The Meaning of Ellah

Ellah is the false land
Ellah is the false face

Ellah is the true land
Ellah is the true face

Ellah is contradiction
Ellah is cooperation

Ellah is what we see
Ellah is what we can't see

Ella abides, yes,
but Ellah hides as well

Metaphysics of the New Fade

In the Age of the
Artificial God Ellah,
all things are
chameleon.

It's the extent
to which you are
that determines
how you succeed.

Dylan became timeless
because he knew
what to change;
Bowie, Madonna,
these artists
changed everything
but their understanding
of music. They had
other interests,
and no true love,
made spectacles
not of their music
but of themselves.
They never went
to Newport.

John started changing
before he truly needed,
changed to fit
his audience
and maybe sometimes
his moods,
a reflection
of what he
needed to be,
until what he
became
was more
important
than the music,
so someone shot him.
All fashions must die
to live

in time.

What killed
the Protest Age
was the Protest Age.
People wonder why
Iraq is not another
Vietnam.
It's because Vietnam
was never Vietnam.
It was what it had
to be.
The Protest Age
screwed
the Protest Age.
Now we sit in wonder
at what we've done,
and don't know
what to make of it.

How about this?
In all things are
the beginnings
of all things.
When we started
fucking about
in the region of Ellah,
we started the whole
ball rolling,
and I'm talking
just last century.
Let the Greeks
worry about
the Greeks,
their Spartans
and their Athens.
We placed a displaced people
in someone else's home,
and stirred about
a cold war
that erupted
over oil.
Tell me what
America has done,
tell me what
Americans do,
tell me what the world is
when the world isn't
any different than it was
yesterday.

The New Fade abides,
it bides its time
like the chameleon,
attempting the colors
that will make everything
right.

Dylan used to makes songs,
now he makes music,
and now I couldn't tell
you what he sings.

I would like to find out.

Traveling the New Fade

Only one war
was fought over and won
for beauty's sake.

Every other has been
for the benefit of
the three great beliefs
of mankind,
and of them,
two remain,

love of country
and love of economics,

each religions
all their own.

Present concerns
seem to bestride
all three, yet
the warriors
will learn
soon enough
that they fight
not for faith
but for their
countries
and for their
economic state.

All three have bound
the course of history
to their backs.
There is no greater
argument against progress
than these, or the need
for it to fight against them.

For millennia,
people either walked,
or employed beasts
to relieve their burden,
when they weren't
echoing nature.
Some of the progress came
when there was
interest
or need
to move many,
but that was
before
three became two.

Now it's in the interests
of the many to move
in the smallest units
possible.

So much more
could be done
if the many
accepted
that the few
can work
for the many,
and the many
for the few,
and not just
one or
the other.

This can't happen
as long as we still believe.

Faith I believe in,
that's the one needful constant,
but faith misplaced
or mistaken
is the murder of civilization,
more slowly
and more quickly
than we realize
or think.

We are taught not to think.

The age I grew up in
was in one of the pockets
where this law did not apply.
People snuck in subversion,
and it was actually
the practice of the institutions.
By the next decade, it had
become our entertainment,
but in the culture,
it was once more taboo.

I hate that word,
taboo,

and the nature of
oblivion.

Oblivion
is the nature
of ignorance,
of the need for it
for things to survive
which shouldn't,
however pleasant,
however passive.

Oblivion is
the religion
of those who refuse
to see the world
as it is, and rather
as they wish it were,
so they could be right,
and not wrong,
as they don't like to be,
but are because
that's what oblivion do.

In the New Fade,
love of country
and economics
is the thing
the last remnants
of religion
fear most,
and brand
as the harbingers
of their doom.
I don't know how
it looks; I live in
America, which has only
ever known itself.
But I do know the New Fade
employs tools that lead
to destruction
to bring about change,
and that's all
that ever happens.
Talk about nature
being ravaged by man,
beyond repair?
Maybe it's ignorance speaking,
but I think nature survives.

Down Home

There may be a problem
when the best you have
at your sister's house
is a good time with
the pets.

I could be wrong.

In Spite

For my own sake
I spite thee.

For my future's sake
I spite thee.

I carry on
in spite.

Off Ice

Some things
don't go
as planned.

I don't
know what
else to
say about
off ice.

What's Better Than A Canyon

If there's no such thing
as a question, then we're
forced to ask and find
no answers,
and that's another
facet of the central riddle.

