Reach into the cloud
architecture, almost to the stars.
I lived where they are made
growing up as a kid.
I just wonder what people
are thinking sometimes,
or what happens to ideas
too un evil to endure.
Out there near the edge
the ferocactus has begun to bloom.
I heard once some skaters
were murdered there.
Today I would only
take advice from an angel.
She says soon you will grow
into a beautiful girl.
Soon you will become a planet,
moons and everything.
Sometimes I feel so happy
I forget I’m going to die,
then I go to the desert
with just my sticks
and wait for the shaman.
He always comes.
And raises a temple up
from the dirt, to give to my life
a gleam of delirium, that I may
accept the final results with grace.
—
Dear Mary Anne, I’m listening
This is where the world begins
When I lay on the bridge the city flattens
If we lived together I wouldn’t be bored right now, making stuff etc.
The doctor got off the couch
Said I’m not dying but he can’t be sure
I put my head in a cloud and really learn to breathe
Just in time for the wedding
The same picture in every horizon
A woman having her hair bobbed and a deserter from the navy
are the images for the full moon today
Once I lived in a place where the mountains would
glare down upon our symbolism and noise
Before you, the pattern of reality changes
A balloon ride is right around the corner from your office
Where the meaning is new but words have the same vibrations
Live a life on one
Smart people have the worst nightmares they say
To lay a pattern in order to survive a future crisis
Did you see what they did to Heather?
Yes I understand completely
Hot wind untangles complicated worries of the day
And blows all the tarot cards off of the table
Am I wasting my life?
Watching the leaves go like that toward the sky
What is the river doing?
Staring up at the bright ass sun
I want to make something two thousand people like
Daylight blankets what’s cared for and not cared for
Shitfaced, I demand human touch
Dreaming, I cosmically rule
The doctor’s a surfer
He rides from the window to my room
I filmed it in Seattle
At night I return to the sea
The facts in this case haven’t changed
Moon in Aquarius pushes us forward into our vision of the future
This morning they mowed the lawns
All day the breeze blows sweet
Here I made a memory
You can have it
Shake out the quilt of everyday talk
To get at a vision of light and pleasure
Where on water each ship is a promise
White sails of white satin sorrow
Roll your neck to the left and the right
To receive a change in headspace before a funeral
Or a mystical gift like a polka dot dress
A nap drifted in and out of my mind
All things for santeros, but forget all that
Here I am brand new
Lush as a dream, too punk for a sad heart
If you see the doctor tell him I said happy birthday
Tell him the panther caps are in the mail
And the black candles I never burned
Tell him my palm lines say wherever people go people are in love
Tell him I’m in the countryside with all my sorry breaths
Tell him I’m on my knees with my hands to the sun
Tell him he’s trapped, sure to make a tragic move
Tell him about the tulips with the pistils made of crystal
Tell him inside me there is an unsunny afternoon
Tell him to take his eyes out of my neck
Moon in Gemini squares Jupiter making today for releasing things forever
Like a fraying black cape or unreliable refrigerator
There’s a light outside that is too bright to bring in
And a Chevrolet wrecked at the edge of the trees
Before wet weather bird cries come quick on the air
Grope at the sky and pull down black clouds
In them sew the last days
Here becomes worshipped what is easy to understand why
A death prophecy everyone always will never talk about
My first friend died in another country while I slept
The second left the note: Yes, this is exactly how it feels!
She is, I’ve heard, still alive, combing down snows from the side of a mountain
It melts into a creek where the farm kids bathe
Their symbols are all the rainbows
They grow into music
Then they get birds and the behavior of birds
The old get public parks
Let the dying have a view of the mountains
Stars are for later
Pull me through a dream
Every idea, of course, is a spell
Mix four ounces of rosewater and pour it into a bowl
Carve one side of a thick white candle with a quick portrait of yourself
Rub a layer of amyris oil around the side of the candle and inside the grooves
Place equal parts frankincense and copal resin in a cauldron
Slowly light the edge of the mix in a crescentic circle
Light the candle
Insert the end of the blade into your hand
If you see light stop immediately
Cut past remorse and future trepidation
Tilt your palm toward the center of the bowl
A turn in weather provokes emotional rush
Memorize the shapes as the drops touch the water
Memorize the sounds
This is what you own
Reach through the sunny dust of day
To ripple the still with your exorbitant limb
Farther out than earth ships could be
Lean out the scene of a moving car
To go into it means to make a mark in the dirt
Moon in Aquarius pushes us forward into a vision of the future
An entire forest just for you
—
This world repeats a soft etc.
Invisible wind,
open up and feel.
It must be a part
of the daily breezes
that roar down the mountain,
the mountain you prefer.
I live inside a crystal ball
that only sees behind me.
Once I was a teen king
thundering over the peasants.
I was born in the image of Steve.
Once I was a farm boy
on the level of clouds.
Float me back to those heights.
I remember yellow heat
in my yellow clothes and
an idea like a campfire
telling me it wasn’t sure
I’ve ever done the right thing.
Now when it asks for cures
I retrieve an amulet from a secret
altar of things that make me calm
to look upon, and when it asks
Fama, where is your love now?
I think about eating poutine
from the small of her back.
—
POSTSCRIPT
Brian Eno and
Barbara Guest’s
Fama Links
LOTS OF YES UP IN THIS PIECE.