This is an intense week.  Performed for a couple of funerals, started a new job bartending at the Allways lounge, and the poetry-play I wrote, LOUP GAROU, opened.  The intensity of life is far beyond my poetic grasp.  I put my pen down and pray.

Finally, the epic poem about the cajun werewolf that i've been working on for the past year and a half is finished and in production as a play.  it's a one man show set out in the woods with live cajun music.  It's visceral, acrobatic, and relevant.  It is the story of a man coming to grip with his violent past, family betrayals, curses, and the disappearing land of South Louisiana.  Come see it if you can.  It is unlike any theatre you've ever seen.

Waking up this morning, after another book party, after the crazy hours spent making books, promoting, beating the streets, the investment of time and energy and money... other people's that i am beholden to as well as my own... the years now spent living on the fringe, impoverished, ardent to grow to create to share ....

Well, I'm in Vermont.  Broke, but I have managed to wrangle a space to workshop my new poetry/theatre/music performance entitled, Danger Angels.  As the time goes by, I will keep you abreast of how it develops.

Great crowd at the party last night... tons of new faces, really diverse, interesting interactions.  We sold almost 40 books which is pretty great for a book launch.  DJ bees knees pulled out some great protopunk jams and we had a furious comic drawing throwdown.  I did two readings and they were lively, if a bit drunken.  In fact, i got pretty wasted last night and lost my phone.  Good thing i don't drive.  nice living in a neighborhood where you can just bike your drunk ass home.

Me and my cousin Brian have been producing a self published zine comic called Bitte Ink for over a year.  Now our comics are being published by a small New Orleans press called Press Street.  The books are 92 pages and $10.  The party will be at a small gallery called antenna on Burgundy street in New Orleans.  During this event we will get neighborhood artists and writers collaborating on a bunch of comics panels which will be assembled into book format.

we skipped town on
a lazy louisiana monday, pondering
metaphysics and the federal levee system
injustice and the grift
wondering when the stink of corruption
will next erupt like
bloated bodies from broken crypts
still ajumble
in these southern perish towns

we slipped out, down
river to the end of our world
stirring little stampedes
of sideways stepping crabs
smiles and a wake
from the boys on boats soaking
golden swamplight in the diesel-stained air

we talked of waters brackish
the absence of cypress and tupelo
local bamboo which were nesting grounds
for the disappeared nation of passenger pigeons
the textile, slave, sugar-rum gun trade
down at fort jackson: red
brick rounded by a green
green moat
and a pipeline runs through it
while the oaks were doing their very best
to break bunkers, abrupt-turning
the tide on our war against nature
we rode our chariot through the june sky
to citrus lands and listened for
the woe of the lord of the pumpstation

and the mowers
worshipped their green fields
and we chased purple dragon quarks
through a nebulous cloud of suchness
as the pointe à la hache ferryman
waved a beatific goodbye
and then it all turned into grass and
oilpits
sinking into the sea

first i leaned back
half-hid in that hairy cypress of
almost human warmth and width, took
in the clicks and grinding chirrups
surface sploosh and old sock hop
rythms driftin' cross the slough

drank
the rot and warp
of slime and ti-pops and lillies
big as a man, no doubt
and still on the lookout for
sleeping snakes and the game warden

bent
in a
funk
to the water, sharp-suckled
in my breath, heard
gurgle-hucked chuckles
celestial drones, the sacred
geometry of the wasp and
the groaning growth of this living death
anorgasmic swamp kundalini..licking
up my thighs and corrupting me
til we couldn't take the moustiques no more
then we settled near naked
in the pirogue
and hove to

the swamp don't just incorporate you
it becomes you
breathes you, spooks you
unlocks and unfetters
loves your baser needs
your demise and decay feeds
the mo' rotten, the mo' betta

love that little pirogue
the way she sit so low in the
water
glides
like a gator goin'
for a baby deer

love how it's all
slankin' into the slough
just how many babies and boos
can you fit into a sentence anyways?

love them saga-rock clouds, the medieval belching oil towers
the rippling rows of cane
cypress driftwood seamonsters
neon moss against red bark and verdigris manes
draping it all like a mantle of faith

the swamp is a creed
purgatory of water
a pilgrimage of land
a holy immaculate afterbirth
from a stillborn river
(and that's just in the daytime...
gonna wait a spell
'fore i spend the night)

i lean back
into that cypress and chuckle
at my own yankee white fragility
breathe out
and let myself become

we got out by walking on water
staying light
taking time to stretch
to breathe

keeping in mind the permanent
permeations of magic
after running all day
we lay trusting on the soft belly of earth
and cried a little
beneath alabama stars

i thought before drowsing
as long as i can still smell her
it'll be alright

since then it's been a constant contact;
a hand-hold.
nature's singsong rythms
rocking us into a longhaul tempo

we, without desinations
find ourselves in synchronistic cöordinates
and have time to hear
the humming of ley lines, whence
we draw strength
for the indefinite road ahead

she awoke, as usual
a little later than me
she yawned, scratched her mane
and shook loose
what i first mistook for a multicoloured cape
but it turned out to be wet wings
still sticky from the chrysalis
and i thought
my god,
i'll never keep up with beauty

then she slipped a slender
arm around my back
and pulled out
one black feather
my very own wings
quivering
singing
to be skyborne

we sat on a manhattan rooftop
smoking, watching colour
welling up out of the city, the sky
letting her wings dry until
that last slip of sunset orange
caught fire
and buried itself
in her hair

c'mon, she said
they're ready.
let's fly on home

and where is that now? i wondered

she pointed to the night
the waning moon

we may land
from time to time, said she
but home,
home is wherever
we can be free

Dear Friends of this sweet earth, Mama Gaia, our only home

Done the good work. Travelled up from New Orleans burdened with water, sick and green, blooming with phytoplankton slime, but blessed, worked, transformed by love. The weight of carrying this responsibility was physical. invaded my sleep, my breathing. Nothwards to Minneapolis, where iwe did a ceremony with Dakota poet Tatanka Ohitika (strong buffalo) and some friends we knew from the big greasy. We poured some of the water in the river at the confluence of the Mississippi and minnesota rivers. Made offerings and made lunch of ourselves for the mosquitoes!

The day after we drove up to the headwaters, and a final ritual, a quiet blessing amidst the splashing little feet of fresh faced minnesota tykes, alive and springing into the cold water and sunlight, Lake Itasca placid in the background> As a gift for my work the river gave me a rose quartz from right in the heart of her source. Nice rock. fun to take a bath with.

Yeah, that's magic. The kids affirming what its all about. Staying simple. Standing in the water realizing all the work we all have done, there was no need fpr talk or formulas... just to be happy, and know that we are making a real positive change in the health of the river. hah.. a band-aid floated on by. Ok so it's a tiny attempt. but seeing the strength of that river even where it's small enough to wade across, you know by the time this work makes it downstream it's gonna be huge. We have already begun a river-long dialogue, a community connected by flowing water. As is say to the folks here in Minnesota, "when you pee, think of me."

Tonight iI'm going to be doing a music/poetry/ritual performance at an underground space called Medusa. Then I head home to my sweet dog and my janky ass life. Hallelujah. As I always say, the best thing about leaving New orleans is coming back.

Dirty Love,

Moose