I've gradually discovered,
much as others have,
that one of my favorite
pasttimes is identifying
meaningful figures
in history. I find
the more one does this,
the more significant
they'll be as well,
if they strive to
understand and not just see.
Sometimes this pursuit
can become excessive,
but it can't possibly hurt
(unless you count dying).

It's the point of
being oblivious that
perturbs me,
when there's really
no excuse.
I'm finding much
of my new surroundings
to match that.
But we do that with things
we don't know.

We'll see,
and in the meantime ask,
what's better than a canyon?

Interglacial

The term that implies
more than a few people
are a little iced over,
how wicked in their
duplicity, ignorance,
or sheer talent
for politics.
It's difficult to say
whether their interest
is to turn back the clock
or really start to tamper
with the weather.
I can tell them where to start!
But they probably wouldn't
like it, as it would take
more cold away.

These guys are the only ones
who don't like warm weather.
It's kind of funny.
Or maybe they just like to think
we should otherwise,
y'know, other than ruining things,
be able to keep on doing
exactly what we're doing.

Just give me a minute.
I'm still trying to figure out
all the flaws in their logic.

Meditation

The wise harm the world;
they spoil it with their dreams.

The Metaphysics of War

War is funny.

Every war is the direct result
of the war before it.

Chances are
if you don't
understand one,
you won't the other.

But I would hope
if you do one,
you do the other.

Except we've reached
a point where
we spent one war
laughing at another,
and the next
still mourning
the last,
while the granddaddy
remains idolized,
even though
it remains
the worst of all.

Maybe that's why.
We try and escape,
to pretend,
because we still
like doing that,
even as we mature,
a rock band in the 80s
being the last
to look fondly
on us,
just as we ended
a cold third war,
which in its silence
was the most deadly
of the last century,
undeclared
and fought everywhere,
after two "world wars."

Every war concerns the world,
but we can silence that, too.

George-22
is the real victim,
the joke,
the jester,
the last man in the room,
when everyone else
has fled.
He is the most alone
with the myths,
and if you could see him,
late at night,
you would see him cry.

The Metaphysics of Magic

Magic is what you get
when there's no other explanation.

Okay, wait:

Magic's what you get
when you don't want another
explanation.

Magic's the alternative,
magic is what you get
when you discover it
in your dreams.

Magic is a way
of seeing the world
that involves fantasy
and wishful thinking

and maybe broomsticks
and hot chicks
(on TV, at least).

Magic is a dirty word,
like comedy.
It can be black,
that magic
is completely different
from the normal kind.

Magic is the future,
is the past,
and is someone's
version of the present.

Magic is something you hide,
or you're burned at the stake,
sometimes just for fun,
if you feel like it.

Magic is belief
inverted,
a way of taking
religion and science
and mixing them together.

Magic is a warm gun.

Magic is a war
even the wise
don't understand.

Just say a wizard did it.

Love's Destruction

What to do with it?
Burn it,
stick it,
find another way.

There's got to be
another way to love.

Well, I say there isn't,
and so it must
be done away with.
No more love,
no more war,
no more hate,
no more peace,
no more greed,
no more
no more
no more.

That's what you get
when you don't have love.
You're really not bothered
with anything.
Loves makes the blood run,
love makes the world turn 'round.

Make love into a trauma,
make love the apocalypse,
as it has always been destined.

Throw away the curtains on love.
I don't need it anymore.

General Metaphysics

I believe that love
is the path of destruction.
I believe

that there are two kinds:
love with irony
and too much,
as someone said
in the film (The Film),
and that you can tell
by how rock and roll bands
have turned out since
their creation.

The Beatles started out
with irony
and quickly started
to love too much.
In ten years,
they were over,
and then splintered more,
down the crosshairs.
John and George
loved too much,
Ringo with irony.
It was with Paul
that the duel edges,
the whole contraption,
fell toward,
from the beginning,
and it is he
whose legacy
is most for debate.
Does he still sing now
because of irony
or because
he loves too much?
Answer such a question.
Who knows such things?

So it was in the 60s,
when music was most loved
in the culture,
but again, as with Paul,
no one knew quite which love
they possessed for it,
and it was this dilemma
that split the interest
for so long that by the present,
no album could contain it
any longer. Those who survive,
do they love too much
or with irony?

