Helter Shelter

It was Friday the 13th
The 13th of March
The Ides of March
They closed the world for the weekend
Beware the Ides of March
It’s a good day for a coup
Coo-coo! Coo-Coo!
Wake up! It’s time to go to sleep!
If you can’t be unconscious
You can try counting sheep

Forced quarantine and several fears ago
Twenty-four hours a day
Catch-22
Event 201
Agenda 21
Hindsight 2020
COVERT-19
Nineteen Eighty-Four
COVERT-19
The clock strikes thirteen!
It’s a novel virus, made out of words
Emerged from the bats, or so we heard
Just down the road from the biological lab
And the commandments handed down on a branded slab
SPARS-Q-T-2 aka The Wuhan Flu
The end of anything else you wanted to do.

So they closed the world for the weekend
Then the plot went completely around the bend
The entire globe summarily penned
As every momentum was made to suspend
Watching the long arm of the law extend
Caught between tomorrow and yesterday
Three lifetimes wasting and waiting away
Three weeks, three months, three pallets of T.P.
That’s nothing to sneeze at
Gesundheit! Stay six feet at bay!
May as well turn on the telescreen
See what else they can pin on that rat-bastard Goldstein
Is it lysol or bleach or hydroxychloroquine?
You’re with us or the virus
And there’s no in between

Helter Shelter
Operation Stockholm Syndrome
But please, let’s not talk about Sweden
Love your jailer
And lock yourself in your home
Here comes Big Tech Big Brother
Stalking your contacts wherever you roam
Hey, you’ve had a little bit too much to think
We’ve placed a 404 Redirect on all your links
Two plus two? You plus you?
Oh, everyone knows: that’s five!
The best time to leave is before you arrive
Giving up living will keep you alive
Double-plus-un-good in the neighborhood
Do you want to be sick? Or well? Orwell?
We’ve been here before, it’s 1984
No, it’s not really a metaphor
And the Nightly Newspeak rattles us more
Than we ever imagined mattering before

The blitz hit…
It hit…
Like a hammerhead hurricane
Wash your hands, we’ll wash your brains
As the rest of reality hydroplanes
Splashing rain on every parade
What can we do to make you afraid?
The phantom menace you can’t evade
Cue up troupes of dancing nurses
With their tacky Tik-Tok routines
Then pan to harrowing scenes
Of cattle car semi-trailer hearses

Breathless…
Breaking news
Freak out on cue
If it bleeds, it leads!
Breaking news
Since the headline is all anyone ever reads
Breathless…
Break the spirit
Break the mind
Break any hope
That freedom might find
Breathless…
Heads the technocrats win
Tails the rest of us lose
Watch while bodies pile high
Don’t you know the end is nigh?
Breathless…Breaking news!
Everyone you know is gonna die
Eventually, you know…
The infection fatality rate for your own DNA is 100%.
True Story.

The models fled down the runways
Clad in invisible robes
Mightier than any monument, but meek unto the microbe
Lies fly and ten times circle the globe
While the truth is still waiting in line
A bio-tech cyber-war with a screenwriter’s design
Filling the air with pathological predictions
And imposing a set of draconian restrictions
Tugging at our nightmares with cataclysmic visions
This psy-op is an absolute masterpiece
They dropped the Apocalypse like a movie release
Bombing the flatlands with inscrutable charts
At which doctor doomsayers launched their darts
No one knows what anyone knew
Confusion streaming from the CDC and the WHO
A million here and a billion there
Soon the profits will be everywhere!
Someone unlocked Pandora’s shabby old box
Guarding the henhouse like a ravenous fox

All bow down before the Saints of Scientism:
Gathered before the dirty windows of the great Pearly Gates
St. Fauci, St. Birx, St. Ferguson, St. Brilliant
Making mayhem of molehill mountain ranges
Blind your eyes as the scenery changes
Immunity? That’s a conspiracy theory…
Freedom? That’s selfish! Back to seclusion!
Where’s your terror? Ivermectin? Unproven!
Hold still for your miracle GMO Frankenjections!
And don’t you dare ask any awkward questions!
How do we know?
Cause So-and-So Said So…
Can I get an Amen and say it again?
There’s a tent revival at the Church of Big Pharma
Trust the Science and parrot the dogma
Did you say “the Science”?
I think it’s pronounced, “compliance.”

Breathless…
Breaking news
They’re covering up the clues
PCR cycles and T-cell truths
Censoring any sort of alternative views
Any word of a cure or an option to choose
Tonight’s gaslight is brought to you courtesy of our sponsors
Gangs of well-funded pharmaceutical mobsters
People are breathless…
The projections are breathless
The prescription is madness
The restrictions are endless
Folks, we don’t know what we’re dealing with here
But trust the experts and put your faith in fear
Simon says stop whatever you’re doing
Your dreams are no longer worth pursuing
Muzzle up and lock it down
Tremble before the cold with a crown
Cluck like a chicken and better beware
Nothing’s more lethal than ordinary air
Except your non-compliant neighbor over there
You ain’t going anywhere
There isn’t even any there there…

Yes, we must, we must,
We must invest our trust
In mighty science, blasting cities to dust
Look to the past and what do we see?
Polonium in the pocket of Marie Curie
Radiant with the glory of chemistry
From DDT and AZT
To filling our brains with mercury
Science sold out to technology
There’s no consensus only choreography
Doctoring the data is just matter of degree
How do you think you get a Phd?
They think they know, but they know not how to think
Dogma is a wine you don’t sniff when you drink
Step in the punch line, that Kool-aid is fine
Never mind those bodies cluttering the shrine

Follow the science, and science follows the money
Toward war and global hegemony
It’s a new twist on a very old story
Make belief in a lie mandatory
What’s really novel is the ammunition
They made the virus into a religion
Communion with biotech innovation
And came with their brand for the whole population
Programming disguised as mass vaccination
And we all want to breathe again
Who doesn’t want to breathe?
Free or otherwise?

The Mother of All Problems

Fellow bell-wetherers,
Former fetuses, and nocturnal emissions:
I tell you, there’s a crime currently in commission!
Oh, yes! We’ve been robbed!
Robbed of something that doesn’t exist
Conspicuous in its absence
Yet universally missed
I’m talking about the subjunctive tense
The world as it would be
If the shot-callers and their minions
Gave half a rat’s ass about you and me

Wood, yeah, let’s talk about wood:
Let’s cut to the clear and plunder
With how much wood
Would the world be good
If we wouldn’t have pulped the lumber
To print the Globe and Times
Into wastelands of woodless wonder?
And would we wonder nevertheless
How in the world we ever got into this mess?

Pull yourself up by your bootstrap molasses
Climb the K2 of class mobility
If your numbers didn’t happen to land
When you played the birthday lottery
Well, it’s easier to scale a mountain
Than to pay-scale out of poverty
When all you have to sell is sand
When the Man hands you lemons
And then raids your lemonade stand

We’re being squeezed
Like blood from a turnpike
We’re being squeezed
Like milk from an overwrought udder
We’re being squeezed
Through bursting birth canals
We’re being squeezed
Like an extra commercial on the comedy channel
We’re being squeezed for our attention
Consuming our years and hours
Squeezed for forced allegiance
To the pyramids of power

So by the hearsay vested in me
I declare a state of heresy
I call for a status coup!
Let’s ask the nuclear questions
And set off the hydrogen bomb in the room
Like, did anyone ask if you wanted to be?
To be? To be born in this war-torn reality
Does anyone even think to consult
The preconceived notions
Swimming around in Shrödinger’s ocean?

Hey there, little embryo,
Are you ready to go?
Are you ready to be pedigreed?
To be summoned forth and graded
On your origins instead of your deeds
Are you ready to be delivered
Your brain on a platter
So that zombie faiths can feed?
You’ll probably be assigned
A costume and nominal creed
But if you pray hard enough,
You could be graced with an atheist family
Here’s a name and a number
That’s your identity
So your slack can be tracked
By the appropriating authorities

Be fruit flies and multi-ply
Cause diapers aren’t cheap
And the private jets won’t fly
Without a servant class to keep
We know that there’s too many
But don’t lose any sleep
We’ll need you in the office early
To teach the robots how to sweep

That’s one small footprint for a person
But a massive crater for eight billion
Anyone have some solutions
For this sort of unbalanced equation?
It’s the mother of all problems
An ever-expanding population
Popping out fresh priorities
At the rate of imagination
Fires and floods swallow our cities
Temperatures rise ever faster
Yet we’re only starting to face the reality
That we’re the actual natural disaster

R.S.V.P, 23 & me
Sign up for your pre-fab destiny
Get set with a shiny Ivy League degree
Or else stuck working out a ten-year plea
That’s all more or less foreordained
If we’ll be speaking statistically
Build your castles of silicon sand
Your dreams are in high demand
In the land of lost opportunity

There comes a time when the fabrication
Of the means of production of the next generation
Unravels in the racks of sweatshop looms
Do you smell that elephant lurking in the room?
Looking for a heartbeat and forgetting the heart
Left in abandoned shopping carts
Claiming eminent domain on human terrain
Mining the irony flowing through our veins
Baby chasing bathwater right down the drain

Fate is just another word for nothing left to choose
Pick it! Pick it!
We’ve got ourselves a hostage situation
Pick it! Pick it!
And there’s no womb for negotiation
Pick it! Pick it!
Until we can name some terms and conditions
Those hand-me-down expectations
Can take an extended vacation

We’re raising no buns in this oven
Selling the next dammed generation
Up the river and down the pike
For I’d better be more than a revolving door
Churning out another set of standard deviations
These chromosomes shall undergo no distillations
My mitochondria have gone on labor strike
This uterus will issue no birth certificates
Instead of replicating life, I choose to live it
As a sparkling marvelous art exhibit
Pick it! Pick it! Pick it! Pick it!
You can’t fire me, oh, you can’t fire me, I quit!
Pick it! Pick it!

Hidden Track

Britches & Hoes Script

Rorschach Mumble

Yes, Good Morning. What’s that? What’re we mourning this time? Why, the afternoon, gone so soon. Very well, thank you and good night.

What? Maybe you’re not such a good knight, after all. Your chivalry matches my socks. I’m Amana Mission, enigmas wrapped in a riddle, on a mission to incite insight…and subvert the prevailing paradigm.

Who is she talking to? Hey, there’s a bunch of people out there, staring at us! Are we supposed to strip now? No, I think we’re going to present a doctoral dissertation. Wrong, we’re running for office. Empress of the Unimpressed!

Could y’all stifle? We’re here to deliver a sermon on the mons veneris. Excuse me, I’m sorry, some of my personalities are completely clueless.

Can we begin with a moment of silence for all the jokes that flatlined on the way to this microphone? Thank you.

DNA=STD

All right! Now, before we get too intimate, I need to level with you. So I went to the clinic, and the test came back positive. Positive means good, right?

Well, the test came back positive-for DNA. Not everyone realizes DNA is an STD. But that’s exactly what’s going on. Deep thoughts.

Hi, I’m the snarky aspiring feminist comic who enjoys awkward innuendos about gynecology. If it “taint” awkward, I’m not involved.

EXPLORING THE CLITORIS

Did I tell you that I discovered the clitoris? Or was it Atlantis that I discovered?

I know, everyone discovered the clitoris, and only most of them are wrong. That elusive love button, the jolly rancher, the epicenter of the earthquake. She waxes and wanes under many names, but few as clinically ghastly as the word “clitoris”.

It’s unclear exactly who deserves the blame for textbooks not calling it the Sweetness of Venus or the Isle of Innana, but I imagine it was someone who didn’t have one.

COLUMBO

A number of men have claimed to discover the clitoris, one such being Italian anatomist Realdo Colombo. No, not that Columbo; this one was a detective of uncharted orgasms, in perpetual search of the “smoking trigger”.

What’s that? I can’t hear you, I’ve got a microphone in my ear. No, and not that one either. You’re thinking of Columbus, who discovered that India is right next to Jamaica.

Well, Christopher Columbus may or may not have discovered the clitoris at some point-I harbor some serious doubts, if you catch my drift-but if he had, he surely would have called it the “uterus”.

AMANA MANIAC

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way. Some people don’t know that Amana is short for “a monomaniac”. Except when it’s short for “a monotone”, “a moniker”, “a monosyllable”, or “a monologue”. Not that the monologues are ever short. But I digress.

Anyway, I like to consider myself a moderately considerate narcissist, so I prefer to practice my nasal-gazing in public. The nose knows! I’m the very model of the modern monomaniac.

CAPTIVATING

Yes, I’m fixated on your grin. Go on. Grin all you want! Ah, Captivating.

Yes, a captive audience! Okay, bar the door! No one leaves until the rest of my squadron is released from the Smithsonian!

Hmm. Where were we? Oh yes. Captivating, all of you. Charmed, we’re sure.

Speaking of captivating… well, we don’t really like to call it “possession”, because demons are so unfairly demonized.

It might be fair, though, to say that we’re all playing host to a veritable rolodex of contentious and contradictory personae, an oddball assortment of stray reaction formations and unemployed social roles.

Pinning down my identity can be a little like playing whack-a-mole without a mallet. Just when I get a fix on who I might be at any given moment, reality goes AWOL and I’m someone else again. You never know who might “pop” up. Here comes everybody!

WHO WAS BORN?

Okay, how many of you were born? Most of you, I see. Any pod-babies out there? Androids? Hatched in a feather-lined nest?

All right, if you were born, how many of you remember it? Really? What was the name of the stork who delivered you?

KEGEL EXCERCISES

So, when Kegel discovered the clitoris; I’m mean, the antithesis-wait, no that’s Hegel-well, you see what I mean. Everyone’s so quick to grab credit for this or that discovery, but no one wants ownership of the ignorance which proceeded it.

You know what else gets my tubes in a knot? Fallopian tubes. Did Fallopio even have a pair of these tubes? No, I don’t believe so.

So why does he get credit for inventing them? Or discovering them, the way Columbus “discovered” the reach-around. These mapmakers are missing the iceberg for the tip!

RORSCHACH MUMBLE

Just the tip? That’s what Dr. Freeman said when he stuck the icepick in my eye!

Hi, I’m the somewhat psychotic surrealist mime who mumbles about Rorschach.

I’m sorry, did you say Rorschach Mumble? No? I must be thinking out loud again. I hope you didn’t hear what I was thinking about this jerk here.

What’s a Rorschach Mumble, you ask? Of course you do. A Rorschach Mumble is an auditory inkblot, an under-heard set of words that reflect preconceptions, often revealing underlying psychosis. Psycho, sis? Oh? Psycho? Who you calling psycho, bro?

No, I don’t care to disclose my diagnosis. It’s protected by attorney-client privilege. As my attorney, I advise myself to plead inanity.

Oh, hell, why deny it, if the straightjacket fits? So, stop me if you’ve hallucinated this one before. The basket case goes to the shrink and says, doc, I’m out of patience. Shrink says, so am I, your hour’s up.

Stop laughing at me! Yeah, I’m the oppositional defiant one. No, I’m not!

SQUARE FROM THE RIGHT ANGLE

Oh my Heavens! Hello, is my personality on straight? Yes, I’m the square one. The status quotidian ordinaire. I’m uptight and really insecure about it.

I know, my insecurities are annoying. And rude. I don’t mean to be such a bitch, it’s just my personality. Besides, I’m strung out on laxatives.

Anyway, I happen to be a professional spontaneity planner. However, you’ll have to book your appointment a year in advance. Not that there’s so much demand, mind you, but I like to be thoroughly prepared for unexpected success.

!0:00

Wait for it. Yeah, wait for it. Go on. I’ve got all day. I’m the passive-aggressive tidal wave. The reluctant Tsunami. No, that’s not a new personality; I’m just brainstorming.

DECENTRALIZED INTELLIGENCE

Lately I’ve been doing temp work for the Decentralized Intelligence Agency. They haven’t assigned me yet, but I’m thinking of free-lancing. Free-lance intelligence, I think that’s a thing.

