This is a piano and High Lonesome vocal from a poem titled Coyote. You can find the poem itself here in Word Press. One my most frequently published and noted poems, so no doubt it will bring derision and repulsion here as it is FB, or it may be liked, I really don’t know. I never know. I write and play in darkness, sleep through the day, the summer sun hurts, my green eyes burn, and the holy find me to be an animal, so: Coyote. The song style is High Lonesome so don’t be put off by the vocal style as it is a style, southern Appalachian. Seems it is becoming lost today. So, I try to do as many as I can in this form, that of being in the low hills, fog eating up the elms and pines, of walking down to the empty and even more lonesome town just past midnight……not a soul in site just me and the street lights downtown cowtown 1 a.m.
The Heavy Rains of January (a Mendocino night)
I was trying to play as fast as I could on bass notes while playing through one of my meditations/prayers talking to God, if I am so allowed. There are those who wrongly believe that one may converse as in prayer with God while playing music. Why no? Someone tell me why not?
The darkness that gets blamed on the blues with a meeting with the devil in a crossroads at night, which I firmly believe, works even more a method of the Holy. You think Bach just flew around the key boards on his own? We say God’s hand was upon his. Bach is often referred to as a most Holy and divine composer. What if it were the opposite? All it takes is a change in belief in the soul of Bach.
Why are we Southerners always blamed as meeting the devil in the rain at Church crossroads? /why can we not meet with God’s Angels and Saints?
The gravestone is a six foot tall monolith with one of my poems. Strange to see my name on a gravestone. Dan was beloved. He was a friend of mine.
Coyote Prince Today
Song from a poem I sent through dozens of rewrites. It became my most published poem, maybe; I stopped making notes on publications when it hit 600. I love poetry. When I move it to music the same thing comes out, my voice.
Now, this is a rebellious song, sick of the moments that pretend to be, the people behind those moments, so the soul of Coyote prince runs deeper into hiding to be spirit guide for those driven to extinction.
The headstone is a six foot tall granite piece, smooth as can be. My dearest friend Dan had died when his twin engine beechcraft exploded on takeoff, mere seconds in the air. I waited for hours at the air port but rules are rules so that could not tell me. I found out the next day. So, they asked me to write a headstone poem, and donated a bench overlooking one of the Delaware battlefields with a two line part from another poem on brotherhood. Dan was like a brother to me. They keep dying a lot lately. It has me scared.
Coyote
COYOTE (2014)
Yeah, and the night limped around like it was trying to go somewhere,
like out of Carrol County, but it didn’t and neither did I…
so it’s just me and the street lamps downtown cowtown 1 a.m.
Not a star in sight and nothing’s open all night but there’s some
eggs at Casa Huddle, been waiting all day by the week-old bacon
by the grease geyser and a tarnished Maxwell pump.
Home is sounding better by the minute, out there, self bound,
out there by the pines where the stars always shine
and the insects call and chant to the night.
Yeah, like this never happened before and the phone rings on time.
Let the darkness rain down on the rascals and rogues, on the land,
on the caverns of the coyote prince; I have tasted the clay,
chewed upon the sunrise in a dozen cities and found nothing
so sweet as the southern summer moon.
As though baptisms were not pure ritual,
as though I’ve lived this course in southern mysticism past,
yet past the prime of indecision into action and desire.
Me, alone with my solipsism and a thousand constellations,
where animal heart is an echo growing stronger in my lungs,
growing out of the chronic dreams of misalliance and master races,
seeds sown in the groves of neophytes and fisher kings, suicide kings
where the world is nothing but reflections and fear…fear…
yeah, fear keep’em all from climbing.
In the black hour those owl wise swoop down on the bell ropes
and burn in the light of the dying mirror sun. Better to burn on
the wing than stooped upon the ladder with some Moloch prince
in a three piece suit, better to screech in the storms
with a new vision of life, alive with all that lives in the treetops
and shadows, in gulf stream and prairie, forest and hill, yeah,
dreams of the beasts on the edge of extinction, they come.
They cry. Dreams of the coyote prince seconds before the snare snaps.
