The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

Swords into ploughshares, guns into electric guitars,
learn war no more, the rageful lack of soft ladyparts,
the beating drum dances, remnants of some ancient tribal rain song,
out in the woods, watching rock and roll heroes sing and clap,
I remember once, drumming in a basement, girls wanting to be caught,
lured and hypnotized by rhythmic beatings —

that, that was a day of poison mushrooms, or maybe the memory is confused,
and I was merely puffing smoke rings
a large friend, drumming, the rest of us, around,

Can music save your mortal soul?

Jimi Hendrix, choking on his worldly rejection
Emily Dickinson sang also, in the quiet upstairs rooms,
Everything we delight in is the leavings of the dead —

Who am I? Prince Adam, not He-Man,
Clark Kent, not Superman,
I am Kal-El, I am the Secret Prince,
the Existential Hero,
Lost in labyrinths

the first cd I ever bought was August and Everything After by the Counting Crows | next week, if all goes well, I go to see them with my lover | she wants to see the Counting Crows, she says, and I want to see her | did I have the Courage of my Convictions, done my One Good Thing, acquitting the boy who may or may not have known what was in the bootbox | one hundred and thirty five grams of cocaine | I, Juror | and now, biggest thing, emigrating to a new country, Manhattan Central, or maybe Brooklyn, joining the great stream |

I was supposed to be a writer, supposed to be an author, an auteur, an artist, an existential hero, the Speaker of Truth, and now I am a jurist, a lawyer-in-training, a slick-tongued obfuscating persuader, hiding pure partisanship behind misplaced appeals to authority — original sin of the originalists —

I do like history, the hard work of dead folks, and law is a particular kind of history, one we endeavor to learn from — perhaps it is sufficient

Elsewhere is hopping, having their biggest artist ever for the exact same days I venture upup to New York City, to get by spot in the Triangle Shirtwaist Sweatshop and McCracken, LLP, sewing wordbriefs —

I will name my son Benjamin, I think — nevermind the allitereration — where do names come from? Mommy and Daddy sitting in a room, inventing my identity? The strangeness of reality — one thousand books will only make you good at spinning stories — spin a thousand stories, but once, long ago, I was a story spun by others and now I spin, and the world goes on, inventing each new day and while there is background, there is also field, and the field dances with the inner secret fire, the true things, the secret names.

The peace-loving rainbow tribe had gathered for thirty years in relative peace, in contravention of Babylon — but as the old died, and young wolves came to take their place, the nights got darker, and bad things were whispered of in the woods —

Until the knights of Babylon swooped in on the tribe, killing and hurting.

Then the secret plan came, and the tribe disappeared from the world, the location of the gatherings only spread by secret word of mouth.

“Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.”

Re: Henderson and the Rain King, Bellow’s Masterstroke

After Henderson moved the great stone goddess of storms, King Dahfu took him into the debths to meet the dark secret lioness, not Dahfu’s father. As Henderson stood in the room, the symbol was real for him and real for me; this was not a symbolic lion, but a real lion, and the real lion is death, the all destroying world, that pads past you in the room.

I know that it is freezing, but I think we have to walk
I keep waving at the taxis, they keep turning their lights off
But Julie knows a party at some actor’s West side loft
Supplies are endless in the evening by the morning they’ll be gone

december in the city … walking down the long avenue … black cars driving by
red lights pull away … your hair is thin but beautiful …
the buzzing in my nose … behind my eyes …
exciting irritation … quick glances, back, forth …
limbs are stretched and tired … hidden behind the buzz of several amphetamines.

When everything is lonely I can be my own best friend
I’ll get a coffee and the paper, have my own conversations
with the sidewalk and the pigeons and my window reflection
The mask I polish in the evening by the morning looks like shit

Don’t I know it — the sweet and easy lonely breakfast — newspaper and a television in a small apartment — it isn’t necessarily happiness, but it’s close — alone with your self, your thoughts, and your world — pure in the morning — can I string words together and make a sentence? can I read these words and hang them like tinsel on my mind? Who is Northrop Frye?

And I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss
So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it
But me I’m not a gamble, you can count on me to split
The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won’t exist

You’re looking skinny like a model with your eyes all painted black
Just keep going to the bathroom, always say you’ll be right back
Well, it takes one to know one, kid, I think you’ve got it bad
But what’s so easy in the evening by the morning’s such a drag

I got a flask inside my pocket, we can share it on the train
And if you promise to stay conscious I will try and do the same
We might die from medication, but we sure killed all the pain
But what was normal in the evening by the morning seems insane

And I’m not sure what the trouble was that started all of this
The reasons all have run away, but the feeling never did
It’s not something I would recommend, but it is one way to live
Cause what is simple in the moonlight by the morning never is

It was so simple in the moonlight now it’s so complicated
It was so simple in the moonlight, so simple in the moonlight
So simple in the moonlight…

Once upon a time, across the several forests and in the greensome valleys, Polychrome and Button lived together in a small farm house on the shores of a wide calm lake. In the morning, Polychrome would go out into her front yard and smell the mild morning breeze wafting in off the lake, and watch splashes of sunlight dance gold across the water.

While Button still sleeps, snoring softly, the long tip of his pointed sleepcap blowing up and then falling down with every breath, Polychrome walks the narrow rows of kukua plants she planted in her garden last March, bending down to split the brown fruit and slipping the wet shiny beans into her left pocket. Then, before Button wakes, she slips into the house and makes Button a cup of coffee, waking him up by waving it beneath his nose.

Button then sprang out of bed, and crawled throug the canvass flap that goes straight into the barn, where, rummaging under Old Mother Chicken, he grabbed two eggs and brought them back, to the little fire that burns in one corner. After throwing them down on the iron skillet, he watched them bubble for two minutes, then scooped them up with his wooden spoon and served them to Polychrome on a chipped china plate.

Should the whole frame of Nature round him break,
In ruin and confusion hurled,
He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,
and stand secure amidst a falling world

— Horace, Odes 3.3 (by way of Addison)

We don’t know what it means yet, but we soon will. Applications for the Corpus Lex?

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