i'm talkin' proverbs. who's talkin' proverbs? the sidewalk edition (of montreal).

secret smiles on the sidewalk, in the cafe, on the bus, you've slid your hooks into me, beautiful, and it does hurt as i spin uncontrollably forward, splish-splashing here and there.

i'm staying in a bright, shiny hotel with a huge crystal chandelier and views of tall banks and insurance companies. how elegant! i'll be happy when my money runs out.

the sidewalks are wet and delightful. did i mention i've actually worn my jeans bare, and holes are forming - this being the first happenstance of this sort since i was a tyke.

the past few nights i've been the star of loungey midnight interviews, as i hurtle toward the center of the city, a beetle railing against a screen window in forlorn summer bars, oh hum, oh hum, refined dissipated excitement lurking in the heavily designed interiors (but always rushing to the center whir!) (finding nothing but a feeling twenty feet above my head.). i sat alone sipping absinthe behind a blurring neon sign, the glossy black table reflected the green liquor and my new beard, as a tall black guy in a suit and wild, wild eyes made his way over and sat down. he told me about himself (a lawyer). i told him about myself (a bum, a prophet). he asked if i'd like some tea (marijuana), i said i was cool, he asked if i'd like some tail (women), i said i was cool. he told me he was very high. i told him he was god's child. i left.

blasting down, i heard some live music moving inside, so i popped in. it was an intimate setting; dug. the stage was about fifteen feet away as i dipped the bread in the lentil soup (required food purchase with stout. being early and hungry, i happily acquiesced.) the band was only rehearsing, but i liked it, and it was a lovely accoutrement to the rain and the soup and the gorgeous girl to my right speaking french.

there's something i like about this city. the women. but more than that there's a feeling in the air that you're safe. everyone is polite and warm. the cab driver was learning spanish, and he had the u.s. electoral college map taped to the back of his visor. you can see it and feel it in the lack of hegemony, and the narratives of design, architecture, music: everywhere. it feels somewhat enlightened. though at the same time it's given me renewed appreciation for america, that old frontier town, that crazed, wild do anything. america has a sense of power and money and suffering and killing i don't feel here. in america, the underground cafes are that much more compelling, the music and books, more radical, radical begets radical reaction, and i do love the american jungle, even if it is against my better judgment(a fuller chronicle of emotion?).

i've heard that incredible amounts of friction can shoot particles into outer-space. i mean, not to get all astro-physicist but the boudoir in my suite would be driving me to fits. thankfully, i've exorcised the demons these past few nights.

tonight, i'm an angel.

verily, verily i say unto you,
except a corn of wheat fall into
the ground and die, it abideth
alone: but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit.

john XII.24

who's talkin' proverbs?

sehnsucht!

gamuk is kissing gamagunaga

noises downstairs, the remnants of an old birthday party where karaoke had smacked heads and hands, dipping, scattered tunes, now green, gray i'm out to sea blowing in -the _wild form cos nothing contains what i want to say, explosions beyond confines of a novel.

robbed tonight, sleep penetrating after a bender, slinking around the city, whiskey in the jukebox bar, a beer, too, strong and thirsty, covered with buds and blossoms, cowboys and girls spiked -wait- impaled against the redbrick night - your heart is wild and you know it does grow.

the feeling of october, whereby dreams right now of a big breakfast in a hardscrabble diner on the outskirts of town, the waitress with red lips, smeared a bit clocked in at the corner of her lips accentuating her sweet drawl and honeylike pleasantries - gary flirts, having already completed a job already that morning (after his coffee and joint and a big stretch, a quick quip to nobody particular), feeling proud and young. the air is crisp, and now we're getting down to business.

pancakes with blueberries, warm maple syrup - the kind dripping from trees on the vermont roadside. splendors of bacon and sausage, big cuts of home fries sizzled from golden potatoes, boston eclairs and deepdishstrudels, coffee fractioning of milk and sugar, the counter reflects heaven, dreaming of fresh powdered warm cookies.

drowsy sleep descends like a coarse fog.

dreaming on a pipe

i hope i've individualized a native's ancient lust.

so now when i see through the window the willow shivering and shaking, and the parked car reflecting the iridescence of a chance meeting on the porch, you out, i in, passing through an old new england home, turned now to multi-family apartments filled with students, families and wild specters bicycling in the night, i hope you won't mind if i have this smoke and share a tale from the plains tribes of north america.