Naturalist, rattling the cages of a language that’s forgotten salvation,
when animal rhythm passes so shall we,
asphalt concrete glass and steel…poof! memories of the land…
a getaway from the lights, from engines’ rhythms, blood in the sand
for a moment before the buildings rise and it’s all just city,
but never open all night. . .And the dirt roads shine.
Well, the night limps around kinda faded and gone,
bird calls in the dawn and the distant combustion howls,
cities rise and fall in the dust, but out here,
out here in the back roads, my heart, all red clay, pines and spring fed
really is open all night, is the one direction unadorned with death.
Loving the land and the hammer that nails it down.
Loving the Rising when our own mortality strains,
pulls upon the bell ropes and finally begs for mercy.
Someone so Beautiful I was afraid to write her as song or poem for half my life
Two days ago I was listening to music when all of a sudden as I was pulling into my driveway I became uncontrollably sad. It was odd and not so odd if one is blessed with the arts. The feeling was such that I just sat in the truck listening and feeling blue. Leonard Cohen blue except it was instrumental, and not the candy sound of Satie either. Just 10 minute of such sadness I began to cry. A man in a truck in his driveway suddenly in tears. I looked at my iPhone and it was a song I had written on my ex wife. I poured all the sadness and loss into this one instrumental. IT is in another place here in WP or SoundCloud, I am afraid to find it.
This song is the opposite. It was inspired yesterday by the song of Jupiter or Neptune, a planet. We’ve all heard the recordings of planets and it sounds a lot like songs of the humpback and blue whale. So, again with only wonder and love, I wrote bits here and there, programmed them into the MPD32, ancient but ancient like a classic stick shift Mercedes. The woman, Kim Chi, yeah it was a nickname half Korean half Swedish and I was simply me. We were coming out of evil fraught relationships and found such comfort and wonderfulness in one another that we could only be together a short time. It can be that way and I hate it, but understand as well. This music, extended and ethereal with bits of action here and there was how we melted into one another. And how we also just as organically washed away into the cold Pacific.
It’s an extended moment of when Kim, woman who captured my heart as well as could be done at the time, when we were naked laying in the part of the Elk River when it was more of stream, looking for salamanders and newts, any funny looking living thing in those pure ,clean pebble bottomed waters.. The magic of that weekend has stayed with me for half my life, And how I have tried to describe it so it sounded more than a sex fueled happiness, it was simply happiness. We were free in each others arms knowing it was for the time that it was as we were both stepping out of disastrous relationships and suddenly here was this person with whom we perfectly matched, but fear tore that in half. So we lasted as long or as less an amount ot time as we needed.
Gentle in the near 3 a.m.
August has been hard. The worst month in a couple of years. So, after the symphonies to women in countries where they are of no more value than a goat and treated even worse. I wrote a gentle lovely little piece.
I hope it reaches you with love and peace. Oddly enough, it was difficult to compose and to play nonetheless as a moment of tranquility. we need that, even in the midst of war or as the object of hate and derision, we need a sense of peace to keep our sanity. Here’s to sanity! And really, I do wish Peace to all who take the time to listen. Maybe read my published poetry here. there’s a lot. I love. I just love. Even in darkness there is love.