That's really the basic problem,
I believe, that too few people
know on which side they fall.
It is a basic communal
ambiguity.
Love too much?
Love with irony?
I believe that
many fall too much
and so they fall quickly,
as the theory goes,
either dying young
or losing interest,
like a child,
the TV Theory Syndrome.
Many also understand
what's so ironic
about the culture,
and they last, they persist,
they are the new conquerors,
and they wield a fiery vengeance
for a world that does not
understand them.
And the irony?
Those who love too much
are the same way.

If you form a basic
reconciliation,
if you were able to
determine
if it were even possible,
then you would
crack the egg,
solve the riddle
of humanity.

All major religions,
all major philosophies,
they understand only too much,
but never irony,
they have no place for it.
And if they do,
these dissenters are outcast.
Even athiests believe too much.
Maybe a comedian is the closest
to a bodhisatva we have,
jokes about nothing,
a great big b-movie.

Anyway,
who knows such things?

Walkie Turner and the Snow Country

I imagine it would easy to ignore me
yet here I am
and I'm not going anywhere
you wish I'd go,
and I am,
just along my way,
not measured by imprints
but in defiance.

Snow World

Come and I will show you
a world fit for a snowshoe

You can leave at the same time
and arrive to feel sublime

In the Snow World
everything's fine.

The Ghost in the Room

There's a ghost in the room with me.
Probably several.
I suppose I'd known it before
but up until just now
when I thought about it
I guess I didn't.

But the ghost is there.
Probably several.
And I'm okay with it.
Because ghosts aren't so bad.
They're like reminders.
Read this poem after I write it
and you're reading a ghost.
That's what happens.
You leave something behind
and you're still there.
Here and there.
A ghost.

Probably several.

Rule

What kind of word is rule?
What kind of word is it
when it's not pluralized,
not the subject
of guardianship,
merely left on its own?

I think it begins to sound
differently.

Not Rule of Law,
not Follow the Rules
not a mighty Ruler.

By itself.

What do you say about it then?
It becomes more abstract,
doesn't it, something you
have to think about,
and for all its
connotations.

What does it end up meaning?
How do you begin to see
where it starts?
And what does that do
for all its other meanings?

Rule is rule is The Rule,
a rule. Like any other word,
the more you concentrate on it,
the weirder, less familiar,
more foreign,
it looks.

Go ahead and give it a try.

An Overpass is not a Bridge?

People may not say it that way
but you may call me a walking stiff.

No, I am not stiff from walking.
Walking is an activity
probably most people fear.

They have for a very long time.
Horses, boats, trains, car, airplanes.

Many ways have been created
so that people will not have to walk.

Great distances are crossed
but are also necessitated
because people don't like to walk.

Even short distances.

And because people don't like to walk
regulations must be made, rules and charges
that limit the ability of one
who does not wish to walk.

Flunk and you walk.
Or be the mercy of others
even when it is cheerily given.

People don't like to walk
and they look at you funny
if (when) you do.

I think it's all kind of funny
another symptom of a system
that takes the most perverse stance

on everything.

The Public is the Public

the only problem with the public
is that it goes out in public

you can tell
because of the mess it makes
that the public
can't control itself
like a puppy

I was thinking
if the public
was out long enough
it could be trained

How You're Going to Ride

You don't need to tell me
where you're going
it's etched all across your face
like you wanted me to know already
you're going
and I'm going
and you're wondering why I went
and I'm wondering, too
but you look like you've been ready
to move on
like there was never anything
but space between us
which is going to become
a reality quickly enough
in more ways than one
with more definition
with feeling
with a distinct lack of hope
and it's not like I'm obsessing
but there's just no way to know
not like the stars in the sky
which misguide and dazzle
and pipe away the jazz
like it's not going to be known anymore
which is the fear that motivates
us all
and so when we move we fear
and we fear because we move
and when we do one
we do the other
when all we wanted was to escape
tap and dance and all that.

Natural Hi

The thing about the Springs
is that these people,
if they're not careful,
could decorate their
landscaping to the point
where they don't actually have
anymore rocks. Right now
they have mountains to look at.
I'm just sayin'
they might not have much left
if they keep it up.

At some point
"they"
will be
"us"
I swear,
but as the spirit goes
through the doorway
I'm just not there yet.
I'm there, but not there,
if you can make
sense from that,
and not just change...