there was a time before the lakota had horses to hunt buffalo and food was scarce. one summer when the lakota nation had camped together, there was little to eat. two young men of the itazipcho band – the ‘without-bows’ – decided they would rise early and look for game. they left the camp while the dogs were still yawning, and set out across the plain, accompanied only by the song of the yellow meadowlark.

after a while the day began to grow warm. crickets chirruped in the waving grass, prairie dogs darted into their holes as the braves approached, but still there was no real game. so the young men made towards a little hill from which they would see further across the vast expanse of level prairie. reaching it, they shielded their eyes and scanned the distance, but what they saw coming out of the growing heat haze was something bright, that seemed to go on two legs, not four. in a while they could see that it was a very beautiful woman in shining white buckskin.

as the woman came closer, they could see that her buckskin was wonderfully decorated with sacred designs in rainbow-coloured porcupine quills. she carried a bundle on her back, and a fan of fragrant sage leaves in her hand. her jet-black hair was loose, except for a single strand tied with buffalo fur. her eyes were full of light and power, and the young men were transfixed.

now one of the men was filled with a burning desire. ‘what a woman!’ he said sideways to his friend. ‘and all alone on the prairie. i’m going to make the most of this!’

‘you fool,’ said the other. ‘this woman is holy.’

but the foolish one had made up his mind, and when the woman beckoned him towards her, he needed no second invitation. as he reached out for her, they were both enveloped in a great cloud. when it lifted, the woman stood there, while at her feet was nothing but a pile of bones with terrible snakes writhing among them.

‘behold,’ said the woman to the good brave. ‘i am coming to your people with a message from tatanka oyate, the buffalo nation. return to chief standing hollow horn and tell him what you have seen. tell him to prepare a tipi large enough for all his people, and to get ready for my coming.’

the young man ran back across the prairie and was gasping for breath as he reached his camp. with a small crowd of people already following him, he found standing hollow horn and told him what had happened, and that the woman was coming. the chief ordered several tipis to be combined into one big enough for his band. the people waited excitedly for the woman to arrive.

after four days the scouts posted to watch for the holy woman saw something coming towards them in a beautiful manner from across the prairie. then suddenly the woman was in the great lodge, walking round it in a sunwise direction. she stopped before standing hollow horn in the west of the lodge, and held her bundle before him in both hands.

‘look on this,’ she said, ‘and always love and respect it. no one who is impure should ever touch this bundle, for it contains the sacred pipe.’

she unrolled the skin bundle and took out a pipe, and a small round stone which she put down on the ground.

‘with this pipe you will walk on the earth, which is your grandmother and your mother. the earth is sacred, and so is every step that you take on her. the bowl of the pipe is of red stone; it is the earth. carved into it and facing the centre is the buffalo calf, who stands for all the four-leggeds. the stem is of wood, which stands for all that grows on the earth. these twelve hanging feathers from the spotted eagle stand for all the winged creatures. all these living things of the universe are the children of Mother Earth. you are all joined as one family, and you will be reminded of this when you smoke the pipe. treat this pipe and the earth with respect, and your people will increase and prosper.’

the woman told them that seven circles carved on the stone represented the seven rites in which the people would learn to use the sacred pipe. the first was for the rite of ‘keeping the soul’, which she now taught them. the remaining rites they would learn in due course.

the woman made as if to leave the lodge, but then she turned and spoke to standing hollow horn again. ‘this pipe will carry you to the end. remember that in me there are four ages. i am going now, but i will look on your people in every age, and at the end i will return.’

she now walked slowly around the lodge in a sunwise direction. the people were silent and filled with awe. even the hungry young children watched her, their eyes alive with wonder. then she left. but after she had walked a short distance, she faced the people again and sat down on the prairie. the people gazing after her were amazed to see that when she stood up she had become a young red and brown buffalo calf. the calf walked further into the prairie, and then lay down and rolled over, looking back at the people.

when she stood up she was a white buffalo. the white buffalo walked on until she was a bright speck in the distant prairie, and then rolled over again, and became a black buffalo. this buffalo walked away, stopped, bowed to the four directions of the earth, and finally disappeared over the hill.

she looks so nice, i want her twice. she looks so free, i wish she was me.

