in 1974 I started work on a biographical/fiction. incorporating bits of journal, drugs sex and drama from the point of view of a 18 – 20 something male living in an old factory town New England as he discovers drinks weed cocaine love sex marriage divorce fatherhood etc. it began by the river it hasn’t ended yet but here’s the first part – for what its worth, still ruff n ready I suppose
photo by pdlyons
Part One: Do you really want to go here?
River
Afternoon late spring clean water rivering golden sunlight drifts slowly graces full breezy trees, sub down silver gold sparks white water green water brass between rock and crumbling pylons water. Trout water clean fast life death water sparkle moments cascade flash blood scent spotted sating skin shudder pulse lightning trout flesh steel clean pain death dream river of sun of steel of rock pumping blood cold icy blood silt shadow lightning green brass white sun down water river.
Suli has freckles all over her body, freckles well not exactly covering but her face looks like a strawberry especially when she’s sunburn, her lips chap Vaselined strawberry fresh fruity taste other glistening lips that never kiss yet smile a river of holy water down upon tonguing boys. Lips of swallowed strawberry fruits of other faces, lips of holy juices tonguing boys strawberry licking body down, sun down, tongue down, body down holy lips fruity inside with a taste with a scent with rivers and rivers of sweet flowing pouring into a sea of tonguing boys. River of blood life death ecstasy the Suli woman rolling roiling river queen all tongued down into pools holy water spilt down pale wall thighs tongue down boy watching windows reflect a sun down silky skin Suli silky silky run it through your fingers skin.
Anxiety who wants to give up the trees, the river, for the city again? Who wants to break open the money bags piss away good cold hard almost legal cash – paying to return to the city. Cold cash for to see the cold city, cold people, hot people, hot/cold never cool or warm only angry suns sons and daughters. My dream does not see me there. I have no place to go there. Here is life and death, clean pure immediate; each being accepts their own responsibilities, each and every form of life raw open being face to face. Here is not the city, here is not the hiding masked man who can never claim himself, the concrete never stops the flood, the narcotic blood can never give the thrill of pure wild savage unadulterated blood as it gushes through the world, not the world of the city but the world of experience, the world of life of pure unadulterated orgasmic thrill. The icy thrill of a morning that does not begin with angry swollen suns sons and daughters.
I live by the river. I live with the river. I am the weeds by the side of the river. Fly as well as trout of the river. I paint in with the river. I write to with in the river. I make love to strawberry women in with by on the river. Animal amphibian fish reptilian whore-master whore Merlin Morgana of the river. My blood white water silt cans bottles logs sparkled stone bits unidentifiable biological material fish egg strider spider; all living, all dead, all treasure of the river are me and I them. All that is river is me. Dreams words skin sex stock barrel – we are river, we the living, we the dead. All flesh, no flesh; we the river. No river of life no river of death no river of things no river but the river. All that is all that isn’t, that is the river.
The river is dreaming me here with radio and cigarette. I am a river dream watching the river sink into a liquid sky a million times reflected upon a sleeping river-dream. All things come from come, all things come, all things the dream of liquid sleep the river dreams. All things a myriad of simultaneous dreams, none greater or smaller only different all sourced from the river. The same river that feeds trout flows through all veins, the same river pours from Suli’s cunt pours out of tonguing boys pours from swollen penises pours out the swollen sun, pours out the violent city pours out the whores the saints trees wind grass stone fingers singers words all as all as all is the one water one dream split countless facets gleaming countless suns sons and daughters of the same sleeping river.
She walked up McNelly street. Passed the fish market with it’s ripe seven in the morning ice crates, the vegetable docks with smashed cucumbers rancid orange juice and diesel fumes. She passed the nine to fivers in their Mademoiselle dresses and Mr. Nash hair styles. They were all heading high heeling it to newsstands and coffee-to-go shops before filling themselves into banks or offices or some other such proper place of employment. These were women of a hectic time, these women of another breed, She responded to them as one species might respond to the similarities found in some other with curiosity, a passing thought as to what they must be like, a bit of compassion giving way to pity and then a final contemptuous dismissal of them all since they couldn’t possibly have any bearing on her life.
