[Somewhere around 2011, members of Tin Can Buddha an artistic-musical collective based out of Lexington, Kentucky, in the manner of Annea Lockwood’s performance art from 1968, burned an old piano in a field as promotion for an event. They asked me to score something for the video that was produced of the burning. I got a few friends together to read through the score, and we recorded it and sent it off. Years later, for a performance with the Tin Can Buddha, I wrote a poem to recite while the video was displayed in the background, with live improvisational accompaniment.]
Our idea of memory is something like a piano, a thing to be played and enjoyed, annoy us in our sleep, frighten us into understanding, making us dance to forget. Burning a big hunk of wood feels good, and all the music ever plucked, must come together, particles striving toward the sun. And so, my history can come together in unadulterated ways – like fire, most democratic destruction. But as a fire burns, it is human empathy with which we see only destruction– truly it is a creator, an amalgamator, forging a new mixture of chemicals. So randomness, generated by our early generation artificial intelligence, has forged the below.
interplanetary chaos
and my tears – like Keat’s Isabella –
now soot-gray waves of stone electric Blue & White, seeping
the Fantasy of American promises
looking for the green secret of existence –
And all this talk of nationalism
all the beauties of living
“I want to be buried in between a Starbucks and a Five Guys
thinking himself an artist
and clicked open our skulls
through a series of backward mirrors
wrapped in ideal plastic
Hey, maybe if every one likeswhat every one else does We can achieve:That so,
great,MonoCulture
a lovely morning sir, she said
to rip them off and speak a new language –
the metal cages of my brain
the bell of bells no longer tolls
Introducing: the Great American Tragedy or Comedy
omniscient Mother of love.
the children of Pornography and Monotony
wearing the pages of their books
I Ameri'can and I Ameri'won't
I buckled on my religion
and that is the Frosty Robert
I am just an ape packing up my things
staring glaring blaring
the non-monkey 3’s.
I don’t remember the kiss we just had
friends and dreamers and wonderers and lovelovelovers
all the beautiful people I knew, stayed in high school
she’s a mare of a woman
well scrape me like a fucking lemon
“Bring me my gun.”
The meadow sits there. I walk toward it.
grown from strong and delusional bonobo fertilizer.
and it’s in that corner of sentimentality
staring into the new flower of Narcissus
a Comedy in scenes
love is always here
and bring the hummingbirds in spring
frolicking away the darkness
lucky lucky lucky to enjoy a bourbon
RedflashingWhiteflashingBlue
there’s a baseball field at the end of town.
a big laugh iNside everything
They were all wrong when they said what they thought they knew
toxic moondeath, inquisitive
coming out in a smile from your divinity
“I cannot speak, the light is too bright, the light too beautiful
lucky to have your eyes
Are your clothes on dear homo sapiens?
a monologue, janusfaced and smiling
and “how was the food Mr. Miller?"
and Jesus says:
into the bright coral mornings of Amsterdam
O multicolored soul
bomb warfare high fructose corn syrup
when your soul and body were still swimming together
Bunch of Men, just standing around
lichens tortoising their way up trees
not knowing what to do, whether to puke or shit
at wishing me the best of Irish Smiles