the reflection in tubular neon red (9631 (backwards) and (again) osserpse) was blanched to the right of her, where from the top, blond, to the bottom, canvas, draped all around her shoulders hung a black sweater (shroud?), giving her the look of the most sincere scandinavian woman of this and that time, the one with the red lips, oh, and let me tell you, her blond hair rushed down, scaping her thin, holy contours in a way that made you think “shit, mickey. if i don’t treat this girl like that greta garbo broad, i don’t know what the hell to do.” i’d been in the café hours, as i remember walking in the sun, passing parents and children, and me so divorced from these remembrances, i mean, believing and knowing everything under my father’s roof? how strange!

i was reading; the door stayed open rush of air. she turned abstractedly, dignified with womanly knowledges, and i was able to see the keen upslope of her nose and her thin, long fingers, but more, her tight lips and puritanical expression like a schoolteacher as I remember she was looking, almost persecuting, ensuring that I wasn’t drowning in the proudness of my own wintry brilliance, main thing, her eyes gave the look of sensual suggestion – a prolongued ponderance of someone – something too personal to understand (no way of avoiding enigmas.). and this prim self-discipline was so pathetic and tight you knew it was about to explode, and you knew it would be good for a man to catch the elements, real gnashing passion in the black.

“do you think i’m a cartoon character.” “the only thing i think about you is you ask dumb questions.” oh. tah. dark now. neon, dim, headlights on pavement. i went back in after a smoke.

shit, i couldn’t read any longer. left. slow down… notice the climax of october. please be aware of the leaves. look at the colors, one big purple, or better yet one smacking gray. and on the dingy sidewalk my nightmare resurfaced, hmm… flew in from i don’t know where, some sinister isle of never-been-inside-you, a decaying dark delos.

it’s anachronistic, immortal, conceptual, perfect, and not existant. i had recently read an article which had appeared in a 1954 issue of TIME magazine concering seventy nine bored american g.i.’s stationed at a NATO base in iceland who had murdered a pod of one hundred killer whales. in a single morning the soldiers, armed with rifles, machine guns, and boats, rounded up and then shot the whales to death.

walking home i had recalled walking with my grandmother from the park back to her house (1988?). we picked up leaves along the way, and when we got back, we traced them on tracing paper in proud triumph. all the while, my grandmother would be chopping a skinned rabbit on her counter, preparing spinach, and rice, and biscuits too! She set the table, called us in, the plastic tablecloth looked flowery and alive over the linoleum floor. “you kids are so lucky.” “yes, grandma.” “when i was your age, i was on my hands and knees scrubbing floors for five cents an hour. We didn’t have the things you kids have. We had nothing, liam, nothing.” (ah, life.)

that rabbit and rice steamed and filled the kitchen with some raw, native pungence when she made you plate and you just had to bring it close under your nose – whoooeee! – the butter melted cataclysmically on the biscuit! grandma said grace, turned her small a.m. radio on and we ate voraciously while she dipped a slice of toast in her coffee and ate slowly, smiling, cherishing, knowing TIME. afterwards she would read to us, fairy tales, history, mark twain, anything. she was raising a hip sidewalk mystic. “liam, would you like some more milk?” ”please, grandma, give me more of the mad, mad milk.”

elementary realization, largesse, comedown, sorrow, and truest love

things are still a bit up in the air, but that's okay. a birthday party last night, singing, somnolent, shrugging in a new world, donning paper crowns.

it's nice to be able to talk with people with views, coming in from under, crazier the better, examining the architectural continuum of the city. these are times to be cherished, and we'll miss them, even tho tempered by the exhilaration of visions of discoveries and truth and dreams through red, white, yellow beads covering the doorway. and a crystal ball.

tic toc. the big clock. the strangest hour of the city when the rush - 7:32 train - meets the going home to bed and the disdainful looks of the commuters, if they have any time for disdain, meaning the condescension of maturity - maturity! - dropping truth and earnestness in favor of

artificial buoyancy?

yeah, i've been reading my anaïs nin, keeping my wild, (un)secret notebook despite my friend's insistence on the free flow of information - look, i'm not fully ready to articulate myself as music. pure, sponsored in heaven images. cool? well. i wonder about the power of a fire, drunken-love, in a simple, enlightened way, freely creating as the individual, and in the night fall leaves being cast off like boots among the mattress.