Hobobun

[WIREMAN]

the crows, the crows
taking over concrete walls
blue sky treetops

......day four in the quest to finish light well in gallery 9.....we got the bull by the horns...off saturday, thank goodness.....santa claus parade pounding away outside on patrick st.......warm day, i really didnt realize till i escaped my concrete confines at 3 pm.......smooth ride home on the train..... weekend dedicated to wire sculpting...art market at nola cafe next sunday

twist and turn
labyrinth of wire
mysteries within

[saw]

those two buzzards
were so big they laughed at my car
I decided to go around them

coming home from dad's house, this dead squirrel was the main course and these monster birds payed their dues and they weren't about to stop munching down on fresh road kill, cause they wuz baddass....and I knew they'd tear my muffler off if I was silly enough to try to squash them, so I swerved to the right, then back again, and looked in the rear view to see one of the birds shaking his head back and forth like a mongrel dog, guts were drippin' down his chin

the ride from the country
is always full of un-city-like things to digest
listening to indie rock

[WIREMAN]

2 breakfast day
what are we having for lunch?
warming trend

....conversations observed....nervous giggles....tainted observations....poutingly spoiled children....america in all its spoiled horror....trumped personifications, when most of us came from elsewhere.....loud in here, sounds like a junior h.s. cafeteria....time for the wire studio....movement....escape...horray!

[saw]

walked along the gunpowder river
saturday, the dogs' tongues
were hanging out happy and tired
I made my way to these little falls
where a feeder creek drops seven feet
in the blink of cooled lava, the ridges
and colors sing like ancient birth, when
out of nowhere this woman with a canon
camera slides up close to my perch
above the water, she has streaks of purple
in her gray hair and she is high on nature,
likes to take pictures of natural settings
that suggest the letters of the alphabet
and now everything I look at looks like
a Y or an A, and she sits down next to me
tells me her name is Sabrina, and she takes
off her shoes and socks, slides on her butt
down to the water to put her feet in
and I see her nails are painted blue, and
she tells me she grew up in the woods
then she drops her lens cap into the stream
and it floats away with an "Oh well"....

[WIREMAN]

out there, barking!
strangeness at break-a-noon
buyer beware.......plop!

....i once met a girl, she was hubba-hubba & ding....ding....ding....nighthawks, tom waits....him puffin away on mike douglas show in 70's....ya know i can hardly remember em now....talkin bout the 70's....it all started on a golf course and ended in a rodpatch....me hangin in a place called madams organ wiring it up and making wild mixed media collages down in adams mirgan, old d.c......


young dumb and yadda-yadda
awakened like a butterfly
the future is now

[saw]

anything goes these days
that is, I'm up for it, you name it
and I'll probably say yes

I want to burn out white hot instead of peter out like a soggy candle, i want to go instead of stay, give instead of miss the opportunity, roll instead of walk the line, fly instead of watch tv, sing instead of sit in the corner. I want to taste a lot of ice cream flavors, sip some good booze, bullshitting with friends, I want to initiate instead of waiting for the phone to ring.

I want to make art, make music
make love if only in my dreaming mind
I want to escape the norm

[the mingo]

Hell Yeah, Mongolia!, saw

[saw]

immobilized
the legs hurt, the head
turn up the stereo
get a shot of jazzy adrenaline

cyrus chestnut massages the ivories, the ebony man with the big smile, the music that syncs the heart with the head, the mesh that heals the ails of the forlorn, I'd like to walk around the lake, but fuck no, that ain't happening til the pain subsides, so I crank it up higher, past ten, to the stratosphere hidden in the imagination of a man biding his time with keyboards and keystrokes, keys in the locks of time's hidden messages, I dream of motion, dream of friends, movies about explorers wearing bearskins and crude leather shoes, alabaster faces, old flames, the mind loves to walk when the legs won't cooperate

being patient is not a virtue
it's a muthafuckin drag
these are the challenges
that test the metallic mettle

it leaves a bad taste in the mouth

[WIREMAN]

...a beer, dark and sour, flemish......cloudy day warm and breezy, christmas eve.....approaching noon, brunchtime full on mexican hash.....shoppers and gawkers abound...a lady says, "we could have sat outside at nola!" to her husband as they climb into their car.....lives stroll by....cars parade.....i drink my beer....

pace of life
cars and people parade
cloudy pink windows

[saw]

merry christmas baby
you sure did treat me nice
long ago on a planet far far away

oh the christmas days of all the 25th's all lined up in a row, can't remember much any more, the lovers, the lonely daze, the giving and taking, the smiles and the tears, 66 of those fuckers....years and years of green ...red eyes....mostly pretty good happy to report...the kids really made it fun.....didn't need jesus to dig the fantasy, the magic in the air, in their eyes....the anticipation, the charade.....the love

merry christmas baby
it's all been a long beautiful ride
ho ho ho, no regrets

[WIREMAN]

