moon traveller herald

  This is a semi religious poem construction for Labor Day! Jack thru John channels Clement. The Catechumen - Clement's Poem I Clement who waltzed my Matilda the known world over studying recall that the 'churches' were simple often, they were someone's apartment and the décor was no décor. You, the prayerful pilgrim brought your emptiness to the void and it became full. - My name is John and this came to me in a dream. more about this : https://moontravellerherald.blogspot.com/2015/10/reading-on-christian-art-of-early-kind.html

 Mission Hill Gas Lights Wheezing in the morning  stewing all in it wheezing cloud of  power plant particulates the gaslight hums down on Shepard St  where the bikers would party where the cobblestones dont answer the phone and the mass art people were mass art arty the gaslight hums on Folsom   DeQuinceian glowing the brothers open the door in millimeters slowly and the gaslight hums at Flann Obrien's alley where George feeds the flocking birds St Francis in his sandals the gaslight hums on.

  Acme Oyster House - Circa 1996 [APRIL 4, 2024] - White Panther Party Activist, jazz writer, MC5 band manager and poet John Sinclair, famously and unfairly imprisoned in 1969 for marijuana use, died Tuesday in Detroit. He was 82. His cause, as potently sung in John Lennon’s It Aint Fair John Sinclair [in the stir for breathing air] became an important rally point in the fight to legalize pot. His influence was also important in helping to create a politically radical school of high-powered rock n roll. That notwithstanding, he also diligently promoted a school of writing known as Jazz Poetry. The school could also be called Blues Poetry. In the '80s Sinclair moved to New Orleans, started doing a radio show, and started writing and performing poetry, mostly about blues.  His masterwork Fattening Frogs for Snakes - Delta Sound Suite," took the lives of the 20th Century American blues artists and applied a precisely descriptive and musical poetical form to its representation. Si...

  I was posting this to Jim Haas's Al Compas site - It is abbreviated versus version on this site . Jim had posted I'm a Little Mixed Up as part of his show.  Ode to Betty James - On a sunny Derby Day/Milwaukee/the East Side/up by the pagoda-looking gas/station around 1971 / got lost /got lost just / a few blocks from home. /And kids came out / climbing over rubble /singing "hippies in town" / singing "hippies in town" / me and dave and jim did / a sort of cold tremble / when a car engine would start /it was like a slow explosion / as we found our way / got back to the pad / and there is an old hippie / fellow traveller playing / I'm a Little Mixed Up -JV

 

  The Transylvanian Lineman "Don’t drink too deep in Transylvanian taverns." – Jack Kerouac, Nosferatu i. Nosferatu was  the man who vamped. Who was like  a hard hissing burden. cast as he was part man, part mythos ranging from rake to maiden with the shadowy purpose  to cloud-up the minds of man and time Noseferatu keeping five counted steps between the haloed souls in the COVID card line. He runs silent  a sharp-eared visage Causing giggles and shrieks in the Harvard film archives Noseferatu Looks like a mad Shemp In a mad man dance down the street. ii. With the sunrise I pick up the empties and toss the joint stubs of someone's nocturnal imbibe the light of the morning drives ‘way the animal Kinski and I feed the birds and pray they bless our day Offering a wife’s crumbly cake and marking A world in a tangle, pursued by an infinite lance and a very old man's problems. -           Jack Vaughan Aug 2023 Pat Methe...

the word expired on a virus  splaat the asteroid took off its hat metaphors were facile and easy you picked them off a tree all sleepy & sneazy before  the academy.  - j.v. Comment: In recent years, Natural Language Processing has been the driver advancing Artificial Intelligence. In recent months that has taken the forms of Large Language Models that mimic human intelligence using statistical analysis to learn the connections between words and finish unfinished sentences. Along the way these technologies have conjured for me recollections from reading Tzara and others who blew up sentences like painters blew up visual represenations.  More especially than most these concepts were plied by William Burroughs who said "the word is now a virus". I guess I've wondered if it always was, and it came from space on a comet. There's more on the topic I suppose in Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader . When I was a lad his writings would sometimes appear in Harper, ...

