& discarded cigarettes, even my bus ticket, hairline cracks in bone, in tar,
in vermillion – ground cinnebar – pigment packed in jars, coolin’ in red clay
shadows durin’ the Renaissance, hairline crackin’ fractal flowers on lacquer,
river-lines on a map, in masterworks, into Assumption of the Virgin by Titian,
& unmentioned others, with fadin’ of time, a tourist bus pulls off sputterin,’
single-point perspective dis-in-te-grates – unseen stick scratchin’ my hand.
I pirouette my solitary shadow across Palazzo Pirro built within
sixteenth century Rome, my shadow layering, a palimpsest, above
cobblestones and a book of matches.
I light one candle divining a reality (quiet: like a stalking panther),
and then brightly shine, playing a piccolo-infused, Super 8 movie theme.
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo in your hand?
I’m goin’ to journey – a refugee, I witness the obsidian glyphs, comin’ down like
a long black glove – aimin’ into the heart of me,
she calls me her sweet hero revolution,
a wooden gate swingin’ open,
and she tastes like nocino…
We pirouette our shadows across Palazzo Pirro built within
sixteenth century Rome, our shadows layering, like a palimpsest, sprigs of
speckled weeds growing among the cobblestones.
We light one candle divining a reality (double-sided: like a magician’s trick),
and then brightly shine, playing a Super 8 movie theme (her firebird voice
disinfecting fountains).
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo in your hand?
I’m goin’ to journey – a refugee, I witness the obsidian glyphs, sparklin’
like the aurora borealis, above the path leadin’ down to the river –
her firebird voice nourishes, dark as syrup, aimin’ into the heart of me.
I inhale ancient images in Pirro Ligorio’s engraving:
Image of the Ancient City Rome.
I light one candle divining a reality (earthy: like a black walnut),
and then brightly shine, playing a Super 8 movie theme – the piccolo
a rowboat rocking beneath my baby’s firebird voice.
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo in your hand?
I’m goin’ to journey – a refugee, I witness the obsidian glyphs, comin’
down like a long black glove – aimin’ into the heart of me,
she calls me her sweet hero revolution,
a wooden gate swingin’ open,
and she tastes like nocino…
We inhale ancient images in Pirro Ligorio’s engraving:
Image of the Ancient City Rome.
We light one candle divining a reality (weaponized: like a cell phone),
and then brightly shine, playing a Super 8 movie theme – starring
gods who play at sport.
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo in your hand?
I’m goin’ to journey – a refugee, I witness the obsidian glyphs, sparklin’
like the aurora borealis, above the wall protectin’ us from invaders –
her firebird voice beckons, dark as syrup, aimin’ into the heart of me.
I cup my ears, lean into a raucus carnival of street theatre,
and reiterate childhood ~ reimagining Pierrot in commedia dell’arte.
I light one candle divining a reality (dangerous: like a darkened highway),
and then brightly shine, playing a Super 8 movie
theme – gods who play at sport loom like the Chrysler Building,
rising like angels on the head of a pin.
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo in your hand?
I’m goin’ to journey – a refugee, I witness the obsidian glyphs, comin’
down like a long black glove – aimin’ into the heart of me,
she calls me her sweet hero revolution,
a wooden gate swingin’ open,
and she tastes like nocino…
We cup our ears, lean into a raucus carnival of street theatre,
and reiterate childhood ~ reimagining Pierrot in commedia dell’arte.
We light one candle divining a reality (bolted down: like a Faraday cage),
and then brightly shine, playing a Super 8 movie theme – my piccolo a
rowboat, her firebird voice clairvoyant in mysteries of flesh and blood.
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo in your hand?
I’m goin’ to journey – a refugee, I witness the obsidian glyphs,
comin’ down like a long black glove – aimin’ into the heart of me.
