what should one stop at nothing?
putting on a shirt? buttoning it halfway? i thought better.

people in my house
they don't mind crazy.

underthings, yes, pants too?
ok.

i'm wearing yesterdays crinkled up khaki's.
now.

i'd like to go sit around in one of those tribes
and look at all of the bare chested women who never new lines.

from sun
they are clay in a slow kiln;

silk in the morning-time and they smell of earth and the river.
and when they sweat its honey and insects and vegetable oils.

the sheen of that brown ought never be covered.
in residence i am pink-milk and white.

jP jun 2o12

the writers almanac

i heard this today and i wanted it in my life. like poems that reach you and never forget you, i wanted it like that. maybe you too.
jP jun 7 12



"The Old Gentleman" by Alden Nowlan

If you want to ask a question, the chairman said, begin by giving us your name and address.

So the old gentleman seated near the back of the auditorium, when it came his turn, said he was Louis St. Laurent and came from Quebec;

and we all of us laughed: because that's who he was and it was the kind of little joke one expected of an elderly former prime minister;

but the next time he said the same thing

and the time after that, said it quite simply

and it became obvious it wasn't meant to be funny,

wasn't meant to be anything other than courteous,

like his holding open the door for whoever happened to reach it at the same time he did

and never lighting a cigarette without offering the pack to the person in front and the person behind and the persons seated on either side of him.

"The Old Gentleman" by Alden Nowlan, from Selected Poems. © House of Anansi Press, 1996. Reprinted with permission.

sometimes we are forced into wrong situations. sometimes we can do nothing about it. and at the end of ourselves, when we've given every hope and spoken out earnestly for truth and right and the opposite plays itself out, we can only turn and walk away. love is not a spectator sport.

when one has found true love and chosen untruth instead, they grieve the child-like spirit inside themselves, leaving it by the roadside, turning a deaf ear as it weeps and gently begs for them to check back in with what is really the only real part of themselves. it is unpardonable only because a person without this spirit, is turned over to the desires of flesh, and only on a death bed will they be met by the truth of themselves again: the child they abandoned on the side of the road. this child is life and life more abundant, but the glittered world says no. still, only a child-like spirit can grow. but the stagnant flesh becomes an old adage or laurel, and so begins the long slow justified demise fueled by the eye, and eternally grieved by the heart.

jP 5.15.2o12 iwalu

lament

i'm sweating from the heat that started long before march
what miracle of earth
is this the new beginning of our end

when it rains the soaking plants steep and only smolder
the yellowing grass in dottie's yard is cut short
drought and dust bring ants like hot july

in pep boys we belly-ached and shook heads about the sun
80. muggy-ending summer-dreading winter
i hollered, "forget summer! wonder what spring will feel like."

my girl lost her father on the way to see him die
the road her only shoulder
doesn't tenderness transgress when grief is sudden

a careful friend on the east side texted asking me about her
even my response was a wound
"in a holding pattern. and the pauses in her steps
and the phrases of her sorrow are just begun."


jP 2o12 march 29
(photo jP march o12)

exploding rounds win over the right to bear a laptop

Dad blows up his kids computer!! well ok, he shoots it with a pistol! Pretty tight pattern too from 4 feet away: You all heard about this.. A 15-year-old girl puts up a Facebook post railing on her parents for making her work "too hard." Thinks blocking parents will keep them from seeing it. SO, dad reacts by posting a video response to her grievances on her Facebook page (OUCH), and then proceeds to shoot her computer, nine times: in the head. Friends, teenage boys mostly, grieve the loss.

I read a few of the commets from the facebook forum and really I have nothing to add except.. Maybe he should have shot his daughter with an exploding round and kept the laptop. that people actually are upset over the loss of a laptop is sadder than a frail attempt at discipline. but parents beware. a last attempt at discipline is most always just that: the last attempt. if one messes up with a dog, one can always get rid of said dog. if one messes up with a child, well.. this father is angry at two people and the first one is himself. the child is secondary. "making her world harder" may be in order. at least he has consigned to "keep" his daughter. tough love is as tough as it must be but it is never received in anger. humility will win the day someday. proverbs does not say when the child is young they will not depart from the training, it says, "when the child is old."
jP 2o12

"compare yourselves not among yourselves"

money is the only form of action. to count the cost is terminally expensive. but in our inability to propagate sacrifice, we have become a shameful people. we are exorbitant beyond measure and thus we are wicked. our only thought is to spoil our children and our grandchildren and in turn we raise them with an inability to see anything other than themselves. to a new generation, the picture on the left is real. the picture on the right only exists in pictures, and Heaven weeps.

jP oct142011

Joshua Payne | One Pass (The Work Tapes) , Vol. 1 | CD Baby

Joshua Payne | One Pass (The Work Tapes) , Vol. 1 | CD Baby

i made one pass at the newest tunes.. they were coming in waves.. and in the time i spent losing, i sang to and into the void. when the height of your longing redirects your words and your weeping into song, the spirit of those moments are the realest they will ever be so in some sense the switch becomes the brush and the microphone the canvass - its a mad blur of color and accidents, beard scratches, foot stomps, page turns and sweat. it is the immediate past rendering a fervor that would never have existed otherwise and somehow the imperfect somehow becomes the truth.

i was a visual artist before i was musician and i never asked permission to paint. these songs, these vignettes into my life are no different. i hang them on walls and release them to the world just as they are, foibles and all.

franz schubert release some 200 published songs in his 18th year of life. seems to me the 12 song system is broken - releasing 1 record every 2 years, the age of these parameters is over.

from now on, i'm releasing everything i write, and if these work tape versions hold the self same spirit of truth as the one pass volumes, what then would be the point in ever repainting them? are they not already hanging in the halls of collegium?

jP '08