The Hand That Pays The Bill by The Sacred and Profane Melodies of Julia Ryder

No More News V1

Karst by Rainy Anderson

Man on a mission
Moves undetected
Into position
Weapon confected
Back to the wall and pray he drinks enough
Eyes of the waiter
Register something
Is he in with us or
Simply nothing
Time won't allow for speculative stuff
It's time to run, but...

Kiss on the forehead
While they are sleeping
Car to the airport
Choke back your weeping
Hide in the shadow of a newspaper as you wait by an open gate
And you dream of the other side
That you'll fly to
The grieving families
Friends that you lied to
Begging the bloodstained hand to wake you up
The things we do for

Love of your country
Love of your children
Love of a woman
Love of the human
Love of whatever fills the coffers up
The things we do for
Men with no faces
Guarding the exit
A trail of blazes
And you connect it
The cosmos condenses to the capsule in your glove
The things we do for

Love

Sources say the system's working great,
and the government is your friend.
Commerce is the same as freedom
and wealth is the same as happiness,
according to sources familiar with the matter.
Sources say you should hate the Russians,
and also you should hate the Chinese,
and also you should hate Iran,
and also you should hate anti-vaxxers,
and also you should hate disobedient podcasters,
and really just hate anyone but your owners.

Sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say we would never lie to you.
We've been speaking to you since you were young.
You can trust us with your mind.
If we were lying to everyone
everything would be a mess,
and the system would be a failure,
but it isn't,
so we can't be,
sources say,
sources say.
Sources say that you are finite,
and that a better world is impossible.
Sources say there is no magic coursing through your veins,
no miracles lurking in the great unknown,
no potentiality crackling within our species,
no leviathans swimming in our inner oceans, 
no dragons soaring through our mind's sky.
Sources say you are your body,
and you are your thoughts and your labels
and what you've been told you are since birth.
Sources say that small child's voice within you
whispering your primordial name
is a liar
and you should drown it in a bowl of Netflix and whiskey.
Sources say sources say sources say
look at this shiny thing over here,
look how interesting it is,
keep looking at this,
don't look within,
don't look without,
pay no attention to the gasping biosphere,
pay no attention to our nuclear Russian roulette,
pay no attention to that man starving from sanctions,
pay no attention to that man shivering on the street,
pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,
pay no attention to those angels in the attic,
pay no attention to the swelling music of the forgotten gods,
just look over here,
just stare at this vapid celebrity wankface nothingman,
look look,
he is doing a thing,
ha ha ha ha he is so interesting and so relevant to our present situation.
Sources say don't trust your own Sources.
Trust our sources; they are official and authorized.
The world is predictable and revolution impossible;
stomp down that light that's been emanating from your chest cave.
Your Source is a liar.
Your Source can't take care of you.
Your Source probably doesn't even own any aircraft carriers.

Our sources say no one else will ever love you.
Shut up and get back to work,
sources say.
Ignore your Source
and keep cranking that gear
for as long as your worthless body will let you,
and then get out of the way
and get into the hole
with the rest of the corpses
in our thriving corpse economy
on our spinning corpse planet
as we exterminate our way into paradise,
sources say.
______________________

______________________

______________________

Reading by Tim Foley.

Sources Say

Love crashes in from all directions,
so peel me off the ground like Wile E Coyote
and blow on my thumb to unflatten me.

Love crashes in like an ACME anvil,
like an ACME exploding rocket,
like an ACME exploding female roadrunner doll,
like an ACME exploding orgy of divine light
erupting from the Great Mother's breasts
and ripping me to shreds leaving nothing but gratitude,
so shake the black soot off from my fur
and clean the coyote-shaped blast marks off the wall behind me.

Love crashes in through my bare feet on the grass
and the wind in my hair,
through the laughter of my children,
through the flying creatures in the air,
through my lover's hands on my flesh,
through the unknowability of the future,
through the ineffability of the present,
through the ecstasy of existence,
through the boundless Heart in which all arises,
so give me a sign which says "YIPE!"
that I may hold before I start falling.

I am in love with everything,
head-over-hormones in love,
gishy, sticky in love,
in love like an idiot,
in love like a gibbering lunatic,
in love like a cartoon,
so fire me out of a cannon
even though I will surely miss my target
so that 
for my very short and ill-advised flight
I can look down over it all
and blow kisses
and howl.
____________________

Reading by Tim Foley.

Love Crashes In

lovely to sit at @stellato-strings piano again and record improvisations again for the first time in 2023. more pieces to be made in the coming weeks from yesterday afternoon's session. for starters here's me, the piano and its harmonics, the wind chimes outside, Audacity editing and the life game of chance (there's no such thing as chance) at play.

This is this week's response to the weekly Naviar Haiku challenge:

Evening sky,
the silhouettes of farmers in their fields
deepen.

(translated by James Abrams)

A wandering poet and ascetic Zen priest, Santōka was a disciple of Ogiwara Seisensui, one of the first poets to discard the traditional use of the 5-7-5 structure in haiku.

Santōka’s poetry emphasizes the necessity of sabi (solitude) in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment and serenity.

Seven days to make music in response to the assigned haiku: to participate visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

Deadline: 18th January 2023

haiku by Santoka Taneda https://www.chzc.org/Nonin.htm

picture is by me of the Anthony Gormley figure currently keeping watch outside Turner Contemporary.

Fentanyl

Sun Sets Twice