SOUL FIRE (LEE SCRATCH PERRY) ~

Soul fire

I got soul fire

I got soul fire

And we ain't got no water

Soul a burnin'

Soul a burnin'

Soul a burnin'

Water comin'

Water comin'

Water comin'

Soul fire

Eh

La la

Burnin' in my soul

Burnin' burnin' burnin' in my soul

La la

Eh!

Soul fire

Soul fire

Soul fire

And we ain't got no water

We don't have no water

Soul a burnin'

Soul a burnin'

And we ain't got no water

we ain't got no water

La la

GREG BROWN ~

POET ~

Translated from the Italian

 by Jamie McKendrick

There's a moment when the body

gathers itself in breathing

and thought stops and hesitates.

Likewise things

tugged by the moon

undergo the influence of

the tidal sigh, the malleable eclipse.

And the boats' planks

swell gently in water.





=






Summertime, like the cinemas, I shut up shop.

Thought flies off elsewhere and evaporates.

Billboards write white,

the air's warm,

the table weighted with fruit.





=






Often the page lies becalmed.

It's futile turning it to find

what quarter the wind

might blow from.

Nothing moves.

Thought wavers in that calm.

What navigation wrecked

is there, being

painfully repaired.







Fibonacci



I note the forehead's curvature

in its utter nakedness

and deduce the same number

that underwrites

how branches grow,

a church's poised facade,

the snail-shell spiral,

and the form of leaves.




 =




I should like, one day,

to be turned to marble,

to be stripped of nerves,

glistening tendons, veins.

Just to be airy enamel,

slaked lime, the striped

tunic of a wind

ground to a halt.




=




On the beach, rotten wood, tires, bottles,

sodden stuff — all things wrecked

and putrified — I love them all:

what's washed up, spewed out, good-for-nothing,

what no one wants

to have or filch.

In April the air

takes on a hint of warmth.

Glows like a cheek.




=




This writing's being worn away,

its angles smoothed, the "r"s,

the "m"s, are turned

and sanded down and roll like stones

the currents shift from shore to shore.

Faces also,

faces waste away

from the pressure of being watched.

They turn into a landscape

full of ruins.






Games: Rebus



A world without time.

Without a breeze.

Everything is still

and exhaustingly full of meaning.

There's no end of meaning and sheer slog

in this worksite of sense.

Every word is a gravelly roadbed

of letters and figures.

Everything weighs a ton.




________________

Valerio Magrelli
Vanishing Point
Farrar Straus Giroux

SUZANNE CIANI (LIVE) ~

JOAN BAEZ ~

BUILDING (BOB ARNOLD) ~

Carson came out the other day with our little Strawberry Girls (who were given strawberries for breakfast out under the umbrella of the picnic table along with french toast, scrambled eggs, juices, many fruits, all Susan prepared). I sit there at the table and it dawns on me each time that the table is much older than me, was my parents, thousands of parties and meals and sit-downs at that table, and it is redwood. Carson and the girls then went along with us to look at all the new buildings, including the newest, which already has the front porch complete and not a window yet in the place, but I wanted a quickly finished front porch to sit there every day and enjoy the view over the pond, the yard, the views everywhere, it has a height.

We then took them to the new fox den under the Faraway Cottage — a building I built with Carson 20 years ago, and now a family of many red fox glow under the building, doing what little harm. They have shelter. A photo below. I believe that is the male of the pups, fearless. Yawns at me like the buddha when I come over to have a look.

Finally the sounds of summer have come here, and the look of the lighting. It’s taken a long time for winter to leave. We had eight months of one continuous fire in the Jotul woodstove.

                                                                                                                 —  May '19

 __________________________

I am building a new woods cottage on rock ledge — purposely difficult and daring — why else build at my age after having built everything I have ever wanted to build: tract houses when very young; surburban slap-dash one floor homes, each alike; a stone building, cabins, my own home, a friend's home, another friend's home, many cottages, and now this latest one of logs, lumber and many windows, and more stone. I will begin to show a digital book of all the building's progress in some manner and form on the Birdhouse forthcoming. First build, then make the book.

                                                                                 —1 July '19

___________________________

Lil' Fox

          more to come. . .

GOREY ~

R E A D       M  E

Just imagine for a moment—

Edward Gorey and Frank O'Hara 

as roommates at Harvard

DAPHNE ORAM ~

AGNES MARTIN ~

R E A D     M E

PHOTOGRAPHER (JOHN SHEARER) ~

John Shearer at Attic working it.

1971

photo by Bill Ray

R E A D      M E

RENE RICARD ~

God With Revolver





The inside of the body pushes towards the outside

And I push myself through streets full of men

Cafes full of men. I order a coffee from a man

Men push through the street in front of the cafes

Bargain in black eyes

My life overflowing its bounds

I can't buy food, negotiate the streets

or bargain in this life

There are men everywhere the

magnificent saber of Islam in their eyes

Men terrify me

Beauty terrifies me

Beautiful men terrify me

and I would faint in the Barbes mud

the inside of my body pushing towards the outside

I sit in a cafe in Barbes

and a woman walks by in tears

The God of Islam is the God of Love

and I know that love is a terrible thing

and a god of love will finish my life

Love is the steepest bargain

of terrible price.    The heart

pushes towards the outside the

heart is a souk

one civilization dents another

pushing towards the outside

and I would pass out in the

market-place men everywhere

My life not such important merchandise

The inside pushes me further out

I would die here without murder or suicide

Barbes or Essaouira full of men

The God of Islam, eighteen

years old. 100 francs a

God with a revolver



Barbes Dec 4, 1981




______________________
Rene Ricard
God With Revolver
Hanuman Books
1989

JONI MITCHELL WITH FRIENDS ~

NEW! JOSEPH MASSEY ~

Joseph Massey, Backroad Scroll

_________________

 Longhouse 
 Summer2019

 First edition

A Longhouse limited edition

 four page foldout 

with decorative label

_______________

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PETER GREEN (Black Magic Woman) ~

DAVE BARTHOLOMEW ~

1918 ~ 2019

BOB ARNOLD'S "WOODLANDERS" ~

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05303

YANG MU ~

A Flurry of Snow





What flitted back across the hills yesternight, without a sound

I thought was a long buried matter of the heart

from the deepest recesses of a valley wallowing in death

With my own eyes I saw her open a little doorway onto the garden

tentatively venture forth, look here, there, then

promptly disappear, leaving, in the end, still

the very heart of winter, nothing but traces


1996

translated by Steve Bradbury



____________________________


Yang Mu
Hawk of the Mind
Columbia, 2018

THE SKILLET LICKERS ~

TIMELESS ~

R E A D      M E

Oxford

1979

PAT & FINN (WILCOX) ~

_____________________________

Pat & Finn Wilcox

at the wedding of one of their sons

At dusk, on summer's first day 2019

we love and remember Pat