Hot, Warm and Cool

Casting Mind back on the day. Back into the deep, dark past of youth­ful folly, delu­sion and spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion. Back to a time when we just didn’t care, or we cared far too much. When every­thing was brand spank­ing new and we drank and drank our­selves into unearned nos­tal­gia or oblivion.

Driving was every­thing. Driving was our escape and revenge, our home, some­thing we con­trolled out­side the law of adults. Their law wasn’t our law when we drove and par­tied and lis­tened to Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Bruce Springsteen and the Beach Boys  —  what today some call Classic Rock. It wasn’t clas­sic back then. It was just the music of our generation.

We had seen “American Graffiti” and we cruised the streets look­ing for our own ver­sion of West Coast Car Culture, know­ing we’d never find it. Knowing that our towns, bleed­ing into other towns, oper­ated under dif­fer­ent rules, three thou­sand miles away from the Valley.…

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2012 Zen

Ishizuri

Ishizuri Jakucho. 1770

 

Have decided to take the plunge. Jump in. No longer just an observer. I will prac­tice. I will breathe zazen. I will con­tain all oppo­sites and not look back. Will do Mu and find empti­ness in all forms and form in all empti­ness. Will do what is nec­es­sary to eliminate I.

The wheel. The great karmic wheel. How to get off it. Why wait? Why wait a thou­sand life­times? Why not now? Total imme­di­acy, total nat­u­ral­ness, com­plete such-​​​​ness. Now. Within this one life­time, which is all that there is, the noth­ing and the every­thing, the nowhere and the every­where, the cen­ter and the cir­cum­fer­ence, I will get off the wheel. Why wait? Why post­pone it? There is only now. There is only here, now.

It’s not just about one. It’s two and three as well. One and none. One and infin­ity. How to hold the con­cept of noth­ing and every­thing in the mind, chew on it, taste it, and smell it like steaks on the grill.…

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Zen Poem

Golden Pavilion, Japan

Golden Pavilion, Kyoto, Japan. Photo by Keith Pomakis

 

Nothing to learn

 

Sitting still and awe­some like a moun­tain
No-​​​​I thought of noth­ing
    Half-​​​​way home

Master Hsueng asked No-​​​​I        
    “Why do you think of noth­ing
    With great intent?”

And No-​​​​I said
“Through con­cen­tra­tion on noth­ing
I am liberated.”

Thwack came the bam­boo stick
    Gong gong gong rang the bell
            Birds cawed as they fled into the blue sky
Their sky their home

Master, why did you strike me!“
No-​​​​I asked in great pain
No longer still or awe­some like a mountain

And Master Hsueng answered:
    “When you grasp after noth­ing
    You make it an object
    Outside Mind-​​​​Body

    You break the flow between void
    And form
    Form and void
    You cat­e­go­rize nothing!”

Thwack came the bam­boo stick
    Back down on No-I’s shoulders

No-​​​​I did not Awaken
        For two more years

 

 

by Douglas Pinson

 …

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Kimbra’s Ring of Gold

This 21-​​year-​​​​old singer has “it.”

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Plain Gold Ring

Explosively con­trolled jazz. Volcanic scat and soul. She bobs and weaves and falls vic­tim to the depths of her emo­tional pos­ses­sion, as all great artists do. But she rises from those depths and expresses the jour­ney upward and out­ward, with­out los­ing her courage or her conviction.

Aside from her won­der­ful voice, run­ning par­al­lel with it, she moves in inter­est­ing, idio­syn­cratic ways to her own song. A refresh­ing change from all too many pop singers who dance in cookie cut­ter ways, pushed into nar­row cor­po­rate forms to look like every other pop singer.  Joy Williams of The Civil Wars is sim­i­lar in her phys­i­cal originality.