On today’s tray ~ Woman Blood Christ Female Darkness
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Grail Woman Blood Bride Christ
Easy to read the new testament with feminist eye. The goddess is there before us. The only missing part is ourself. To read with our heart not with someone else’s law.
Try Eve ~
Serpent ancient symbol of immortality
Knowledge wisdom tree of knowledge
Every oppressor dictator in history considered knowledge to be a sin.
There is more mannishness than godliness in the wrathgod’s jealousy.
Eve the mother offering immortality – life to her children and to the one she loves.
Someone has deemed that a sin worthy of being exiled.
Again, smells like toxic masculinity rather than god to me.
So, we are exiled from Eden/eve.
We are exiled from the mother. The one who gives all in favour for the one who doles out.
The one who loves freely as the mother as the Christ.
Love.
Put it back. Make it real.
Every feast day for every woman saint together in the front pews women should sit together. Every event for Mary. line the pews together. Every rosary sit together. Show every priest the solidarity of the mother with her children. Mary with Christ. Children with the Mother Church.
What Christ has wrought with eve
What Christ has Wrought with Mary
Let no mere man break asunder.
One of the most female based religions needs the involvement of women in order to be restored. Healed.
The new testament of Christ is to be read as antidote to the old testament of wrathgod. That’s the rebel Jesus. Love over idolatry. Kindness over stone.
Once We Knew the Dark
No matter where days may differ but darkness is the same.
What if I lead you by the mouth?
Places underwater you could breathe in
Fingers taught on instruments stranger than bones
Drawn by strings reminiscent of words long ago
Familiar colours since extinct.
When winter was all there was could you find reasons to celebrate?
No matter how elaborate windows intricate trees harmonic songs
What does it take to lure a silver sun?
Bleaktitude chased
Hot whiskey voices
Oak wood smoke
CúirtRed berry holly
Slender secret ghosts vulnerable to love.
If it were long ago and my name was Jesus
Would you change your name for me?
Would you be my Mary?
I have become food for other creatures
Things I never knew existed indulge themselves in me
Grey not white birds mark my passing secret self
No evidence during that time of my existence
Yet even so something still remains:
A dying ember tenderness unquestioned.
Drawn to the wound in you moon strong as my own
A thing to be fingered or fucked a place to meet or loose ourselves.
What makes me want to reach in wonder what shape your creatures take as I do?
Unlike them others, reverse rodents unable to stay,
I’m not afraid. I know nothing survives the future.
Why wait for secrets? When we forget enough we die.
stories, energy, equanimity, democracy, boomers, oppression, religion , and coffee.
21 3 23
I have often told my self stories
Then believed them to be true simply because I was the one who told them
These have been the cause of all my suffering
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There is energy. There is us needing to identify these energies. To categorise, conceptualise, judge. The defining of energies makes us feel solid, in control. That’s why joy, peace, kindness usually seen as strength. Not like anger or hatred, these give us a delusion of being solid, strong. These mask our fear of not knowing who or what we might really be. Through them we pretend to know what we are – firm solid strong hero of our own story.
There is energy.
It needs no identification
In order to be
But it takes a bit of courage
To let go of the pretence of being solid.
Reading life like poetry expands your world
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EQUINIMITY = LIBERATION
There is energy.
Not
There is energy that is good
There is energy that is bad.
There are types
Tired energy
Joyous
Angry
Peaceful
Etc
Or
There is energy
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Whatever tells you
Don’t look
Don’t care
Don’t question
Don’t learn
Don’t love
Don’t live
That isn’t democracy or religion,
That’s oppression.
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True Democracy
See I was taught that democracy takes courage. The courage to allow the rights of the other. Not only their right to exist but their rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That it takes democratic courage to allow the other a voice, a choice, a privacy, an equality.
The belief that majority rules is erroneous with regards to true democracy. Otherwise, everything depends on the personal belief of the many. This is only might makes right, this is not democracy. Democracy is the courage of all to allow the human and civil rights of all.
