southern hem, northern haw

what i feel when i'm playing guitar is completely cold and crazy, like i don't owe nobody nothing and it's just a test just to see how far i can relax into the cold wave of a note. when everything hits just right (just and right) the note of nobility can go on forever. i never tire of the solitary E and i trust my guitar and i don't care about anything. sometimes i feel like i've broken through and i'm free and i could dig into eternity into eternity riding the wave and realm of the E. sometimes it's useless. here i am struggling and filled with dread—afraid that i'll never squeeze enough graphite from my damaged cranium to inspire or asphyxiate any eyes grazing like hungry cows across the stage or page. inside of me i'm crazy i'm just crazy. inside i must continue. i see her, my stiff muse, jutting around round round round like a broken speeding statue. the colonial year is dead and the greeks too are finished. the face of alexander remains not only solely due to sculpture but through the power and foresight and magnetism of alexander himself. the artist must maintain his swagger. he must he must he must be intoxicated by ritual as well as result. look at me i am laughing. i am laughing. i am lapping cocaine from the hard brown palm of the bouncer. and i trust my guitar. therefore we black out together. therefore i would run through scum. and scum is just ahead, ah we see it, but we just laugh. we're ascending through the hollow mountain. we are peeking. we are laughing. we are kneeling. we are laughing. we are radiating at last. this rebellion is just a gas our gas a gas that we pass. 

 

ya bangin on my heart's wammy bar

the vibrations reverb verb verb through my fingers

i get down on my knees

for you

I am peaches in September, and corn from a roadside stall
I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl

I am a town.

 

Sitting in a bookstore in Dumbo, I see a child walk in.
It smells like ice cream! he exclaims.
I don't smell it, but I'm sure he's right.

I awoke from a dream.
I had been dreaming of Patti and Basquiat.
I awoke with menstrual cramps and hobbled bleary-eyed to the bathroom.
I went in and turned the light on but it blinded me so I shut it back off.
I was still asleep, really, as I felt like I was Patti and Basquiat, or at least belonged to them.
Or perhaps they belonged to me.
And I thought I was giving birth to them.
I thought about Just Kids,
How it was my second mother,
How my natural-born mother birthed me
And how that book birthed me again,
Anew.
For without it I would not exist.
I moaned in pain,
Thinking I was somehow returning the favor.
I thought of Patti hunched over shredding her guitar.
 I thought of how Basquiat died at only 27.
I thought of people with PBR tattoos.
I debated whether or not to take a pain pill.
I turned the light back on so I could see my blood,
Make sure it was the right kind and not the wrong kind.
My eyes cleared at last and I wondered how long I had been in that bathroom.
The sun was up now,
6 AM in Harlem, 
Birds tweeting.
What kind of vision was this?