The vortex of wisdom by John Dorsey
If you are interested in his book, send $10.00 to: 2413 collingwood blvd.b207
toledo, oh 43620
i thought i had
gone beyond the sea
above the holy vortex
of wisdom found in
sleep whispering secrets in
some sweet bashful dove's
ear which was my
mistake
we are few tiny
kissing seahorse footprints amongst
the many waves in
the middle of dance
party
u.s.a.
i pressed my body
up against the wisdom
to hear love singing
music to my ears
like some schoolboy riddle
crushin' on cleopatra thankful
for this blood ambling
through my veins set
before the nile our
water fountains were made
to strike oil so
not thinking i pulled
up a chair and
blessed the tsunami
like a child asking
for permission to speak
in tongues oh please
big daddy part the
red sea while i
dream a little american
dream
John Dorsey
America Poem - S.A. GRIFFIN
it was the pledge of allegiance
everyday
to the flag
it was the pledge of allegiance
it was our country 'tis of thee
New Yorkers that never saw a cow
cows that never saw a city
mothers fathers sons and daughters
the born and unborn
it was a house that was always there
like wood and brick eternity
it was gold silver oil
it was t.v. that was American
it was "made in the U.S.A."
it was small towns that was somewhere else
big cities that was everywhere else
that was somewhere
it was a wheel
it was wheels
it was the Wizard of Oz white man ethic that
snuck into grandma's womb and exploded like
Pandora's box over the rising sun
all hail the glory that was God!
it was deliverance
lovers and lies that were promises
birds piloting over silent streams of sky
it was dreams and dreaming
and it was flying higher than God
it was faith
pure and uncut
it was spent cartridges that hammered our dreams
fast to reality
it was Monroe Garbo Harpo Chico Groucho
Presley
Gone With The Wind
The Babe and baseball
hearts filled with hotdogs and homeruns
jazz pouring out of speakeasies like
hot pepper sauce over flat tongues
F.D.R.
J.F.K.
Gary Cooper and High Noon
Hank Williams Pete Seeger Huddie Ledbetter and
America
was an eager young debutante
in soft white and pink crinoline and taffeta dresses
and waves of waterfall tresses
in love with
storybook princes and princesses
it was
"I have been to the mountaintop"
assassinations and angry black clouds of riot
it was the coming of age of Harlow and Hitler
and the bastardization of Nietzche by
Hitler and Hollywood
blonde breasts sagging into fading hairlines
it was desperate to be un-understood leaders
who wanted to follow
it was a generation of giants and giantesses
spawned by chrome gods and goddesses
in the backfields of glorious horse
Chevys Fords Mercurys Oldsmobiles Chryslers and Buicks
that longed to become
Cadillacs
it was men who hated men
pathetic pawns of power
begging for manhood
borne of paper
thrusting accusations of
"communist, red faggot, nigger, wop, spic, kike, white trash, whore"
it was a time
it is a time
it is America
it is a can opener
a microwave
a long distance telephone call
satellite Jesus crucified by capitalist commanders
hip new fads of neon nostalgia
sitcoms t.v. dinners
used used cars
fast fast cars
55 miles per hour
fast fast food
and the killing that rages unresolved in the
french fried inside and outside
the headlines the hairlines the waistlines
it is the dead inside of a quarter pounder with cheese
and the masturbated sesame seeds of love that
should have
it is valleys of vines
plains of corn and wheat and dyed red meat
cut picture perfect
estrogen fed chickens with centerfold breasts
it is a single stalk of corn
growing out of a crack in the sidewalk
on a Hollywood streetcorner
it is forty years of fallout
and four hundred more
it is the one that got away
the soulmate perfect one
it is the perfection of imperfection
and the searching for truth
it is the heartland
it is America
it is the great love and admiration
the stifling addled ambition
it is the people and the truth
which is somewhere searching in a
rambling car that only stops for
dollar gas
hot coffee
then races off again over the stoic face of
what is
America
S.A. Griffin
Hale Anuhea
House of cool
soft/fragrance
upland forest
Nite Bloomin
Jazzmen
their music
mingling
with
Hawaiian Slack Key
and the Blues
of the Ladies
creating
a new song
celebrating
The wisdom
of the old ones
Wild/Old/Women
outnumbering the men
making them
Dance
M SHANNA MOORE [Hawaii]
BOB DYLAN'S YES YES DAY - SCOTT WANNBERG
Minnesota surreal tilt-a-whirl ambience
straight shooting rip roaring summer of metaphor
All the answers my friend are living on Desolation Row
where thought dreams might be guillotines
but oh did you feel the sunlight snap its rays
when such a party made its way over the old radio of a.m.
