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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 8, 2005 12:31:22 GMT
Wilderness the first volume of Jim's poetry published after his death....any good or complete toss!! Any of you leather pants lovers got a view?  DRY WATER The velvet fur of religion The polish of knife handle & coin The universe of organic gears or microscope mechanical embryo metal doll The night is a steel machine grinding its slow stained wheels The brain is filled w/ clocks, & drills & water down drains Knifehandle, thick blood like the coin & cloth they rub & the skin they love to touch
the graveyard, the tombstone, the gloomstone & runestone The sand & the moon, mating deep in the Western night waiting for the escape of one of our gang The hangman's noose is a silver sluice bait comeon man your meat is hanging on the wing of the raven man's bird, poet's soul
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh the thin rustle of weeds the voice comes from faraway inside, awaiting its birth in a cool room, on tendril bone The insane free chummy cackle of infants in a ballroom, of a family of friends around a table, laden w/ feast-food soft guilty female laughter the barroom, the men's room people assemble to establish armies & find their foe & fight
Clustered in watchful terror by vine-growth, the hollow bush dry cancerous wells We awoke before dawn, slipped into the canyon
Noon schoolyard screamed w/ play, the lunch hour ending ropes & balls slapped hard at cement sand, the female land was bright, all swelling to degree most comfortless & guarding
A record noise shot out & stunned the earth. The music had been bolted w/ new sound. Run, run the end of repose an anthem has churned the bad guys are winning.
Silver shaken in the gloom I left her
Trees waste & sway forever
Marble porch & sylvan frieze Down on her knees
She begs the spiderking to wed her Slides into bed
He turns her over
There is a leather pouch that's full of silver
It spills like water
She left And took the coins I gave her
As to the drowning man hoarse whisper invokes, on the edge, an arroyo Sangre de Christo
Violence in a time of plenty
There is one deaf witness on the bank, the shore leaning in finery against a ruined wall as Jesus did. Red livid lips, pale flesh withdrawn from ragged dress, pit of the past & screens unveiled in the scarred chalk wall
When, often, one is not deluged by rain, 3 drops suffice The war is over there I am neither doctor nor saint Christ or soldier Now, friends, don't look at me sadly ranting like some incomprehensible child I know by my breath of what I speak, & what I've seen needs telling.
Please, freeze! Danger near. A message has started its path to the heart of the brain A thin signal is on its way An arrow of hope, predicting rain A death-rod bearing pain
I
I will not come again I will not come again into the swirl The bitter wine-soaked stallion eats the seed, all labor is a lie; no vice is kindled in these loins to melt or vie w/ any strong particulating smile. Leave sundry stones alive.
II
Now that you have gone all alone the desert to explore & left me here alone
the calmness of the town where a girl in black gets in a car & searches numbly for her keys;
Now that you have gone or strayed away
I sit, & listen to the hiss of traffic & invoke into this burned & gutted room some ghost, some vague resemblance of a time
Offon, on and off, like one long sick electric dream. This state is confused state. Out there her life like warm connectors, plug into her soul From every side & melt her form for me.
But I deserve this, Greatest cannibal of all. Some tired future. Let me sleep. Get on w/ the disease.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 8, 2005 12:31:53 GMT
"In that year there was an intense visitation of energy. I left school & went down to the beach to live. I slept on a roof At night the moon became a woman's face. I met the Spirit of Music." Jim's view from Dennis Jacob's rooftop.....An appearance of the devil on a Venice canal. Running, I saw a Satan or Satyr, moving beside me, a fleshy shadow of my secret mind. Running, Knowing.
The day I left the beach
A hairy Satyr running behind & a little to the right.
In the holy solipsism of the young
Now I can't walk thru a city street w/out eying each single pedestrian. I feel their vibes thru my skin, the hair on my neck -it rises.

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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 12, 2005 16:15:16 GMT
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Mar 28, 2005 15:21:48 GMT
been reading this a bit lately and I think there is some bloody good stuff here...definitely the best of the Morrison work in print!  Wonder when we will see Volume III of the Lost Writings? The FearEternal consciousness in the Void (makes trial & jail seem almost friendly)
a Kiss in the Storm
(Madman at the wheel gun at the neck space populous & arching coolly)
A barn a cabin attic
Your own face stationary in the mirrored window
fear of restroom’s Tragic cold neon
I’m freezing
animals dead
white wings of rabbits
grey velvet deer
The Canyon
The car a craft in wretched SPACE
Sudden movements
& your past to warm you in Spiritless Night
The Lonely HWY Cold hiker
Afraid of Wolves & his own Shadow ~~~
The Wolf, who lives under the rock has invited me to drink of his cool Water. Not to splash or bathe But leave the sun & know the dead desert night & the cold men who play there. ~~~
a ha Come on, now luring the Traveller Mighty Voyager Curious, into its dark womb The graves grinning Indians of night The eyes of night Westward luring into the brothel, into the blood bath into the Dream The dark Dream of conquest & Voyage into night, Westward into Night
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Post by ensenada on Mar 28, 2005 19:51:41 GMT
i havnt read this yet, its on my list. but what i have read here, its bloody good....my kinda thing. and his written poetry about the aztec stuff even seems to have a small drawing if a pyramid with all seeing eye! had jim read about the illuminati? 
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Post by wyldlizardqueen on Mar 29, 2005 0:50:43 GMT
Yeah, i think it is some awesome!!stuff!!
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Mar 29, 2005 11:01:52 GMT
i havnt read this yet, its on my list. but what i have read here, its bloody good....my kinda thing. and his written poetry about the aztec stuff even seems to have a small drawing if a pyramid with all seeing eye! had jim read about the illuminati?  According to David Icke and his mad mates he WAS one! 
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Post by jym on Mar 29, 2005 12:26:55 GMT
Surprised they haven't added Morrisons name to the list of Grand Masters of the Priory of Scion & put him in the DaVinci Code! 
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Post by ensenada on Mar 29, 2005 13:21:02 GMT
 did david icke actaully say jim was one?  he would obvioulsy be the king! that guy needs a slap! as for the priory of scion...i can see jim strapped into his harnesses spanking himself with a whip lol no really i can! 
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Post by mywildlove4371 on May 28, 2005 21:19:39 GMT
I love the aztec wall of vision and troubled immeasurably. they caught my eye the first time I ever read the book back in the 90's. 
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Post by lawless on Jun 15, 2005 16:40:12 GMT
The poetry of 'Wilderness' begins, proper, with 'Poems 1966-1971'.
The first title is 'The Opening of the Trunk' which could stand only for the first short poem, or as a loose title for the first seven poems.
The 'Trunk' could be, prosaically, where the poet keeps his notebooks when travelling [this poet has always been a nomad - the son of a navy man, travelling from base to base ['to come of age in a dry place'] - a student, and now a musician, travelling from town to town from country to country.
But the poem makes of the trunk a metaphor - one is reminded of the Old English phrase 'word-hoard', meaning poetry, used I think, in Beowulf. The term is used by Saxonists to mean 'lexicon', i.e., the poet's personal vocabulary.
So we begin with the notion that the poet is setting out his 'word-hoard', literally or metaphorically.
The first poem runs thus;
-Moment of inner freedom when the mind is opened & the infinite universe revealed & the soul is left to wander dazed & confus'd searching here & there for teachers & friends.
Morrison goes further and extends the trunk metaphor; the trunk is likened to the 'mind' [compare 'The Universal Mind', with its line 'suitcase and a song'].
Opening up one's mind - with poetry, knowledge [and one would have to add, mind-expanding narcotics] is compared to that sudden opening of a trunk, where, like Pandora's Box, something new and strange rushes out into the cold air of normalcy.
Looking at that first poem, a single stanza, more closely, we notice the phrase "dazed & confus'd" - is it too fanciful to think that this is an allusion to the Led Zep song of the same name which was premiered in the late 60s by the 'New Yardbirds' as they metamorphosed into Led Zep? We can imagine that had the poet heard that song, he would have liked it [he did mention somewhere that he was 'listening to some new English bands'].
No matter - a key word in this stanza is "soul". In ancient Greece the soul was said to leave the body in the form of a serpent - a myth which has resonance with the poet's other work, such as 'The Celebration of the Lizard', of course. Generally, the soul is depicted as a bird taking flight, and so is released - just as if it were in a trunk which is suddenly opened, allowing it to escape. This soul is nomadic, like the poet ["wander"].
