Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Hurricanes and how to pray about them

When asking God for a favor,
it’s best to start small.
“Please, almighty God, don’t shatter my windows.”
Don’t get ahead of yourself.
Think about the storm
and all the demon winds
and know that it’s all part
of a grand plan.
“Gracious God, let cars not
fly through the side of my house.”
God is listening, so
kindly ask for minor floods
and quick dissipation
once the storm hits land.

Pray about the hurricane,
not against, it would be wrong
to defy God’s will.
“Humbly, lord, this house
is all we have.”

Crouch up in the smallest ball you can muster
and rock back and forth at the lowest point of your house.
Feel the foundation tremble
at God’s immeasurable strength.
Cry at the sound of dogs Toto-ing into the stratosphere.
Say the lord’s name, the one you know, three times
and click your heels to the rhythm.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Grovel
and beg, plead and cry more.
God is listening, so
board up your windows if you
plan to use the name in vain.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Dear Abby

This morning I pose the question: Is there any way to change the wicked beast?

- Chief Starblanket (At Wounded Wrist)

*************************************************************************


Dear C* @ W2;

If it was born and stayed beautiful for the first quarter of its life, you can be sure there is no way to change it. It will never gain awareness of its nature, and will see the destruction and violence it does as being a mere side effect of its existence. Rarely there are monsters born of lycanthropy, bitten at some long withheld future date, a few thousand days away from birth. There is a change that comes in some kind of post-adolescent maturity, a ripeness, so that they are beautiful for the first time in their lives.

I have intuited that these cases, though rare, might be of great interest to you. I can tell you exactly that if you are writing to me in the first place, that this is not an ordinary beast, born and reared by the instincts of the perfect few. Of those gorgeous creatures it is known, even by laymen and idiots, that the immutability I have referenced in the above paragraph is as stalwart as the chemical elements. I do not blame them for this, for wolves are born to feast on flesh and blood, as they are born to sate themselves on soulless favors for all of time, amen. Predators cannot be dissuaded, but in their guiles men have died trying, exhausting every card trick and knock-knock joke they ever knew.

Forgetting all that; this is not the kind you have before you, still the threat upon your life is no less immanent. I can tell you right now that this is not the time for outlandish attempts at time management and vague retreats into holistic stress therapy! Listen to me closely because if you remain in such proximity to this narcissistic abomination your day of reckoning is nothing less than nigh:

Set aside your foolish affection for this one I know you have grown so close to, because I also know, that as you wrote me this, there is still time to cut your pink leather leash. The house pet that you harbor has been growing steadily more beautiful, and you have noticed this. All their young-adulthood has been accumulating towards every glittering new moment in which they are recognized as what they are; slowly undressing in a striptease of true nature. Killers. Better than most at maintaining both consciousness and memory of their former inert states, they are more reprehensible for their unrelenting selfishness and cruelty. They will rend you so completely in their hands, and crush all the intangible human softnesses that you possess. It is the beauty that keeps you in these mighty palms. Turn your face away from the light, turn your face away.

I will end with a self-authored proverb hoping eternally that you have gotten the gist:

There can be found no trace of ill-intentions on the bloody fingertips of the Giant who enquired to caress the gosling.

I hope this has been helpful,

-D.A.

************************************************************************



$$$ NOTE $$$

At long last I have kicked off my Art/Poetry Blog project, which consolidates my contributions to branches and contains some new written work and shoddy photographs of my visual art endeavours which will be exclusive to:


www.holy-almost.blogspot.com

Dig it!

P.S. Thank you to Branches as an entity and all contributing memebers for continuing to be a source of inspiration for me.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Co-dependant African Blue Mantra

It is the hour before
The hour before work
Every minute is golden accumulation
Against the shower curtain
That I will draw on this private morning in my apartment
Which will end once I am in the alley way
Taking three or four last desperate inhalations
Against the restaurant’s brick wall

Trying to look forward to the money:

I praise whatever somber mystic power permits the Greeks
To keep both of their two clocks
Running ten minutes slow
A double blessing
Needed to counter the two human manifestations
Of ill feeling who have just moved in next door to me

Twin specters of death
The color of an anti-matter black
African women
Sisters, or friends
Walking the neighborhood streets all day
Relentless
Collecting plastic shopping bags
Completely full
Of other people’s garbage
They never fail to stare at me
Not speaking a word
Only gesturing malignantly
Sometimes they hiss
Like rotten sickly cats
And a vuvuzela in the local pub
The Mother continent
Having an infectious touch
All around Saskatchewan
I’m afflicted

This latest addition beautifully complimenting
My other already welll established infections
I am flourishing in a new
More assertive kind of madness
It is a hard drinking
All possessing
Omnipotent and magnifying
Force lingering behind
Every kind of feeling that I feel
From now on
And he the disembodied
Unnamed figure
Now starring in all my nightly dreams
And hallucinated picture perfect
In a recent fever
That has forced me to cast something out
Relinquish all my blind intoxication
For ten days, while I take the medication
The perfect excuse
I will challenge my own will
On the back step
The cruel nature of perfection
Forces me to up the ante

Some say red hair is unlucky
I read in a book of proverbs that:
“Ill-luck is good for something.”
I have fully thrown myself into the discovery of all it’s uses
All parts of the animal
Sweet stench of the avid lovers’ bed
Endless ways to entertain with perfect courtesy
And the best card tricks
You’ve ever seen
The way he is the highlight
To the way I lose my head
I inflict a bodily revenge
Let him be lost on my island,
Wrecked in my shapely ruin
Looking for fruit in unknown forest
You're the free man
Because tonight, it's on the house

Saturday, August 7, 2010

New EP

Hi folks,

Just wanted to share our new EP (entitled "Proto") with everyone. For those who don't know, we're William Carpenter's Towering Trees. We play rock music that's poppy and jangly and mostly fun. Here's a download link:

http://www.zshare.net/download/791045639b9e7092/

Also, the songs can be heard individually at:

myspace.com/williamcarpenter

or

reverbnation.com/willcarpenter

Thanks for listening!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Forward Talk

Between forward talk
be more assertive
worked out in circles
i’d like to be burned
is an unfulfilled patio
buy the bigger hat
of objects
i could go for that
on top of one another,
the clouds were too fat
a mass of question marks ask
why and who’s there?

The wind went
where a possibility waned
then lost one for a second
as a memory of mushrooms
drag into a forelock--
I cried at your funeral
I felt closer to god
Amen
The open ceiling
brushed stroked mysticism
and the pews we sat on.

Large cities and their newspaper
publications people could still get
but would rather read
through a phone
on a train
that smells a mix
of your twin bed,
armpits that are too ticklish,
and the barbeque I ate last night
for breakfast.

When intimacy issues peel
louder than a sonic boom
flip them again
until they become something new:
A rush of river trees
humbling circadian
horripilation.