nor warrants…or the craving of the afflicted…the addicted…the one that got away….

far away from suburbia…from 9to 5…from kids in kindergarten…from mom’s apple brown Betty served after Sunday’s sermon…far away from America…

to a place where poetry is heard…words are read….songs listened to…and wine can be bought on Christian holidays….

YOU HATE THIS COUNTRY SO MUCH THEN WHY DON’T YOU LEAVE….

buy me a ticket..
I’ll go…
I know when a party’s over….

the sun rises in the east…sets in the west…
took me years to figure that out..
teachers said that was the truth…
I doubted….

and now there is travel towards cities…towards peaks….over farm land tucked away in valleys…
around broken down Chevys that lay in a lot
past old factories where men labored…
in neighborhoods….homes were cared for…
I see the sun comin’ up…

then turn around…
go backwards over the steps in progress made…
see the sun goin’ down..

over mountains….
and neon…
dust trails with ghosts still askin’ for a dime….
oil drills drillin’….
windmills churnin’….
exhaust fumes hovering over asphalt…

out to a hamlet of hills…
where grapes are golden..
water washes away sins from the nights before…

then what…
where to go next…
where will the sun take me….
which direction to follow…
flip a coin?

follow truth….always follow truth…

asleep in a car…an Avenger escaping America’s storms…looking for calm on the Canadian side of a continental divide…always on the lookout…always peeping behind the curtain…where can one find a better deal…

maybe Montreal….or Quebec City…a different kind of language…but the same bohemian life…the wanderings of the soul…need not work…a steady employment…just the brush….the canvas….a full tank of gas…

what happened in the land that was never free….never trusting of it’s poets….philosophers…prophets…putting faith in politicians…salesmen….nuclear physicists….the creative condemned…

no longer are there leaves of grass…nor trips on the road….just the constant craving of self-help through false faiths which tell us…you’re never wrong…

I sit in this Avenger looking out at the St. Lawrence Seaway…it’s clear blue color…I marvel at…it has no sin…

not a dark heart like the Hudson…nor a man made hue as the Chicago…just beauty…just beauty…

and this traveler keeps traveling…maybe onto mother Russia…or Havel’s dream left behind…could pay final respects to comrade Fidel….who knows…

keep going…keep going….soon you will be home…

this time he really let go….nothing held the old man back….he had something to say, I don’t know what day it is….or month…or year…but I know that’s not what I ordered….

the young lady….thick orange foundation on a white pimply face just stood there in silence…

Where’s the au jus?….you know…the beef drippings….his thin lips quivering, well…what’d you say…this ain’t no French Dip..

Sir, tray placed under arm, that is a French Dip…do you want au jus? …I can bring you au jus, an Indiana twang made it sound anti-Semetic..

No…just keep it…I’m not paying for that…not what I ordered…the jus is what makes it a Dip…there shouldn’t be an option..

Fine, walking-off in a puff…the old man just turned away in the booth…watching trucks pull-up and leave…

tea was drunk..time was passed and a country song played on the radio

tables were wiped down around us…no-one coming near..there was always a distance with dad….

what did I order?, he asked, we did order didn’t we?….he started to raise a hand.. attempting to flag down a waitress…

yeah pop we did, grabbing his arm and placing it on the table and letting go…it was time to let go…just let go..

well I wish to hell they’d hurry up and bring it…

going into a Buddhist meditative state…done with outside interferences…the television…the cellphone…all kinds of electronic devices…dogs barking at cable-men carrying ladders and smoking cigarettes in the hot June sun….

thinking of peace within…what makes peace….what gives peace…where can I get some?…only from inside grasshopper…only from inside…

atop looking at the empty medicine bottles…the Depakote…the Seroquel…all gone…never quite did the trick…

not like 2000 year old words…or 50 year old jazz riffs…planted in the soul long ago…..Ornette Colman blowing magic through us all…to us all…just accept his mysticism…his myths laid down in staccato syncopations…blow daddy blow…

I rub the Buddha belly and find joy as I tickle stone….a joy of nothingness….just the Buddha…the breath…and the beat….

it is joy we all seek….it is joy….here’s to joy…..and peace…all from within…or is it….

humming along to songs…reading psalms…listening to quiet…pure quiet on the outside….and notes hit close to the heart…tugging…pulling….waiting…to strike a chord again…ahhhhhh….

going into a Buddhist meditative state….don’t stop me..

no tongues required….nor money thrown in a basket…just follow the air….follow the music…follow the poems…..follow the beauty…follow the peace….

Coltrane…Evans…Davis…Silver…Baker…Getz….Satchmo…Les McCann….Hancock….life’s luxuries…listened to with tears after midnights…if you don’t cry while hearing jazz…you ain’t human….