So I see in this poem a yearning for freedom; even more a yearning for what the poet calls "the infinite universe". Straightway we recall Blake's [to paraphrase] 'doors of perception' being 'cleansed' so that man can see things as they are ... 'infinite'.
But that freedom is found only in interiority - the "inner freedom" as the poet calls it; a freedom mitigated by a 'searching'.
Beware though, that freedom is *fleeting* for it is a "moment" [see also Nietzsche's use of this term 'Moment' in his theory of the Eternal Return in his 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'; Nietzsche's work was admired by the poet].
This opening of the trunk, or opening of consciousness, is a fleeting revelation - ["revealed"]. And it carries with it a sense of disappointment, as it leaves one "dazed and confused", rather than enlightened.
Why? - Because ultimately, at the stage when one is first opening the trunk, one needs "teacher and friends".
Lesson - as much as one wants freedom and the infinite, one still needs guidance and community at first.
This is a true beginning poem - the start of a long spiritual journey.
How apt that it should 'open' the collection called 'Wilderness'.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 7, 2011 11:28:10 GMT
L'AMERICA Clothed in sunlight restled in waiting dying of fever
Changed shapes of an empire Starling invaders Vast promissory notes of joy
Wanton, willful & passive Married to doubt Clothed in great warring monuments of glory
How it has changed you How slowly estranged you Solely arranged you
Beg you for mercy
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The Crossraods a place where ghosts reside to whisper into the ears of travellers & interest them in their fate
Hitchhiker drinks: "I call again on the dark hidden gods of blood"
-Why do you call us? You know our price. It never changes. Death of you will give you life & free you from a vile fate. But it is getting late.
-If I could see you again & talk w/ you, & walk a short while in your company, & drink the heady brew of your conversations, I thought
-to rescue a soul already ruined. To achieve respite. To plunder green gold on a pirate raid & bring to camp the glory of old.
-As the capesman faces poisoned horns & drinks red victory; the soldier, too, w/ his trophy, a pierced helmet; & the ledge-walker shuddering his way into inward grace
-(laughter) Well, then. Would you mock yourself?
-No.
-Soon our voices must become one, or one must leave.
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Forest strong sandals burnt geometry fingers around a fire reading history in blackened books, charcoal silence in moot splendor
Flame-tree Sire, we met in Eden The troubled time we had rustling in the night leaves a sniper aimed at our window a kitten mewing in the blasted strong air I must go see
-You've found your Voice, friend, after all else I recognize fast the Strong sure tones of a poet was it a question Search or of strangling? I wonder We never talked But welcome here to the camp fire Share our meal w/ us & tell us of your life & the hanging
-Well 1st I screamed & I was a child again alive Then nothing til the age of 5
& then summers & the racetrack I looked for a girl in New Mexican bars & found jail The prostitute looked out her cell & saw Fuck god scratched on a leprous wall
-You're rambling boy what of the rest the jazz highway he winks.
-I got picked up & rode through the night
-did you see any buildings
-did I... What was I doing of course we danced plenty She had nice sides the cop hit me Stop, I don't remember
-The logs are melting we must move on The fire's ending we'll hear more at the next altar
[musical interlude]
Trees Train-death The American Night We went through 5 cords of wood this winter
-he told me beautiful stories & had the most beautiful visions He was a truly religious man at the end
-you know, I like you guys god-damn!
(I saw this cat run out of the ocean, one night, and beat-off into a fire)
I'm going down to Mexico To this border town I heard about & I'm gonna buy me a girl & bring her back up here & marry her, it's true. This guy told me. A friend of his knew someone who
-You're too much--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 7, 2011 11:32:08 GMT
open
The Night is young & full of rest I can't describe the way she's dress'd She'll pander to some strange requests Anything that you suggest Anything to please her guest
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SIRENS
Midnight criminal metabolism of guilt forest Rattlesnakes whistles catcalls
Remove me from this hall of mirrors This filthy glass
Are you her Do you look like that How could you be when no one ever could
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Poet of the call-girl storm
She left a note on the bedroom door. "If I'm out, bring me to."