Her firebird voice dark as syrup, pale as flutterin’ cherry blossoms,
passin’ like a shadow across the public square, deepenin’
worn ballustrades in darkest chiaroscuro, spreadin’ like black-moss jam,
spreadin’ upon the panther carved in white granite, rollin’ ancient wheels
down hallways of the gods, rockin’ me like a rowboat, rockin’ me into
confusion, perfumin’ rivers and clay, and plants receivin’
moonlight, and trees in silhouette, and evaporatin’ mist, and constellations
deep as ice disappearin’ at breakneck speed, disappearin’ into amber
like a prehistoric gnat, a grasshopper wing, a spine, the scent of smoke,
starlight embedded in black moss arcin’ high above the cave, torchlight
flickerin’ ancestors to the wall ecstatic, copper-plated figurines, hewed
magnetic wood, chantin’ in shrouded limestone, silvery echoes quiver:
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo in your hand?
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo in your
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo in
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that piccolo
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that
Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with
Hey Joe! Where you goin’
Hey Joe! Where you
Hey Joe! Where
Hey Joe!
Hey
A 1493 woodcut of the university town of Bologna, where Copernicus studied law.
I found this anonymous woodcut online some time ago and created a series of digital images blending it with a small & golden, Incan figure (a god perhaps). I decided to only use one of those images for this posting. I cannot remember which high school, or year, the high school yearbook photo of the cheerleader and basketball players came from but here they are, in their youth, featured in a new variant of the classic Hey Joe! now situated in Rome, or perhaps outside of time. I lifted the figure in blue from a series of images in progress about a bus driver (not sure I’ll ever get back to it). I take credit for my own digital creative work and conceptual imagination. I don’t claim copyright over original source material in my (not for profit) re-contextualizing and art-making.
Special thank you to Joe Kelly who encouraged the vernacular in abbreviations such as goin’ instead of going. I used that whenever ‘Joe’ of ‘Hey Joe’ was asked thequestion.
Four hours from Paris, Texas you told me your kidneys were shot.
Four hours from Paris, Texas you told me you’d taken the shot.
The antithetical tincture closes during this phase, the being is losing knowledge of its old antithetical life.
The conflict between that portion of the life of feeling which appertains to his unity, and that portion he has in common with others, coming to an end, has begun to destroy that knowledge.
I got my mother on the phone in a phone booth.
She said I’m making you an Atomic Bomb sandwich – the kind you love.
I said mother dear, I’m driving an eighteen wheeler.
Oh mother dear, three of the tires are shot.
He can hardly, if action and the intellect that concerns action are taken from him, recreate his dream life; and when he says ‘Who am I?’, he finds it difficult to examine his thoughts in relation to one another, but begins to find them easy to examine them in relation to action.
He can examine those actions themselves with a new clearness. Now for the first time since Phase 12, Goethe’s saying is almost true: ‘Man knows himself by action only, by thought never.’
Oh mother dear, there is a cloud – silvery and blue, hanging above me.
This phase is the beginning of the artificial, the abstract, the fragmentary, and the dramatic.
Unity of being is no longer possible, for the being is compelled to live in a fragment of itself and to dramatise that fragment.
She prayed to Mother Mary swirling in a purple robe.
She prayed to Mother Mary lighting candles on a crimson heart within a crown of thorns.
The primary tincture is closing, direct knowledge of self in relation to action is ceasing to be possible.
The being only completely knows that portion of itself which judges fact for the sake of action.
When the man lives according to phase, he is now governed by conviction, instead of by a ruling mood, and is effective only insofar as he can find this conviction.
Mother dear, I am four hours from Paris, Texas.
Oh mother dear, my passenger fast asleep.
Mother dear left me a note: Your Atomic Bomb sandwich waits on your favourite plate. I left you everything I own. I know it’s not much.
Light streamed through a squat crystal shot glass.
His aim is so to use an intellect which turns easily to declamation, emotional emphasis, that it serves conviction in a life where effort, just in so far as its object is passionately desired, comes to nothing.
He desires to be strong and stable, but as Unity of Being and self-knowledge are both gone, and it is too soon to grasp at another unity through primary mind, he passes from emphasis to emphasis.
In the kalidoscopic setting sun I pass the drive-in movie theatre on Medicine Hill.
On Medicine Hill a cowgirl told me to give it my best shot.
The strength from conviction, derived from a Mask of the first quarter antithetically transformed, is not founded upon social duty, though that may seem so to others, but is tempermentally formed to fit some crisis of personal life.