The question we should be asking people is – do you really want to live in a country where the your rights and the rights of others may justifiably be revoked every time the majority demographic shifts?
Today when I look at my country that’s what I see. Rather than the nurturing of courage, it seems to perpetuate the right to bully, the right to instil fear, the right to make money at all costs, the right of might – with no regard for the amount of misery, tragedy, or instability it causes its own citizens or the rest of world.
It has always taken extreme courage to be democratic. It still does.
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Boomerz
I live only in memory
The day to day does not inspire me
I only want to sit here think about what used to be.
Here only in my own home.
Locked doors, paid taxes, insurance policies, protect me.
TV, petrol chemicals, nourish me.
She told me she was going out to lunch with her friend. Even asked if I wanted to come along. I was busy at the typewriter, so I said maybe next time.
Came back, told me she’d seen a lawyer and wanted a divorce. I was so angry I just said Fine. Packed a back, left.
A while after, once it was settled I was picking up the rest of my stuff.
She asked me Why?
What?
Why didn’t you fight for me, for our marriage.
I don’t remember what I said but I wasn’t angry anymore.
~
How should I treat pain?
With kindness.
When I can.
No matter how many years it takes.
~
February sun dances
Crisp morning across my fingers
Each breath catches wonder
Each step keeps me close
~
In fact, we don’t really see anything. We perceive reflections of light. And of the light spectrum we only perceive partially. Our eyes are limited. So, what we can’t “see” we decide does not exist. Or we decide it might exist according to our own impositions. Either way, all the while our vision of reality is based on what we don’t really see much like that which our eyes cannot perceive anyway.
I’m sorry I never told you. But that night I came home terrified you really saved my life. I lay in bed your cool hands on my for head on my arms. Talking softly all I could say was that someone must have slipped something in my beer. When actually what it was, was I had bought these little white pills after being told they were mild like Valium. Turned out they were white lightening acid. And so, I spent a few hours trying to figure out what was happening alone in the woods coming up with answers like I was dead or I was god or if I didn’t want to be dead I had to become god. Usual seventies acid stuff which at the time even with my experience I couldn’t tell .well any way. I didn’t need to do any of those things, I just had to make it back to you and then it all came clear and you were my mother and I was your kid and I slept for most of a day and it was ok.
Sorry too that we never really talked about your sickness. Maybe I didn’t want to know? Or I was too afraid to know that I would be loosing you. Loosing my mommy. I was feeling I couldn’t do anything any way. Well, what could I do? Today’s answers are not the ones I had back then.
Helpless when all I could do was hold you – and didn’t even do that much,
Today’s answer – one of them, I hold you now and always in my heart. I see you in my beautiful son and daughter, for that always I am grateful.
Thank you for saving my life and for giving it to us all.
Not even big as a handful. The only type easy enough to peel. Flavourful enough to be worth the peeling. That first piece of peel, Always pinch it between my fingers so I can inhale the stronger scent of citrus oils. Did you know if you hold a lighted match close to the peel while you squeeze the little jets of oils will do split second bursts into flames. Each flame sounding a little bit like a whistling fire work. Tiny streaks blue flames for tiny moments whistling themselves out. Don’t remember who taught me that. It was one of those boyhood things that everyone in the neighbourhood seemed to know. Like how to make a sling shot using a coat hanger and some inner tubbing. Which yards you could cut through to sneak up to the reservoir. How to whistle, how to tie a slip knot, how to light a match, how to sneak cigarettes from your parents, how to fix a bicycle chain, friends showing things to friends.
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Today the rain
Sails across the sky
Sounds against the house
Even the dog keeps patient
Let’s me finish my little orange and a cuppa tea
Before setting up we’ll walk.
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Let them be unto themselves
Secret never to be told
A futile fantasy
Reveals nothing
But the fact
No one can be truly known
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What can you do when you don’t know where the trauma
Shaking you around all knee jerk and random
Comes from?
Where do you go when you don’t know where to go?
No places but for slow simmer heart aches occasionally boiling over.