World in a jug i. The Dead Sea Scrolls evoke the aura of sacred mystery a blood enveloping Found in jugs in a desert cave Wreathed with shreds of paper that glisten in the air Hasten us to some  smoky abyss we may run the tapes of burroughs we may drink the firewater sepulcher We may dive in the mosh pit but We let the softside roll on the old dead sea scrolls   ii. Is there something to be said for organized religion? I will leave that to you It’s not been all bad It’s been far From mostly good And what mother’s son wouldn’t wonder enough to go back to the original Inner Workings in the scrolls in the cave on leather By the sea Dipped in blood ink To see the vision before the staging? iii. bring back my children from afar [4Q176] Wake up and put on Your strength Hand down your walking stick and hike It’s due time for glory war is on the land Your redeemer is the story. - J.Vaughan 2023 Also hear Fragment...

  The Friends Basement book sale was an occasion to thin out the books around here – many which basically overfill the space, un-re-read. Said good ‘buy’ to this grimy tome: The Dream Songs (1972) by John Berryman. Before I knew it, I got to thinking. John Berryman today is probably in the category called cancelled, where he hangs out with Hemingway, the king of cancelled, and others. Like Hemingway his father shot himself, and like Hemingway he would commit suicide, jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis. Back in his day, pre-1972, he was a hard drinking big-ego professor poet full of confessional angst, in my humble opinion. His songs were an endless song of hisself in an un-understanding world. Great bearded poet who spilled out his guts at poetry readings, and later, probably, fell into the punch bowl, to be saved for a while, in my dream song,   by a caring co-ed. You see in his poems his battle with drink, which I should say does demand some sympathy. In his writing...

Box of Glass Eyes  : Rewrite                i. A box of glass eyes At the Harvard Museum Glass eyes that look at me with tenderness like the glass sea anemone That echo the whimsy Of the visible golden rod dirty That carry the pacing meanness of Dingoes in the zoo The eyes like dreaming butterflies cased before Jerry Lewis comes dusting eyes for the big day waiting.                ii. Like the bones in the valley set to jump up and start dancing The glassine eyeballs too will fly Until that day they rest the pleasant rest of chocolates In a box Eyes that were made by Von Meyer The glass shop pipette wizard Visage manifester alchemist of a mélange   hearty transparent and fragil e People will visit and eye Until the great day of rumbling. Of great spirit dancing The day of glass eyes leaving their box .               ...

"If the glass is full, you can't fill it." - Jelly Roll Morten Jack Daniels was sitting  by the fire a' cryin -  copper tubes in moonlight the mash a fryin. Tom Merton come down  from Gethsemane Town walked way back to way back when - had two sips and again did a chugalug flip kissed the sky and then wrote a note in journal bout that old Kentucky zen.

Have a poem yall...two from the Vault combined. Taking vacation - see you there after! - JV i. Waiting for Bob La France to pick me up in the Long Red AMC Marlin All anticipation in the night of Nitty Gritty Playing Wilson Pickett's Greatest Hits in the anticipation Eyeballing a zit in the truth-telling mirror Getting psyched When Everybody Needs Somebody shook the radio Entering the long dark dusty archive - Soulville - to get the 45. And I Found a Love. 634-5789 - A Racine Exchange! ii. But the Juke Box at the Lucky Cue is the altar where we share these offerings.  he Lucky Cue was punk for us!  Recall The Cue: You walk in there and the juke box is playing.  Two long rows of greenfelt tables, pinball machines up front, more tables and a mezzanine level in the back.  And the juke box is playing  96 Tears,  Sometimes Good Guys Dont Wear White,  You Gonna Miss Me, and  Pushing Too Hard, by  Question Mark and the Mysterians,  the Standells...

Excited to introduce the writing of Cecelia Estrada Vaughan to these pages! - J.V. About Luigi Russolo - 1885 – 1947 Machines that scream: inventing Futurist Music … “Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibilities of men.” Luigi Russolo writes, “Each sound carries with it a nucleus of foreknown and foregone sensations predisposing the auditor to boredom, in spite of all the efforts of innovating composers.  All of us have liked and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. For years, Beethoven and Wagner have deliciously shaken our hearts. Now we are fed up with them. This is why we get infinitely more pleasure imagining combinations of the sounds of trolleys, autos and other vehicles, and loud crowds, than listening once more, for instance, to the heroic or pastoral symphonies.” This futurist manifesto, “The Art of Noises,” became, perhaps frustratingly, t...

