Allen Ginsberg

stranglehold

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I cannot escape the stranglehold of words. To be able to use language like an alchemist mixing chemical concoctions that play with the mind, well now that just turns me on to no end. Words are sexy. I’ve been learning about the sentence and even though I have been writing sentences for more than forty years, there’s still loads to learn.

And then there are American Sentences – the Americanized form of the Haiku invented by the word wizard, Allen Ginsberg. Like the Haiku, American Sentences (example 1 and example 2 and here’s a whole book of them) are meant to be extremely vivid and detailed oriented with the image as the central focus rather than rhetoric or lyricism. I tend to float between image and lyricism.

I especially love what happens between sentences where the juxtaposition of images play with your own experiences to co-create a narrative between writer and reader. For example, when you read the verse below what images spring forth from the depths of your subconscious:

Where were you when the weird bearded beasts
burst from her womb rubbing their buddha bellies and
praying to the sleeping lamb, the flowering whore laughed
and blessed the night; your last words lost in the drowning city.

Those are the kind of words I hear in my head from time to time and often commit to paper (well electronic paper that is). I know I’m sloppy with punctuation, but playing with words is more meaningful to me than grammar. Though grammar is the glue that makes the spells work. Otherwise, you (mis)spell and the magic doesn’t work. And words are magic.

Bring me back the witch’s head. I’ve been obsessing over Courtney Love obsessing over doll parts and faking beyond fake with a crazy ache to have more cake than anybody else at the table.  But the truth is I’m more likely to be what might have been bearing the name of never was.  I don’t know what I’m selling but I’m not selling sheep. Demonology maybe?

Image by Waldkunst

Sometimes my mind gets so saturated with words that it feels like my head is going to explode. Like right now, my head is throbbing but it’s not like a headache. It’s more like all the thoughts in my head want to get out at once, and yet I’m still putting stuff in it right now as I  re-read T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland – probably his most famous poem, but hasn’t been, up until now, one of my favorites. The state my mind is in is making the Wasteland make sense like it’s never done for me before. 

When I’m here, there’s not much else to do but ride it out and wait for the calm to come.

It’s a good place this.

I like it here
this place where
all of Time meets
inside my head
past, present, future
blending together into
now(here)

I hope you’re staying safe and sane in these crazy times.

Clay

Stranglehold

by

I cannot escape the stranglehold of words. To be able to use language like an alchemist mixing chemical concoctions that play with the mind, well now that just turns me on to no end. Words are sexy. I’ve been learning about the sentence and even though I have been writing sentences for more than forty years, there’s still loads to learn.

And then there are American Sentences – the Americanized form of the Haiku invented by the word wizard, Allen Ginsberg. Like the Haiku, American Sentences (example 1 and example 2 and here’s a whole book of them) are meant to be extremely vivid and detailed oriented with the image as the central focus rather than rhetoric or lyricism. I tend to float between image and lyricism.

I especially love what happens between sentences where the juxtaposition of images play with your own experiences to co-create a narrative between writer and reader. For example, when you read the verse below what images spring forth from the depths of your subconscious:

Where were you when the weird bearded beasts
burst from her womb rubbing their buddha bellies and
praying to the sleeping lamb, the flowering whore laughed
and blessed the night; your last words lost in the drowning city.

Those are the kind of words I hear in my head from time to time and often commit to paper (well electronic paper that is). I know I’m sloppy with punctuation, but playing with words is more meaningful to me than grammar. Though grammar is the glue that makes the spells work. Otherwise, you (mis)spell and the magic doesn’t work. And words are magic.

Bring me back the witch’s head. I’ve been obsessing over Courtney Love obsessing over doll parts and faking beyond fake with a crazy ache to have more cake than anybody else at the table.  But the truth is I’m more likely to be what might have been bearing the name of never was.  I don’t know what I’m selling but I’m not selling sheep. Demonology maybe?

Image by Waldkunst

Sometimes my mind gets so saturated with words that it feels like my head is going to explode. Like right now, my head is throbbing but it’s not like a headache. It’s more like all the thoughts in my head want to get out at once, and yet I’m still putting stuff in it right now as I  re-read T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland – probably his most famous poem, but hasn’t been, up until now, one of my favorites. The state my mind is in is making the Wasteland make sense like it’s never done for me before. 

When I’m here, there’s not much else to do but ride it out and wait for the calm to come.

It’s a good place this. 

I like it here
this place where
all of Time meets
inside my head
past, present, future
blending together into
now(here)

I hope you’re staying safe and sane in these crazy times.

Clay

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Completely changed my worldview

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Books are a habit worse than heroine for me. I can’t get enough of them. I read the preface of the Allen Ginsberg Journals this morning. I have yet to finish the Olson book, but I couldn’t help taking a peek inside the Journals.

