Thursday 23 August 2012

Six Dreams to Stop the Machine





"dusk and dawn are the cracks between worlds" -Don Juan


I

darkness
comfortable,
shadow gravity black holes,
family homes, tradition,
all this remembrance is all,
fit as spirits, brothers and sisters yawn,
fall back into the deep lonely mind past
the white stem of the eye balls,
into the axiom-egg-yolk, still-lidded-shell sigh,
knowing the light above the city looks the same,
I press the snooze button...

II

I fall again, I am always falling, this time into
full of blankets and pillows off of cupboard rooves,
light itself the womb joy warm agency crossroads,
my brother and I are laughing,
we lead from this moment
where we can be anything,
yet we are
warriors, hippies,
mothers Quan Yin smile as we go,
said "this is all a remembrance",
I know what she means,
there where the quest
same Buddha destinations are already curled
in fractals apex shoe like eaglets,
growing up and flying away from the soles
where in golden lettering
Apollos inscription remains
“I love you anyway”
I fear that I'll never see mum again,
I hunger
for assurance manifest in her eyes
it doesn't come, she is ash,
I put my soles on
and fall out into the dark street,
I am fear chased,
I climb a tree away from
the dinner suit wolves,
I am barking, they are barking,
fire against fire,
with my paw
I am reaching for the horizon light,
it is so fucking dark,
I fear it will never come,
I thought
“I must have destroyed the sun with my haste!”
I
fall,
yet I don't stop,
I keep falling, still dreaming.


III

how can one close
ones eyes in a dream?
do we die?

IV

now is the peace free flying
over the moon lit coast,
I have lost everything and it feels free,
because I have lost and am lost,
zions stretched out beaches,
oblivion foam lines lips chanting,
“aum mani padmi hum” smashes
against cliff faces staring in beautiful sorrow,
inky black still time trough
in the spaces between each,
where I find you, we swoop,
up we parallel limestone maps,
up from the car cracking rocks,
somewhere real alarms a frantic pace like mercury,
and yet our pace is still a rushing pre-birth everything,
fleeting up into the stars,
climbing to deep still echo in the sinew,
in the apex,
where thought nothing mirror,
our altar heart is freedom fire,
we can calm all the screams
in our angel eyes,
where this is all remembrance,
holding the world and yet it stops,
god dam time is never long enough,
we suddenly lose our wings,
our feathers,
we are naked and falling frantic,
before the surface hits,
now,
all is awake blue and outside my window.


V

a whirl wind of my house,
I STOP!
I remember that it is my day off,
I am remembering, craving those dreams,
there is nothing else for me to do but
free this moment, a sunrise yet to be,
free the coming day yet to be,
free the language
between everything,
my daily place under the tree,
feeling the dewy grass and cross leg,
the meditative jazz bird song
where it all magnet,
I see faces in everything,
bark wise faces,
silly leaf faces,
curious grass faces,
nonchalant, just-being-cloud faces,
exxxxact-izzzat co-existence...
but not quite...


VI

I watch a jogger,
she turns and faces the day with
abstract determinism,
this is all there is
in the unchanged concrete
where Charlie loves Mel
with an arrow,
the city that never sleeps,
the mugger always
behind the ally shadows,
in the headphones between songs,
the monster at
the bottom of the war bin
sneers at the grey blue neon light,
she caught my eye like moth,
blank and black holes like some place
where we can see by all
the billion faces of history,
the same where I once
knew that blank,
and it meant something
human,
one love,
I turn and blink in the void,
she turns and smiles at someone she knows,
the day has managed to completely snare
its alien fly victim in the golden orb web,
I stop the machine where three butterflies
are making a temple
three foot off the ground.


Book Review: The Subterraneans -Jack Kerouac



 

In a few words, The Subterraneans; not what I was expecting.  Perhaps the title inherits an expectation of a more group involved focus, more of that party, smoke rooms and jazz meta-sex in spoken word, music and explosive ranting that he is so famous for.  Sure these moments ARE there, yet it just doesn’t register that the relationship he falls into is going to practically take up the entire 111 words.  Still, this ‘not expectedness’ was not exactly disheartening, it never is with the vibrant jammed packed Kerouac stream of conscious prose, even with such ‘downer’ subjects as paranoia, alcoholism and relationship jealousy that tears love limb from limb, it’s the way he writes that just brings the passion for life and dream philosophy alive. 