His thought is immensely effective and dramatic, arising always from some immediate situation, a situation found or created by himself, and may have great permanent value as the expression of an exciting personality.
The thought is always an open attack; or a sudden emphasis, an extravagence, or an impassioned declamation of some general idea, which is a more veiled attack.
The name of the movie on the highway marquee in bold block letters came into view.
Thistles in a ball blew across the hood.
NOW WE ARE AS LOST AS THE ONCE GREAT HERDS.
The Creative Mind being derived from Phase 11, he is doomed to attempt the destruction of all that breaks or encumbers personality, but this personality is conceived of as a fragmentary momentary intensity.
The mastery of images threatened or lost at Phase 18, may, however, be completely recovered,but there is less symbol, more fact.
Vitality from dreams has died out, and a vitality from fact has begun which has for its ultimate aim the mastery of the real world.
The waterfall after an abrupt fall continues upon a lower level; ice turns to water, or water to vapour: there is a new chemical phase.
NOW WE ARE AS LOST AS THE ONCE GREAT HERDS.
Four hours from Paris, Texas I click on my high beams.
Four hours from Paris, Texas I take out my tools.
When lived out of phase there is hatred or contempt of others, and instead of seeking conviction for its own sake, the man takes up opinions that he may impose himself upon others.
He is tyrannical and capricious, and his intellect is called ‘The Unfaithful,’ because, being used for victory alone, it will change its ground in a moment, and delight in some new emphasis, not caring whether old or new have consistency.
The Mask is derived from that phase where perversity begins, where artifice begins, and has its discord from Phase 25, the last phase where the artificial is possible; the Body of Fate is therefore enforced failure of action, and many at this phase desire action above all things as a means of expression.
Whether the man be in or out of phase, there is the desire to escape from Unity of Being or any approximation towards it, for Unity can be but a simulacrum now.
And in so far as the soul keeps its memory of that potential Unity there is conscious antithetical weakness.
He must now dramatize the Mask through the Will and dreads the Image, deep within, of the old antithetical tincture at its strongest, and yet this Image may seem infinitely desirable if he could but find the desire.
When so torn into two, escape when it comes may be so violent that it brings him under the False Mask and the False Creative Mind.
The man in the mirror said my kidneys are shot.
The man in the mirror said I took the shot.
I found various cave paintings online, some images of buffalo, and photographs of an old drive-in movie theatre to juxtapose. All were anonymous. I obviously do not claim copyright for these works. However, I have fashioned new digital work(s) for purposes of commentary and art within a not-for-profit context. I placed my watermark on these images to take credit for creative digital artwork.
I studied a map of where we lived in the Missouri, Ozarks when I was a boy. I realized it was only four hours to Paris, Texas. For some reason I liked the idea.
I found a free PDF download of W.B. Yeats’ work A Vision. It is a mighty work. Not easy. The inscription: ‘Finished at Thoor, Ballylee, 1922, in a time of Civil War.’
A series of digital images reimagining the Celtic deer who appears near the end of my long painting ‘Druidica Blue: Deja Vu (Cave Art For the New Psyche).’ Here she is reimagined as a ‘double-deer on the river with a blue slash.’
Reimagining the imagined. The Celtic deer discovers herself in a geometric composition with a goddess manipulating a moon symbol, also from the original painting.
Reimagining the imagined. She is reimagined in two-dimensional profile where ‘dry sand is covering reeds and half-buried, disintegrated reed boats.’
Reimagining the imagined. I reimagine her being ofthe sun. In this composition two diagonal rods exit or enter a window in a dome. Diagonal lines connect her to the window.
Reimagining the imagined. She is reimagined here within a defined space. Perhaps an open air temple. I include a section of the original painting.
Reimagining the imagined. I remember painting the curvilinear antlers and feeling the texture of the paper on the floor. In Photoshop I (somehow) created a ‘brass brooch in refracted sunlight.’
Reimagining the imagined. The Celtic deer experiences a sudden buoyant springtime: surging youth & chlorophyll. Excuse the double watermarks. In doing so much layering and relayering I lose track of it.