Am I on a quest to find the self, dissolve the self, or to self-actualise and realise there is no self?

I read the preface and introduction to the Ginsberg journals and like an open flame to tissue paper my mind was set on fire.  I’m not sure how to explain it, but think of it like a puzzle you’ve been trying to solve and then you finally get the last piece that makes all the other pieces fall into place.  I feel like that happened to me today.

These six poets surfaced in my psyche:

I have to spend sometime figuring out how they relate to each other and how the story of my life intersects with these poets.  I know Eliot had a huge impact on me when I was 16.  Mister Parsons, my high school English teacher introduced me to him.  The first poems I read of Eliot’s was The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Hollow Men. I was blown away. Those two poems completely changed my worldview, and I don’t think I’ve ever really recovered from them even to this day, some 33 years later.

Sometime around 10:30 AM I crashed, that is I came down off of my caffeine and sugar high.  I hadn’t realised just much caffeine I’d consumed, plus a whole pack of Fruit Mentos.

What was I thinking?  The only cure for such a crash is to inhale peppermint until you feel the chill between your eyes in the middle of your skull.

“I might buy more gold.” I heard someone next to me say.

I gathered they were talking to their broker on the phone.  He was going on about liquidating some of his investments because of the state of the world at the moment.  He even enquired whether or not he could take physical possession of the gold if he wanted to.  I’m not even sure why that caught my attention.  I guess it’s not every day you hear someone talking about buying gold.

I saw a lady with massive boobs carrying a new born.  She sat down a couple of tables from me. I couldn’t help wonder how much her boobs must weigh and then I thought about the baby and whether these boobs posed a threat to it, like if they were lying on the bed together and one of those giant boobs popped out and landed on the baby.

Don’t ask. My mind has been like that all day.

Watching shadows on the wall.

Ok. Who spiked my coffee this morning?

A post shared by Clay Lowe (@soulcruzer) on

My computer is on 34% battery life left which is how I kind of feel right now.

The day has been long.

I better recharge.

Before I go dead, like a doorknob or fucking fried chicken as Jules would say.

Soundtrack:

I had to find her the old fashioned way

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5A.M Thoughts – We are all afraid to act like ourselves. I read that from a passage in Allen Ginsberg’s journal. That is so true.  Walk into a room full of people and if you’re like me, you probably size up the room before deciding how you want to show yourself.  If it’s a room full of friends, you’ll show one side of yourself; if it’s a room full of strangers, you’ll show another.  It’s even more nuanced then that.  Which friends are in the room will determine which side of you choose to show.  Granted, all these versions are you, but which one is the true you? Or do we wear so many different personas that we no longer know which one is the true version? The tricky thing with the mind is we can fool it into believing anything. So even though I might say I know who I am, do I really?

Continued on with the Olson book.  It’s easy to think that your literary heroes just pour great writing straight onto the page.  This is hardly the case.  I can’t believe how much Olson struggled to get his literary career off the ground.  The anxiety, the lack of confidence, the procrastination, even the greats suffer.  The only thing that can be done is to keep plowing away at it.

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men 
Gang aft a-gley. – Robert Burns

Yes old Burnsie was right, the best laid plans often go awry.  I had a plan for the day, but a quick phone call in the middle of my walk, ended that.

Question:

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Well I was the recipient of the call to bring the mobile:

I had to find her old school.  I had an approximate location and a length of time she’d be at the location or nearby.  I found her without hitch.  I called an audible on the day.  Instead of doing admin in the morning, I worked on the chapbook at the place I delivered the mobile phone.

I also had the idea that this chapbook should be a collab with a fellow creative, someone visually oriented.  I dropped my dear friend Cherry Williams an instant message.  She accepted.

Afternoon. Admin. Done!

Finished the second cut of the new chapbook.  Settled on 26 poems.  I sent them over to Cherry to read.  I’m looking forward to seeing what images she comes up with to fit the words.

More admin to get through this evening.  I’m running a condensed team-building exercise tomorrow.  After my meeting with the manager last week, I got the impression that tomorrow might be a rough one.  Always hard work when you’re working with a team that has disengaged.

I’m fighting against the clock here and my body.  I want to curl up under my desk and sleep.  Actually I want to stretch out in my bed.

Actually there’s nothing to stop me.

Actually I think I’ll stop here, grab some Baudelaire, and hit the rack. Tomorrow is another day.  Did I accomplish everything that I wanted to do today? I think so.  That’s good enough for me.

Chow!

P.S. Did I mentioned I hate banks and governments and people who try to rip you off just because they can?

Soundtrack: