finding the crazy poet site

[mnaz]

(Note: words of Ned borrowed by permission.)

It's been too long since you sipped good tequila with Ned, and his states of no-mind and mind that jump so freely into each other. His mind turns on a dime. Like last time . . .
"What keeps us from the Garden?"
"Fear and desire, the gatekeepers."
"The Budhha passed through to the tree."
"Man I'm sick of politics these days . . ."

But who is Ned? And why did he appear out of your desert reverie? You and Ned must go way back, right? Well, no . . . And that's the odd thing about this wander you hit upon. You are meeting not only silent rock, but also a few poets who live on its shape, as it happens to look at this moment of forever-sculpted stardust. Old poet souls. You met Ned due to his poems on a screen, of all things. True story. The rock is wired now.

You stumbled onto a crazy poet site, a place that took up Kerouac's torch after all the years-- where poetry twists and tangles around itself, and long strings of poems wring themselves inside out and punch each other in the head, bathe in torrents of radiance and swim muddy rivers of rage, wander all over canyons of mind and back deserts of creation. Sometimes the poets fall out and argue for days-- long threads about the nature of "reality," but they always come back to paint the sky new colors of breath. It's one hell of a mind-bending bash onscreen.

Yes, the Screen. It's everywhere, and everyone peers into glowing boxes. And you detest the idea, though the Screen shows real potential at times (whatever "real" means). And it's the oddest thing. Poetry is flooding cyberspace. Everyone's a poet now, with screen names like "Whitebird," or "AxDeath," typing anything imaginable in a text box, from lines of simple, mundane glory to wild freakout, A to Z, it all comes out in the wash. And lots of adolescent gushing too-- "my tears are raindrops on your dusty moon." A billion screams into the soulless metal machine. We will not be denied!

And that's how you met Ned . . . crashing in the wild surf of poetry storms, coming in from space. And you met others too on the big zig-zag. Like that trip into dark June mists of coastal Oregon to meet a long-time hippie jazz singer named Ann, her words on a screen too immediate to ignore, her images too rich to pass up, her voice as golden as playful truth-- "the truth will set you free." She sang into the mic for a live show put on by the local radio station, some comical cowboy hit-the-dusty-trail number, and little kids danced merrily in circles in the studio, little Buddhas in light. And for a few minutes there was no needless brutality in the world, and for awhile no need to rush out again and hug a dashed line, conquer the miles.

Captain Jim lived a few miles down the shrouded coast. Word of the crazy poet site had filtered down the waterfront, and Captain Jim had some crazy tales of waterlogged fishermen on the wharf shooting bourbon, and singing and brawling in the bars of life-giving seaport murk, and flashing fists and knives when festivities called for it, blood and bourbon in the salt mist. Not at all like the desert, where guns made more sense. Oh Captain Jim had some stories.

The great zig-zag . . . like when you left the open desert for California sage, which looks like Nevada but is bisected by wires and fences, confined against its nature, then down across pistachio fields, the hills turning emerald, down to the dreemy orange salt breezes of Santa Barbara's coast to meet an old professor named Mark. He looked like Mark Twain, with bushy white hair and mustache, and was a published poet-- was actually paid for his poems. Hard to believe in this metal age of anti-art.

His tract house was lined with oil paintings, about half his own. He played guitar and mandolin, and penned scenes of back road Americana, its colorful, tragic figures passing through, and he had a thing for French Impressionists. You traipsed off with Mark through beige burbs to the beach, as he filled you in on Chatwin and Yeats, even Kafka, and he knew every bird in the sky, each warbler and vulture. He knew these things. He once taught at the University of Nevada and was drawn to your screen notes on the Nevada desert, scattershot as they are, a crude attempt at rock art. He was humble, and told you to keep going. You are picking up things as you go.

And that's how you met Ned. His words . . .
Take all your words
and spill 'em in space
Watch them swirl
like constellations
Wild horse head
nebula fantasies
Mothers of suns
still in the wombs
Words, more words! They go forth and multiply on the face of sprinkled heavens, poking at its far seams, in long, fine desolate alleys of mystery, close as a honey bee among petals or far as a star collapsed in its own fathomless gray immensity, unseen, unheard in its black corner of infinity.

It's hard to figure the inspired lunacy of going thousands of miles to meet folks you know by little more than pixels onscreen, but that's how it was. And why not? The whole trip's been a tale of broken reverie anyway-- right from the start a shadow of war over freedom, or the grind of your truck when it could be silent, or sudden faces of cops out of silence, or powerlines from nowhere carving up glow, and now the arrest of art on a screen-- but so far it's the best distraction to hit you, coming in from outer space.

Yet it all seems a little counter-intuitive. Can poetry survive a digital revolution? Rattling in circuit boards? Or art in general? Our life blood in countless blocks of bloodless digits? In records made of digits, not grooves? Music is shinier now; its warm wood resonance a touch petrified, hard to put a finger on it . . . And why did horns stop blowing on funk records? The jazz was crazy before that, after the Big War, like streams of cool Dada fury straight off the fronts of blown reality. In time the blues were amped up and exploded to furious riffs too, like we knew they could be. But right about then the Big Corporation came with new designs on world domination, and a new Age of Greed began to flower, despite protests of old parable gods. But that's another story, so back to this one.

And here you are with all this freedom, and darkness closing from the west. Maybe it's time to go see Ned, and turn East to the temples of West Texas. Maybe even get out on the Marfa flats to see those unexplained weird lights at twilight (and vow not to explain them). Ned said they were like were like little dancing fireballs. Yes, Eastern redemption in the Texas desert, that's it! And true to your faith in a sacred attainment of Aimless, you launch east on I-40. "Father forgive me, for I resort to the Interstate." There is still hope for light. Murk may beat the coastal ranges, but deep enough in the interior it never rains.

[judih]

this is really good work, mnaz

publishing material (if there's space on the cyber shelf - and i believe there is)

[the mingo]

Zooooooooooooooooooooooo > oooooooooommmmmmmmmmm !

[stilltrucking]

“In the spiritual and political loneliness of America of the fifties you'd hitch a thousand miles to meet a friend,” Genesis Angels

Thank you for another good read/ride.

[sweetwater]

can you say pullitizer
or geller

or is it gellhorn

anyway great reading

[creativesoul]

can you do that again? no seriously- i was enraptured- had to read it- couldnt stop and i like the way people 'pop up' like visiting a strange culture- thank you- it is rare that i am free like that- reading someone else s writing-this is great- really 'ono' thank you -poetry will surrvive cyber space= be transformed - entertained by the vastness of words and language-i stumble towards the bordello in the distance- sans love -dusty tired-

[mnaz]

thanks judih, mingo, jack, sweetwater, creativesoul ...

yeah, i think this one "pops" pretty well ... "roadgoing" ...

(see if you can recognize some of the "crazy poets" themselves in the descriptions ....)

[creativesoul]

Exudes a sense of self satisfaction with just enough humility to be tasteful- waiting
Waiting
- ticklish lout