bobbradley.com

from the prodigal drummer:

I.

What Thunderama 2012 said…

I, Elvis Crockett think this little light of mine got some shine, has some value to offer and I am working on non-attachment to outcome.

Which will make this whole project better to write and hopefully to read.

I, Elvis Crockett, am an agent of the Prodigal paradigm. As prodigal, I approach the tribe from the outside to the inside. Have researched links with ancient scapegoat anthropology. Blake has this initiation mapped out in songs of innocence and experience.

The podigal had blown the inheritance and been out rollin with the pigs, and I, Elvis Crockett, have done some of that.

In addition, I, EC,  have also flown some with the angels.

What drives a prodigal far from home,

Calls him back again,

And again, empty-handed.

Flush with mortal love.

Samhain 2012

Behind his mask

He watches.

Is interested in discovering what drives others

to seek power at work or in love.

He may be ready.

Ready to delve into the gnarlish

world of hidden, forlorn feelings.

He knows that is the place that he often avoids.

Now, however, he is willing to overcome

his resistance. And yours, even if you’re not

comfortable with the thought

of what you both might encounter there in those

Cthonic gated communities. Those catacombs in which

To wander among the ghosts of shadows.

Copses of corpses vertical and murmuring

Through their postures about ancient

Crannies of the kundalini where the quiet

Is a violin bereft of bow. From the bonfire

Of bovine bones rises as vapors

above the mansions that house our fathers and

mothers. Whose vapors drift as dreams

unharnessed and hateful about not

Healing. Which every morning settles on manicured lawns

Beneath which roots itch: each of them, every one.

Dew of which dreams make the grass blades pretty with

Fractals of projective fantasies.

He/You are on the right track. Which zeroes

The X/Y axis that paradoxes the paradigm

Into quadrants of skillsets to plant power and

harvest power. Afore-mentioned

torque of agriculture.

Into the red clay and piedmont

sand of his nativity. Seed of a birth which

meets you at the cross and throws dice for

the soul’s own garments.

Which lie strewn about the scene.

Grief of which peels the bulbed onions of eyes from

which all bitter tears flow. Which flow creates the rivers

of movies that spool the mind,

its ruts and tunnels runnelling through maps of sadness.

And joys. Racked up in surrenders diasporic in scope

And scale. Big ol’ sticky face, betrayed by

infantile oralities that march as toy soldiers in the dreams

Of an abandoned boy:

what goes in, what goes out.

He will surely feel relief

once you know the truth.

No triumph in it. No defeat.

He holds a palm, into which he stares

A stigmata, to his heart.

As he fears the pulsing orb not up

To the things that must be known,

Much less the things that must be done.

just came across this really good article and have to share.

another look, from a corrective distance, at a controversial book:

Robert Bly’s Iron John: click here for article

Zircon Tiara: The Gemini Kid does

Karaoke

In order to have romance

In your life,

You must think romantic

Thoughts

And fill your eyes with romantic

Visions.

Like a train Bound for

Nowhere. Eyes

That glisten when they look

At you. Or

The moon reflecting

On a lake.

AUTUMN ALABAMA

From Tobacco Sunburst (2004)

I.

Woke up one morning,

my head still swimming dreams.

I glimpsed a lovely lady;

the artist of a charming scene.

She paints in colors

and always works alone.

Her name is Alabama

and she calls the harvest home.

II.

She nudged me on

And I walked into the story

Of cinnamon cemeteries

Winesap apple glories

Row by row she lined the fields

With broken stalks and such

When mother nature make the way

Who could want for much

III.

Harvest the colors of Autumn Alabama

Orange and garnet and gold

Mother Nature paints with Autumn Alabama

So that nothing but the sky grows old.

V.

She told me don’t believe that winter’s too bewitching

You can hear what lives inside if you’ll only listen

VI.

When that wind turns the city thin

And neon lights announce

Zero’s the bone—old man winter’s in the house

I let my mind go back to autumn Alabama

Such patience sets the stage for spring and all that glamour.

autumn alabama (2003)

from Talking Rock Music Album, Tobacco Sunburst

producer: don dixon

engineer and guitar: mitch easter

for bear bryant, joe namath, the snake and the pierce sisters.

VII. Final Chorus

Harvest the colors of Autumn Alabama

Orange and garnet and gold

Mother Nature paints with Autumn Alabama

So that nothing but the sky grows old.

Nothing but the sky grows old.

Bavarian Gentians
By D.H. Lawrence

Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.
Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s gloom,
ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter’s pale lamps give off
light, lead me then, lead me the way.
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
down the way Persephone goes, just now, in first-frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is married to dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice, as a bride
a gloom invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms of Pluto as he ravishes her once again
and pierces her once more with his passion of the utter dark
among the splendour of black-blue torches, shedding
fathomless darkness on the nuptials.

Bavarian gentians, tall and dark, but dark
darkening the daytime torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s gloom,
ribbed hellish flowers erect, with their blaze of darkness spread blue,
blown flat into points, by the heavy white draught of the day.

post to test. long may you run and prosper, forever young…