I’m currently available as a quintuple (counts on fingers) no, sextuple agent in several demilitarized dimensions across the conceptual realm. I’m the scatterbrained alien spy, and…oops! There goes my cover. (sheds shawl).

PAYING ATTENTION

Oh, well, none of you were paying attention anyhow, right? (points) You weren’t. Neither were you. Were you?

Nothing to see here. Please ignore me. I’m the invisible one. What do you mean, you can see me? That’s just an illusion. Besides, I’m only invisible when no one’s looking. (Shrinks)

What’s the price of attention, anyway? How much does it actually cost? Will I be receiving an itemized bill at some point for all the lavish attention I’ve showered on frivolities? Can I pay with Kanye coins? Will it ruin my credit rating? Ha. Ha. Credit. Me. Rating.

RUBBER CHICKEN RELIEF

I’ve got to give myself credit, though. I’ve been tirelessly campaigning to raise awareness and shine a light on the plight of the endangered rubber chicken. Yes, tirelessly, pounding pavement without a single tire, because using tires would be utterly hypocritical, under the circumstances. My rims are beat all to hell.

Anyhow, in case you didn’t know, rubber chickens are now featured on the endangered species list. Apparently the rubber interferes with their procreation, and comic poachers are an on-going threat. If we don’t take action now, there will be no rubber chickens left alive on Earth.

So, please, please donate to the Rubber Chicken Relief Fund. We accept filthy lucre and post-dated reality checks. Your contribution will help supply turkey basters to infertile rubber chickens located in all four corners of the globe. And only the corners. No where else, actually.

So take action now and donate to the Rubber Chicken Relief Fund. This has been a Pubic Cervix Announcement. Thank you, and may the forceps be with you.

Transorbital

There’s a hole in my pocket where I keep my lost marbles
A delicate seesaw where reality wobbles
In a garbled sea of serenading angels
Strapped to a table and surrounded by spies
I think these demons are getting wise
Maybe I just need a little more exorcise

First you’ll be baptized with electric goo
Seventy hertz of holy spirit bolting through you
And then the crucifix comes into view
I’m sorry, did you say, “auditory hallucinations”
Well, I’ve been pursuing a more credible delusion
And they’ve got a new psychosurgical solution

I need a frontal lobotomy
Like I need a hole in my head
Oh, dear Dr. Freeman won’t you set me free
To achieve transorbital velocity
And nobody needs to worry about me
Oh, no, not anymore
Hell, who knows what that part of the brain
Is even meant to be for
And I must be the one who’s insane
Since I’m on this side of that door
Let’s get transorbital
Let’s get transorbital…

Well nothing makes me more annoyed
Then when they get to calling me “paranoid”
With all the assassins I’m tryin to avoid
They’re stealing pep from my step and I cry for hours
And I fear I’ll fry if I hop in that shower
For the KGB has jury-rigged the power

My brother says this but my mother says that
And the dog and cat say I just need another zap
The UFO’s tune in through my dental caps
It’s a bad mental rap can’t you see
Cause they’ve got nuts crazier than me
Running the asylum in Washington, D.C.

Oh, yeah baby, it’s the talk of the town,
Dr. Freeman he can calm you right down
That transoribital lobotomy will bring you around
You’ll forget all about being sick
He’ll pull off a slick little magic trick
Chip the shell from the nuts with a chisel pick

I need a frontal lobotomy
Like I need a hole in my head
Oh, dear Dr. Freeman won’t you set me free
To achieve transorbital velocity
And nobody needs to worry about me
Oh, no, not anymore
Hell, who knows what that part of the brain
Is even meant to be for
And I must be the one who’s insane
Since I’m on this side of that door
Let’s get transorbital
Let’s get transorbital…

The Question That Killed Cassady

Codified bridge from beat to hippie
A rudderless vessel of psychedelic discovery
Unclean machine of perpetual perversity
Transiting between altered states and cities
Fueled by sweaty adrenaline
And wanderlusty audacity
Skin blistering with palpitating authenticity
Oozing sexuality and howling holy obscenities
Under an umbrella of numinous luminosity

Read more: The Question That Killed Cassady

Codified bridge from beat to hippie
A rudderless vessel of psychedelic discovery
Unclean machine of perpetual perversity
Transiting between altered states and cities
Fueled by sweaty adrenaline
And wanderlusty audacity
Skin blistering with palpitating authenticity
Oozing sexuality and howling holy obscenities
Under an umbrella of numinous luminosity

Read more: The Question That Killed Cassady

Gonzo Bonkers

Hollywood’s gone awful green these days
If you listen to all the stars
Well, they sure are busy recycling scripts
While blowing up all those cars

Read more: Gonzo Bonkers

Gyroscape

Once upon a time there was no time
Splitting infinity down the middle
All and nothing intertwined
Around no body and never mind
Riding the impossible riddle
Trillions of wills, static and still
Until eternity started to spill
Concrescing into spiral shapes
And so Chaos ensued
With endless Orders to fill
All aboard the Gyroscape
It’s the ultimate thrill

First there was a moment of silence
All existence crystal and frozen
The future Universe condensed
Into a span the size of a notion
Then the spell of primordial suspense
With a Thunderword was broken
Splintered into horizon events
The titans of time were awoken
Flashpoint dance of radial radiance
Launching pyrotechnic explosions

Mandalas in every direction
A machine of perpetual motion
Tick-tocking the clock of the moon
And guiding the tides of the ocean
Pirouetting energies
On a galactic tilt-a-whirl
Oh, the world is your oyster
Just don’t swallow the pearl
Yes the world is your oyster
Don’t you swallow the pearl

Particles and planets
Dance in a ring
Swung through space
On an invisible string
Everything is twirling
It’s the music of the spheres
Wheels within wheels
Gears turning gears
The carousels of our days
The Orbitrons of our years
All ways in motion
Yet never anywhere but here

Behold the Cosmic Engine
Never knowing where to begin
The attractions are magnetic
But eventually entropy always wins
Well, you might think it’s magic
This choreography of quarks
Tripping the light fantastic
On streams of unseen sparks

Witness the clockwork of seasons
Cascading staircase spirals
The pitter-pattern of oscillation
The rise and fall of every cycle
Darkness fades when flames appear
Stars burn out then shift career
Every morning last night’s swirling world taken
As a dreamer awakens stirred and shaken
Reborn to remind that nothing’s mistaken

For every revolution
Is bursting with change
In constant rotation
Awaiting the strange
Holograms engaged
In currency exchange
Recursive reiterations
Of space chasing duration
Wild rock and roll gyration
It’s the ride of our lives
Toward a destination
Which never seems to arrive

Particles and planets
Dance in a ring
Swung through space
On an invisible string
Everything is twirling
It’s the music of the spheres
Wheels within wheels
Gears turning gears
The carousels of our days
The Orbitrons of our years
All ways in motion
Yet never anywhere but here

Particles and planets
Dance in a ring
Swung through space
On an invisible string
Everything is twirling
Wheels within wheels
The carousels of our days
Within gears turning gears
The Orbitrons of our years
Turning wheels within wheels
Within wheels turning gears
The carousels of our days
The Orbitrons of our years
All ways in motion
Yet never anywhere but here

Yippie!

Air thick with talk of sex peace and race
Paradigms shifting all over the place
Boat rocking from alienation and rage
A paradoxical patriot leapt to the stage

Abbie and his band of merry yanksters
On a mission to mock imperialist gangsters
They were Marxists of the Groucho school
And guerrilla theater was their radical tool

The squares called their ideas pie in the sky
So they threw their pies in politician’s eyes
Stuffed shirts never seemed to get the joke
Hell, chuck ‘em if they can’t shake a yoke!

Yippie!

The great unwashed were called to Washington
To exorcise the demons from the Pentagon
Couldn’t get the brass properly high
But angel heads arrived to give it a try

Valiantly defying the law of gravity
Allergic to any kind of authority
Both america’s orphan and his father
Stand-up subversive and professional bother

Yippie!

In Grant Park the insubordinate freaks
Were granted whacks on either cheek
A fiasco made of Daley’s big show
The Democratic Convention in Chicago

It was Hoffman versus Hoffman
In the trial of a generation
Eight defendants who’d sent the invitation
Inciting the imagination of a war-torn nation

Abbie knew courtrooms had three rings
So delighted in jerking the judge’s strings
Charged with conspiring to get his skull cracked
They brought elephants into the room
And donkeys into the act

Yippie!

Well, he took the heat for playing in the snow
But he was really a victim of Cointelpro
Once the vanguard of the revolution of fun
Abbie went on the run and left a fatherless son

Even in exile he fought the good fight
Most famous fugitives stay out of sight
But Abbie couldn’t stay out of the game
Waging environmental battles under another name

Well, they don’t make ’em like Abbie anymore
The Man learned a lot from the Vietnam war
First, stay away from the lottery draft
Or else the radicals will have the last laugh

Yippie!

Existential Roulette

Far as I can tell…(x3)

Well, far as I can tell the world’s all wet
And we’re paddling without an oar
Taking a whirl at Existential Roulette
As if life were anything more

Jettisoned in unison
From a loaded silent cannon
Spilling by the billion
Into boundless sightless oceans

We’ve left suspended animation
Propelled by lust and expectation
Yes, it’s a race toward inhalation
To take the face of the next iteration

Cause far as I can tell the world’s all wet
And we’re paddling without an oar
Taking a whirl at Existential Roulette
As if life were anything more

So shake a tail, you’ve just one shot to spend
Once you pass the delta of the vas deferens
Make it first to the glow at the tunnel’s end
Beating billions of brothers but not one friend

And so we bust forth at bullet pace!
Night-sea swimmers flailing with grace
Only one winner can ever take this race
There’s no future awarded for second place

The Egg? The Egg? Does She even exist?
Or does this emptiness forever extend
Making mirages in the mist?
Oh, you’ll hear tall tales told of solid shores
But I’ve never met anyone yet
Who can say they’ve been there before

The Egg? The Egg? Oh, how could you doubt?!
What do you suppose this game’s all about?
Why, She’s the prime mover of the great rotation!
She’s the source of all motivation
And nothing matters but that standing ovation

Far as I can tell….

Oh, I bet I’ll be born in plenty of debt
Deep in a hole with the ante unmet
But hell, that has never stopped me yet
From risking nothing at all
When the croupier calls
Spinning the wheel of Existential Roulette

For, so far as I can tell the world’s all wet
And I’m paddling without an oar
Taking a whirl at Existential Roulette
As if life were anything more
As if life were anything more
As if life were anything more

New Word Jazz

2-19
Legend’s End
Wax and Wings
High John
Xochipilli’s Mask
Judge’s Daughter
I Just Work Here
Tributary
Smuggling Smoke
Pine Cone Ridge
Dimension Not Available
Faux Mirage
Key of Now
Partner Ship
Whether Vain
On A Phrase
Jack and The Green Stalk

2/25

Resonance Renaissance
Lattice of Errors
Spot of Mandelbrot
Good Friday
Mess of Lentils
Thump-Revised

5-9
**Global Edit**

5-17 Edits

Strange Loops
Shamboozled
Crossing The Rubicon
Pine Cone Ridge

6/2
Saturn’s Return
Strange Loops
Shamboozled
Jack & The Green Stalk
Pine Cone Ridge
Down To Delphi
Crossing Rubicon
Ouroboros
Kaleidoscope Catalyst
I Just Work Here
Alembic
Renaissance

Mess of Lentils

It was the night that someday came
The moon blossomed and I did the same
Miracles in a circle bearing my name
Purple sage said go now stake your claim
And never forsake it for wealth or fame

Called forth the birth-write on my knees
A floating bright light beckoning me
Rippling in an unseen breeze
A whisper urging me to seize
The thread of the Dead with delicate ease

That snag’s quite a drag
But the balloon hasn’t popped
We weren’t brought this way just to get stopped
We didn’t fly the night sky only to be dropped
Perched on a precipice, one and all
And we didn’t come this far
Only to fall

Follow that voice and be well led
If you dare tread raging riverbeds
Let resonant words be heard and said
But don’t you trade it for an inflated head
A red mess of lentils or thin slice of bread

Heirloom treasure one can’t keep
Conferring pleasure doesn’t come cheap
You’d better be ready to dig real deep
Fail and flail and wail and weep
Measure by measure on a groundless leap

The waking dream came and went
Throughout the winters of discontent
Twisted forks mentally bent
Mixed messages hastily sent
And who knew what any of it meant

That snag’s quite a drag
But the balloon hasn’t popped
We weren’t brought this way just to get stopped
We didn’t fly the night sky only to be dropped
Perched on a precipice, one and all
And we didn’t come this far
Only to fall

Good Friday

It was a very Good Friday
At Harvard for a select few
Where psychology met theology
Over a new psychedelic brew

They made a strange congregation
A most unlikely Trinity
Scientists hosting religion
To investigate Divinity

Indeed, a very psilly idea
Brilliant at the same time
Under the banner of academia
Was hatched the perfect crime

Is this the newest Testament?
A heaven-sent experiment
Oh, can we scan the mystic?
Make the numinous self-evident
By the light of sight fantastic
Test the edge of reverence
Against a mind-bending experience
With the full blessing of the State
They ate the apple in innocence
The miracle isn’t that they saw God
It’s that they got away with it

Come ye faithful seekers
This little pill will be your guide
We’ll study under Knowledge Tree
And check out the view inside

Meet you at Marsh Chapel
We’ll see how deep it goes
Toss the golden apple
Between the wooden rows

The serpent bids you bite
Just a slice of forbidden fruit
Sample some shamanic sight
Before you don your preacher’s suit

Is this the newest Testament?
A heaven-sent experiment
Oh, can we scan the mystic?
Make the numinous self-evident
By the light of sight fantastic
Test the edge of reverence
Against a mind-bending experience
With the full blessing of the State
They ate the apple in innocence
The miracle isn’t that they saw God
It’s that they got away with it

After we’ve been wined and dined
Let us pray in Science’s name
We’ll learn what kind of faith we find
Taking communion of a different kind

Did the bush burn before your eyes
That crazy little thing called god
Can it ever be quantified
Sized up and demystified?

So pray tell, did it feel more real?
Any visions you’d care to reveal?
Did the medicine enhance your zeal?
Or did doubt find your mind unsealed?

Is this the newest Testament?
A heaven-sent experiment
Oh, can we scan the mystic?
Make the numinous self-evident
By the light of sight fantastic
Test the edge of reverence
Against a mind-bending experience
With the full blessing of the State
They ate the apple in innocence
The miracle isn’t that they saw God
It’s that they got away with it

Spot of Mandelbrot

What means the B?
What means the B?
What do you mean, what means the B?
Well, what means the B?
In Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Ben What? Benot B. Why?
Benoit B Who?
Benoit Be Where?

Benoit B Mandelbrot
But what’s with this B?
For what does it stand?
This lonely interstitial initial?
This mysterious Be
Thrown unceremoniously in the middle
Why must it be Benoit BE Mandlebrot?
Wherefore and whyfore this misbegotten “B”?

