POEM FOR MONEY: I Seen the Stylus and the Damage Done

POEM FOR MONEY MAY 2015:
I Seen the Stylus and the Damage Done
 

30 October 2014 Reverberation Vinyl 54 Words

Here I am, reporting for duty, 10 am, first colonel from Uncle Johnny's scattered secret army of diggers, arriving with my bags filled with esoteric treasures for the store, here where the vinyl roads cross, where we ensure the beats of the circulating blood. Our language is guitar, drum, pain. Echoes are our friends.


30 October 2014 Reverberation 11 words

These are the sirens that call you back when you escape


13 November 2014 Reverberation 86 words

YOUR RECEIPT
THANK YOU
Oh sir, only you understand
this righteous disease, but
u=you will not help me, this
insatiable ear worm possessing
me, coiled in my cochlea,
inextractable, hooking itself
in deeper deeper
even as my hearing
becomes brittle and the
oasis of my potential
finances a stagnant piss-puddle
its poisonous barbed spiky tail
hooking poisons deep into my brain
cutting off the flow of logic
and making me spend money
on records always more
records
HAVE A NICE DAY
PLEASE COME AGAIN


2 January 2015 Reverberation 40 words

Was this then my New Year's Resolution?
To kick off the year by plunging straight
unrepentant into my most violent compulsion?
Or did I lose a battle with the greedy demon?
What possessed me? Was I even present in myself?


Date illegible Exile on Main Street 33 words

Why thirty three and one third, an irrational number
100 divided by three, repeating threes ad infinitum
A scroll, a mystery, like pi, the revolution of all circles
Is there something unknowable there?


4 April 2015 Strictly Discs 87 Words

I entered your basement with the
care of an archeologist, my reading glasses,
a flashlight, and on my phone a list of letters
of the alphabet where I was most likely to succeed
in accumulating LPs to fill some of the holes
causing me pain, holes where my collection bled
endlessly for lack of a crucial brick of completist
work, this week's appetite. Yes with experience and care
I set about extracting from your catacombs those things
of value yet overlooked, inhaling pure dust, exhaling mercy.


17 April 2015 Exile on Main Street 69 words

Black pills, landing pads, footprints from the past, slices of the vinyl tree of music history, counting the number of rings in the spiral
These black pills I can't stop buying, or putting the needle in again and again
Needle tracks, soundtracks, five tracks to a side
No vinyl anonymous chapter, no witness
I am an archive, a private library, collector, senseless addict
Every day is Record Store Day


17 April 2015 Exile on Main Street 11 words

I watched Cristy drive away and went back in the store


Date illegible Reverberation Vinyl 123 Words

Free me from logic, signifieds, see you
Free me into normalcy
Please release me from rationality into a purple spiral world
Red splatters, pure abstractions, perfect shapes
In this blood room filled with the esoteric unknowable infinite run-off grooves of poetic settings, whispering electronics, even traditional instruments bent to insane purpose
Here I take my flight, fill my ears with beauty, ugliness, mystery, history, the invisible canon that matters
The analog anachronism, where a monk behind the counter transcribes scrolls after scrolls, transacts, instructs me to ferry them from the digital fires of burning libraries to a safe underground vault where their value will go unseen when the tyrants finally seize control of their rogue industry
Are we monks, dirty dudes, curators?

RECEIPT: Date illegible Reverberation Vinyl Amount illegible Life irreversible

2 May 2015 Reverberation Amount $219.76

26 May 2015 Reverberation Vinyl $81.85

9 June 2015 Exile on Main Street $7.06

Royalties for a novel and 2 CDS

29 June 2015 Exile 8.71

16 July 2015 Reverberation Vinyl $69.40

18 October 2015
55.53 academy—paid back, New York

19 October 2015
81.66 academy, New York

21 November 2015
$40.22 Vinyl Mountain*

21 November 2015
142.23 4000 Holes, Spokane

21 November 2015
107.61, Garageland, Spokane*

23 November 2015
146.75, Garageland*
32.61, GarageLand*

*See receix=pts

 

Forms used in this work