Blue Light Lounge Sutra For The Performance Poets At Harold Park Hotel -Komunyaaka
the need gotta be so deep words can't answer simple questions all night long notes stumble off the tongue & color the air indigo so deep fragments of gut & flesh cling to the song you gotta get into it so deep salt crystalizes on eyelashes the need gotta be so deep you can vomit up ghosts & not feel broken till you are no more than a half ounce of gold in painful brightness you gotta get into it blow that saxophone so deep all the sex & dope in this world can't erase your need to howl against the sky the need gotta be so deep you can't just wiggle your hips & rise up out of it chaos in the cosmos modern man in the pepperpot you gotta get hooked into every hungry groove so deep the bomb locked in rust opens like a fist into it into it so deep rhythm is pre-memory the need gotta be basic animal need to see & know the terror we are made of honey cause if you wanna dance this boogie be ready to let the devil use your head for a drum
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
I'm not sure what's hitting me right now... it feels like this blazing force, like a comet that surrounded me and has been sweeping me away from this dimension. It is as if I've been drawing people into my circle, like I'm a magnet (no, not a chick magnet but yes, at times) and the people I want near me are coming near me. My motives are terrible. I think about how I was a seeker, and how I simply went after what I wanted and either it was granted or not granted. That simple. To some extent, it is still like that with me, but now it's something different. Either you believe in divine power or you do not. And if you believe, as some do, that that power is really driving the bus, then you wait for lightning strike, and if you believe that way, as some do, then you realize that lightning doesn't strike more than once. But if you're in a good place for things to come to fruition lightning strikes all the time, and if you're ready you can take advantage of the brilliance of what's being created around you. My motives are terrible, looking indirectly for personal gain, I begin to question again my own understanding of human relationships. Who is a friend? How does a friend behave? Isn't it more than simply enjoying people's company but furthering the relationship by offering up whatever you have at that moment to give someone a hand, to really help them, lend them an ear, listen. Or it could be they are looking for support, they are looking for you to validate their ideas, or to write off their worst fears as foolish, because they have an inherent worth beyond their worst fears. This is an offering that you can grant to a friend. I've never been exactly where I want to be more than I am right now. Probably when I was 15 years old, surrounded by good friends and fielding good rapport, I struggled with that, I struggled with success, of being liked. Even then I remembered what all of it was for, how or why i deserved to be accepted, when I had never been accepted for anything. When I was rising out of failure, and instead of shrinking back into the background, I chose the higher ground, which was to use it for decadent gain. Not so much as it presented itself, but still, I thought suddenly I could have it all. What disappointment. Because I ceased just being as I was, as being exactly where I wanted to be at the moment. I asked for more. I went out and grabbed at it, and ground the links into the dust. For more. I don't want to ask for more right now, because I seem to be in a place where I'm just in the middle of the whirlwind, not really understanding it all, but knowing I just don't want all of it. I couldn't believe when a woman I have long had an affinity and respect for just broke over her own lines, and asked me too hang out with her. It took me by surprise entirely because I haven't been expecting much really, I just know good things are happening when I'm patient, when I stay in the moment and open myself up to those things. I don't think of this as forever, not by any stretched, but it's an opportunity to exercise what seems to be working for me, and that's to try to be myself as best I can. To try to bring out the good in people, or bring out the personality that they want to display, to comfort people even if just give them an environment with which to be comfortable. It's what I absolutely love right now, this experience of being able to step out of my comfort zone even if just for a moment, and go with what I've got.
The antithesis of all this is I'm just a people pleaser. I don't want people to be mad at me, I don't want them to not like me. I'm obsessed by this possibility and yet, every day I talk to people who seemingly do not care about anything but their own agenda... even working at a job, which pays them much more than I will ever get from my current position, they still think of how to wrap everything around their wants & desires. This is the way of the world for (most?) I don't keep a planner, in fact have never in my life kept a planner. Nor have I ever felt I needed a planner. Maybe now it's getting close to that, but it seems like a female thing. An obsession with knowing where you are going. So maybe it's good to begin planning things. We all know plans fall through. My plans certainly fell through somewhere between 2008-2009. The whole fucking thing just split apart... I couldn't think out three weeks at all. Right now, there is no need. I do go where the day takes me. Sometimes I plan out a couple days, I determine a weekend. I keep appointments (doctors, therapists, concerts, vacations) and if people ask me to outings, I arrive. I'm terrible with birthdays, which is odd because I'm coming up on one. What if everyone I know forgot my birthday, weddings are the same way, and what if everyone forgot or simply decided they didn't want to go to my wedding.
Anyway, more and more, I am seeing that this life is about doing what you want. I am frightened about the next step for my career... As I took this shift which doesn't have me go into work until 10:30 in the morning, I stay up late and wonder about where my life is headed. About what the next step for me should be. I almsot had a melt down at work today because of lack of communication, letting emotion creep into the work where no emotion is really required. I'm getting sucked into the drama of the vicissitudes of working the rat race. And yet, that is what this enterprise requires. I hear it every day where people are getting involved in the traveller's bullshit. You knew this when you signed on, is what I think. You complain about criss-crossing the globe, eight cities in two weeks and you don't even see your own bullshit. The bullshit in that place is so thick you need wings to get over it. But it pays well, certainly. It pays well and I'm not clamoring all the time for how I'm going to get my next load of groceries.
So what, me worry? And still I can't separate from that idea that if I am expected at all times to have my shit together then why shouldn't they? If I live with the cost of my inadequacies, why aren't they? Get a clue and call me in the morning. That's what I think. That's where I find myself, insufferably... I am in a place where I think too much without much provocation. I can't "help" it, so I begin to think. Even so, the job is not a long term consideration because I have this alternate plan, which is to gather up a plan. I had this lightning shot this afternoon. I'll get a job teaching in Amsterdam. My hometown. The place where I'm from but have never been in so long. My belief that we all come back to where we begin. Maybe I don't live in town, maybe I don't work in town, because wouldn't that be even better?? Because then I could take the Thruway to work or go out Rte. 30 and head west to some other town and see the sign that says Utica 57, that I grew up with. I wait out the winters and own a small house somewhere in town and know all my neighbors. I'd start a group there. New York. And I'd have summers off and go down to the City and catch ballgames at the Stadium... it was an idea. Like Atlanta. Like Jacksonville. But then came the notion from somewhere else, it's not where you are, it's who you're with. Sometimes the truth. Sometimes a lie.
The antithesis of all this is I'm just a people pleaser. I don't want people to be mad at me, I don't want them to not like me. I'm obsessed by this possibility and yet, every day I talk to people who seemingly do not care about anything but their own agenda... even working at a job, which pays them much more than I will ever get from my current position, they still think of how to wrap everything around their wants & desires. This is the way of the world for (most?) I don't keep a planner, in fact have never in my life kept a planner. Nor have I ever felt I needed a planner. Maybe now it's getting close to that, but it seems like a female thing. An obsession with knowing where you are going. So maybe it's good to begin planning things. We all know plans fall through. My plans certainly fell through somewhere between 2008-2009. The whole fucking thing just split apart... I couldn't think out three weeks at all. Right now, there is no need. I do go where the day takes me. Sometimes I plan out a couple days, I determine a weekend. I keep appointments (doctors, therapists, concerts, vacations) and if people ask me to outings, I arrive. I'm terrible with birthdays, which is odd because I'm coming up on one. What if everyone I know forgot my birthday, weddings are the same way, and what if everyone forgot or simply decided they didn't want to go to my wedding.
Anyway, more and more, I am seeing that this life is about doing what you want. I am frightened about the next step for my career... As I took this shift which doesn't have me go into work until 10:30 in the morning, I stay up late and wonder about where my life is headed. About what the next step for me should be. I almsot had a melt down at work today because of lack of communication, letting emotion creep into the work where no emotion is really required. I'm getting sucked into the drama of the vicissitudes of working the rat race. And yet, that is what this enterprise requires. I hear it every day where people are getting involved in the traveller's bullshit. You knew this when you signed on, is what I think. You complain about criss-crossing the globe, eight cities in two weeks and you don't even see your own bullshit. The bullshit in that place is so thick you need wings to get over it. But it pays well, certainly. It pays well and I'm not clamoring all the time for how I'm going to get my next load of groceries.
So what, me worry? And still I can't separate from that idea that if I am expected at all times to have my shit together then why shouldn't they? If I live with the cost of my inadequacies, why aren't they? Get a clue and call me in the morning. That's what I think. That's where I find myself, insufferably... I am in a place where I think too much without much provocation. I can't "help" it, so I begin to think. Even so, the job is not a long term consideration because I have this alternate plan, which is to gather up a plan. I had this lightning shot this afternoon. I'll get a job teaching in Amsterdam. My hometown. The place where I'm from but have never been in so long. My belief that we all come back to where we begin. Maybe I don't live in town, maybe I don't work in town, because wouldn't that be even better?? Because then I could take the Thruway to work or go out Rte. 30 and head west to some other town and see the sign that says Utica 57, that I grew up with. I wait out the winters and own a small house somewhere in town and know all my neighbors. I'd start a group there. New York. And I'd have summers off and go down to the City and catch ballgames at the Stadium... it was an idea. Like Atlanta. Like Jacksonville. But then came the notion from somewhere else, it's not where you are, it's who you're with. Sometimes the truth. Sometimes a lie.
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