melodrama (a dream)

I know how the marsh rat feels,
reeling below the hunting owl...
after last night under helicopters'
hard blades.

The round moon fixed me as a point
of eye-glint on the war field, where
red lights blinked overhead.

Then heavy missiles came,
came tilting like heads of archangels,
came silent through the doomed night,
came hard by the round moon.

But morning came sooner,
bringing with it a deeper dread: sunlight,
normality.


"I awake, but my soul is in dreams." -- William Blake

stop

too much:

Process. Invention. Politics. Theory. Blathering.

too many:

Mirrors. Egos. Grudges. Beliefs. Projects.


*************


Stop and:


Grow some vegetables in a patch or on a porch.

Walk in the woods.

Write a poem.

Help somebody.

Contemplate the moon.


Don't do a god-damned thing, otherwise.

pets

I see them...everybody's nice, regular-duty pets. Men with loving, obedient dogs at their heels. Nice, dumb cats just being themselves.

Me?

Had a dog years back that broke my nose. Had a cat that was schizophrenic. Got a dog now that thinks I'm a dangerous lunatic. And I'm pretty sure my current cat is my reincarnated grandmother.

Go figure.

my daughter is a drawer

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Cameron

Drawn with graphite pencils, color and text added in Photoshop


..............


Sarah (Buck, not Connor) is 24.75 years old, and she likes to draw stuff when the mood hits her. Rest of the time?

By day, her cover is a pharmacy tech. By night, she stoically and intuitively performs her clandestine duties as an international agent of W.I.E.R.D. -- World Investigation of Enigmatic Ruptures and Deviations. I'm not at liberty to go into this at much depth or length.

Suffice it to say: if not for her and her comrades' efforts, Naughty Glowing Bubble Men and Giant Clowns from Beyond would have taken over this planet by now.

[Hey...I misspelled "weird." That's weird.]

my friend

She lives in Serbia,
and I imagine all the flowers
of that land are blooming
a dark Novalis blue.

She lives in Serbia,
and I can't reach her.
But she is the only one
who knows me.

In one of her pictures,
she is open and curious,
amused, at least I think.
It's hard to tell with Buddhas.

The next picture's cool.
She looks like a bandit
about to rob a bank
that hordes too many dreams.

And then she is a goddess.
That look would disarm armies.
By turns, she looks seductive,
yet also self-effacing.

Finally, the rebel.
I've never been so free.
I've never been so giving.
She could teach me worlds.

Bob Dylan's *Chronicles: Volume 2* ?

Having read and reread Chronicles: Volume 1, I found it to be engrossing, elliptical, groovy, and kaleidoscopic. It seems that three volumes are planned, and I'm eager to devour the next one. But I haven't been able to find out any info on when it'll be published. I Googled a number of pages to no avail, and even the publisher Simon & Schuster had no news that I could discover.

Has anyone heard a rumor or something more solid about when the next book will be released?

DON'T READ MY BOOK !

Please...I'm warning you. Don't read my 2005 novel – Séance in B Minor. I wrote it, for the most part, in something like a hypnagogic trance, and I might very well have crossed the line into questionable spiritual territory. Shelling out $16 could turn out to be a Faustian bargain for you, causing irreparable psychological harm.

One chapter contains a dissertation, of all things! Who in their right mind would subject themselves to such a thing? Especially as conjured up by someone – me – who never even went to college? And especially given by a character who, during the presentation, hears voices? Who soldiers ahead, even in the face of an academic panel's arrogant, preening incomprehension?

Who would sit still for my ex machina device: a piece of non-existent technology for blending the brain-waves of two sleeping dreamers? Surely such a thing and its description would be too facile for a proper suspension of disbelief.

And of all things! Several times in the book, I try to turn pieces of music into words. Music is music; prose is prose. Attempts at transmuting them must, of course, be an unholy alchemy. Here, see for yourself why it's best that you DON'T READ MY BOOK:


Allison unlocked her hotel room, entering its quiet ambience. She slipped off her shoes and sat down at the table, propping her feet on the bed. Remembering the unlistened-to-CD of Chopin's Preludes, she inserted the disc and adjusted her headphones.

These short pieces were preluding, foreshadowing no larger musical structure. Each one led nowhere, except to the next prelude. They were self-contained reflections by an inward-looking artist. But Allison discerned a continuum as each piece added its own texture to a poetic whole. This whole was an augury, an anticipation of death.

Some of these pieces were the casual renderings of evanescent moods. Others exuded happiness. But even those melodic paths were strewn with the withering blooms of melancholy – an understated sadness spoiling human joy. Still others plunged into darker places and expressed, with reined-in hysteria, that taboo thing of the psyche: Death. It is where everyone is headed, and Chopin was giving Allison a guided tour of the terrain. Every word, every action, every human breath is laden with the autumn chill of our ending. This music, this sometimes acquiescent, sometimes feverish music was acknowledging death's paradoxical enhancement of life. Before the horizon of mortality, every moment adds a new layer of poignant meaning.

Eventually, she emerged from that world of aural poetry. A conversion had occurred. She had crossed the threshold from one state of consciousness into another. This new dimension contained a fulgent, yet disturbing art.


Oh...one more thing. My novel was rejected by major and minor publishers. I had to put it out myself. That must mean it's not any good. Right?