Reimagining the imagined. Three primary influences (Matisse, Cubism, cartoons) create the sensation of a distant seashore I will only visit in my imagination.
Reimagining the imagined. In this Cubistic image the Celtic deer seems to enter the edges of a reverberaton.
I said frequencies come into view roaring like a whip-poor-will.
To within hearing range.
Within broadcasting range.
Within a marvelous & manifesting zone.
Except I didn’t say tone. I said zone.
Investigate the marvelous:
Track back to
a pulsing frequency
imagined as gossamer,
like that clear syrup you poured on pancakes,
in the air & not even sticky.
Except I didn’t say ode. I said code.
Remember that old song about a tomato,
You say: toe-MAH-toe
I say: toe-MAY-toe…
Except I didn’t say tomato at all.
I said alchemical frequencies.
Dialing landlines into clay.
Calibrate a fine-tuning.
I heard the eyelid open.
How does one hear from such a distance
if there is such a distance.
Track vibrations to their source
to evolving devolution
to devolving evolution.
Morphing into law or code.
Law or code tracked to a source
follow a firefly spiraling.
The source of the code fomenting sound.
A whip-poor-will swooping in a gyre, invisible to the bird of prey.
Remember that old song about a tomato,
You say: toe-MAH-toe
I say: toe-MAY-toe...
Except I didn’t say tomato at all.
I said thrum:
Amber-golden honeybees
pollinate the sun.
I said hum:
Rapid eye-movement beep.
Divining rod-flicker beep.
Levitating hypnopompic sun-stone beep.
Translucent wing-sheath
humming.
I bought a boomerang.
Silence! Hush!
Let you and me (one of us the fool) embroider a spoon large as a tapestry.
To spoof high officials with mock Greek Tragedy: How to SpoonfeedHoney.
To perform the pagaentry with sardonic flourish and redeeming severity.
Except I didn’t say money. I said honey.
I practice hooking my wrist.
At the market, behind seven hanging skins, I bought a boomerang inscribed with carving.
Expect
OM.
Beep
OM.
Amber-golden sun-stream OM
beeping hum, beeping thrum...
I purchase drops of oil annointing the boomerang.
A tacked up handbill publicizes theatrical spectacle of the highest form.
To sound
OM
spanning divinity to infinity.
Eyelid ascending…
A whip-poor-will descending
glides into the window light,
scratches at the stone of night.
OM sounding gyres, OM sounding omphalos
infinitely divine.
Infinity sounding
OM,
One eyelid open,
fingertip
shiatsu beneath the soil.
A silence of soil
in divine science, divine omen
infinitely OM.
A thrumming bluebird, thrumming gnat, thrumming comet,
(infinitely divine)
thrumming the speed of sound tearing a hole in shrouded time.
I conceal the boomerang within the folds of my Turin robe: echo of the divine.
Echo of the divine – tear a hole in time,
hurling, aimed into the mission,
sailing to omniscient vision
& to return
& to return.
In Turin return to shrouded silence,
raise the eyelid,
visualize OM.
In absent space, in disintegration
visualize OM.
OM onward OM in hallucinations of the heart.
Investigate the manifesting:
Track back to
a pulsing frequency
imagined as gossamer,
like that clear syrup you poured on pancakes,
in the air & not even sticky.
Remember that old song about a tomato,
You say:toe-MAH-toe
I say: toe-MAY-toe…
Except I didn’t say tomato at all.
Beneath the eyelid all is silent.
Silent night.
Tomato, summer 2022Photograph in Wikipedia I digitally rendered for purposes of non-commercial commentary.
Philip S. Callahan, Ph.D, influenced this poem, if I may call it a poem, with his unique research, discoveries, and ideas about sound & transmission related to the Irish round towers.
A linocut moon from my ‘wordless poem’ Nevermore Together (2014, The Porcupine Quill’s press – 120 linocut prints). A Spiral Monk digital drawing from a series I did a few years ago. The Irish terminology discovered in the John Moriarty book Dreamtime.
Eachtra: An adventure to or from the Otherworld of mythic, or of near-mythic, strangeness. Imbas Forusnai: Method of divination practiced by seer-poets of ancient Ireland.
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