Well, maybe this Be is much more than a symbol
Maybe the Be unblocks the swirling sea
And unlocks the key to Julia’s riddle
Maybe the B stands for born
Born born of a shattered mirror
Worn along the battered shore
Of every emanating river
Borders torn from rough contours
Wherever hereafter encounters before
Where each inch contains a mile more
And a Universe unfurls behind every door

Infinity bound up in her embrace
Interred in recursive iterations
Entangled time overgrowing space
From a seed of springtime equations
Let the fractal retrace
Julia’s fractured face
In all her glorious deviations
Just a spot of Mandelbrot
The elf in self
The elf in self
The elf in self
Nature never forgot

Maybe the Be stands for branching
As water and blood course and recurse
Maybe the Be is the be be beginning
Whichever narrator told it first
Maybe the Be is for burgeoning
From the genesis of domino events
Or perhaps the B is merely for beckoning
Your mind toward whatever it meant
Maybe the Be stands for flickering Between
The impossible and the merely unseen
Maybe the Be is for Becoming
One with singularity’s sheen

Mer
Myrrh
Murmuring
Mer murmuring more
Murmuring more meaning
Recursion recurs
Mer murmuring more
More mortal morphemes morphing
Morphemes morphing meaning
More less less more more less
More meaning meaning less
Recursion recurs

More tales
More tall tales
More mortal tales
More immortal tails
Recursion recurs
Tales made by Mer mer mer
Missed misted mysteries
More morphing memories
Murmuring Murmuring
Murmuring

Recursion recurs

Mur mur murmur
Murmuring murmuring
Morphing morphing morphing
More less less more more less
Meaning meaning meaning
Less more more less less
Morphing morphemes
More murky memories
Murmuring murmuring
Murmur mur mur
Recursion recurs
Mer murmurs
Recursion Recurs

Infinity bound up in her embrace
Interred in recursive iterations
Entangled time overgrowing space
From a seed of springtime equations
Let the fractal retrace
Julia’s fractured face
In all her glorious deviations
Just a spot of Mandelbrot
The elf in self
The elf in self
The elf in self
Nature never forgot

Went out tilting at windmills
Across groundless molehills
Hangin’ on for dear life
To the edge of my skull

Tried to hitch a ride
To some kind of wild spectacle
Something absolutely atypical
And yet cosmically universal

Then my thumb went numb
And my tongue went dumb
Waiting for some answer to come
So I followed a trail of diamond crumbs
Straight to the edge of Elysium

Well, the paradox of paradise
Is that Heaven’s just a narrow slice
Without the underworld’s fire
The whole globe would be on ice

Every star becomes a dot
Each story told a mere subplot
Just a spot of Mandelbrot
Flashing past in candid shots
Of scenes time long ago forgot
Blinking lonely nodes
Linking to the motherlode
Wading in the flow
 just waiting to go
Wading in the flow
 just waiting to go

I entered a 3-D flowchart
Elegant with gold-inlaid art
Where you end up depends
On where you start
For destiny has got
A lot of moving parts

Then a siren rang a bell
She said I know but will not tell
So what if we spin here
For a spell
Upon this unhinged carousel
And reflect our paths
In parallel
Reflect our paths
In parallel

For I am Julia Mandelbrot
And I am the model-maker
Replicating all of Nature
Far too expansive to capture
Rendering the big picture
Delivering it in miniature

Every star becomes a dot
Each story told a mere subplot
Just a spot of Mandelbrot
Flashing past in candid shots
Of scenes time long ago forgot
Blinking lonely nodes
Linking to the motherlode
Wading in the flow
 just waiting to go
Wading in the flow
 just waiting to go

Well, models are exhibitionist
Curving contours lightly kissed
Treating every eye to a tryst
Lingering on each little twist
Exposing more than I’d care to exist

Drawing the Universe to scale
Tracing snakes swallowing their tails
Galaxies poured into Grails
Recreating creation’s trail
Down to the finest and last detail

We spun all the dials for a while
And turned that inch into many long miles
Still I remained an empty exile
Chasing the impossible endless smile

Then I drew a bridge to forever
Made of maybes and what-ifs
And measured howevers
Whiled away ages in the endeavor
She patted and tapped my head and said
Well, that design is very clever
But you’re gonna need a bigger lever
Yeah, you’re gonna need a bigger lever

Every star becomes a dot
Each story told a mere subplot
Just a spot of Mandelbrot
Flashing past in candid shots
Of scenes time long ago forgot
Blinking lonely nodes
Linking to the motherlode
Wading in the flow
 just waiting to go
Wading in the flow
 just waiting to go

Renaissance of Nonchalance

Well, we’re painters with sound
Mechanics of broken hearts
Conductors of cut-up clowns
Fluent in six tongues of art

Born ready for a Renaissance
In the age of science fiction
In a world of shallow bon vivantes
Where the best lack all conviction

They say it’s written in the Lord’s Will
That the meek shall inherit the Earth
Well, let’s get that line to probate court
Before another bomb gives birth

Look, I’ve got eyes on the back of my back
Always on point to take up the slack
Jack of all knacks
A patchwork of hacks
On the wrong track
Slipping through all the right cracks

Our leaders were mostly liars
So we sought out the self-evident
Sparking fires in live wires
Chasing drive-by enlightenment

Knee-deep in ruins tryin’ to trace
Eroded signposts left behind
Puzzle pieces into place
Guessing our best and reckoning blind

That golden balance is bound to be found
Tomorrow always comes around
It worked back then it’ll work again
If the principle is sound

We’re the very modular
Modern major generalists
Bringing into transitory being
Whatever wills itself to exist
Adaptability, that’s our specialty
For the flexible persists
Tossed on waves of creativity
No fortress can resist

Oh we’ve got eyes on the back of our backs
Always on point to take up the slack
Jack of all knacks
A patchwork of hacks
On the wrong track
Slipping through all the right cracks

So let’s grab a sip of novel tea
And swing from the limbs of RealiTree
For shift happens
When we’re all fluxed up
So bring out your brilliance
And let’s raise our cups
To the electro-plated, plenty jaded
Renaissance of Nonchalance

It’s magically scientific!
Well, you might say it’s more realistic
To disdainfully remain pessimistic
But it’s better to be happy than right, right?
And there’s a riot of insight to incite
Even when salvation is far out of sight
Violins playing while Rome burns
Who knows how to turn the stern
Of this panic-wracked Titanic
Before melting icebergs converge?

In an age of mass confusion
Setting the stage for revolution
Bit by bit and byte by byte
Lighting up the edge of evolution
Dancing around every bonfire
The Titan’s scorching torch ignites
Under a crumbling Empire
Missing the trees for the Farenheit

Imagineering through intuition
Teasing the future into fruition
On plateaus of punmanteaus
Lining winding cascading tableaus
Of shooting stars on a mission
Rise up as visionaries always arose
It’s half past time your talent shows!

Look, I’ve got eyes on the back of my back
Always on point to take up the slack
Jack of all knacks
A patchwork of hacks
On the wrong track
Slipping through all the right cracks

Jack and the Green Stalk

‘Twas the week before harvest and all through the hills
They were watching grass grow and piling on bills
As water tanks emptied and the sky threatened to spill
The local farmers left crews to guard the fields
So they could gather and brag about their soon-to-be yields

Jack Stash jingled up
With his chestful of bling
Coming on like some kind of cannabis king
Expecting you to kiss his gold-leaf ring
But just as the crowd would drift away
He’d spark a spliff so stony they’d stick around all day

Now Jack had traded his Cadillac
For a pack of the most exotic breed
A hundred seeds
Absolutely guaranteed
To deliver unbelievable quantities
Of the planet’s most magnificent weed

But Jumpin’ Jack’s next claim
Was the camel-back breaker
Wagerin’ acre for acre
It looked an easy taker
He’d beat the best yields of the weed’s own maker
One hundred beans would turn a metric ton
His land hands down
On a bet which couldn’t be won
Was it too much sun
Or was the fool just having fun?

The pool was cool so one and all
Stripped off their wit and skinny dipped
The farmers filled out betting slips
Not wanting to miss the hill’s biggest gag
This character was on some weird sort of trip
So Jack collected the wagers in a dirty bag

The matter was forgotten, and the next round called
But Jack kept it all for the following fall
For he knew something about these seeds
They were a genetically modified Superweed breed

Jack loudly put out the word
That there would be a reward
For all who referred
Sources for large quantities of high-quality turd
From any kind of mammal or bird
Jack kept track of any lead he heard
No matter how strange or plainly absurd
His nose attuned to the slightest hint of a fart
On many a wild-goose chase he hauled his cart
Cow pies and horse logs were merely the start

Jack dispatched divers and expeditions to procure
The oddest order of every sort of manure
Spent a fortune on Siamese royal monkey chunks
And catching giant whale feces before they sunk
Bull shit and bear shit and bat shit by the can
Guano from caves untouched by man
Delicate hummingbird turds collected by hand

Flaming dragon logs certified pure
Force-fed goose droppings and just to be sure
Wolverine and leopard drops
Zebra paddies and rhino slops
Leisurely sloth turds oozing down
Elephant packages and donkey doo
Jack even arranged to smuggle a few pounds of Panda poo
And for good measure some politician’s promises, too

The fertilizing pile stank for miles and miles
As the valley was haunted by a ghost most vile
And then he flooded it like the banks of the Nile
Stripping the most mellow of their well-worn smiles

But their frowns slowly melted to awe
Preferring their eyes deceive than believe what they saw
Twenty-foot trees defying every natural law
Bursting with colas bigger than ole Jack’s head
It appeared nimble Jack meant what he said

He had brought forth a miracle in the Mendo mud
Never had a plant produced so much fat bud!
Over twenty pounds of trimmed and dried herb
And not only that, but the smell was superb
The giants averaged this unbelievable yield
From each of the hundred stalks in the field

The harvest was judged
By luminaries of the highest grade
All of it was photographed, dated and weighed
For Jack remembered his bets, and planned to get paid
Ninety-nine plants came down like a charm
Chainsaw carving through stems thick as an arm

The tallest stalk Jack saved for last
Towering like the Titanic’s proud main mast
Over Jack’s sorry marks as they watched aghast
He was the better grower, and better bettor, too
As they said goodbye to the land where they grew
Some humble pie shoe fly this was gonna be to chew

But Jack was not sad as he climbed the ladder
He got happier as his neighbors grew sadder
His grin grew wider as they got madder
So thrilled he forgot to get clear of the crash
Stunned like a deer by a photographer’s flash
Jack Stash was mashed
His head was bashed
The betting slips were trashed
Witnesses paid cash

This here’s the story of a grower named Jack
Who forgot to watch his own back
So no one knows why his skull got cracked
They blame the golden stalk he tended so well
They say it killed him when it fell
And shot him straight to the greedy part of hell
Because sometimes giants need to win as well

Weather Vain

Too many cooks in this crowded kitchen
Don’t even have a clue
All the seasoning you’re pitchin’
Into my hoodoo stew

Don’t try to be me
And I won’t try to be you
I’m mixing the recipe
And I’m fixing this brew

You missed your cue, so hold your say
On every damn twist
That didn’t turn your way
Make it rain in your domain
Just please don’t rain
On my hurricane

Got to slam the hammer down
Before the cloudy skies transform
Strike the nail into the crown
While the irony’s still warm

Driving colliding pressure zones
To whip up thunder’s form
Listening for wind’s whistling tone
To summon up the perfect storm

You skipped the script, so hold your say
On every damn twist
That doesn’t turn your way
Mage the stage in your domain
Just please don’t rain
On my hurricane

You’d try to fly before you could walk
Write a book before learning to talk
If you’d only learn to wait your turn
There’s no Empire your fire can’t burn

No plight ever could be so great
That quibbling won’t make it worse
Waste this space in endless debate
With winds which won’t reverse

With air so abundantly rare
Our time to taste it slipping away
I swear we have no more to spare
Indulging this in-fighting today

It’s in the script, so what do you say?
The rhythm is rolling
And it’s heading your way
Mage the stage and hold your domain
Just please don’t rain
On our hurricane

Reading off the same page
Lockstep at last
Dancing on a stage
Conjured from the past
Here are the ingredients
The spices and the knives
Okay let’s get cooking
Before our guests arrive

It’s in the script, so what do you say?
The rhythm is rolling
And it’s heading your way
Mage the stage and hold your domain
Just please don’t rain
On our hurricane

Partner Ship

An edifice built on quicksand
Only has so long to stand
While sunlit skies still glow
And fair-weather winds blow

Soon enough those storms will show
And that’s when we’ll really know
If there’s any solid foundation
Or just a bivouac imagination

The hardest part of Partner Ship
Is settling on one course
When we’re all on a different trip
Back to the same old source

If this is a test of my patience
I don’t know if anyone passed
They say patience is a virtue
But so is getting it done fast

Hairs split into pure thin air
Debating hallucinations
Scaling stairs which lead nowhere
In mindless reiteration

Vanity’s bonfire zips
Underneath winter’s glaze
Oh, we’re only going through a phase
These days will slip into history’s haze
If this bridge doesn’t burn over a phrase

The hardest part of Partner Ship
Is settling on one course
When we’re all on a different trip
Back to the same old source

Just because we’re here now
Doesn’t mean we’re not there then
There’s a lot I’d love to disavow
But we’ll probably do it all again

Seeds of optimism
Drowned in springtime rains
We were only going through a phase
Down slippery slopes over homegrown clichés
Fate always seems to turn on a phrase

Peace poses the golden riddle:
At what point do opposite sides agree?
Truth might be right down the middle
Halfway between you and me

The hardest part of Partner Ship
Is settling on one course
When we’re all on a different trip
Back to the same old source

Fortune scorching
Under summer’s rays
We were only going through a phase
We went torching set the Earth ablaze
Such is the power of a well-placed a phrase

Time is shaped like a funnel
Only one way to slide
Deeper in toward the tunnel
And out the other side

The hardest part of Partner Ship
Is settling on one course
When we’re all on a different trip
Back to the same old source

Key of Now

There is language which is spoken
Giving breath to gasping thoughts
Sent on rafts of air as tokens
To return what time has taught

Some ideas find the mind smitten
Words worthy of another look
With desperation these are written
Born to bodies of fine-lined books

Hungering for more of what passed before
Sucking the life from the dead
Making memories into metaphors
Spun from pale parable threads

Wisdom comes in many tongues
Many ways to use the air in our lungs
Many ways to link the old to the young
But few ring as true
Give the Muses their due
Deliver us the truth that is sung

There is nothing quite as sweet
As an exhilarating breath
Nor sad as that last defeat
The desperate gasp at the door of death

Truth’s an estimation
Made of fictions that endure
Always in fluctuation
As obvious as it is obscure

Spotter cries out for land
Hanging from the bow
But it’s just a note of sand
Written in the Key of Now

Wisdom comes in many tongues
Many ways to use the air in our lungs
Many ways to link the old to the young
But few ring as true
Give the Muses their due
Deliver us the truth that is sung

People’s Imperial Army of Clowns

The People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
Exactly as silly as it sounds
The People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
In for a penny and down for a pound
For the revolution goes round and around
Oh fools come and claim your crowns
Flip those turned tables upside down
There are no orders, Chaos abounds
In the People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
Commanding you to surrender your frown

Oh, you scruffy ruffians and rabble: rouse!
All those oddballs the square disavows
Oh ye of arched and angled brows
With a little more wit than the law allows

Grab your props and take to the streets
With your colored hair and floppy feet
We’re bringing the meta to meet the meat
As we march along to inaudible beats

So all you weirdos, freaks and geeks
Outlaws peek out from your hide and seek
We’re done biting tongues and turning cheeks
It’s time for the un-greased wheels to squeak

We’re saving the endangered rubber chicken
And goin’ straight for the funny bone
Exposing the Man behind the curtain
Until that threadbare Emperor’s overthrown

The People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
Exactly as silly as it sounds
The People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
In for a penny and down for a pound
For the revolution goes round and around
Oh fools come and claim your crowns
Flip those turned tables upside down
There are no orders, Chaos abounds
In the People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
Commanding you to surrender your frown

We’ve got spies in Caesar’s Circuses
Infiltrating ranks of trained seals
Shining spotlights on Ringmaster walruses
Delivering their kings and cabbages spiel

We’re armed with loaded questions
Bayonets tipped with barbed rapier wit
We’re aiming flanks of satirical canons
At the bunkers of royal hypocrites

The People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
Exactly as silly as it sounds
The People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
In for a penny and down for a pound
For the revolution goes round and around
Oh fools come and claim your crowns
Flip those turned tables upside down
There are no orders, Chaos abounds
In the People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
Commanding you to surrender your frown

Calling all agents of aberration
Misfits and left-outs in each state of creation
Line up, pratfall in random formation
And land a quarter hour in the joke rotation

We’ve been successfully loosing
Since the invention of questionable taste
We’re led by General Confusion
And cadets from outer space

The nose, knows, you’re either running or blowing
So keep those red noses at hand
In case your face is somehow still showing
When that punchline eventually lands

The People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
Exactly as silly as it sounds
The People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
In for a penny and down for a pound
For the revolution goes round and around
Oh fools come and claim your crowns
Flip those turned tables upside down
There are no orders, Chaos abounds
In the People’s Imperial Army of Clowns
Commanding you to surrender your frown

Dimension Not Available

When touring the Galaxy
Better remember these tips
Only the very strange
Seem to survive the trip
Never mind sudden shifts
Of gravity and hyper reality
Just be sure you’re well prepared
To endure bad alien poetry

It’s one of those days
You wake up to find out
Your world’s in the path
Of an interstellar route
Condemned in the name
Of eminent domain
And all they can say
Is you had your chance to complain
Don’t wallow in gloom
This is no time to despair
Better get out the Guide
Plenty of other planets out there

That dimension’s not available
Insufficiently improbable
All Deep Thought aside
If you want to learn how to fly
That’s as easy as wormhole pie
The secret’s simply this:
Fling yourself at the Earth and miss
Just fling yourself at the Earth and miss

Well that ship you’ve hitched
Seems the worst possible place
Until you’ve been tossed
Into the void of outer space
The irony-laden Universe
So infinitely perverse
Just don’t you panic
‘Cause it can always get worse

And the Galactic President’s
A three-faced hustler
A shameless arrogant stud
And fugitive spaceship rustler
Once you see the lay
Of the Milky Way
Just like at home
The Galaxy’s ruled by clichés

That dimension’s not available
Insufficiently improbable
All Deep Thought aside
If you want to learn how to fly
That’s as easy as wormhole pie
The secret’s simply this:
Fling yourself at the Earth and miss
Just fling yourself at the Earth and miss

Better let all those little things slide
Beggars can’t be choosers
On interstellar rides
All you need is a towel
And a golden heart
But it helps to read
Multidimensional charts

Comic justice
It’s the only fair kind
In a Cosmos where
We’re all flying blind
The answer is
Forty-two, my friend
What did you say
The question was again?

