photo credit: Kari Musil 

Like whiskey aged

Mellowed

Slowed down

Old school

Remembered for it’s bite

Some flavors are acquired taste

Between dark history

And magic fairies 

Is a legacy of ghosts

Who will not be stilled

By death or passage into

Other dimensions

Weeds are designated

By those with shallo...

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photo credit: Andy Arsham 

House Of Harris

The alliteration of your existence has voice in wind

You are s-o-n and s-u-n of light

You are soul brother soul nephew and child of the solstice

Your heritage points toward more shine

More bright eyed wisdom

Shine on young Harris your passage has been paid

By your parents and their parent and all the parents on planet

Earth and ...

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photo credit: Sarah Greenfield 

Flavored Water

Almost every pot starts this way

Olive oil

Sweet and hot peppers

Purple onions

Garlic and little bits of ginger root

Another stone soup is under way

Stewing on low heat in oil

And just enough water to steam

(Cause you know they don’t mix well)

Until vegetables with chicken legs and thighs 

Hardly sizzle together

...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman

 Kulture is a Klub

For George Coleman

An old man named Change limped

Awkwardly

Clumsily up an avenue downtown

In his hand was a large unwieldy

Envelope labeled REVOLUTION

On his body hung a worn and frayed

Bluesed uniform embossed in

Stitches with the words

SPEEDY DELIVERY

He was expecting revolution

To come swiftly

But change co...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman 

I USED TO DANCE

I knew

I’d better learn to dance

I never knew how much was required

Or how long the music would last

I didn’t know how to catch

A segue before being trapped

On a dance floor or

Lost in drumbeats and bass lines

I used to dance… or

There was a dance

I used to do

There was a time

I used to dance the electric slide

...

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photo credit: Given Writers Retreat

 Amnesiacs

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Little Wing 1968

by Jimi Hendrix

Well she's walking through the clouds

With a circus mind that's running round

Butterflies and zebras

And moonbeams and fairy tales

That's all she ever thinks about

Riding with the wind.

 

When I'm sad, she comes to me

With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free

It's alright she says it's alright

Take anything you want from me,

...

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ImproviXation #107 

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Another rewrite of When A River Floods now called Half In Shadow

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"The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life."

-Shakespeare

 Post-Romantic Bop

She avoids my eyes like there’s

Something she doesn’t want to say

I don’t know what it is

I’m not going to ask

It’s bad strategy

Either she’ll pull it up and spit it out

Or we’ll leave it like that

First it seemed incidental

Now it’s intentional ...

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photo credit: AEI 

Walk Loosely To The Light

Biography and biology unfold and we

Find us bound in habit

Tied to identity

Herstory

Their story

Acculturated

Assimilated    

What turns us inside

What makes us crazy

Makes us remember

Forget

Walk loosely

A tall elegant griot advised

Let it hang

Push meaning

Fire is needed more than light

So orange l...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman

Down To Da Sky

“If he ask you what I was wearing

Tell him a rainbow round my shoulders”

Sometimes moon outshines sun

And a way toward freedom is lit

Jo Bobby knew only 

Day to day toil and grind

Perspirational reality from

Walking atop eggshells

Navigating broken glass

Brutal consequences

Of belonging to somebody

 Branded chattel

...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman (Half in Shadow) 

 Old people speak of death frequently now… Quincy Troupe from Skulls Along the River

This Ol’ Building (Negro Spiritual)

There's a leak in this ol' building 

And my soul has got to move

My soul has got to move

Yeah my soul has got to move

 There's a leak in this ol' building 

And my soul has got to move

To a building not made ...

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We Too Hold Truth

A dancer I know made a flag 

 For me

 It contains my favorite colors and

 Holds the spirit of a sloth

Deliberate and lazy

Slow but sure

Hanging upside down

And clear about the difference between

Sky and ground

My flag for my revolution

No nationalistic colors with stripes

Bars animals symbols or heroic images

Represents me - never has

I ...

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Thirty

Rivers carry debris until floods release ghosts

So the dead can make deposits and withdrawals

Planks, fallen branches, corpses of fish, fowl, mammals and dreams

Become ghost ships carrying organisms to new destinations

With water as medium the dead and the undead sally forth as equals

 Two: 

Good River Feeling Bad

 Her voice is deep water

Though she’s too shallow ...

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Painting by Jennifer Davis 

Trapped Inside

Every river longs

To swell memory to ancestor size

And reclaim land that belonged to her 

Old Woman River

Running naked in the sun

Carrying waste and toxins

Along with grief for dead things to a sea

Transporting esoteric knowledge

No one had a taste for

Unlike clockwork she forgets nothing

Though she sometimes wishes sh...

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photo credit: Deanna  Towne 

 Anniversary

There is no clean slate

No blank sheets of paper

To write our lives on

We palimpsestically erase

And rewrite existence like

Painters whitewashing

And rescaping canvas

With images telling new stories

Often by another painter

In some other time

With alterative visions

No story is complete

Life goes on in ways

That...

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