and the linear cord snapped
we were in overlapping creative water
roiling with the sonar of see through those Ahab masks
and find Bob Dylan dancing with Slim Pickens
singing Knock Knock Knockin on Heaven's Door
Jerry Garcia, too, came to hum
and the radiating food we ate then
became our ability to digest the variables of the world
now
The sun might not be yellow
it might even be a chicken
and sometimes more than just a president
has to stand naked
while here on the rap sheet of now
we gladly become one with the crime of creative dissonance
and paint our masterpieces every second
as we crawl to the jazz
through the landmines of oh no not them again america
as Bob Dylan's Yes Yes Day
whistles the sun to bobbing
in the sky of Woody Guthrie
and such bobbing becomes bop
and pop and mom dancehall
where the skin is an instrument
reflecting musically the
heat generated by all outlaw hearts of
the poem
Eyes Like Mingus (For Steve Fowler) - RD Armstrong
Eyes like flint
like flecks of coal
like shiny bits of starless sky
trapped in the ruins of a slag heap
Eyes like molten steel
sullen and angry
piercing -- a bullet finding its mark
like a jaguar
passionate and alive
yet hating the trap
pacing behind the bars
bars like a skeleton
trapped inside the mind
behind
Eyes like Mingus
like notes
caught in the net
like the grid of notation
like Mingus
in shamanic Mexico
trapped in a chair
no strength to grip
no fingers to coax notes with
no feet to stand up and count with
no time -- no signature
Eyes like concrete -- shattering
like glass -- splintering
like the wrecking ball’s slap
like voltage -- unregulated
like a passion laid bare
to the gallery’s scrutiny
like the madman’s frothing nightmare
like the inexplicable accuracy of random fate
like a shot to the belly
like Coltrane’s "Favorite Things"
like your fingers -- stilled
Eyes like an empty glass
staring bug-eyed into space
upturned and dispassionate
like a dream -- lost in the stars
Eyes like Mingus
silent but never
silenced.
by RD Armstrong
The Red Sea Blue Plate Special (For HB: Hank Beukema) By Nelson Gary
As you egressed, I ingressed,
ingloriously within you; gorged
where you had been gored,
shopped in Byzantine bazaars
until models for icons came forth,
each one a fragment of your fullness
as you disappeared through the skylight,
the avant-garde rider that places home in sight,
that ascends above the immortal monuments
designed by psychic cartographers, architects
of the soul, with hemispheres working
in far more sublime and synchronous synergy
then these war-torn, drug-addled spheres
of mine have ever known until I experienced
the energy that forever enshrines the august
brightness of your face of sunken features
and lines deeper than ravines as the ineffable, in-
visible heliotricism of this intimate constellation
concealed, veiled by the alphabet, which cries it tears
of the dark hours in my little red, mutable box.
There is talk and concern, common compassion
in submission to the fear we all own as my little,
red box expands in the heat, contracts in the cold.
My little, red box, a theater where I could play
a cast of characters from the most regal emperor
to the most impecunious beggar, would
be the permanent performance platform
of the inarticulate hunger artist if you had not been
such the expert hunter and most delicious slaughter
through all these years of fireside chatter
until this, the ice age of these our twilight years.
My little, red box you pack so well for work
does not respond to the forecast of thunder
showers, knowing the cherry blossom of brothers,
sisters, siblings and other family members, limb
by limb, veiny leaf by leaf, hand in hand, coming
to congregate on the last horizon, not since
our wedding day have the beams streamed
as prismatically as all of this rainbow warbling.
I am not half as dark now as I am dim by comparison,
but in this indeterminable midway moment
as I open my little, red box,
the only topological equivalence I own that
matches the encyclopedic medical genius
of the pre-natal to the forensic, but it
is all healing as I pull back the onion skin
layers, knowing now that we are born crying,
because we are grieving the loss of place
to where it is now that you are making your homecoming.
I don't get this, even from the best doctors, even they
cannot write, never could write this unsurpassable script.
I can't get no satisfaction. When I'm watching my tv,
and some man is telling me how white my church can be,
but he can't be holy because he doesn't smoke
the same cigarettes as me, has not seen the light
in the heart of coal that is solid gold. I make
of myself a burnt offering, a holocaust,
because of a clause in our wedding vows,
which should have read until death we contract,
closer and closer until our oneness is transcended
by harmony, the rhythm of sound and silence, presence
and absence, and in death we expand our bond across worlds.