That dimension’s not available
Insufficiently improbable
All Deep Thought aside
If you want to learn how to fly
That’s as easy as wormhole pie
The secret’s simply this:
Fling yourself at the Earth and miss
Just fling yourself at the Earth and miss

Pine Cone Ridge

Trap doors in shifting floors
Whoa, I’m tumbling from the sky!
Where just a half a blink before
I could swear I knew how to fly

Oh, I hail from the vista
Of the Pine Cone eye
Where gravity’s just a
Local ordinance to defy

You know we had a wild night
Down by Mandrake Lake
Dream-webs dropped
From swan-drawn flight
Waves of yesterday
Washed in the wake

She whispers her will
On the wisp of the wind
When the night is bright
And daylight dimmed
Ballets of fireflies
And star-studded skies
Folds of old fables
And worn yarns of the wise
Well, Iris left you a message
At the edge of rainbow bridge
Spelled out in the language of images
It said mind the signs
Along Pine Cone Ridge

Hidden where no sunshine enters in
Lit by the smile of a waning moon
A flick that never seems to begin
Cut off by floodlights too soon

You know we spied the deep inside
Swimming in Mandrake Lake
Refracted reactions
Unable to hide
Mirrored in murmurs
Mortal mouths make

She whispers her will
On the wisp of the wind
When the night is bright
And daylight dimmed
Ballets of fireflies
And star-studded skies
Folds of old fables
And worn yarns of the wise
Well, Iris left you a message
At the edge of rainbow bridge
Spelled out in the language of images
It said mind the signs
Along Pine Cone Ridge

And we drowned on what we found
Diving deep beneath Mandrake Lake
Coiling cords around twilight sounds
And wrapping ourselves in our mistakes

Smoke signals drift away
Firmament’s gone quaking
Fading fast into the day
Beneath the weight of waking

You know we dove to the treasure trove
Under the surface of Mandrake Lake
Sprites in spite of the web we wove
When we wrested ourselves awake

She whispers her will
On the wisp of the wind
When the night is bright
And daylight dimmed
Ballets of fireflies
And star-studded skies
Folds of old fables
And worn yarns of the wise
Well, Iris left you a message
On the edge of rainbow bridge
Spelled out in the language of images
It said mind the signs
Along Pine Cone Ridge

Tributary

Never mind me
I’ve got an eight-track mind
It’s the kind that isn’t built
To ever rewind
Oh, forward is the only direction I know
For in the current there’s only one way to go
Steady toward tomorrow
As every river flows

Well, never mind me
I’m just a tiny channel
Of a branching tributary
Past the rapids headed out to sea
Mountains stand still, but I’m in a hurry
And probably will be for all eternity

Dust or nuggets
You just never know
Panning sentiments
For whatever seems to glow
Toes buried in sediment
Knee-deep in indigo
Always an experiment
In the Riverflow

The flow lives in between the lines
Filling in the Earth’s cracked design
Drink deeply and think deeply
Of pressed papyrus reeds
Bearing hieroglyphic signs
Where ancient ideas
Remain enshrined

Let’s say my way is the High Way
The enchanted byway,
The do, for there is no try way
That flow has never led me astray
Washing away, washing away
The dirt of many derelict days
Clinging on
To crusty feet of clay

Dust or nuggets
You just never know
Panning sentiments
For whatever seems to glow
Toes buried in sediment
Knee-deep in indigo
Always an experiment
In the Riverflow

Never mind me
I’m a creature of reflection
Following the golden
Hollow course correction
Drifting from the pores of conception
A psychoactive stream of consciousness
Eroding all perfect imperfections

Once in while the flow goes downhill
Inclined to bend toward gravity’s will
Well everyone loves to watch a waterfall
Some climb some rise and others crawl
Oh marvel at how the river spills
Wherever there’s a fault to fill

Dust or nuggets
You just never know
Panning sentiments
For whatever seems to glow
Toes buried in sediment
Knee-deep in indigo
Always an experiment
In the Riverflow

I Just Work Here

Pivot point, pivot point
Which foot leads?
It’s a chance dart
Tossed at a dance chart
Go back to what yesterday left
Or hit new horizons at full speed?
What you can’t do
Is leave it up in the air
Pick a direction
Or we aren’t going anywhere

Putting out brushfires
As you spark another blaze
Tangled up in cross-haired wires
Yet still the music plays

And here’s an empty echo chamber
Compounding sounds of borrowed voices
No hooks in sight to serve as anchor
For your tapestry of choices

Pivot point, pivot point
It’s such a poignant choice
Down that hard rocky ground
Guts and glory bound
Or turn back around
And own your hometown
Retelling second-hand stories under a mask
Over and over to anyone who asks

Juggling jaws and grasping straws
Struggling to claw
Free from the cage of fame
Chained like a half-tame
Trained dancing bear
Don’t blame me
I just work here

Yanked in six directions
Away from your beating heart
Split up in scattered sections
Sacrificed on the altar of art

I can see your rising ire
Bright as any flame
The sting from your cold shoulder
Burns me just the same

Pivot point, pivot point
Who else can we appoint?
It’s your landscape to expand
Head for ever-higher peaks
Or tread in waves of quicksand
That’s Excalibur in your hands
So swing that sword like it’s your own
For you’re the one that pulled it out of the stone

Juggling jaws and grasping straws
Struggling to claw
Free from the cage of fame
Chained like a half-tame
Trained dancing bear
Don’t blame me
I just work here

Gifted you are, oh yes it is true
But the gift was not meant only for you
We all chipped in to give you your due
Bending with trends
Leads to crowded dead-ends
So no more can any of us depend
On borrowed sounds with ears to lend
Tomorrow follows the course set now
There’s no choosing when, only how

Oh I know if the roles reversed
I might roll my eyes like you
For we surely haven’t seen the worst
Of what you’re going through

Juggling jaws and grasping straws
Struggling to claw
Free from the cage of fame
Chained like a half-tame
Trained dancing bear
Don’t blame me
I just work here

It’s a pivot point, pivot point
Fate hinges on this juncture
Do we blast faster toward the past
Or cast it off for the future?
Craft tomorrow’s architecture
And build something new to last
Or charge forever under flags at half-mast?
Whatever you do, don’t hesitate
That drawbridge gate ain’t fixin’ to wait

Juggling jaws and grasping straws
Struggling to claw
Free from the cage of fame
Chained like a half-tame
Trained dancing bear
Don’t blame me
I just work here

Judge’s Daughter

There was a cruel judge who dealt in dread
Sentencing the living to join the dead
He decreed an annual Athenian feast
Be fed to an unspeakable bull-headed beast
Sacrificed in a cavernous maze
To meet the monster at the end of their days

The judge had a few troubles at home
Namely a wife who was prone to roam
Short on mercy and quick with the hammer
And then there was this prince in his slammer
Who on the eve of the scheduled slaughter
Stole the love of the Judge’s daughter

With your feet dipped in fire
Running free your sole desire
When you’ve caught the heat
And it can’t get any hotter
Just don’t burn the Judge’s daughter

Ariadne, she was a firebrand ready to flee
Said oh, lover, I’ll set you free,
But only if you swear that you’ll bring me
If I stay, why, I’ll lose my head
So track the labyrinth with this thread
And out of death shall you be led

I’ve been thinking since you first arrived
That I might prefer you make it alive
Stick with me and you’ll surely survive
This court is rife with sorrow and strife
So please just take me and make me your wife
I’ve danced in this dungeon all my life

With your feet dipped in fire
Running free your sole desire
When you’ve caught the heat
And it can’t get any hotter
Just don’t burn the Judge’s daughter

The fugitive lovers quickly fled
A steep price now upon their heads
Bats out of Hades’ realm of the dead
Now he was a prisoner of love instead
One night they made it on moonlit sands
But as she slept he made other plans

Ariadne saw she’d been played like a pawn
He’d gone and left her by the early dawn
You’d think with love so tough to find
Such sweetness wouldn’t be left behind
But heroes hate to get tied down
With beauties waiting in every town

With your feet dipped in fire
Running free your sole desire
When you’ve caught the heat
And it can’t get any hotter
Just don’t burn the Judge’s daughter

Xochipilli’s Mask

Morning glory sacred smoke
Open the Sun inhale or choke
But never forget the way you woke
Peeling back the serpent’s cloak

Ally of poets
And the brave in battle
Summoned by chants and dance
And entheogenic rattles
Panoramas of primal images
Collecting souls along astral bridges

What you’d never seek
That’s what you’ll find
The root of the fruit
Of the unfiltered divine
Wrestle with warrior tasks
And questions you tremble to ask
Be in the dance
When you fall to the trance
You gave it all
For your chance to glance
At the visions behind Xochipilli’s mask

They trek half the globe
To try the extreme dream
Climb jungle cliffs
And swim upstream
Leap psychic rifts
And reset the brain
A world of pain
For the shallow and vain

Some things can only be grasped
When the flower child has been unmasked

Mount pyramid steps
The warrior’s way
Source of sorcery
Shadows at play

Some things can only be grasped
When the flower child has been unmasked

Teonanácatl

Flesh of the Fifth
Excessive god
Eyes rolling back
Eternally awed

Some things can only be grasped
When the flower child has been unmasked

What you’d never seek
That’s what you’ll find
The root of the fruit
Of the unfiltered divine
Wrestle with warrior tasks
And questions you tremble to ask
Be in the dance
When you fall to the trance
You gave it all
For your chance to glance
At the visions behind Xochipilli’s mask

Quetzalcoatl

Step lightly
Upon the serpent’s tongue
Heavy feet are likely stung
Ladders latticed
With invisible rungs
On which the heads
Of pretenders are hung

Nahautl

Languages lost
Cultures cost
Meet the new boss
Bearing a cross

Some things can only be grasped
When the flower child has been unmasked

Effigy unearthed
Inestimable worth
Totem of mirth
Calendar rebirth

Some things can only be grasped
When the flower child has been unmasked

What you’d never seek
That’s what you’ll find
The root of the fruit
Of the unfiltered divine
Wrestle with warrior tasks
And questions you tremble to ask
Be in the dance
When you fall to the trance
You gave it all
For your chance to glance
At the visions behind Xochipilli’s mask

Some things can only be grasped
When the flower child has been unmasked

High John The Conqueror

Oh, no, Low John done done it again
Made off with the boss’ favorite pen
And wrote a note that said it all
Nailed it up on the parlor wall

By the power divested of me
I tell you, every one of you is free
Yes, consider it a royal decree
I declare a state of liberty!

So let the cotton go rotten
The Devil can have this plantation
In case you’ve forgotten
I was born the Prince of a nation

Oh, no, boss man, we won’t work no more
You bought yourself more than you bargained for
Whips just make me whistle Dixie down
And the hounds come around to bay with the sound

It was half past a holiday midnight
When the grey fog turned pale with fright
The insurrection surrounded that luxurious bed
Then slipped a noose around the master’s head

John the Conqueror stepped to the fore
And faced the master who lay on the floor
Well, here’s our papers, better make it right
Or you’ll be going out on a limb tonight

Oh, no, boss man, we won’t work no more
You bought yourself more than you bargained for
Whips just make me whistle Dixie down
And the hounds come around to bay with the sound

Cultivating mutiny under your boot
The unquiet is mighty silent
But our struggle is not mute
And every agitator that you shoot
Summons up a riot in tribal tribute
Man, when you come face to face with your fruit
You’ll see in what a swamp you settled your roots

Yes, I’m faster than that whip-cracking bastard
And that’s what makes the real master
But my curse is a slow, slow poison
Takes centuries to sink in
Under your children’s children’s skin

Oh, they’ll shuffle to jungle rhythms
They’ll howl at the moon
As they weigh out their freedom
By the mile, and by the tune
They’ll abandon your petty kingdoms
And sleep in till noon

Oh, no, boss man, we won’t work no more
You bought yourself more than you bargained for
Whips just make me whistle Dixie down
And the hounds come around to bay with the sound

Don’t y’know, little Pharoah
Anyone can swing the King’s lingo
They call me High John or John the Low
And I don’t kiss any man’s toe
So you can take your status quo
And stick it where the sun don’t glow
Yes, you can take your status quo
And stick it where the sun don’t glow

Oh, no, boss man, we won’t work no more
You bought yourself more than you bargained for
Whips just make me whistle Dixie down
And the hounds come around to bay with the sound

Legend’s End

In the beginning when the soup was stirred

In the beginning we only know what we heard

In the beginning all the faces were blurred

In the beginning was the word that meant a word

The net I set is a self-spun web

Still and silent through surge and ebb

The trick is not calling the catch too soon

Drag the diamonds in by the clock of the moon

Schools of thought in current streams

Past pockets of ice and scalding steam

Weaving in the wake between extremes

Plucking pearls from debris of abandoned dreams

Just a matter of time

Till I hook one on the line

Bound to be a lucky strike

Coming down the pike

Serve it up on a silver tray

When I finally land the catch of the day

There was no time before time began

No space but a race to track time’s span

Bounding round the bend

When tenses and senses

Blur and blend
Where tale and teller

Together transcend
At the legend’s end

I have hitchhiked the trails of spice

For visions that struck me blind

I’ve twice toured the veils of vice

For a glance at virtues cloaked behind

I’ve fallen in and out of countless traps

Along the way to buried treasure

I’ve found and lost more ancient maps

Than I could ever measure

I’ve seen seas of heartless harpies

Shred a sailor’s soul to ribbons

My blood is quite rich in irony

So my laughter might be forgiven

I’ve sailed to the center of the Sun and back

Embarked on many fruitless quests

Searching for heroes in a haystack

And igniting the firebird’s nest

There was no time before time began

No space but a race to track time’s span

Bounding round the bend

When tenses and senses

Blur and blend
Where tale and teller

Together transcend
At the legend’s end

The rhythm of waves in rise and fall

Sliding on skates since before I could crawl

Surfing the surface and riding the brink

Of emerald empires swaying in sync

Stories are what the sunshine becomes

Eroded to the speed of solid concrete

Pulsing out rhythms of phantom atoms

Bouncing to the beat of galactic heat

In the end all the stories fall into one

In the end all the worries roll into the sun

In the end all the glories turn tail and run

In the end we’ll know we’ve barely begun

There was no time before time began

No space but a race to track time’s span

Bounding round the bend

When tenses and senses

Blur and blend
Where tale and teller

Together transcend
At the legend’s end

In the end no cares what tea used to cost

In the end the sea forgets where the treasures were lost

In the end no one knows the miles we crossed

Chasing rainbows and enduring the frost

Yesterday’s timber is tinder tomorrow

Passing to ash for the future to borrow

Shedding skeletons like a worn set of threads

Amber melts as gold spins out of lead


In the end it’s just you and the void

In the end only you know what you might have destroyed

In the end only you know if the means you employed

Was worth what you paid and what you enjoyed

There was no time before time began

No space but a race to track time’s span

Bounding round the bend

When tenses and senses

Blur and blend
Where tale and teller

Together transcend
At the legend’s end


Wolf Flow Logic

Second Circuit: Territorial Imperative

Pa pa pitter patter pasture pattern patrol foster pastor patriarchy patrician protect power power power power power