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I dropped by to see you late last night But you were out like a light Your head was on the floor & rats played pool w/ your eyes
Death is a good disguise for late at night
Wrapping all its games in its calm garden
But what happens when the guests return & all unmask & you are asked to leave for want of a smile
I'll still take you then But I'm your friend
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ODE NEW YORK MAIDENS
everyone has Their own magic
There is no death
so nothing matters
High Style
Flash & forgive me
high button shoes
clean arrangement
messy breeding
love's triumph
everlasting hope & fulfillment
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THE AMERICAN NIGHT
for leather accrues The miracle of the streets The scents & somgs & pollens of existence
Shiny blackness so totally naked she was Totally un-hung-up
We looked around lights now on To see our fellow travellers
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 7, 2011 11:51:57 GMT
A man rakes leaves into a heap in his yard, a pile, & leans on his rake & burns them utterly. The fragrance fills the forest children pause & heed the smell, which will become nostalgia in several years Sirens Water Rain & Thunder Jet from the base Hot searing insect cry The frogs & crickets Doors open & close The smash of glass The Soft Parade An accident Rustle of silk, nylon Watering the dry grass Fire Bells Rattlesnake, whistles, castanets Lawn mower Good Humor man Skates & wagons Bikes
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 7, 2011 11:54:29 GMT
The Endless quest a vigil of watchtowers and fortresses against the sea and time. Have they won? Perhaps. They still stand and in their silent rooms still wander the souls of the dead. who keep their watch on the living. Soon enough we shall join them. Soon enough we shall walk the walls of time. We shall miss nothing except each other.
I get my best ideas when the telephone rings & rings. It’s no fun To feel like a fool-when your baby’s gone. A new ax to my head: Possession. I create my own sword of Damascus. I’ve done nothing w/time. A little tot prancing the boards playing w/Revolution. When out there the World awaits & abounds w/heavy gangs of murderers & real madmen. Hanging from windows as if to say: I’m bold- do you love me? Just for tonight. A One Night Stand. A dog howls & whines at the glass sliding door (why can’t I be in there?) A cat yowls. A car engine revs & races against the grain- dry rasping carbon protest. I put the book down- & begin my own book. Love for the fat girl. When will SHE get here?
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In the gloom In the shady living room where we lived & died & laughed & cried & the pride of our relationship took hold that summer What a trip To hold your hand & tell the cops you’re not 16 no runaway The wino left a little in the old blue desert bottle Cattle skulls the cliche of rats who skim the trees in search of fat Hip children invade the grounds & sleep in the wet grass ’til the dogs rush out I’m going South!
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 7, 2011 12:00:24 GMT
This poem was believed to have been written for Deanna Michaelson who spent some time with Jim during his Miami trial days and whose story was exclusively featured in my old Scorpywag Doors fanzine. Check out link below for the article she wrote. 24 Hours For Magic’ By Deanna MichaelsonMiamiWhat can I read her What can I read her on a Sunday Morning
What can I do that will somehow reach her on a Sunday Morning
I’ll read her the news of The Indian Wars
Full of criss-cavalry, blood & gore
Stories to tame & charm & more
On a Sunday Morning ----------- Some wild fires Searchout a dry quiet kiss on leaving
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 8, 2011 12:02:01 GMT
IN THIS DIM CAVE
In this dim cave we can go no further Here money is key to smooth age. Horses, givers of guilt. Great bags of gold.
I want obedience!
We examine this ancient & insane theatre, obscene like luxuriant churches altars.
I confess to scarves cool floors stroked curtain
The actors are twice-blessed before us. This is too serious & severe.
Great mystery! Timeless passion patterned in stillness.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 16, 2011 12:01:26 GMT
Slightly different version to the one printed in Wilderness. Where are my dreamers Today & Tonight. Where are my dancers leaping madly whirling & screaming Where are my women my women quietly dreaming caught like angels on the dark porch of a ranch
dance dance dance dance angels angels dance dance dance  Same poem in presentation case. 
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Post by helenclare on Jan 19, 2011 17:42:58 GMT
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 19, 2011 19:19:08 GMT
nice addition to the thread HC!
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