Call Me Back -19/03/2009

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Just hold on a second just down in the hall,
Where there's a painting I'm hanging,
Down halls from the tropic of a carcinogens label,
A corner holds,
Where I'm learned in Chinese algebra,
Holdouts and handouts on to seconds,
My baggage,
She's chained to my bunk.

I'm two feet one hand no eyes down the hall,
Heavy and painted yellow bars,
That shake like nerves,
Stammering, she said I am the one mumbling,
Shake like nerves all nervous-like,
Shell shocked somewhere between,
A count to sixty seven, sixty eight.

And a fist full of good nights.

Whistling the tune from fist full of dollars.
I'm leaning here, Leone style.
Look at me when I'm not talking to you!

No, I'm made of children and Simon is still saying,
Prying pied pipers in Hamlin,
Maudlin, maybe,
But I done learned something else now,
I learned those moments like new words,
Versed in one moment,
No future or past or present or nuthin',
Just do me a doorway to dark fill with a light-drinker,
His face is the whole shadow,
Looks like a pillow from what you cannot see,
Sings about ten years when he can't jump from this open door,
Holds back the upside down land in blue lights down that river,
The shoulders wanted to leap out,
But the elbows stopped him,
You better grow him hands to hold,
So we can pole-scratch some names into them,
Let it get all-filthy with squashed yawns and those frayed folds,
On red-gone-pink bank notes.

No soul left on either shoes that aren't shoes,
Call them sandals, not thongs,
Take this sentence slow as to not confuse one accent for slights,
Of hand,
Take a mouse pad and grow him a full story,
One eyebrow raised,
Up into the sleaziest of my moments,
So I can now pluck at the best of these and compare,
The length of our chin hairs,
To times spent with a light-head,
Hanging out a train doorway,
While I'm moving.

We're wrapped in plans,
And parts to play in them,
Staging the world in stages,
If it ain't on the page...
Then it's off the wall,
And I threw the fucker out the window.

Like its yet another block of concrete between these bars,
Another man wrapped in calls for food,
Another scuff mark stitch lost pull it with your teeth till the toes start hurting,
Another infection not healing thumbing a thimbleful of puss on a thrum,
Past another scab sacrificed to hairs on my shin,
Another glance to avoid,
Another light switch that don't work so good,
Another accent that hides words in cadence,
Alien.

Same place I hide the direct answer with the vague nod,
Another village that started with K,
And ended in sweat,
Some half-warm warning of a light threat,
You lose your cool,
And we'll take your life too,
Minute.

All in this vast space called a second,
All sounding like rattles of gauges,
All like pretending I know what you mean,
Like I have an audience in palm trees,
Like you fuckheads found something lost in the lines above,
Like I haven't crossed over,
Lines of control,
Into a vicious caricature of some old joke about existentially bad grammar school kids.
Wankers.

What I wouldn't give for one,
What I wouldn't,
Would that I was right out the window with a string of paper cups,
Or newspaper greased with pools of samosa fat,
Or sleeping across on a timescale that weighs in,
On a conversation that is long over,
Some embarrassed eye rolling you can smile to,
And then take you seat, please,
Sir.

Just shut the fuck up,
I heard the banana tree say,
But he wasn't talking to me though,
It was some message to pass on, to my thirties,
Or to my social betters,
Or to whom this may concern.

That tree wasn't talking to me,
Because I got a plan, like Cylons,
Revolving around doors and continental shifts.
Not stiffs in boxes,
Waiting for their plots,
To be dug.

But that's way under budget and I'm picking this conversation up,
I'm saying nah man,
I could gag her reflexes with plastic cup coffee,
Before she could tie a tourniquet round my eaten away finger tips,
With string from the last teabag.
Just shut the fuck up.
Is what the plant said, to the man with a plan,
And I'll pass that on.

I'm one of the few to break the curfew,
Like fuck, I know what time it is yeah,
And, yeah, I would have called,
But calling out for you,
And your anyone,
Is like cashing in this fat chance,
And I'm over-weighting in, not broke yet,
I've been dropping kilos like they could have just fallen out this door,
For the value of ...a few dollars more.

That is what I'll whistle next,
I'm gonna-be-have-been, up all night,
That's what you get for being born yesterday,
I'm don't want to sleep,
That moody bitch,
And sleep don't want to sleep with me,
Neither.

But I'll cum quietly,
I won't make a scene,
It won't make me either,
But from what the trees say,
This urban decay,
If you don't stare at them overhead wires,
In the middle of nowhere long enough to forget the urine you do smell,
And the sound of people you keep awake thinking,
Incessant,
Then you will never understand,
Why I can't explain,
This new understanding.

One word, first word, one syllable, first syllable,
Ummm...
Sounds like some future that looks like nothing compatible in the old format,
And the thread you will need to sow up that corner torn hole in the side of my arm,
Won't fit through the hole in your needle.