....nice eve of xmas....talking with friends, drinking beer outside nola cafe.....lotsa interactions....i guess i just should accept that i mourn on christmas....for CJ....my mom....now my sister susie's gone.....i loved it when carole jean was around...she'd decorate the place all up....one particular time we decided to invite what she called the "lost boys" over for dinner and a movie, latcho drom about gypsy music around the world, needless to say everyone loved it.....a good day indeed....


beacon in the hood
cool warmth had by all
time of sharing

[saw]

food and music
laughter and song
guitars and bass
jokes and crescendos

candles everywhere and spinach pie, bourbon and beer, goat cheese and crackers, the kind of conversation that can sustain a man for weeks, the friends that always show up, the friends that make it all worthwhile, the voices of song and laughter blended like a martini, and it's never boring, never a waste of time, I never regret the expense or mess, I relish the ring of the door bell, over and over, the parade of love, the guitar cases I store in the front room. the feng shui of a tiny room, the glowing eyes of folks that have no problems at the moment, the fantasy of lights and talking strings

hope to do it again next year
if i can make another spin around the planet
and so it begins, the top is set in motion
a gyroscope that breathes a little more

[the mingo]

it's not like i wake up in the morning to find the moon at my door, no, that is totally the moon's doing, it's on a schedule but i'm not, having fucked off to the river some time ago where i found a house to do some living in -

time to leave the antiseptic behind
time to leave the hypnosis behind

i wake up, get the coffee going, get the fire going, open the door to let the dog out, smell the air, look up & there's the moon - just like i said - this will go on 'til the moon enters it's next phase -

some think sweetness
substitutes for taste

already there are people at work, i have work too, strange work but work nonetheless - there are horse bones scattered on the ground of my mind, ephemera from a time of mobility - a time that once called to me strongly, constantly, but when i ran to embrace it it disappeared - what i didn't know then was the deductibles involved, the inevitabilities, how you could lose a leg, arm, eye, or a loved one as a matter of course -

mist over river
the death of newspaper

there is a glass bird here with me, i might even have brought it here - it sits on a windowsill, its glass eyes looking out on a glass world - as always there is nothing between it & its own reflection ...

the rain is
ablaze with ice

horse bones & a glass bird is what i have - they are not my life, they are just my pay -
and, for a few days each month, the moon

here & gone
don't ever forget

[saw]

catch a falling star
don't put in your pocket
hitch your dreams to the cosmic dust

there is magic all around you, but it isn't the normal way for most to wake up with appreciation for all the good things that are going on, no, we tend to focus on the bad junk, my aching knees, the lack of do-re-mi....the lack of energy that used to sustain you through the whole day into the evening of your desires, it just ain't he same, but honestly it could be worse, so how do we enliven our time awake to let go of the rather trivial and run like the stallions in our minds through the day-glo fields of imagination as blue horses, purple cows, orange crows that soar next to the sun....WE CAN DO IT....just need to employ a few tricks of the mind....use the natural caffeine of an unfettered mind to achieve the most that is possible on any given sunday....dig down, mine the golden edge that slices fatigue and ennui...rise above the blahs

how will I saddle such wild ideas
how can I tame my madness enough to ride
through the remaining days like a fiery don juan demarco

[the mingo]

Some miles to the northeast of here on a bend in the road there is, or was, an old wooden schoolhouse that had been converted into passable living quarters sometime in the past. There was a row of big maple trees between it and the road. You see this often with these old schoolhouses, planted by some long ago budding scholars who are dust now or with the Lord, farmer's kids & blacksmith's kids & storekeeper's kids & the woodcutter's kids - all of them living in an America that is also long long gone.

_ _ An old woman lived in this schoolhouse. Out front by the driveway she had hung a shingle with the words "The Poem Factory" written upon it. Curious, I stopped in one day & introduced myself. She invited me in for coffee. Inside was a wonder - every horizontal surface was covered with books, yellow legal pads covered in writings, scraps of paper everywhere, on the tables, tacked to the walls & doors. She handed me my coffee & said, "Welcome to the Poem Factory." I picked up two books off the nearest pile, one, poems by Dickinson & the other by some poet I had never heard of who had lived in Revolutionary times and had served with Ethan Allen & the Green Mountain Boys.

_ _ I stayed for most of the afternoon, drank much coffee & helped carry in & stack some wood for her. Our conversations went everywhere. When I left I did something I don't always do, I got to the top of the hill and stopped ... I looked back on the Poem Factory.

This was many years ago now. She cannot still be alive nor the old schoolhouse still standing. The place is not that far away now that I live up here on the Plateau. Come spring & the snowmelt I will take a ride over there to see what is to be seen.

An old woman
an old house
poems everywhere