Black paintings, X-rays on the cave walls, the history
of our days measured out in an abacus, the relics,
even bones I no longer cling to,
but the emanation and shade
that neither bows nor decimates
night and day, but is the eternal
you, which outlasts the charnel
house, as you ascend to tell your
true father and mother you have a spouse
that is just around the bend and on tour.
But it's all right now that my life has been
a flicker to your flash and I forever see,
feel our indomitable spark each time
these classically trained fingers arc
and hammer the keys that unlock
the doors to all that is sefiroth bark.
Knowing tomorrow there will not be a lark
in my little, red box, but a sly fox
who has eaten all my chickens, repainting
this little, red box, which I take to the docks,
to cast my line for the wrinkles of these brain
waves, knowing forever you do flow, do flow
flow through me in cherry red flow by parting
and that alone.
I WANT TO BE A TOUR GUIDE AT GETTYSBURG - HANK BEUKEMA
I want to be a tour guide
At Gettysburg.
I'd ride in the car with you and
Get emotional about Picket and Stuart....
I want to thrill the kids
And chill the dads with the
Real story of Seminary Ridge...
Rebels yelling, tobaccy spittin
Bleedin, dyin,but never more alive
Before in their whole dark lives...
I want to play piano for Coltrane
In a little smoky club...
I'd be McCoy Tyner and
Every body would be looking at
The great man while I would be
The real deal story
Setting the foundation
Down below for
All that was happening
On top...
It's too late to be the Homecoming Queen
It's too late to lead the Giants to the Super Bowl
It's too late to sit on the back of that
Convertible and give em that Queen Liz wave....
[And I have practiced it]
It's probly too late to lead the NY Philharmonic
Through a Gershwin number or to
Dance with a little lame'
suit on for the ladies....
But it's never to late to love you...
It's never too late to keep trying
To live thru another hard day...
It's never too late to try one more time
To beat those demons that haunt me...
I want to be a tour guide at Gettysburg....
Hank Beukema
Martina in a Liplock - Hank Beukema
I had Martina in a liplock when the
Earthquake came to town
She mumbled something about how
No one had ever made the Earth move
Like that for her
And we got married
In Central Park.
Ten years later
we're laying on the couch
Watching Lawrence Harvey
play chess on Columbo
And she said,
You're not like you used to be.
Twenty years later we watch the Millenium
Roll onto the beach
on a TV in the mall
And I realize that our life
was like doing coke.
You light that spark the first night
And spend the rest of your life
trying to fan that
Ember into a flame again.
Thirty years have come and gone
and I still feel the tremors.
I laid Martina down on the couch
and I sat up and
Read Raymond Chandler to her
as she moaned with the pain.
After awhile you get used
to the Earth not moving anymore
and
Just an occasional tremor
in the heart can get you by...
SATURDAY POEM - SCOTT WANNBERG
there came this large movie
in which we are all extras learning to sing anything that we find at work in our feeling
there came this all night party of the obstreperous heart
didn't matter if you brought much or even brought anything
the door always open
live music in all the pores
they were barefooting it on the white house lawn
well, it wasn't that particular White house but it was white
but then the music it made color
and we all became nouns and verbs of plenty
in the downloading of the bones
oh it takes a few minutes for those bones to download, honey
don't worry too much and reach for the customer service hot line
the only customer hot line is this song
and it says
you can somersault in any language you topsy turvy in
and the rain will still remember to land when it comes to town
and look you up and shake your hand and go outside and see those stars
more stars than there are in MGM Heaven
Louis B.Mayer kind of dug bragging, but Nick S. in NYC eventually canned him
but that's okay as Louis B. has a mandolin and the time is right for swing shifting it
Wayne Melton he called the tunes
Hank Beukema was singing the first verse
as the planets took time out and relaxed, stretched their capabilities, and then resumed orbiting the sun
Lorenzo/Larry he brought them all up to their feet with his smile
and Mike Westerfield snapped his fingers and the brains of all concerned opened up long enough
for the sunlight to find a friend.
Today is Saturday, and Slaid Cleaves is singing on the CD machine.
Nurtured my noggin a bit and felt like writing this poem.
The four horsemen of the hootenanny.
Riding your way whenever you need the music.
11/17/01