  This artifact from my bedroom bureau shows how lively the Chicago Blues Scene was in 1978. Every night in July, boffo!  What a line-up! Sunnyland Slim, Otis Rush, Magic Slim, Detroit Jr. Son Seals, Erwin Helfer and Mama Yancey - it just goes on and on. I got to a couple of these nights - hot but it was great to be there. This happened while I worked with Sunnyland on the Prose Poem "Sunnyland Blues." Most of that was Sunnyland conversation - and what testimonies they were. Here below instead I include some excerpts from the book that touch on my impressions of Chicago. These and some verbatims by other musicians weren't particularly received well by the critics. I get it, they were jarring, and might have worked well in a longer more rambling presentation.      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FROM CHICAGO AND ACROSS KING DRIVE - Distended lights of the northwestern trestle. Buses this burden their scores. Ice chests in the gas stations wait for Sat...

This is adapted from a Selection from Our Vault. Writ on the passing of Wilson Pickett in 2006.  Wilson Picket was the first soul singer I heard, and the most direct, and the guy who got me into the thing. Wilson Pickett. I died in front of 40 people 0nce trying to replicate Mustang Sally. It isnt possible.  His is irreproducible art. Midnight Hour was an oldie. But it was totally different than any other. Tried and failed to replicate that as well.  The thing is that the time and the place become one with the feel. I'd listen to those records waiting for the Marlin ride to the Gritty. Wilson Pickett Poem My room in the house on North Bay Drive Waiting for Bob La France to pick me up in the Long Red AMC Marlin All anticipation in the night of Nitty Gritty Playing Wilson Pickett's Greatest Hits in the anticipation Eyeballing a zit in the truth-telling mirror Getting psyched When Everybody Needs Somebody shook the radio Entering the long dark dusty archive - Soulville - to ...

  Spent a morning at Boston Public Library going through old issues of Mission Hill Good News on microfilm when an old poem appeared. This is late 1970s.

  i searched the graveyard all over trying to find where kerouac lay i searched the graveyard all over trying to find where kerouac lay just me and my racine buddies on the hottest august day they had come out in a rambler and we were out on a spree to play they had come out in a rambler and we were out on a spree to play but when came sunday  went looking for kerouac's grave he was a lonesome traveller who showed the world another way on the road and in the dharma the holy poet sadly prayed we thought he'd send a message an eminission from the grave then a dove rose in the meadow where the peoples memories must stay and we went in the direction the spot from where it came the bird like a flying beer can showed the place where ti jean laid  on the hottest august day.                         -jack vaughan This opened up upon listening to Champon Jack Dupree - a song where he searched a graveyard for his motherl. W...

I n a comfy ez boy, with a big screen (for me) TV, watching the masters.... What I fixed on was the tweeting Georgia birds of spring. the birds is like the blues they tell a story everyday i have the blues everyday i hear the birds                      -jvaughan

Bessie after the war By the green sea Ruminating. Lee’s been through here. Hannibal too. Playing whisk and canasta On the fold up map table Trading armies like baseball cards On a rainy summer day. Thinks to make a surf board And drift out like a ship. - Jack V.

This is a riff on review of Edison by Morris elsewhere on this and my ProgressiveGauge site.   At about the age of 10, Edison goes to the creek with young friend George Lockwood, who disappears in the eddies to drown. Edison observes the creek water for a long time, maybe rapt by the dying Lockwood’s breath bubbles. At last, after the long wait for Lockwood to surface, Edison finally goes home to dinner and to bed without telling anyone about the event. Meanwhile, a party searches for Lockwood – eventually they come to hear Edison’s story of his drowning. Self-taught polymath,  noted as a man of amazing concentration.  He could look intently at what was there and was able to uncover deep first principles  as he tinkered with pieces of  metal, carbon, vulcanite, lamp black  and assorted materials. More than that,  he had a gift for  imaginative re-application of principles  to conjure new products,  and improve on existing successes....