It’s the Wolf Flow logic
Mark your territory
Secure in a circle of urine-soaked boundaries
Pissing in a sea of predator and prey
A theater of threats to be held at bay
I come from a long line of those who survived
By doing what it takes to stay alive
It’s safer to be feared than ignored
From underdog to overlord
That’s the Wolf Flow logic
Mark your territory

Yeah, the Wolf Flow Logic
Mark your territory
Better bow before your authority
As you scale the pyramid of hierarchies
You stick with us and here’s what we’ll do
We’ll extend our strong-arm of protection to you
Protection from what? Protection from who?
From what we’re gonna do if you don’t join our crew
Participation is mandatory
That’s the Wolf Flow Logic
Know your enemy

Wolf Flow Logic
Mark your territory
It’s a racket of protection natural selection
And the gang is sharpening its fangs
Preying to overtake the game
The status quo fueled by pride
Claiming turf with every stride
Tread upon your neighbors’ heads
Join the hunt if you wanna get fed
That’s the Wolf Flow logic
You’re in or you’re out
And if you’re out, if you’re out, you’re dead

Follow Wolf Flow Logic
Mark your territory
Map out the pattern of patriarchy
Leaving behind a bloody legacy
Excreting its laws all over history
Priests and kings and daddy makes three
Trapping seeds in the nuclear family tree
You’re not the only one who can get uppity
That’s just how a bitch gotta be
Marking her territory
Yeah, the Wolf Flow Logic
Welcome to the Wolf Flow Lodge

Waxen Wings

I get my best work done in my sleep
Last night I made a mountain
That would make Olympus weep
Rode up there on a fountain
From a well ten miles deep
Found a fresh new world to live on
One we’ll have the wit to keep

Caught a comet out to Saturn’s rings
Where I had some Titans to meet
Zipped out by Jove to flex my wings
Waxen and weightless and fleet
Showed off my moves to some old dead kings
And headed for the source of things
When I was ready to meet the heat

Takes a lot for wax and strings
To fly away with freedom
Oh you’ve got the wings
But have you got the wisdom?

And if I have hold of one regret
As I tumble back to Earth in confusion
I wish I had laid my bets
Reckoning the power of hydro-fusion
Maybe if we’d weighed the real threats
Of flight by a child of the dungeon
All the dreams we haven’t seen yet
Beyond the reach of resolution

Takes a lot for wax and strings
To fly away with freedom
Oh you’ve got the wings
But have you got the wisdom?

In this game of musical stairs
All is lost if you’re stuck in a chair
The only way out is up in the air
As we contemplate compromising
The fire is below and quickly rising
Take the elevator all the way to the top
When you get there just forget to stop
Oh Icarus, put some sunscreen on your face
There’s no ozone out in outer space

Takes a lot for wax and strings
To fly away with freedom
Oh you’ve got the wings
But have you got the wisdom?

Judgement Machine

Fourth Circuit: Cultural Context

Us them us dem us dem dem dem democracy domestic domicile domain dominate dominion despot dungeon us dem us dem us dem

Will I get more milk with a smile or a scream
That grove is green, but what does it mean?
Is that a lurking shadow or a wolverine?
How am I to interpret that gleam?
Are you looking to meat me, eat me
Or are we on the same team?
Is this whole routine just a fever dream
Ignore the bark or flee the bite
Bank to the left or bolt to the right
It’s a battleground of mind versus might

Food or poison better guess well
One fills your belly, the other sends you to hell
Quagmire quicksand oasis mirage
Water or danger wrapped in camouflage?
Why’s it so bright in the middle of the night?
That can’t be the moon dropping all that light
Should I head downwind or back upstream
Survival safe arrival partner or rival
At what point should I intervene?
It’s all up to the Judgement Machine

And I am a Judgement Machine
Know what I mean?
Judgement Machine
Scope out the Scene
Judgement Machine
You, me, and authority
Ordered by the Judgement Machine
Our voices our choices
Our hands and our feet
Our tongues and our lungs
Our eyes and our ears
Driven by the gears
Of the Judgement Machine
Judgement Machine
Know what I mean?

Madonna whore can I please have some more?
Did we break a glass ceiling or hit the floor?
Dominance dancing with submission
What’s my mission and why should I care?
Where do I fit into this institution?
From vestal virgin to barren librarian
Takes a soapbox to organize a choir
Like it takes a village to raise an empire
Unity discrimination loyalty retaliation
Tribes and nations, demand political affiliation
But I’m at one with my alienation

And I’m a Judgement Machine
Ya know what I mean?

Father and mother self and other
Slamming together in a nuclear reactor
Generations fused through chains of traditions
Identity in a centrifuge of confusion
Melting down the core of authority
Runaway engines of individuality
Parallel tracks laid by carrot and stick
Containment vectors that make us tick
Thesis antithesis diametric opposition
Cascading convergence of conflicting visions

And I am a Judgement Machine
Know what I mean?
Judgement Machine
Scope out the Scene
Judgement Machine
You, me, and authority
Ordered by the Judgement Machine
Our voices our choices
Our hands and our feet
Our tongues and our lungs
Our eyes and our ears
Driven by the gears
Of the Judgement Machine
Judgement Machine
Know what I mean?

Army corps guarding the company store
Missing the skyline for the smog
Trails blazing or cultural fog?
Cloud bank foreclosing across our horizons
Allies and enemies in revolving doors
Stoking the brushfire of retribution
No problems, merely fluid situations
No solutions but new crystalline formations
Rotating roles for the next revolution
Judgement machine: Powered by Evolution!

And I am a Judgement Machine
Know what I mean?
Judgement Machine
Scope out the Scene
Judgement Machine
You, me, and authority
Ordered by the Judgement Machine
Our voices our choices
Our hands and our feet
Our tongues and our lungs
Our eyes and our ears
Driven by the gears
Of the Judgement Machine
Judgement Machine
Know what I mean?

Lattice of Errors

The first part of any plan
Better factor in the glitch
If the thread is held by human hands
That’s where you’ll find the hitch

They say two wrongs don’t make a right
But sometimes three lefts do
Luck has struck again despite
The brambles I stumbled through

Well, the rope might slip
If you lose your grip
Fickle fate always flips
That’s the chance you take
Every success is made of mistakes
Many a mountaineer’s crumbled in terror
Afraid to gamble all on a guess
I’ll just climb my lattice of errors
And make an impeccable mess

The difference between silent and listen
It’s all in the order of the letters
No matter how well this one’s done
Somebody already did it better

That’s the rule of thumb
So open all three eyes
Ask tomorrow what today becomes
For in hindsight we are truly wise

Invent, reinvent, rinse and and repeat
For a phrase uttered by any other tongue
Still sounds as bittersweet
Maximized adages across the free range
Our common currency
It’s the medium of exchange
Bring out that old worn-out homily
For some things never do change

The proverbial wheel
Rumbling through time
Catchy phrases spiced
With a dash of euphony
A twist of irony
And a splash of rhyme
Bites of sound
Stick around when we’re gone
Dependable as tomorrow’s dawn

Yeah, you know what they always say

Led tritely through the land of the living cliché

Over shaky terrain and tricky gaps
With borrowed tools and faith of the Fool
Making miracles out of mishaps
When the tether unravels from the spool

So take it with a grain of philosophy
If you’ve grooved into a ditch
That lesson was tendered in catastrophe
Value hard knocks and you’ll always be rich

Well, the rope might slip
If you lose your grip
Fickle fate always flips
That’s the chance you take
Every success is made of mistakes
Many a mountaineer’s crumbled in terror
Afraid to gamble all on a guess
I’ll just climb my lattice of errors
And make an impeccable mess

Smuggling Smoke

I’m a broker by day
Even broker by night
We deal in shades of grey
Green fading into white

Delivery’s done
Fortune’s won
Pockets stuffed
With burning dough

Another run
Under the gun
Just a little less
Than I owe

Standby for the catch-phrase king
Rumbling toward his reckoning
Hanging on to his buzz
By a very thin string

Superhero quick
And Houdini slick
Slinging dreams
From his bag of tricks

Dancing fast
With danger and doom
As a cloud of glitter
Spins the room
Sustained by adrenaline’s sonic boom

Filled to the brim
With vinegar and piss
Guess I always knew
It would go down like this

You ain’t got to be no prophet
To see the wiring in the walls
Just take a look
At the history books
The big ballers always fall

Once I thought you were the Devil himself
With Heaven in a bottle
Sitting right on your shelf
But when the Reaper arrives
To ring your bell
Bet you’ll turn a profit
Smuggling smoke into Hell

Zipping past at the speed of need
Wherever desperation drips
Sucking poisoned seeds of greed
On the short side of the flip

Can’t spare a second to sniff the roses
Hey, there’s enough cocaine
On this here plane
To numb ten million noses!

I’d sell you my soul
But it’s already sold
Traded to the trolls
For some shiny Mule’s Gold

You ain’t got to be no prophet
To see the wiring in the walls
Just take a look
At the history books
The big ballers always fall

Once I thought you were the Devil himself
With Heaven in a bottle
Sitting right on your shelf
But when the Reaper arrives
To ring your bell
I bet you’ll turn a profit
Smuggling smoke into Hell

The game started getting
Grim and gruff
The men in suits shuffled in
Talking tough
And bursting with bluff
Down for a round
Of no one wins

They ambled over to the table
And laid out some heavy stakes
Though they said they might be able
To cut someone a lucky break

This business of chemistry
It’s all a thin-lined blur
The edge of integrity
Where sleight of mind occurs

So if I loosen my collar
It’s ’cause this heat is a drag
Bet doughnuts to dollars
It’ll be the mule with the bag

You ain’t got to be no prophet
To see the wiring in the walls
Just take a look
At the history books
The big ballers always fall

Once I thought
You were the Devil himself
With Heaven in a bottle
Sitting right on your shelf
But when the Reaper arrives
To ring your bell
I bet you’ll turn a profit
Smuggling smoke into Hell

Look, the dealer’s done
Said the Fed
And your head’s
Stuck in a noose
If you ever want to sleep
In your own bed
Better lay your cards down loose

Go ahead
And take this pen
Before the deal
Comes round again
‘Cause the guilty ones
Draw a deuce
But the innocent
Get sent for ten

Please, please, please
Don’t you plead
No, please, please, please
Don’t you plead
I swear we’ll all be freed
So please, please, please
Don’t you plead

Oh, no, sir, I’ll take my odds
You can keep your devil’s deals
Praying silently to all the gods
Every lip stays zipped and sealed

Oh, let me relieve your doubt
Save us all a little time
There’s no more point in holding out
Your friends, they dropped the dime

Truth’s reduced to poker chips
Sweat’s thick enough to drown
If so much as one word slips
That house of cards comes tumbling down

It’s all about timing
And being where it’s at
When the temperature is climbing
Go bust the thermostat

Teapot whistle screaming
Mercury’s gone to your head
Everybody scramble
Hatter’s mad
And seeing red

You ain’t got to be no prophet
To see the wiring in the walls
Just take a look
At the history books
The big ballers always fall

Once I thought
You were the Devil himself
With Heaven in a bottle
Sitting right on your shelf
But when the Reaper arrives
To ring your bell
I bet you’ll turn a profit
Smuggling smoke into Hell

Temple Of Gnosis

Sixth Circuit: Neuro-Electric Meta-Programming

Gno know noble ignore notice cunning incognito reconnaissance diagnosis notify ignorant notorious connoisseur connotation knowable notion gnosis gnosis gnosis

Well, the temple’s between the ear and the I
The house of cognition, pattern recognition
Pentagons to the left of me
Apples to the right
And when they come together
The seeds of strife ignite
And when they fall apart
The tree rises from the heart

What I spy in the corner of my I
A glimmer of vision
It’s a whisper of wisdom
A taste of creation
The world in gyration
Iridescent transmissions
Orbiting the origin
Still burning within
As thunder rings throughout the spheres
Eureka! Eureka! That’s the future you hear

It’s a lightning bolt
It’s a camera flash
An earthshaking jolt
As continents crash
As above so below
Just follow your nose
No more guessing, you know
Ride the rising tide inside
For sense is the essence of essence
And the night sky will be your guide

The temple’s between the earth and the sky
Branches and roots of RealiTree
Made of all our woulds and coulds
Hidden by a canopy
Of transitory leaves
Falling faster than we perceive
Watered by springs of intuition
Struck by starlight
And triggered into fruition

It’s a lightning bolt
It’s a camera flash
An earthshaking jolt
As continents crash
As above so below
Just follow your nose
No more guessing, you know
Ride the rising tide inside
For sense is the essence of essence
And the night sky will be your guide

In one I and out I fly
Lest the vessel ossify
In the space and span I occupy
Here I am, here for the duration
Swimming in emanations and emitting vibrations
In web of holistic fractal pattern causation
For everything’s created by what it is not
Every pair of opposites grow on the same lot
And that’s why you’d best love your enemy
If only for being who you don’t have to be

In one ear and out the I
Expanding rings of stimuli
Over-growing flowing charts
Navigating our star-charts of art
We’ve got a compass and ephemeris
A map of nested mirror images
Over here dwells the highly surreal
Dripping with morphing visages
And when the meta and the “for” line up
Ideas cascade from some bottomless cup

It’s a lightning bolt
It’s a camera flash
An earthshaking jolt
As continents crash
As above so below
Just follow your nose
No more guessing, you know
Ride the rising tide inside
For sense is the essence of essence
And the night sky will be your guide

By the by there’s no more I
Who what where when how and why
There’s only the gnosis, the gnosis
Filtered through reverse osmosis
Known and unknown
Locked in a jitterbug dance
Inverse Universe in recursive expanse
Bend and transcend and do it again
For this initiation never really ends

It’s a lightning bolt
It’s a camera flash
An earthshaking jolt
As continents crash
As above so below
Just follow your nose
No more guessing, you know
Ride the rising tide inside
For sense is the essence of essence
And the night sky will be your guide

Kaleidoscope Catalyst

Once upon a lovely summer dawn
A generation went boom
So many lines went undrawn
When the walls ran out of room
Splintered and cast adrift
Scattered by the technicolor shift
Oh, you can feel the aftershocks
From that rumbling quake
Like an avalanche of rolling rocks
That still makes foundations shake

Went to the Universe City
Where it’s all matter of degree
Where the walls breathe relativity
Where the electric bombshell dropped
Where the static bubble popped
Turn on tune in to what the pine cone sees
With a crystal clear batch of pure Phd
Liquid synchronicity dust
The kaleidoscope catalyst
Problem child
Of a Swiss bicyclist
Strange such a substance
Should even exist
The kaleidoscope catalyst
Demeter’s hidden kiss
The kaleidoscope catalyst

Forged in the crucible of serendipity
An accident of birth
Born to neutral chemistry
As Mars took over the Earth
Waging what a broken atom’s worth
With Pluto right behind
This one blows up cities
But this one blows your mind