High Lonesome Sound of A Bad Son Trying to Be a Good Son
This is a simple yet complicated hillbilly kind of thing, High Lonesome if you will. I was surprised to find few knew the history of poetry, narrative, stories, singing around a fire, or just the singing that overlaps and develops through repitition and changes in pitch and range. As an overeducated redneck who frequelty seems to say, “look, I have over 600 published works and taught master classes in poetry during Pablo Neruda Literature Conference”; and sometimes I feel bad saying it. I feel like I am putting the other person down when all I want is to say speak freely, please, I starve for articstic conversation, for knowledge and exchange of experiment of idea and method. Some of us write and publish in the same style to the moment of death. I change stylyes and technique as a way of keeping from off the cliiff’s edge. So, this said, I am limiting to whom it is sent but am posting to FB anyway. If you have a pulse and there is venom within it please stay away. This ballad is in as ancient a style as I can possible reference. There is no older way of history, of religion, of sharing our lives than in those songs and stories we tell with FRIENDS. Back when life was different it was one of the favorite things a group of us would do which was to sit out at night with weed and a jug of Mountain Red Burgandy, and make up songs or expand with new lyrics our favorite Dylan or Young. It was a way of communication, and it was for me a way of developing poetry which I would later publish. Today we think of High Lonesome as a strictly Appalacahian thing with our Scotland and Nordic heritage in the hills. I like to sing it all the time. So, lately I have been recording them. Hate or love, or indifference, it’s cool. Everyone has a theory and each of us has a “thing”. It is just that for me I find this thing limitless and am at my struggling happiest when taking on new projects in the Arts and different forms of music. Yesterday I spent 20 hours on Klaus Schulze inspired Dark Side of the Moog, Michael Shrieve type drums, I was mad with intensity as I tried to get the changes because the style was out side my range. Today, was a hard day of too much money had to be spent, mine, credit, family, and it really tore me up. The loneliness of devotion is often tossed off as being weak in faith. OK, fine. But we all have feelings and if we do not have feelings then I guess we are dead. This High Lonseome ballad in three parts is all me cause no one will endeavor such a horrid act as collaboration with me. The horror is that I understand. This song is about prayer, devotion and love. 3 things surely to scare away any art and Catholic friends who remain. PLease if you dig on American music going back to first man and woman relating their day over a steak mammoth and fern grill, then you’ll know what I am doing. I feel bad gogn to such length to explain a work in progress, but I change styles on things so often it confuses people and they become agitated. I have changed my publishing poetic style 3 times since I was 16 when I first began publishing, each change came about from discussions and criticisms from my editors and regular ol’ life changes. Yesterday I spent 20 hours on a Klaus Schulze and Michael Shrieve style of early techno using Logic Pro X, an Akai MPD32 and my midi grand piano.
It was fun but wow was that taxing trying to maintain straight chord changes and beat progressions. I am a modern classical composer in the world of Arve Part, Reich, Cage, the evil Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Krautrock of course. Yet still in the classical range and as a pianist the setting it all up into various instrumentations for a symphony is an amazing and tedious experience I recommend to any and all who love the challenges our world of art offers each day. I live in praise of THE Buddha and his Saints as Mahayana Buddhism is a religion and I was devoted for all my life up until 6 or 7 years ago when I had THE Jesus Christ experience of being spoken to from the Cross. It was strange and unexpected. I knew in that momen, a Saul to Paul type scene, that Christ was hurt as I hated him and his religions so much, but the more I returned to my youthful studies in Alan Watts and his gang of world religion to Lacan and his gang of Post Freudians I began to understand exactly what was happening and it relates to Thomas Merton. That’s all. For anyone bold enough to try to make it through my often turgid prose and even more thick music, I thank you. As a Poet, my primary source of Being, it is an adventure that language turns into clouds and waves, earth blooming and earth dying, so when I go into the unknown I expect people to express some pretty serious hatreds, yet all I hope is that we love.
Final version Prayer to Saints Stephen and Barthalamew
This is about the Saints Stephan, skinned; and Barthalamew, stoned to death to speaking of our Christ. This is dedicated to the forced maiming of women in Islamic nations. Women are not slaves, they are not propety, they are not to be vaginally muttilated so they do not enjoy sex. What kind of scared ass wimp does this? What insanity propels a people into such destruction of the opposite sex? From this we see Besh, or Isis, committing unspeakable acts whcih in turn inspires other insecure men to do the same. Be secure, but they are not, they know the women would run in a second if given the chance. But then some, when interviewed will say the rules from completely covering them in 100 plus degree heat and cutting out the labia is fine. This is what occurs in mass psychology, the mass psychology of fascism in the shape of Islam. Good people, stand up and speak against the horrors. Putin smiles with an obviously sexually confused mullah as they agree ‘yah it’s cool to maim women, whatever.’
The things going through my head I can’t post here, I’d be deleted for speaking my mind against these actions.
Prayer Song to St. Stephen and St. Barthalamew
Symphony #6 For the Tortured and Ruined Women of Africa to India by the hand and hate in Islam today. It breaks my heart, we are all to blame, we are each one of us with an able hand.
What is left but to kill, to kidnap, to rape, to destroy, to sell in an open slave market, to strangle a daughter for shaming by marryin the wrong man, to throw acid at school shilren out for an ed…
Symphony #6 For the Tortured and Ruined Women of Africa to India by the hand and hate in Islam today. It breaks my heart, we are all to blame, we are each one of us with an able hand.
