The incomplete works of AWD

a stoner in the world of men
an old man with a heart of bone

an old stone who made it home
a homer in the dome of rome

In a garden of snow I came down and looked around
Everything I found seemed so profound, so perfect

We asked for the crown
And we were sat down
crowned with a frown

We waited forever it seems
Pretty soon the seams were undone
And out from the hole came the kingdom come

I know you'll understand
When it comes around
I know you'll see the light
I know you'll see the darkness

Adjust you to the truth
I tell you through my teeth
and unwind

Let it come to you
Like venus in a shell

The farmer takes a wife
The wife takes the cheese
The cheese takes me

And I take the reason for living
alone, I take the stone

Living unsound is hard not to do
When you're so involved
In the secret of love
In the secret of truth

I've got a whole history
coming for thee

A PIRATE RECONSIDERS

My nephew-in-law, Joseph George,
told my father-in-law, his grandfather,
Joseph George, the famous pirate,
that he wanted to be a pirate too.

Joseph Senior squinted down
at little Joseph and his parrot squawked,,
"Are ye ready to leave yer mudder, son?!"

Little Joseph's eyes popped wide
and he shook his head side to side.

Then he turned and ran out of the room.

The pirate's eye twinkled like a star,
his face as black as the night.

Martha Washington Kisses Kublai Khan

The Parampampoli set afire, a sacred toast,
a new family ritual on this only July 4th, ought eight, denoting
a Chindian family reunion, a French Birthday, salsa,
and life in general, brought by hand from Italy, drunk
on a fiery day, during opposite season:
"religulous, drinking a hot drink on a hot day!"

Spirited away by the clan, the fire in the pan
is shiny and the world is left, mercifully,
unconquered. As if one could, anyway.

One might call it interdependence day.

Call granny up and apologize
(for the insolent revolution)

Now

Is anyone missing?

here's an old poem I just found.
I barely even know what it means.
except I am obviously another of the old dykes.
yeah, right? DeGraff and Rembrandt,
chilling in the red light.

Canon Fodder

I'm living in the icy heat.
It comes down and takes control of me
in the morning when I hear the dog
barking in the neighbor's backyard,
singing a lullaby about the valentine
that made his old master cry.

In the auditorium
there were some kids playing harmonium
for a bunch of old hipster dykes.
I thought it was like toys on strike.

Old Rothko glows like he has got the bends.

In the morning there's an afternoon
that the evening will chill too soon.

There's a predator on TV.
It knows how to slay the enemy.

And it doesn't have nothing to do with art. 

Got to get down
and get the dime
off the floor
that you dropped there.
Hey, is this yours?
Come back and save me
from Woodrow Wilson.
He looks like he's going to freeze
me in the icy heat.
He's going to show me to my seat.
He's going to sew me to my sheet.

Mini New Orleans Jazz-fest in Arvada

Otone brass Band pulled out all stops.

A grandma in heat burned me on the dance floor.

Now the Zydeco Mayors tear up "Bernadette" as I rest and read

the new Nabakov short in the new New Yorker, "Natasha".

New Yorker just pulled it out of their ass,

came out with it up front

in their overly anxious Summer Fiction issue.

So I read, somewhat skeptically,

until about 5 paragraphs in I suddenly get bonged

with Great Literature bell Nabakov rung so well.

Too much for me for the moment, too rich,

had to put it down and write a poem to you instead.

Because I know the bell echoes loud in your head.

Otherwise, intrepidly traveling space and time

like some goddamn cosmonaut at light speed.

Careful as always to try not to get my head

sliced off by the giant fan at the top of the shaft.

No kidding, I used the Wii "Fit"

to float, stupidly staring at a virtual flame,

forcing it still, quieting the wind,

ignoring the footsteps, the moth,

until the candle started to lower

and I was sliding around mid air

in a larger than life projection on the wall,

somewhere between half and there.

The dance floor is full, yet people starve.

The stomach is fat and torture is on the upswing.

Why I learned to shut up and love Denver.

I was dancing to Erykah Badu at the Fillmore, along without about 10,000 sweaty women. Women love Badu and Badu loves women. So the show had that going for it.

I heard a new Mick Jagger song on the way home, he sings "I can still paint the town all the colors of your evening gown". and that's how the people appeared to me last night, from alabaster, to olive, to caramel to richest chocolate to charcoal black. Among them you could see the product of a vibrant city, a real city, something Denver is quickly becoming. Denver isn't in the league of San Francisco and New York City, but the flip side is that everything is easier in Denver... there was plenty of room at the Fillmore to dance.

Erykah, the queen, came out in a pink dress, like an upside down tulip. The dress was elegant and classic, while at the same time modern, even post modern. The dress was sculptural too, every time Erykah struck a pose the dress did. The room was hot and Eryka asked for a T shirt. Someone threw up an x large Ed Hardy T Shirt. Eryka slipped it on and slipped the dress off. Every song thereafter Eryka adjusted the shirt on her until it became a dress hanging off her lovely shoulders. She also tied the T shirt so it hung over her hip, exposing the right half of a pink thong underneath. Oh, and she was wearing black worn stockings too. hot.

There were plenty of drag queens in the audience, which is always fabulous. Eryka is a great modern day diva. The only thing missing, perhaps, was a sparring partner. As Billy Holiday had Lester Young, as Ella had Louis, I wish ?uestlove from The Roots (the opening act) would have been up with her, or better yet, a surprise appearance from Andre 3000.

Thanks to Genevieve for getting me to the show. And thanks to Denver for being just big enough.

My friend Rebecca sent me a link for a contest to win a home in Red Feather, Colorado. You send the essay and $100 and if they get 2000 entries then the winning entry wins the house. Deadline was Saturday, May 25th, so of course I waited to write it until about 3pm on Saturday. But it came out nicely I thought and so I add it here, so that regardless of whether it wins or not, at least somebody might be inspired by it.

Colorado Home Essay: A Dream No Longer Deferred

There was a time when I lived, blissfully, in a rent-controlled flat in the heart of San Francisco. Days were spent with friends in artistic collaboration of every imaginable kind, the pressures of the "real" world still at bay. But life conspires to beat the creativity out of you. And so it happens, slowly, until pretty soon the days of bohemian abandon seem like a distant dream. The strip malls somehow take the place of your imagined utopia.

We are a group of four artists, a musician, a painter, an architect and a poet, who want to reclaim the dream. We want a home where we can meet and create communal art. We have long shared this dream together, but in this economy, especially hard on artists, it is tough just to keep up with our own dental bills, let alone finance a dream of artistic community. Thus, our imaginations caught fire when we saw the opportunity to write an essay for a home.

We are all extreme in our commitment to nature and the environment and have already been fantasizing about all the ways we might turn this house into a power plant of green-kilowatts, surrounded in a circle of windmills and adorned with solar-shingles.

And we dream, too, of projects of pure expression, art for art's sake, which will take us a well-spent lifetime to create, a sculpture garden straight out of our childhood fantasies.

We dream that the ingenuity and creativity we will lovingly pour into this home will ripple out to the entire community of Red Feather, and then further into the more arid regions of Colorado, and, finally, because our dreams are writ large, into the whole wide world.

To wax poetic, we dream of an infusion of creative souls to provide the infinite warmth of a hearth internal, a green song electric sung in the sounds of home. And this home in Red Feather, Colorado, we dream, with all of our combined powers of dreaming, is that poem.