Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Not shit Sherlock

I been into the green grass of home lately
my sense of humor gets the better of me.
All I can say to what you are saying Is, i know, I know, I Know

I take Kurt Vonnegut's advice to his readers
"Listen to the music."

Dear Sasha,

It is righteous anger alright. Rant on Sash
In the meantime, in these meantimes
I sit with the deep Ellum blues and write this.

Anger is problematic for me, this from a man who once(November 22, 1963) come to near to suicide by matricide.
Some of what is happening is beyond anger. I wish I was smart enough to get my head around Kierkegaard's 'Concept of Dread'

I remember that date all too well, even though I was only 13 at the time. I was in my 7th grade science class - we were discussing an upcoming trip to the Boston Museum of Science. The principal, Mr Willis, appeared in the doorway & beckoned to our teacher, Mr Lamella, who joined him in the hall. Mr Willis shut the door behind them. Like all self-respecting 7th graders, we took advantage of his momentary absence to misbehave. A few minutes later, Mr Lamella came back in - and he looked stricken. Gray. "The trip is off," he said. "Boston is likely to be shut down - because the President has just been shot, and he's not expected to live." We went dead quiet. Johnny Crabtree turned to me & whispered, "Who would do such a thing? Who?" It was all I could do to shrug.

The ride home on the schoolbus was just as subdued. And the next four days - beautiful, cheerfully sunny, brisk New England late-fall days - were the saddest, most somber, most portentous I've lived to date. The country lost its virginity that weekend - the innocent optimism of the 1950s was struck down by the assassin's bullets along with JFK, and died with him. And we've never gotten it back.

The only other single catastrophic event that came close to hitting me with the intense unreality of that weekend might be the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. Knowing what a rabid space-nerd I am, my ex-wife phoned me that morning to inform me that radio contact with the shuttle "had been lost". No big deal - comm problems aren't all that unheard of - but when I turned on the news and heard that the shuttle was "overdue" at the Cape, I knew right away what had happened - the only way it could be out of contact AND a no-show at the landing site would be if it hadn't made it through re-entry. It hit me with a strange, surreal, dream-like unreality..... a holy-fuck-not-again sense of nightmarish horror....

in the meantime back at the grave site
on Germantown Road in Dundalk
where the tombstones lean and fall
but I got no worries about Crazy Mike's stone
my brother paid for perpetual care
the perpetual jam is a perpetual motion
motion the best thing next to being free
eighteen wheels turning free out of my own center

afterthought
the stones vibrate to the trucks going down Dundalk Avenue to the Dundalk Marine Terminal down