*     *     *     *     *

Kimbra Johnson was born in New Zealand, grew up there, but now makes her home in Australia. She has been com­pared with singers like Nina Simone, Amy Winehouse and Bjork.…

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Between the Notes

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Bang on the Chasm

 

by Robert Mueller

 

 

I am won­der­ing about new jazz and new art music, and sep­a­rat­ing them entirely for the con­ve­nience of enter­tain­ing these thoughts. I am think­ing about con­sort­ing with a dif­fer­ence even though what I have to say about one has to be true of the other (again assum­ing for the pur­pose that they are sep­a­rate). Specifically as a mat­ter of degree I want to dis­tin­guish new jazz as a liv­ing pro­duc­tion that arrives cur­rently, spon­ta­neously in the club or spon­ta­neously also at a jam ses­sion or record­ing ses­sion, from the same sce­nario for new art music, which comes to us as a prod­uct, or object, that, when it arrives, may arrive in a pub­lic per­for­mance, but not cur­rently. Rather, there is a delay, for reflec­tion to take place, and even if it were to take place in the few moments after the per­for­mance has ended (that is, right then and there), it nev­er­the­less arrives in the mode of delay.

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New Poetry Review, by Robert Mueller

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Review of
Alan Gilbert, Late in the Antenna Fields

by Robert Mueller

 


The writ­ing in Alan Gilbert’s vol­ume of poetry, Late in the Antenna Fields (Futurepoem Books, 2011), feasts on sar­casm and dispir­ited bit­ter­ness, not to men­tion a cer­tain snag­ging anomie.  Putting it bet­ter or worse, the reader might think to assim­i­late it to some kind of art adhe­sion.  One is led, or prof­ited, to hear, and to sense and to pick at, a gen­eral vaguely petu­lant and vaguely dis­in­ter­ested and yet per­sis­tent pat­ter of ambi­ent pet­ri­fied dis­plea­sure.  There is thus less of a dan­ger than a fore­gone cap­ta­tion in this approach, inher­ently.  So far so good if it sticks; so far so good so long as it edu­cates even, guides, charts and win­nows.  But when notes of whin­ing and grip­ing swirl in, as they some­times do, the reader may well wish to give pause.…

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Wanderlust, by Joseph Milford

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wan­der­lust

 

The sand would scrape itself

            I heard it whisper

as i breached the white­washed torrent

            with my chest

emerg­ing forth ever­clear and green

            drench-​​​​dripping in the first

pos­i­tive moment

            hun­gry for the textures

of earth and flesh

            the mor­tal opacity.

I carved a mon­u­ment, an easel.

            Then por­trayed a pastoral.

I will try to find you there again

            around and behind every root and knoll

into the craters of every ero­sion and explosion

            strain­ing

the fur­thest inher­ent peripherals.

 

The wind sep­a­rates my limbs, it tousles

            the hair of the soldiering trees

I lie on my back and shape cloudshapes

            around your name

I lie here bar­ren in your memory.

Spinning under the moon, hand in hand

            with the animals

into the torn lace out­skirts of evenings

            the blue the pale the pagan

suck­ling an entirely dif­fer­ent oxygen

            and I saw you there

your arms flung open

            the mouth of churches

                        spilling light.

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Newspaper Hats, by Joseph Milford

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news­pa­per hats before we could read them

pirate ships were eas­ier to build when
dig­ging our way to China sal­vaging
lar­vae for insane hatch­lings in our heads
our hair cropped for sum­mer like the thorn hedge

chest-​​​​naked Pan-​​​​like young demi­urg­ers
crav­ing malt­eds and dou­ble cheese­burg­ers
we were the ones to win the nymphs of creeks
with sling­shots and water-​​​​guns we’d lay siege

Spiderman’s webs spun tall tales by midgets
tree­houses, tall Coke machines, vacant lots
all the bud­dies I never had now here
my mind the unlikely phởtographer

on bikes, skate­boards, bare­foot on hot asphalt
the peach­fuzz of Spring in our hubris caught
nudie Mags found in pines­traw pile, my first
full glimpse at a woman’s form a new thirst

and I stand­ing between two pines arms spread
into kudzu vines where skein becomes aged
where periph­er­als are blurred, birds flurry
a boy’s mind can like a squir­rel scurry

the forests of my youth don’t look the same
sentry-​​​​like, teem­ing with too many names
in the creek-​​​​beds now there is too much said
between my ears no ships, just dry salvages

– by Joseph Milford

Copyright© 2011 by Joseph Milford.…

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