 

For it is a book about the heart. The most subterranean subject there is I suppose.  Some of it will grate on the nerves, the way that 15 pages will be expressing paranoia of his girlfriend supernova love flame, Madou Fox, just innocently playing around with other poets and then two or three about his depression on about how he fell into the paranoia in the first place.  Yet in the end between these Kerouac consciousness tedium’s, tedium’s that are very real to many men and women in the relationship sex-drug paranoia-underground wild-games anyway, there’s something so raw spirited and wild, a vein to the ocean that is the American-Indian/African aboriginality of this woman character in his life, a balance that supersedes his ego and comes at the feminine aspect of his prose life of love above the fields of prostitutes and groupies not present in any of his previous books.

 

For it is with moments such as explaining Madou fox’s ‘flip out’ running naked into the street and sitting on a fence “She was in the alley, wondering who she was, night, a thin drizzle of mist, … one slip in the wrong direction, endless space reaching out…cities in one wash of sad poetry, with honey lines of high shelved angels trumpet-blowing up above the orient-shroud Pacific huge songs of paradise” indeed, the traditional rant Kerouac fan will not be disappointed with this focus in this book, and the new fan might see his Zen-Buddhist metaphysical poetry closer to the theories of ‘the other’ so objectified previously.

 

For a deep romantic he really is behind all the wild superficial madness chauvinisms and alcoholism that sure, eventually brings him down, but damn, what I’m saying is that if you can read the flame of what he is saying behind it all, the sub texts of karma, life directions, dream life and fate life, then you can appreciate this immensity that he has put into words, the immensity that is ‘the ragamuffin dusts in the little kid’s corner and he’s asleep in his crib now and I love you, rain’ll fall on our eaves someday sweet heart” and the tragic… 


Thursday 2 August 2012

POST BEAT POETRY: The present, The Future...


 

Beat poetry. What is it? Who are its generation? Is there a renaissance? Kerouac, Corso, Ginsberg, 1960’s, shhh… These are just words man. 2012, WE ARE IT.   True, we still need them in this age, in the now vast unfortunate distance between meaningful silence and poetry and fellow human beings. Yet what if I told you the beat generations work could still lead the world back to a larger poetry life, even back to inner peace, even now?

Don’t use the telephone, people are never ready to answer it, use poetry –Jack Kerouac, Scattered Poems

Crazy huh? We must act as a team of course. To do this, soul listen, soul act, gather in groups, bring their peace back past the wall, reach back to the communities dreamed of in the sixties. Allen Ginsberg, (Verbatim, Ginsberg, Ball, 74) talks of Kerouac, of his free writing that could define the simple contents of a car for almost 60 pages and make it interesting. You just don’t get that kind of madness these days, I ask, could this alliterative attitude to musical language thus likewise define and modernise important teachings, from Homer, engineering, tautology, religion, to protest work, science-renewability and collective-mind-philosophy for today’s generation?

Poetry, always the future of other poems –Jason Maxwell, For the future of other poems 

Isn’t this strangely similar to advertising for Steiner school? Is this bite-sized enlightenment for the digital generation hopelessly lost in games? No, this is what’s natural. Would you listen to a creative rap about William Blakes work in class? I know I would, for a translated divine ‘now vision-clarity’ with a capable confident abstraction, capable of grabbing language by its fast beat balls, past its structuralist curriculum barriers, to a slow down human connection that borders madness, refocusses beat as living, organic musical poetry and moment.

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul! –Allen Ginsberg, footnote to Howl

Of course that’s the challenge, why you’re here listening to my undisciplined key board tap-flowing-electron-to-electron isn’t it?  Yet to find this space, whenever I write, I get a feeling I cannot describe and you know it too I imagine, call it a well-spring, care for your page time, call it what you like, it is best born of the idea that work becomes alliteratively cohesive naturally, a kind of leap for consciousness energy. Like the beginning of the dream that is always forgotten, it is the work that remains that is important, as it becomes life, life beat for the next generation’s words…

In this blog I would implore you to bring back beat poetry, activate this well spring of life and beat for our generation and our children, yet most of all I would like you to simply share it, share your beat-heart-life amongst us so that we can hear your moments through the syllables, be it your opinions upon my post, your reviews, your poetry, your prose, it is a space for writers and for the future of writing to meet, and so may it be

w a African drum

-Jas :D

P.S Below are links to groups and readings, my personal inspirations and my work, please share and enjoy as freely as your heart desires rhythm…

 

On Muse… Writer of Eat, Pray, Love


My work on Allpoetry.com, a free poetry sharing community


My spoken/performed work on soundcloud


Me on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/#!/jason.maxwell.372

an Exquisite post beat poet and my recent modern sensei


his performed work

http://www.reverbnation.com/marccreamore#!/artist/artist_songs/1707074

Local poetry gigs in and around Melbourne

http://pamspoetrypitchblog.blogspot.com.au/

A great local hills poet


A great lesson/belief youtube from Kerouac himself


some inspiring science magic: “what the bleep do we know?”


An excellent blog with many inspiring videos to watch