Man, the age was more than Aquarian
It was overtly subversive
And downright contrarian
When all the senses combined
Tasting synesthesia views
Turning on cultures colorblind
To intangible magical hues

Went to the Universe City
Where it’s all matter of degree
Where the walls breathe relativity
Where the electric bombshell dropped
Where the static bubble popped
Turn on tune in to what the pine cone sees
With a crystal clear batch of pure Phd
Liquid synchronicity dust
The kaleidoscope catalyst
Problem child
Of a Swiss bicyclist
Strange such a substance
Should even exist
The kaleidoscope catalyst
Demeter’s hidden kiss
The kaleidoscope catalyst

Oh yes that sound is still around
Though fainter with every year
But if you keep both ears to the ground
There’s just enough left to hear
Lost secret dimensions
The rye’s no mystery to me
For my essence is Eleusinian
Awaiting the return of Persephone

Went to the Universe City
Where it’s all matter of degree
Where the walls breathe relativity
Where the electric bombshell dropped
Where the static bubble popped
Turn on tune in to what the pine cone sees
With a crystal clear batch of pure Phd
Liquid synchronicity dust
The kaleidoscope catalyst
Problem child
Of a Swiss bicyclist
Strange such a substance
Should even exist
The kaleidoscope catalyst
Demeter’s hidden kiss
The kaleidoscope catalyst

Pharaoh’s

Let my people go, I told the Pharaoh
Let them go from their conceptual bondage!
Let them be liberated from their limited horizons
Let them be free to finally see
That after all this
We’re still in the throes of slavery

Let my people go, I told the Pharaoh
And they are all my people
From the starving poor
To the Masters of War
They are my people
And they will till your fields no more

Let my people go, I warned
Or before your Empire is mourned
The sea will swallow your screams of horror
More plagues we shall call
Chipping away all your layers of walls
Until your pyramid finally falls
Let my people go, Pharaoh,
For you too are held in the trap
There is a way out and here is the map

Let my people go from their Irony Prison
The pentagon fortress of Western Material Rationalism!
Let my people go from the dark dungeons
Of dogmatic frozen sons of schism
Let my people go, for only as one can we be freed
Let my people go, from the poison pill of greed
Let my people go, or the plagues will descend
And your children will desert you and all you intend
Just be sure we’re free and clear
Or we’ll release the worst of your Dynasty’s fears
And shed no Nile Crocodile Tears
When the trumpet blares in your ancient ears

Let my people go, from hopelessly outmoded
Moldy old phoney moralities!
From mindless allegiance to authority
And from the stench of ugly bigotry
From the catacombs of how things used to be
When so-and-so the seventeenth lorded over humanity

Let my people go, Pharaoh
It’s for your own good
These pyramids are ruining the neighborhood
Let my people go, for you live here too
Something’s got to go
So like this a cat a few thousand years ago
I say, Pharaoh, let my people go!
Let my people go!
Let my people go!
They are all my people, every last one
Your house will be troubled
Until our freedom is won
Your house will be troubled
Until our freedom is won

Betty’s Attic

Betty never shirked a day of work
She was the picture of the perfect clerk
She knew at the Bureau that mum’s the word
No matter what secrets might be overheard
She never typed off-key or misplaced her smile
Misspelled a memo or lost a file

Read more: Betty’s Attic

Foul

I saw most of the minds of my generation
Sold a cheap plastic corporate vision
Between rounds of life imitation
Ground in the gears of media transmissions

America is huddled and shivering tonight
And the papers and airwaves are filled with fright
As we rubberneck around to catch the sight
Of tragedy so common it starts to seem trite

Professional puffballs playing up and out the rage
Struck with sudden bouts of humanity on stage
On pitiful puppet strings until the turn of page
Turns darkly to demand blood and that war be waged
That the beast of vengeance be loosed from the cage

Dare we look it clear in the eye?
Dare we admit we always knew why?
Dare we take the rap for the big bad lie
And cop to truth behind that American Dream pie
Baked from the bodies of slaughtered braves
Seasoned with the stolen sweat of slaves
Spoiling under curses streaming from graves
And spilled along an oily path privately paved

Can we resist deflecting the finger of blame
Swallow the humble pie slathered in shame
Evil done by our hand, evil done in our name
It is the evil of our Empire just the same
Justice is not this twisted revenge that is taught
Extracting from scapegoats the cost of getting caught
It is an obligation to own in our deepest of thoughts
That the buck stops here where this bubble was bought

I pledge allegiance to the mixed bag
Of the United States of Experience
Cause a Fascist by any other flag
Stinks to high hell of the same arrogance
And if you want me to subscribe
To that hope and change vibe
I do sincerely hope that change
Is more than the old shell game rearranged
Cause all I see is my rights down the shitter
Hunted to extinction by mindless drone planes
Beamed in by our electric baby-sitter
As little America goes dramatically insane
And drowns in a flood of insipid glitter
Land of the angry and home of the vain

So when the awful reality touches down
And the death and horror is all around
And the guns have put us down on the ground
And we hear for ourselves war’s gruesome sound
Let us not cast about for some demon to hate
Let us not run into the arms of the State
I myself have no more trust to give
To a government that cares not one bit if I live

And if you try to claim this “democracy”
Is other than an elaborate hypocrisy
None are so blind as those refusing to see
How our stolen minds are miles from free
And this exercise in communal futility
Has driven us to the edge of gullibility

Is it our duty to dwell in our guilt?
To purge the pain on which our monuments were built
Another layer of fossils dissolving to silt
Accumulating ages of archeology’s quilt

It took millennia to achieve this height
Of hubris where our petty fights
Scan the planet every night
In the game to command the blinking of lights

The darkness comes from the very same source
The madness of advancing freedom by force
It hits with shock it hits with awe
The blowback even the poorest prophets foresaw

As we try to comprehend these monstrous mirrors
Manifest destiny of our collective fears
Armed assassin of the vain illusion
That surely there must be some confusion
We’ve paid protection for our picket fences
We’ve paid our dues to our proper pretenses

My hands are bloody, America.
No excuses. No evasion.
I am the child of a pathological invasion.
I did not start this war
But I am part of what they started it for
I have no power to raise the dead
But I’ll be damned if one more death on my head
Will go by without even a word being said
So now, perhaps, that we’re feeling meek
Can we also consider those America killed last week?

Manifest Station

Did you ever stop to wonder
Who scattered this trail of silver?
And crafted raft after raft to save
Some unknown swimmer in the river?
We knew you’d one day crest this wave
A dreamer and devoted Great Worker
So eyes on the prize, gems that flicker
They’re visible only to the wild and brave
Who trust the current to deliver

We can conjure what you crave
It works as well without a wand
The power is in the wave
And a little help from the Great Beyond
Count all those shells you’ve saved
If you trust your motivation
Just redeem all your misgivings
On the way to Manifest Station

The whistle blows echoes of laughter
Chugging on levity’s elevation
You won’t find what you’re after
In any book of incantations
Orient on that which makes you whole
Now that’s your destination
So bring your body mind and soul
Together at Manifest Station

Yes, let’s get this wish
To Manifest Station
The electric express
To Manifest Station
No need to guess
About Manifest Station
Go East Go West
You’ll find Manifest Station
Just bring your best
To Manifest Station

Conjure just past any juncture
Where you have taken a sacred position
Invoke the stop that never stops
In the space between transitions
So all aboard this train of thought
With an ephemeral ticket which can’t be bought
No guessing what it might be worth
The midnight special to Manifest Station
Bringing dreams all over the Earth

Let’s get this wish
To Manifest Station
The electric express
To Manifest Station
No need to guess
About Manifest Station
Go East Go West
To Manifest Station
Just bring your best
To Manifest Station

Rolling on wonder, rumbling thunder
The engine driven by the fire within
Fueled by the soul and hidden by skin
On the fast-track to where it all begins
The breath at the core of the Original Spin
Sometimes the schedule runs a little late
And the train arrives in a different state
The itinerary frequently fluctuates
En route to Manifest Station

So let’s get this wish
To Manifest Station
The electric express
To Manifest Station
No need to guess
About Manifest Station
Go East Go West
To Manifest Station
Just bring your best
To Manifest Station
Bring your best
To Manifest Station (x3)

AbracadabrA

Hook and Nail

A tale of two twins
Orphans split up at birth
As opposite as yang and yin
As different as sky and Earth

One twin was sent off to a tower
A tower of ivory and jade
Taught to use the tools of power
And the rules of forging blades

The other twin was tossed aside
Hobbled by a twisted spine
Cast on a raft to ride out the tide
And vanish from the grand design

This is the tale
Of the hook and the nail
Is this the tale
Of the hook and the nail?
Is it a quest for a question?
Or the yes of exclamation!

Seeking success
In parallel formation
Waging perpetual war
For your attention
Finding solace
Only in rotation
This is the tale
Of the hook and the nail!
Is this the tale
Of the hook and the nail?

Raised by a school of sirens
The hunchback queried introspection
Melodious genuflections
Heading in any direction

The soldier was an upright citizen
Certain such questioning was a sin
For he knew just how many seraphim
Could crowd on the point of a pin

Hunchback huddles
Pondering puddles
Slippery and subtle
And eternally unfilled

Exclamation army
Firing at will
Aiming at truths
That just won’t stand still

A tale of two twins
Orphans split up at birth
As opposite as yang and yin
As different as sky and Earth

This is the tale
Of the hook and the nail
Is this the tale
Of the hook and the nail?
Is it a quest for a question?
Or the yes of exclamation!

Seeking success
In parallel formation
Waging perpetual war
For your attention
Finding solace
Only in rotation
This is the tale
Of the hook and the nail!
Is this the tale
Of the hook and the nail?

Down To Delphi

Quite a crowd at Muse’s Mountain
Line winding well beyond the horizon
The mighty and the meek
On a fool’s crusade
A hubristic parade
All made equal as they seek
A cryptic fate to evade
Sneaking one fleeting peek
Behind time’s curtain
And they’re emerging looking
Even more uncertain

They come to banish their blues
Collecting useless future clues
Catch a sketch of tomorrow’s news
Which of these avenues shall I choose?
If I rush into battle, will I win or lose?
How do I know if any of this is true?
Are the gods my undoing, or is it you?
No answer makes sense when
The question’s confused

Down to Delphi
For a spot of riddles and rye
Down to Delphi
Answers never seem to apply
Down to Delphi
Advice you’re bound to defy
Down to Delphi
Whatever they try to prophesy

I’d seen all the tragedies
The future, it never ends well
I’d been to all the Mysteries
And had Kykion on a half-shell
Not sure what I was looking for
What would Pythia have in store?
Maybe an ambiguous turn of phrase
To change my soul forevermore
Well, Delphi, it’s on any bucket list
One of those destinations not to be missed

So I sat at the feet of the Oracle
She deeply inhaled the fumes
And she asked me for a riddle
But I could only hum the tune
I asked her if all of these equations
Were merely the sums of our creations
Then she said, take this up in your head
The only true gold is information
Your world’s not made out of particles
Your mind is made in their relation

Down to Delphi
For a spot of riddles and rye
Down to Delphi
Answers never seem to apply
Down to Delphi
Advice you’re bound to defy
Down to Delphi
Whatever they try to prophesy

Legal Fiction

I built my palace on quicksand and silt
Using rubber struts and pillars of guilt
A red-tape door with a paperclip latch
Ok, I give up, now who’s got a match?

Then I staked my claim on a land mine field
Not much to look at, but a hell of a yield
The overhead’s low and profits sky-high!
So who cares if we’re bleeding the planet dry?

Yes, I’m a person by legal fiction
Your friendly global corporation
I was never elected
And never crowned
But I’m running the world
Running the world
Right into the ground

Look, I earn my keep peddling false hopes
Don’t ask how I sleep, man, it ain’t easy to cope
If you only knew about my panic attacks
What if those sheep want their fleeces back?

I paved my highway over a pile of rust
Using good intentions and misplaced trust
There’s only one exit, at the end of the line
Half a smile past the Abandon Hope sign

Oh, I’m a person by legal fiction
Your friendly global corporation
I was never elected
And never crowned
But I’m running the world
Running the world
Right into the ground

And these activists, they get in my way
What the hell are they protesting anyway?
Don’t they know how it goes, just pass the buck
We own the politicians, so best of luck!

Think you have problems? Check out this graph!
Those earnings ought to be good for a laugh
Look, the brokers deserve some dividends
To comfort them when the sky descends

For I’m a person by legal fiction
Your friendly global corporation
I was never elected
And never crowned
But I’m running the world
Running the world
Right into the ground

Dharma Map

I went to see the guru
To score some destiny
Just enough to tide me through
‘Til I could fix my color TV

Read more: Dharma Map

Axioms of Empire

Come now, let us rival Nature
We’ll build on banks between the rivers
Watch us wall off every danger
Save our stores from starving strangers

Let us set the price of pleasure
Catch our cut from every acre
Tally all the Earthbound treasures
For we only own what we can measure

Add a bigger buffer
Around multiplying structures
Divide them up then conquer
Such are the axioms of Empire
Ever hungrier for power
Seeking new realms to devour
Fending off the final hour
As the axe falls on the Empire

These decrees define the letters
Lines confining willful workers
All will cultivate our cultures
For only we’ll have any answers

Ordered echoes yoke the future
Designing minds to be their bearer
Wooden actors pose as rulers
On strings of plundered lucre

We face foregone foreclosure
Debt embedded in the architecture
For those who seek to be Earth’s master
Summon forth disaster even faster

Add a bigger buffer
Around multiplying structures
Divide them up then conquer
Such are the axioms of Empire
Ever hungrier for power
Seeking new realms to devour
Fending off the final hour
As the axe falls on the Empire

Gremlins On Theremins

Say, I hear you play air guitar
Like a million-dollar rock-star
Yeah, swinging that axe and looking sharp
But can you tease the untouchable harp?

Can you gesture forth eerie arias
Worthy of unseen phantom operas
Can you conduct concertos
Plucked from thin air
Do you dare the instrument
That isn’t really there?

You play it with a wave
Amplitude and oscillation
That’s all it takes
To surf those good vibrations
Stringless space
Tracing vapor’s song
There’s gremlins in the theremin
What could possibly go wrong?

And when you’re all alone
In the chaos zone of the etherphone
Where shapes of sound are shown
Fourier waves of volume and tone
On marionette strings of energy
Naked hands generating melodies
Like a flash of sorcery

You play it with a wave
Amplitude and oscillation
That’s all it takes
To surf those good vibrations
Stringless space
Tracing vapor’s song
There’s gremlins in the theremin
What could possibly go wrong?

Tuning the vast sonar ocean
To tones of lunar emotions
Gradients of shrill variation
Always on the edge of implosion

Theremin, you mind-bender!
Full of unsung songs to render
You’re the sailor they’ll remember
When the bombs are marked return to sender
And the airborne corps all surrender

You play it with a wave
Amplitude and oscillation
That’s all it takes
To surf those good vibrations
Stringless space
Tracing vapor’s song
There’s gremlins in the theremin
What could possibly go wrong?

Meets The I

Crazy Bear said you gotta flip your lid
If you want to see the other side
Peer past the grids and pyramids
Where the pattern gets magnified
Magnified
And amplified
As the sirens sigh
There’s so much more than meets the eye

Oh crystal ball
Oh crystal ball
They’re all cracked up at the oracle
Said always choose an alternative
And when in doubt, just be decisive
Oh, sure, the signals are clear and loud
Bet on the horses riding the clouds

I met her down at the nebula’s edge
Plasma mandalas all around
She asked if I could spare some space
For we’ve run out of ground
Out of ground
We fell spellbound
In torus twine
Wrapped around the grand design

We were on the same kind of vibe
Frequency freaks tuning in
Decided we must be two of a tribe
So we took our world out for a spin
For a spin
Wound up within
Spiral vortex skies
Plenty bright but none too wise

Oh crystal ball
Oh crystal ball
They’re all cracked up at the oracle
Said always choose an alternative
And when in doubt, just be decisive
Oh, sure, the signals are clear and loud
Bet on the horses riding the clouds

History sure ain’t what it used to be
Jaded and riddled with stray blasé
Today is living out a parody
The past getting so passé
So passé
It’s gone away
Like yesterday’s pie
But there’s so much more than meets the eye

Incredible

Diogenes went a-hunting for an honest man
Said I’ll surely find one if I can
I’ve been all up and down this land
But I’ve never seen the real deal first-hand

All of the balance and none of the check
About as fair as you might expect
Cork popping on the bottleneck
Dealing from the bottom of half-stacked decks

Northbound suddenly heading south
Two truths coming from a single mouth
Didn’t know the world was so flexible
It’s absolutely incredible

I carry a lamp by the broad light of day
Hunting for new ways to disobey
Heckling authority is my real forte
Scraping by on panhandler’s pay

I’ve heard words that beggar belief
Raised in defense of a millionaire thief
Hiding behind a gold fig leaf
But the two-bit hustler gets no relief

I’ve been to bordellos and boardrooms
I’ve seen manure spruced with perfume
Everywhere wolves pull on costumes of wool
To fool the sheep they’re getting set to consume

Northbound suddenly heading south
Two truths coming from a single mouth
Didn’t know the world was so flexible
It’s absolutely incredible

Maybe we’ll strike platinum
Or at least some silver shekels
Fortune’s a pendulum
Hitting all the pits and the pinnacles
They call it a windfall
Because wealth is ephemeral

Oh we’re gonna make it rain
We’re gonna make it flood
So better get up on the high ground
Or be knee-deep in the mud
If you’ll trade your soul for treasure
You’ve got a solid claim on neither

Betting big on a hand of symbols
Pocket full of intangibles
Always playing on principles
However the cards may shuffle
The treasure belongs
To those who go all night long
For the sake of the song

Northbound suddenly heading south
Two truths coming from a single mouth
Didn’t know the world was so flexible
It’s absolutely incredible
Absolutely incredible

American Fall

I must admit I love
Even the way she lies
Rolling her eyes and heaving her sighs
Tuned-up and spit-shined
All wound up and out of her mind
Not a thought in her head
About the pricetags of play
That’s okay
She doesn’t pay ’em anyway

Reckoning clings
On frostbitten wings
Tiara’s sparkling, you know what that means
It’s no surprise to any eyes who have seen
Someone shoot for the moon and miss
Stricken with courage from a lion’s kiss
Sailing on storms of bliss
Suspended in a bubble
Inside a tide of rubble
On sound-studded lightening lit clouds
Looming long and rumbling loud

Oh beautiful America
Your makeup is smeared
Is that oil on your face
Or foreign orphan’s tears?

Oh the buzzing in the crowd
As miss high and flighty tumbles
Wings mangled but head unbowed
Tresses tangled in her soiled shroud
Misguided expeditions endowed
With the force of the humbled
And the curse of the proud

Oh beautiful America
Your makeup is smeared
Is that oil on your face
Or foreign orphan’s tears?

She struts upon stage for an hour
Wrapped in flags and flanked by tanks
Giddy with glory and drunk on power
Under the thumb of plutocratic banks
A noble enough experiment
But what has become self-evident
Is that she’s heading for a fall
Because America promised freedom for all
In the form of worldwide shopping malls
Pearls before swine, they’re mine all mine
The call of an Empire in steep decline

Oh beautiful America
Your makeup is smeared
Is that oil on your face
Or foreign orphan’s tears?

Strange Loops

I had this thought inside my head
What would happen if I said:
I had this thought inside my head
And I wondered what would happen if I said

Read more: Strange Loops

Ken Nordine Sendup

Air Lift Underground
Sending Up Ken Nordine
Read more: Ken Nordine Sendup

Let’s Bring the Healing

Well, this castle is quickly losing luster
The courtyard’s cluttered
With braggadocio and bluster
Broken windows shuttered
Sliding into the gutter
Whatever happened to the welcome mat?
Oh, they sold that to the plutocrats

It’s a labyrinth of one-way doors
Where billionaire servants carefully ignore
Your protests as they steal all that is yours
And sell the furniture for a trifle more
This is a house that has forgotten the poor
We’re not even sure what we built it for

The paint is peeling
On the sagging ceiling
Too much truth revealing
We’re tired of kneeling
It’s potluck planet
And we plan on feasting

So let’s bring the healing
Let’s bring the healing

Better invest in remodeling
Let’s start by appealing
To that human feeling
We’ll need more than a cosmetic change
The whole foundation must be rearranged
We’re so spun out on our polarities
We’ve misplaced half our humanity
Compassion is pure necessity
When we understand
That I plus you makes we

So let’s bring the healing
Let’s bring the healing
Let’s bring the healing

We’re sick with worry
Sick with debt
Sick with doubt
Sick with regret
Sick with hatred
Sick inside out
Sick about what it’s all about
Sick of division
Sick to the core
Sick of the mantra of more more more

We’re sick of celebrity
Sick of the news
Sick of manifest destiny
Heads I win, tails you lose
We’re sick of the superficial
Sick of the profound
Sick of the artificial
Turf smothering the ground

Sick of lies raining from above
Sick of push
And sick of shove
Sick with twisted ideas of love
Sick of always keeping score
And so very sick
Sick to death
Of the vile stench of war
There’s so much we’re all sick of
So let’s bring the healing

Let’s bring the healing
Let’s bring the healing
Let’s bring the healing

Faux Mirage

Never trust a psychic
Who only sees appointments
If they were truly authentic
They’d have your slot penciled in
I’m not calling anyone a charlatan
But this snake-oil seems mighty thin
Have you taste-tested your own medicine?
Yeah, this snake-oil seems mighty thin
Have you taste-tested your own medicine?

We’ve come to some oasis
Where the water tastes like truth
Filtered through reverse osmosis
And delivered to the youth
For the thirsty do not inquire
If that cup of Kool-Aid is pure
When it quenches the heart’s desire
And comforts the unsure
When it quenches the heart’s desire
And comforts the unsure

I once bought some free advice
The very best kind you can get
If they sell you your own soul at market price
That ain’t enlightenment
No, that ain’t enlightenment

It’s a three-ringed shell-game circus
Trapeze leaps of synchronicity
With all these signs between us
It’s a wonder anyone can see

The fault is not the dots themselves
Cast in constellations unforeseen
Whatever Fate’s ulterior motives
For making such a scene

You might write it off to happenstance
An offbeat quirk of circumstance
Just an act of random chance
A meaningless coinci-dance

Is it forgery or  foreordained
Sleight of hand or cosmic plan
Or just a way to keep us entertained
Seer-ing in the frying pan

I once bought some free advice
The very best kind you can get
If they sell you your own soul at market price
That ain’t enlightenment
No, that ain’t enlightenment

Nostradamus always stuck to his story
But just as quick to hedge his wagers
Missing the mark never made him worry
For it all shakes loose sooner or later

So let’s play a game of spin the tale
Let’s pin the foible on the future fable
For the Devil hides in the fine details
And Justice has Her thumb on the scales

Karmameters and alien channeling
Bone throw, Tarot toss or Me Ching
Whichever way you swing
Everything shifts with a butterfly wing

I once bought some free advice
The very best kind you can get
If they sell you your own soul at market price
That ain’t enlightenment
No, that ain’t enlightenment

Volition is like a faux mirage
It feels real in the heat of the choice
Fate comes in heavy camouflage
Imitating a stranger’s voice
Even counterfeits hold a certain charm
And if no one’s any the wiser
How does anyone find the harm?

Adorned with graven emblems
Covered in costume jewelry
Numb to the shiny conundrum
Embedded in star-struck neon marquees
Well, no side trip is out of the way
When redemption’s the destination
The sybil had her say, come what may
To a future of veiled creations

I once bought some free advice
The very best kind you can get
If they sell you your own soul at market price
That ain’t enlightenment
No, that ain’t enlightenment

Bloomin’ Craft

Starseeds from wild yonder frontier
Efflorescent effigies made from mirrors
Under the deep blue atmosphere
Exploding at the bottom of an ocean of air

Overtures and undertones
Animating flesh and bone
Chipping away at the great unknown
As both the sculptor
Both the sculptor and the stone
Both the sculptor and the stone

They carried carbon contraband
Written in twin helix strands
And it spread throughout the land
Lit like a red-hot firebrand

The Oracle code from the motherlode
Where the sky kisses the Earth
And rain returns for another rebirth
Sun-soaked fractal math
Wandering and pondering
Evolution’s garden path
A rose arose
A rose arose
A rose arose
A Cosmos exposed
As the coiled Caduceus laughs
Practicing the Bloomin’ Craft
Practicing the Bloomin’ Craft
Practicing the Bloomin’ Craft

Rhea gave Her essence to the Aeons
But bygones wouldn’t stay bygones
Fed a rock to the Ages swallowing Icons
And made old Time cough up the Pantheon

She showed them the invisible
She told them the inaudible
She described the ineffable
Defied the inevitable
And bid them build the impossible

She wished us illumination
But left us biding among the blind
She whispered secrets of initiation
By the sign of serpents intertwined

The Oracle code from the motherlode
Where the sky kisses the Earth
And rain returns for another rebirth
Sun-soaked fractal math
Wandering and pondering
Evolution’s garden path
A rose arose
A rose arose
A rose arose
A Cosmos exposed
As the coiled Caduceus laughs
Practicing the Bloomin’ Craft
Practicing the Bloomin’ Craft
Practicing the Bloomin’ Craft

Velvet Valley

Going down to the velvet valley
Where syrup streams come to swell
Going down to tickle my fancy
And to tickle yours as well

Read more: Velvet Valley

Pulling Strings

We met in booking at the local clink
Making the best of the situation
I’d had a little bit too much to think
Sparking a three-state investigation

She was in for numerous sins
And countless deviations
She flashed me an unlawful grin
The kind that needs no explanation

Oh, that good old outlaw romance
Sweatin’ heavy and takin’ our chance
Oh, you know, it’s a dangerous dance
By the seat of our pants
Sometimes it comes apart at the seams
Whenever you start pulling strings
It might just keep unraveling

It was love at first mug shot
So I hurried back with her bail
And when they wouldn’t let her out
I took down the walls of that damned jail

We ran off to join the circus
That scene was really fly-by-night
Swinging the high trapeze netless
With backpacks of dynamite

Oh, that good old outlaw romance
Sweatin’ heavy and takin’ our chance
Oh, you know, it’s a dangerous dance
By the seat of our pants
Sometimes it comes apart at the seams
Whenever you start pulling strings
It might just keep unraveling

One day the big top blew sky high
And we were already making tracks
Skating on thin ice of alibis
With the heat always at our backs

Never met a rule that wouldn’t bend
We’re completely self-authorized
I haven’t a clue how all of this ends
But I plan on being surprised

Oh, that good old outlaw romance
Sweatin’ heavy and takin’ our chance
Oh, you know, it’s a dangerous dance
By the seat of our pants
Sometimes it comes apart at the seams
Whenever you start pulling strings
It might just keep unraveling

Saturn’s Return

She was ravishing in rags
She banished gloom from the drag
Serving fantasies by the bag
Any eye would be
Taken in by the shine
Oh it’s no use cryin’
Over spilt wine
And no use whining
About wilted vines
Especially when the vineyard
Was never mine

She interrupted nothing
Nothing at all
I was deeply contemplating
The nearest wall
Intent on procrastinating
A perfectly good day away
But I lost sight of my priorities
And put the pause button on delay

Maybe it was her eyes
Or maybe her ink
Maybe it was her fire
Or just my drink
Whatever it was that made me think
Thoughts that came
With a nudge and a wink
A voice in my head that seductively said
I can always do nothing tomorrow instead

Words had such a way with her
Acrobatic enough to insert
Terms like “hyperbolic tesselation”
In the course of casual conversation
Dangling participles in anticipation
Of furtive yet fruitless flirtations
Daring you to confess incomprehension
Of notions which defy explanation

She had a way of waxing eloquent
On any subject she’d care to invent
She was of roundly angular bent
And I was rarely sure exactly what she meant
She always assumed that you understood
I always assumed I eventually would

Maybe it was her eyes
Or maybe her ink
Maybe it was her fire
Or just my drink
Whatever it was that made me think
Thoughts that came
With a nudge and a wink
A voice in my head that seductively said
I can always do nothing tomorrow instead

Classy and class-conscious all at once
She dropped out of finishing school
And jumped into the blue gene pool
Elitism isn’t for everyone, she said
The books kept slipping off my head
And anyway they’d rather be read

What a bundle of conflicted contradictions
A wonderful mess of conflated convictions
In a ribbon-red dress defying description
Surfing the wave of Saturn’s Return
She had three triple lifetimes to burn
And so when she said shall we then go
And I said where and she said you know
She said you know
She said you know

Maybe it was her eyes
Or maybe her ink
Maybe it was her fire
Or just my drink
Whatever it was that made me think
Thoughts that came
With a nudge and a wink
A voice in my head that seductively said
I can always do nothing tomorrow instead

Mondegreen Stew

There’s more here than meets the ear
More than anyone understands
Like an old story told fourth hand
The only constant is conversion
Everyone hears a different version
Pass it on, pass a ton
Past a one, past we won

Read more: Mondegreen Stew

Thumplethinskin

Here comes the king of the trolls
On a red-carpet of indemnified souls
Make way for the procession of deplorables!
They hang on his gilded coat-tails
They hang on every blustery word
This curious cross between Mussolini
P.T. Barnum and Harry Houdini

On goblins! On dragons!
Sound the alarm! Arm the klaxon!
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Fe fie Foo-foo
Freaking all the field mice
And bopping ‘em on the head
The Klan and 4-chan and the FBI, oh my!
They bet on the long shot
And Russia covered the spread

Enthroned in a castle of cards
With struts of silver spoons
The blowhard paper tycoon
Upgraded to full-scale typhoon
Well, they cultivated the piper
But he supplied his own pie, sir
And now he’ll call the tunes

The firmament shakes
Under the jackboot earthquake
The upset heard ‘round the world
Coup! Coup! Coup!
For ballots are cheaper than bullets
And puppets move faster than rockets

On 9-11 twin towers fell
In the apple of America’s I
On 11-9 another gaudy tower rose
To spill golden showers from the sky
Now we confront unbound Titans
Looming over compromised horizons
Now the map is swimming with red
As rough beasts slough off to Washington
Lining up at the trough to be fed

I’ll Putin twenty
If you’ll ante up the farm
For this is the land of plenty
And the bankers will come to no harm
Just make sure the bears keep their arms
The Second Amendment trumps the First
As clock and calendar are radically reversed
America’s a casino now
And all the chips are in
We’re stuck holding deuces
Who do you think will win?

So it’s time to build a wall
Around our three-thousand mile mall
Better not let those brown folks in to work
At labors the brown-shirts would rather shirk
Well, you know Nobody won the 2016 election
But the plutocrats made their selection
Missiles and seig heils
Rise to salute his improbable erection
A psychopathic half-wit driven to emit
A shit-storm of unfiltered excrement
But we hold it obvious and self-evident
That Douchenozzle J. Thumplethinskin
Has no business even being free
Let alone our last President

All braggadocio and bling
As real as professional wrestling
Authentic as a QVC zirconium ring
This bumbling parody of villainy
Blowing the trumpet of tyranny
Bearing all the legitimacy
Of a three-trillion dollar bill
America, meet your poison pill
Thump! Thump! Thump!

Unasked

Now, let’s hear it
What does silence say?
How do phantoms pass the day?
How much does a dream weigh
After doubt has chased it away?
What random tangent shall we entertain?
These are the pressing questions
Unasked in their very expression

What a heavy day in the laboratory
We’ve set off in uncharted territory
Let’s see if we can levitate gravity
Or sort static from synchronicity
Not nearly as noble as dynamite
And darker than stars devouring their own light
Bellowing every now and then
Fire-demons of spite
Scorching the source of all we ignite

Here we’ve visited vistas
Of unintelligible synesthesia
Here Mnemosyne wrestles perpetually
With her evil twin Amnesia

Here have we overflown lands
Overgrown by phony panaceas
Scaling loops of circular stairs
And plunging neckline nadirs of despair
As we distilled volatile emotions
Into smokey lyrical potions

Ideas getting carried away with themselves
Born to greatness
But bound to bookshelves
It’s all very quick
And terribly clever
But where shall we find the wizard healer
Who knows how to cure the broken lover?