This is a symphony that has been rolling around in my head for a week or so ever since I read the story about the woman going back to Pakistaniniillyanybody land to be with her husband. Some paternal relative, as in her father or his, strangled her to death as an ‘honor’ killing. It raised a lot of violent thoughts in me. Such brutality, such crazed ignorance and hatred for humankind. What environment is so horrid that killing is the better of living and talking it out or just going ahead and killing the woman, maybe rape her in between so she can get an extra stoning or public hanging like they do off the back of car hauling trucks. These people. God is there to hold the hand of the condemned, or maybe not, maybe it is just an evil, cruel, hatelful, soulless, no ethic what soever other than to kill. “What is your ethic?” To Kill. “OK, bye bye” .
To get it off my chest I labored for a night and a day on the concerto #10 or #9. I had to write and play the pain away. It hurt so much. I thought of all the little girls in Africa, the women in Saudi Arabia beheaded because their husband cheated, the women of all the -stans and India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the southern Phillipene islands, all hijacked and mentally vanquished to death worship, the waiting to force death upon another. Why? It ruins me. Why?
So I wrote Symphony #6 which had been my intention all along, but as I moved through the notes I came to understand why a concerto. I needed something visceral and murderous, dangerous, harsh, violent to cleanse my own soul, to pray and beg God please please pelase not slaughter the women of Afric and Middle East and Central Asia, but they are just prayer flags on a mountiantiop. Cauthet in the wind, maybe catching God on a good day or not.
So i worked on these fthree Asian instruments to get a Silk Road feel to the music, even thogh it was a dirge, It just had to hapen someway. How How can I feel hate? Should i? God commands our love. So I have love and try, pray that they may wake up to their sins nd sin no more. Christ did give us Hope so I hold on. I know some poor girl is being pelted by rocks and acid thrown at her this very moment as she walks that perilous, but still happy child kind of way we were on our way to school. I loved walking to school. All breezy, waving hello, if I was sad or contemplative just look at the trees, the lawns, the flash of cars on Chamblee Tucker Road. But no one wanted to hurt me…..much. At least I arrived and made it home alive without my face disfigured, my body broken, to find I was sold into sex slave as a 8 or 9 year old to a 55 year old man, a death sentence in itself. It’s al they know , all they can hang onto, if if is a girl get her to school, try to see her educated before the men in the family do something horrid, cruel beyond sin, down down down into the lake of ice with Satan’s wings ever chilling the air as he chews more destroyed souls and stares skyward to a light he will never again see. I imagine them here, with the worst, the cannibals, the child killers, they must serve and serve for all time till the end of time and Christ gives them relief into a lake of fire to burn out into nothingness. This is how I felt. how I feel when I imagine the sufffering and fear these women must endure. For it is to come, there is no exit, it awaits and sharpens it’s teeth, let’s the nails grow long so as to punish with deep wounds. This is our world. Not only will we see polar bears, narwhales, elephants, tigers, cheethas, lions, coral and seahorses extinct in our lifetime but what if we see the women of the near east gone, gone, gone. I guess then the sulphur and tar scented men can have their man boy love heaven on earth and some stupid punishment by having sex with only virgins. It is crazy. It is in every way insanity. This is our world. Thank you WWI for your idiot French and British Maps. Thank you England for the years of slavery. The Bedoin, the Shi’a, the whatever who knows, they are murdering Catholics as well. What will be left? Will we ever say to the house of Saud that we know it is them. We know they are behind it all. Thtey send radical imams to friehdly, peace loving people, rape them and their land and leave them as terror driven and lost thier minds. We are a part but we are not all. We have bllood on our hnds for sure. How do you fight a people whose life is so bad that they want to die, they want you to kill them in combat. They want to come home after a bad day planting poppies and land mines to beat and kill their wives. Look. we have it pretty good. For the Catholic Faithful say your rosary abd Jesus prayers throughout the day, do not give up, God, His angels and saints will hear, the compassionate heart of Mary will be awakened. I hope. I pray. And so I write music to life and to move our hearts into a shattion of belieff, into a place of hope faith and love Please. Love the ONE and the MANY. We are all God’s children.
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