New Poems

     Grazie , John Hartford. I wish the truth could be simple, but I think it's mostly true that I don't want to play in Mark Twang. If I could play like Johnny Gimble, truth would radiate from my fiddle, and maybe I could get the hang of any simple verb in its past participle-- if only I had had the simple sense to stay out of Mark Twang in the first place. Johnny Gimble's fiddle I didn't have, so the band had no use for my wimpy bowing. Well, who was Mark Twang, anyway? Not Johnny Gimble, agreed, but the other Texas Playboys, including the women's-lib Twang member Donna--the simple heart of Johnny Gimble themselves all a-tremble, all four fiddle strings a-goin' twang at once--Johnny Gimble bowed simple!

Breaking My Don't Call a Jam Resolution 1. Grazie, Stan Rogers. Crazy weekend! I kind of let up on my don't call a jam resolution. OK, I got the bends from trying to raise the Mary Ellen Carter from below on my crazy weekend. Kind of like when someone friends you and then gets too close by poking. So why didn't I stick to my don't call a jam resolution? I would need the constitution of a naked ape to endure such a weekend and not be saddened-- a really big fuckup who can never keep to their resolutions. So, I'll succumb to dumb confusion. Nothing adds up. I had a crazy weekend 'cause I didn't stick to my don't call a jam resolution. 2. Grazie, Steve Earle, So, I actually called two jams. How bad were they? I guess I'm just the Belle of Bedlam! You love me at a glance, when I get down on my knees and pray, and call two jams. I'm the flim-flam man, you dare say, but I'd rather be the Belle of Bedlam who doesn't want any Sam with Dick so...

Am I too tired to write? Well, I'm doing my house laps. The jam was a bit of a chaotic fight. I was kind of uptight, myself I guess--in need of a nap. Now I'm too tired to write, but I'll indite my reflection of those jam haps-- how the jam was a bit of a chaotic fight. First off, my fiddling was a fright,, trying to fill the sound gaps-- gaps I barely dare to write about--how really tight we really weren't, though we gave it a hard rap-- guitar, fiddle, harp, drums in a bit of a chaotic fight. It'll probably come out all right in the end, after we're all done shooting craps. Not too proud to write: The jam was a bit of a chaotic fight.

Writing instead of living. Fighting the red writing tape, suiking in my bed. What's living besides driving late at night and writing the exciting traffic down in  living pencil strokes Loving/living. Dying/writing.

    Grazie, John Jacob Niles. So, why don't I want to play my fiddle today, I wonder. I can't play the fiddle as I want to play it, but that's no reason to put my poor fiddle away completely. But I wonder (as I wander without my dear fiddle), what the hell I do want (out under  the sky). Well, just to scrape so my fiddle will screech like the wonder that it is, making me yet fonder of my sweet fiddle- friend with whom I want to jam so! You may wonder!

What if I put my hot fiddle [pencil] away for good? What would remain? I'll still be able to twiddle my arthritic thumbs after I put my hot fiddle [pencil] into its box of wood. I'll be good for a while--then what will remain will be my sweet kiddos-- Jess, Bec and Egret. They'll inherit my fiddles when I've left the saddle for good. They'll remain to yodel that Cattle Call song by Eddy Arnold: Ooo-ooo. Ooo-dee-dee-dee. Ooo dee dee-oh Dee dee.

So, yesterday the one to whom I've been most charmedly attached answered my question about the jammyjams. And I guess the status quo reigns. But I'll just wait for someone to tell me when to get my fiddle out and bring it to the next jammyjam. So, I won't invite the jammyjammers  to come over for another drink of jamminade, myself. But will I let myself be fetched back to the one who makes my heart ache sore? I surely won't have latched the door! I never learn, do I? I don't even know for sure if I'm still the one who calls the jammyjams.

Singing Resistance: Whooooheee! I will forward to others. Heart assistance: Hope be! Singing Resistance: A life sentence for you and me-- us and whom others?-- from state malfeasance. OK now, everybody: Sing Resistance at the Temple entrance! Make the MAGAs see our concern for others! Fair chance Eve's apple tree will bloom Resistance when the year advances from winter to spring. Whooooheee! I will forward to others!

I do walking laps in the house all winter to appease my Fitbit. I don't enter the great outdoors, because it's icy. ICE will stay the winter, it looks like, so when I go out I mostly march in protest events. The future looks dicey enough that I'm afraid we may enter the great beyond before the thaw hits. So, I'll keep doing my house laps for the rest of the winter, hoping I don't fracture my hope bone from falling on these slippery floors. OK, I'll enter and take part in any anti-ICE action you name. I'll bring my signs and sing this resistance song all through the winter. When they open the ICEy gates, don't enter!

I don't feel like doing shit today--don't know what's wrong. I just sit here like a nitwit and sing Songs that aren't worth the shit they're written in. I just sit here with my cat, trying to horn up on shit-- I mean, get some dumb stiff on the phone and tell them I gotta sit down to make my art. It's up to you, Mr. Jones. Sit down and shit!

Will the Yokel know when to stop? Once a yokel, always a yokel, you know. There's always honey in their pot. They did a lot of chop-chop for a while, but they stopped two years ago. Now the Yokel will have to stop all over again--dancing their life-story hip-hop, relating it to you blow by blow. I'm talking about pot now, of course, dragging till they drop. The Yokel's quite the head, you know, and they've got no plans to stop. They're gonna keep up their hot performance till the cock crows and they wake up. OK, they're beating their pot with a big Heffalump  hoof now--what they've got to show. They'll just finish mopping up, and then they'll stop.

I must have revised yesterday's Yokel Song ten times, and it probably still clangs the gong. I knew my logic was all wrong, but I still didn't kill yesterday's Yokel Song, but kept revising it all to hell and gone. There must be pills that would keep the gong from reverberating my skull so loud. Them pills'll make my song sweet as my missed friend's voice crooning along, even though we're singing in a gong- storm. Well, I've strung speaker wire so I can be as shrill with yesterday's song as AI's Chinese thunder god, Lei Gong!

When a future possibility seems sad, you think you might be able to prevent it because it hasn't happened  yet. You look at its red light in the future's rear-view-- that future possibility looking sad, indeed, in a mirror that reflects  everything and anything that hasn't happened  yet--and aren't you damned glad it hasn't! That future possibility seemed sad, eh? Well, what happened instead? Did that sad event happen not (lids over eternity's eyes closed shut)? Practice can't happen now, so I'm sure to miss my friend.