The Real McCoy…Ray Brown….Keith Jarrett Trio…Paul Chambers…Mingus moanin’ and howlin’….Joe Henderson….Peterson….do you hear these prayers…you listenin’?….

Dexter Calling….Dear Old Stockholm….Sunday At The Village Vanguard…Swiss Movements…meditate on that…

songs hit and hurt…a good hurt…a healing hurt…giving joy…old memories come about….life unfolds in the length of a single smoky note…blown…beat..plucked…and planked….forgiveness wails…

it is jazz….America’s dying art form….or…is it….

I was in a nuclear submarine, the old man said as we drove west on 94, how many people can say that?, he cleared his throat…always large wads of flem coming-up…wiped into a handkerchief..

I was at the bottom of the ocean…working on this dude and octopus tentacles kept coming up through the iron openings…you drop a wrench and you can kiss that baby goodbye…..

we drove on into the summer’s night with the sun going-down before us while silence dragged and mixed with cool air from dashboard vents…

I was working on an oil drill in the ocean..over there in Texas….all the way down to the floor…just an iron grid separating me from death…how many people can say that?, cleared his throat again, you drop a wrench in that dude and you can kiss it goodbye, pop looked out the window…we went back to silence…

I like watching The Discovery Channel, he said, lots of interesting things…like shows on the ocean…the work done out there…just a grid separating you from death.., he cleared his scratchy throat again, I don’t know how those guys do it….

the sun was gone now…and quiet was kept for a while…just quiet…, You know I once worked on a fishing boat out in the middle of the ocean…up in Alaska….

and in the pitch black I drove…

she said I had a heart filled with soul…how many can say that..
the greatest of complements…

not statuesque…nor..
beautiful to look at on a beach or in a picture frame..
not smooth…suave…or slick..

no money…nor house…or car to drive her around town in on a Friday night….no fancy clothes or jeans with gimmicks sewn on the ass….

just soulful….simply soulful….like Muddy Waters…or Howlin’ Wolf….men made in the image…

the molds of heartbreak…hunger…. but never helpless…never wanting…accepting the deal thrown down…card after card after card…

it is the struggle that gives us soul…that makes us human…living for the  constant search of grace…and it’s always just around the corner…

I gladly accept this soulful title…now it’s onto Chicago and let’s win there…

there is no comfort in being stationary….the same place for too long….a need of travels to cities where life changes…yet rules remain….some rules…

a need for a home….a bed….a toothbrush-holder…maybe monogramed coffee-cups…the car….the life-insurance policy…playing it safe…?

Ramirez said, You’ll never write anything worth a shit until you’ve suffered, boy was he right…and maybe that’s what the artist does….live a life of suffering….merely for the sake of art….

comfort destroys creation….the soul grows soft and nothing is absorbed…learned….experienced…and that is the rub…..

crying out to be loved…to be warm on cold nights…under blankets with a lover you can cling-to….walks…talks….feeding each other with forks and finger-tips….

or to continue this chaotic course of never safely landing….no net…naked on the page…..the reward is the story….the verse…

it will drive you mad….this life….it will drive you mad….

take-up your cross poet…go to the next town and the next town and the next town….but what grows from movement?….what can be attained?

a bookbag of underwear and Miller…a soul of Kerouac and mysticism….a romantic who never gets the girl….these are the gifts of literary loves…the life of the writer…

observing….reporting…telling tales in truth….with craft and discipline…and suffering….

nothing dramatic…just some pain…tis all that is required….a small price is a life….there will be other lives…

one’s to persue academia in…or the selling of insurance….a bond…a stock-option…a political pawn…but…this one is that of the poet….and motion is needed…

a movement like Whitman…or Papa Bear….the Beats….drinks on me….the scrounging for a word at five in the morning that’s kept you up all night…that perfect word…the one that fits…

it could be in San Francisco…or dear old Manhattan…maybe Chicago…that word is out there…

go find it….just go and find it….

sitting in Bryant Park among birds…lovers….kids….Young Turks…old lions…and ptonk players…ping pong pussies…and poets reading fucking Billy Collins…how nice…how nice…

and ear-plugs plugged in while tuning the world out….Coltrane….Evans…Tyner…
Miles….

I miss not a sound from this metropolis…not the constant chatter of young women sealing deals on cell phones…or scores kept in office pools….

whose doing what to whom and whom doing what to all while secrets are exposed on Facebook and sweet tweets…all will soon be revealed on channel 7 Action News…

music on….society off…..mouths move…with gestures…. legs stretched…a lay in the green…green…spring… with flowers in bloom and commerce ever present….

it’s just another day….