Let us consider the cost of consideration
The drag of deliberation
As we design experiments
Destined to end in conflagration
And attempt to invent acrobatic instruments
Intent on self-examination
Without bending them
And sending them
Into maddened luminous hyperspheres
Blinded by the navel’s
Glorious glare
These are the pressing questions
Unasked in their very expression

Is there a real difference
Between forgery and art?
Does it matter
If the buyer can’t tell them apart?
Is the culture past the date of expiration
Spoiled with murky curdled traditions
Devoid of any credible claim
To serving any reasonable aim
Or can one cull
A strain of redemption
Immune to the pangs of conception
Say, is there any sense assigning blame
When cure and poison are exactly the same?

What are gods made in the image of?
Is time truly a Titan
Which swallows its children
All the while protesting love?
Thundering conflicting commands
From lofty mountaintops above
As the faithful cut off their own hands
Fearful to trust their own plans
These are the pressing questions
Unasked in their very expression

How does one plot out
The origin of originality?
What came before eternity?
When did these broken notions of sin
Get twisted and mixed in
With evoking inner divinity?
How do we swallow our own tales
Taken to compass the cosmic scale?

Will ideals keep caving to expediency?
What would it even mean
To be completely free?
Where’s the hope for anarchy
When some warlord half-cocked big shot
Marauding with an unopposed army
Directly erects another dynasty?
After all, if the Empire were to fall
How many of us would survive at all?
These are the pressing questions
Unasked in their very expression

Usual suspects rounded up and released
All the props of philosophers and priests
Yet the mystery of ontology remains unsolved
And now the lab has utterly dissolved
Who cares who did it
We want to know why
Even if we only find plausible lies
All the mind’s cages buckled and bent
No one knows where the control group went
Medals all melted down again
Has the entire universe fallen in
Collapsing all which might have been?
These are the pressing questions
Unasked in their very expression

Truth Is A Goat

Truth is a goat
Herded though the desert
By gruff, bearded keepers
Bearing hooked and wooden sticks

Truth is a goat!

Truth is a goat
Stubborn and unyielding
Scaling the mountain
In search of itself

Truth is a goat!

Truth ruts with gusto
Butting heads
With other truths
So eager to breed
And spread their seed
In temples and confessional booths

Truth is a goat!

Truth grazes on fiery gazes
Fixed on a stony creed
Written on truth’s tanned skin
Where it says knowledge
Is wrapped up in sin

Truth is a goat!

And holiness bellows
A hollow trumpet sound
Through the severed horns of Truth
Sacrificed in the name of the name
Bleating guilt
And bleating shame
Blurting Truths
Broken and tame
Oh beware if anyone dares
Say these goats are all the same

Truth is a goat!

Truth is a goat
And no one seems to raise goats anymore
It’s all sacred cows
And lambs to the slaughter
Dancing atop steepletop bells
Just as well
For Truth’s coming around the mountain
On a steep vertical crag
Where no other biped dares to tread
Wild and unkempt terrain
Truth that won’t stay in a single head
Or remain in pickled brains

Truth is a goat!

Truth is a goat
And the ego is a dog
Barking and corralling
Wandering wayward Truths
Faithfully serving the Shepherd
Who butchers the meat of the matter
And sells the Truth to the highest bidder

Truth is a goat!

Truth is a goat
As old as the hills
Living on quotes
Getting by on cheap thrills
Hooves split asunder
And never quite still
Unafraid of thunder
Hungry, unfulfilled
Kind of makes you wonder
If the old goat really knows
And if we ever will
If we ever will
If we ever will

Is Truth A Goat?

Every Third Word

Ouroboros before us
Ouroboros behind
In endless genesis
As the real unwinds

With a flash daylight devours
Last night’s slithering tale
Eleven flying elevators
Thought-trains jumping their rails

Inverted and bent closed-circuit events
All mere fragments, whatever they meant,
Wherever they went…
Well, it’s forever now or never
A watch in rivers of now
And it’s up to the woken one
To make sense of it all somehow

Is it a play?
Or is it a bird?
We’ve heard rumors of humor
Dressed in gowns of the absurd
And after the loss of laughter
You’ll grasp about every third word
Faster than a loco motive
With a head full of steam
Well, you may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not
I’m the Dream

We’re still here in our hypersphere
On tradewinds of imagery
Inklings along fractured frontiers
Scribbling provisional memories

That’s just us in juxtaposition
That’s just us in juxtaposition
Slipping in the wake of the stream
Sounds wrapped around recursions
Sounds wrapped around recursions
Sounds wrapped around recursions
Narratives tugging at extremes

There were double-twist contortionists
Double-takes and deja vu
You can call me a hopeless optimist
But a miracle’s always overdue

Is it a play?
Or is it a bird?
We’ve heard rumors of humor
Dressed in gowns of the absurd
And after the loss of laughter
You’ll grasp about every third word
Faster than a loco motive
With a head full of steam
Well, you may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not
I’m the Dream

It’s a Sphinx without a riddle
An oubliette without a hatch
A bow without a fiddle
Or a torch without a match

It’s a coil without a center
An explosion with no force
A device with no inventor
A serpent without a source

Is it a play?
Or is it a bird?
We’ve heard rumors of humor
Dressed in gowns of the absurd
And after the loss of laughter
You’ll grasp about every third word
Faster than a loco motive
With a head full of steam
Well, you may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not
I’m the Dream

Ouroboros before us
Ouroboros behind
In endless genesis
As the real unwinds

Road I Ride

The road I ride
Isn’t marked on any map
It’s a little off to the side
From where pandas lay their traps
Out where outlaws hide
The tunnels are where I reside
A little dirt I take in stride
No room for undue pride
On the road I ride

Read more: Road I Ride

Chimera

’Twas the battle of White Mountain
Bohemian dreams in flames
And among the abandoned banners
Lay the opposites that were the same
Arsenals of vitriol
Launched in fits of ire
Save your face or save your soul
But either way it ends in fire

Chimera in a china shop
Bless this mess
It never stops
Ten thousand steps
To reach the top
But only one slip
For the bottom to drop

The clash of the sky Armadas
Under a musing moon
Eloquent wax melting
Janus candles lit too soon
Pyrite pyramids tower
As rockets burst above
Shooting stars don’t go that far
When the wish runs out of love

Chimera in a china shop
Bless this mess
It never stops
Ten thousand steps
To reach the top
But only one slip
For the bottom to drop

There were jars of bottled lightening
Scorched Earth all around
Shards of shattered rainbows
Snowflakes rising from the ground
Assassinated characters
Faces full of sand
Low-down spilled across the hill
Casting shadows on the land

Chimera in a china shop
Bless this mess
It never stops
Ten thousand steps
To reach the top
But only one slip
For the bottom to drop

Fabric Meets the Flesh

Winter blew through and froze my bones
The angels throwing hailstones
We’ve crossed Juno, just so you know
And she’s notching icicles in her crossbow

The best laid plans of men and mice
Left us highways paved with ice
Snowballs rolling big and bold
I hope that jack-shack’s gonna hold

A flawless design
In the cloister of the mind
But will the pattern unwind
When put to the test
When the fabric meets the flesh
And veils fall in soft caress
When art devours artifice
And we stand naked nonetheless

When the meta is consumed by meat
Theories are great, but when do we eat?
You can lead minds to the kitchen sink
But I don’t believe you can make them think

Back to the old drawing board
See if this one strikes a chord
The blueprint’s only paper-thin
When the human element enters in

A flawless design
In the cloister of the mind
But will the pattern unwind
When put to the test
When the fabric meets the flesh
And veils fall in soft caress
When art devours artifice
And we stand naked nonetheless

If you’d plan to span the globe
Clad in royal threadbare robes
Well, every strength comes along
With weakness born of being strong

When ideas hit hard reality
Dragged by tractor-beams of gravity
And the parachute snags and tears
Remember we’re always halfway there

A flawless design
In the cloister of the mind
But will the pattern unwind
When put to the test
When the fabric meets the flesh
And the veils fall in soft caress
When art devours artifice
And we stand naked nonetheless

Crossing the Rubicon

We’ve uncovered the plot of a book
And we’re surfing turning pages
Everywhere little Oedipa looks
We’re trapped in Tristero’s traces

Are we hoist in some twisted hoax
Or a warped hallucination?
Shadows wrapped in mystical cloaks
Fleeing with your imagination

Truth’s a many-headed hydra
Every answer has a twin
There isn’t any box big enough
To squeeze the Universe in
Maybe the pattern’s real
Or else completely fake
Maybe you’re only dreaming
That you’re actually awake
Maybe it’s transparent
Or utterly opaque
All there is is a point of you
A drop in an infinite lake

Skating third rails of radiation
Through concrete tunnels of perception
Fissuring degrees of gradiation
Splitting the spectrum of sensation

Just a half-step of separation
Dividing diamond-faced dimensions
Tinsel filaments of reflection
Lost in transit and translation

Sorting scattered glimmers
Of tableaus twisted and bent
Stirring a mixture of pictures
Chronicling impossible events

Truth’s a many-headed hydra
Every answer has a twin
There isn’t any box big enough
To squeeze the Universe in
Maybe the pattern’s real
Or else completely fake
Maybe you’re only dreaming
That you’re actually awake
Maybe it’s transparent
Or utterly opaque
All there is is a point of you
A drop in an infinite lake

Well, hell, we’ve crossed the Rubicon
And the die is irrevocably cast
Whatever laser-razed lost lexicons
Illuminate the hidden past

Are we in a digital analogy
A virtual reality imitation?
Marked by quirky peculiarities
Emerging from rainbows of gravitation?

Lyrical spherical symmetries
Encompassing the whole of the Earth
Wrapped around parallel polarities
Of entropy and rebirth

Truth’s a many-headed hydra
Every answer has a twin
There isn’t any box big enough
To squeeze the Universe in
Maybe the pattern’s real
Or else completely fake
Maybe you’re only dreaming
That you’re actually awake
Maybe it’s transparent
Or utterly opaque
All there is is a point of you
A drop in an infinite lake

Hotel Paradox

Right at the corner of Vortex Street
And Enigma Avenue
Squatters blew up the Utopia Suite
So we’re booked in room Catch-22
Now is tomorrow with a backspin twist
And you’d better believe nothing unreal exists

Oh, I swear we’re halfway there
Down roundabout halls and endless stairs
Got to think around the box
To navigate this place
No vacancy in the Hotel Paradox
But we never run out of space
And we’re halfway there
Always halfway
Halfway there

The front desk has already checked out
The pool full of atmosphere
The marquee is powered by doubt
For if you knew, you wouldn’t be here
If you have to ask, the answer is know
‘Cause we ran out of answers ages ago

Oh, I swear we’re halfway there
Down roundabout halls and endless stairs
Got to think around the box
To navigate this place
No vacancy in the Hotel Paradox
But we never run out of space
And we’re halfway there
Always halfway
Halfway there

The time has come, the walrus said
To vacuum the upstairs ceiling
Time to lie in an unmade bed
And watch the paint a-peelin’
Well, nobody asked if you wanted to be
So free will’s an illusion if you ask me

Oh, I swear we’re halfway there
Down roundabout halls and endless stairs
Got to think around the box
To navigate this place
No vacancy in the Hotel Paradox
But we never run out of space
And we’re halfway there
Always halfway
Halfway there

Corporate Logos

You know the flow by where it won’t go
Those outlines define the shapes of the signs
Drawn in the span between high tide and low
Visible only when moonlight shines
Always digging and ditching
That double-edged duality
Emulating every enemy
As we go about the business
Of re-branding reality

Spiraling staircase
Spells out the word
That all eyes know
And no ears have heard
Four letters in the flesh
Swirling in a soup
Strangely stirred
Walking the talk
Stumbling and slurred

Banks of currency backed by trust
Storing the solid light of the sun
Accounts inherited by birthright of dust
With a ballooning balance known by none
Variable interest which self-adjusts
And long lines of numbers which add up to one

Spiraling staircase
Spells out the word
That all eyes know
And no ears have heard
Four letters in the flesh
Swirling in a soup
Strangely stirred
Walking the talk
Stumbling and slurred

So we’re making matters in our own hands
For all we are are blueprints in sand
With the endless supply of endless demand
Swimming through the subspace substrate
Creation in search of something to create
Anagrams and amalgamated visions
Fused by the art of inverted fission

Spiraling staircase
Spells out the word
That all eyes know
And no ears have heard
Four letters in the flesh
Swirling in a soup
Strangely stirred
Walking the talk
Stumbling and slurred

Corporate Logos

Alembic

The face of the tabula rasa
Emptiness awaiting the wind
Like a mad priestess of Pythia
Inhaling infinities within

Exhaling soap-bubble streams
Running on the last synapse
Juggling fragile dreams
Until all save one collapse

I made my way to this domain
Dancing in the serpent’s lair
Dissolving the shallow and vain
Washing myself right out of my hair

When the right hand knows
What the left hand feels
When opposites match
Epiphanies flash
And sparks catch
Illuminating the wick
Just you mind the magic
Watch the other hand
That’s where you’ll find the trick

At the crossroads the curtain rippled
Centuries swept away
And then our numbers tripled
When the djinn came out to play

Eternity etched in hourglass sands
Symbols distilled through the ages
Keep whatever you catch in your hands
And transmute it upon these pages

Did you anticipate this instant’s arrival
Grasping at tattered coat-tails?
Can you taste the rag-tag sense of style
Can you hear the breeze rustling these sails?

When the right hand knows
What the left hand feels
When opposites match
Epiphanies flash
And sparks catch
Illuminating the wick
Just you mind the magic
Watch the other hand
That’s where you’ll find the trick

Alchemy is all about purity
Dialing down the ego noise
Rising higher with every degree
That the fire-walk destroys

Sitting in the crucible
We’re cranking up the gas
Down to bare essentials
Extracting music from the mass

We’ve caught a drop of magic
Raining from phantom clouds
Distilled in the alembic
Until it sings the spell out loud

When the right hand knows
What the left hand feels
When opposites match
Epiphanies flash
And sparks catch
Illuminating the wick
Just you mind the magic
Watch the other hand
That’s where you’ll find the trick

Sailing In Circles

Ah, those were our halcyon nights
Dancing on fantasy’s ledge
Outlandish pied-piper satellites
Pushing the envelope over the edge

The stars all shining spectral rays
And the ocean was but a lake
Sailing in circles for a thousand days
Swept away as we fell awake

Oh, all of us felt the loss
From the four-way double-cross
When the arrow hit the albatross
And the headless coin was tossed
First it soars
And then it tumbles
Well, that’s the way
The karma crumbles

Well, the Captain took a turn for the strange
Missing the storm-clouds for the sea
Icebergs high as a mountain range
Echoing whispers of mutiny

The vessel sank like stoneware
In wells of washed-out ink
Wisdom, wisdom everywhere
But not a thought to think

Oh, all of us felt the loss
From the four-way double-cross
When the arrow hit the albatross
And the headless coin was tossed
First it soars
And then it tumbles
Well, that’s the way
Tthe karma crumbles

Gotta get it off my chest
My chest
Oh I gotta get it off my chest
My chest

The sightless prophet held his head
Salty and parched with thirst
Bring that bird back from the dead
And your fate shall be reversed

If your raft survives resurrection
And rises up from the murky deep
Casting a still life reflection
Of when dreams were only asleep

Oh, all of us felt the loss
From the four-way double-cross
When the arrow hit the albatross
And the headless coin was tossed
First it soars
And then it tumbles
Well, that’s the way
Tthe karma crumbles