Because I'm a prick.

And you, are a corked-bored,
And we're all just some clumsy motherfuckers when you need these two hands,
To grip and the room won't stop rocking,
Not in that fun way,
Over even,
My way.

More like rocks without rhythm,
Some convulsive-retarded spasms bend-and-unbend to your knees,
Not much better than the way I try dance to reggae,
Three kneecaps, one love,
Hair everywhere, and sweat, and stains,
Keep forgetting to smile in case I was being looked at,
In that music I'm all thumbs, all mouth, all night.

All night, long.
As long,
As that might end up being,
Being, that it is tonight.

But you don't know that,
...unless you're down that hall,
Calling me back,
Watching me for hearing something,
Anything... please, I hear it.

You want to see it?
It's all there, idiot,
Facing out the open door,
Idiot,


Written all over my back.



_____________________________________________________


So I had a little time to kill in Bangalore, and I'm reading Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn", blame him.



-Peace


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All That, Was Left. -15/03/2009

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This is where I was that last morning.

I awoke from dreams of someone else’ Karma-yoga,
Where I had dreamed wave length measurable-times,
In a loving world populated full of fears,
Mostly my own.

Staring up at that same ceiling,
Seen too many times,
But that time now,
Not seeming long enough.

This is where I was,
The community of conscientious objections,
To the objective bounds,
Of my world-view,
Now, it’s a scene of creaking ladders,
Now it’s a row of empty beds,
Now it’s nets and rope-holds.

It’s a stray end,
Poking out of a thatched leaf roof,
Now it feels like a school at sunset,
You’re only here if you’re trespassing or in trouble,
It’s bathing in glows of days gone-bye,
It’s a big fucking space,
Conspicuously full of emptiness,
Now.

This is where I was,
Back at our celebration,
That last day I whistled Palchabels Kanon,
Some irony of mine,
That I’l never let you let go of,
A private joke amongst my publicity,
Because privacy,
Became for us the new currency here,
Expensive,
It was traded, and I got my certificate,
I got my friends,
I had my doubts,
I made my mistakes.
And that cake,
Has been had and all been eaten now.

You know dem… down by the campfire,
A Portuguese beaconing Bob Marley over a beat,
Out into nights out in the forest.
That would transition into too-early mornings,
Where we dug, planted, watered,
Bunded, mulched,
Then breaked.

This is where I got pine-apple for breakfast,
On the even-numbered mornings,
Where,
I got Senegal fast food,
Stuck in my head.

This is where I heard him say,
You fucked it up!
Playing the Dude to my Walter,
I tell him, no problem,
And I can get him a toe by 4 o’clock if he wants,
With or without nail polish.
He walked around in his underwear,
Un-hippy,
Frowning at tomato plants from beneath that wooly beard,
While plotting his Zionist conspiracies,
No doubt.

This is where I took the classes,
That I tried not to sleep through,
Each one,
In the heat of a tropical afternoon,
Biological resources talking edges,
…y’all.

This is where there was a mud hole,
From which I crawled,
Playing crocodile for a while,
When I forgot anyone else was around.
Now that pool of water is all but gone,
Dried up in waiting,
For a rain months away.
From now.

This is where I pulled faces by the dozen,
Dragged them up onto an open-staged-space.
This is where,
I had read, that God, God help you, is dead.

This is where I defended and upheld,
Appalled and let go,
A battlefield tested opinion,
Watertight seaworthy, but sinking,
When my teeth sank into it.
Sharp, but somehow blunt,
Big, but always diminishing with the proof offered.

And that,
Is where I was when I got caught,
Got depressed and regressed,
Got detached, got rejected, dejected,
Where I deflected,
A tangible death,
For at least one more day, yet.

Where my bruises healed real-slow,
Where the infections spread,
Limping their way across the compound,
From one person to another.
This is where I was,
When we fell off and kept riding.

And here,
This is where I was,
Where I was when I told,
How not to miss,
The absolute perfection,
Of each moment,
In time.
Where I was,
When I finally came to see it,
And to believe in it,
Too.

This,
Is where I said so many farewells,
Too many, really,
For my words.
Sinatra sung, as I leave you there,
They call those songs,
Standards.
Beg me, or you, to stay,
One more day, one more hour.
…and I forget, the rest of his words.

You became another face, for me to face,
It got a little harder,
Each time,
The heart grew fuller,
As this place grew emptier,
Each time.

So this last morning awake,
This is the last time I will find-myself,
Standing here ...without looking over my shoulders,
Wondering what they can-and-cannot carry.
More than others,
But less than most,
As I tried to co-operate,
Not compete.

This is where I was.

This is what I’m leaving.
A forest to grow people, as they say.
Sadhana Forest,
Where I found a passion for this world, again,
This is where I was.
Where I helped it out just a little,
And this act helped me out,


A lot.


_____________________________________



-Peace



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