Juke

My Cadiz, Spain experience sang of Juke, an African word meaning wicked or disorderly in one language.

It also meant a building without walls in the Congo. For American Blacks it took on sexual connotations and a type of dance.

It may have also described jute - a rough fiber made from the stems of a tropical Old World plant used for making twine, rope, or woven into matting - fields and jute workers visiting makeshift bars. Juke joints were bars with dance floors and back rooms for gambling and brothels. Shake your moneymaker.

Your Mask Eats Your Face

To juke was to lead a wandering life, have intercourse. To go in, jam and poke. Whorehouses. From the 1930’s on Delta blues players played juke joints, passing the music from generation to generation. Juke boxes were invented in 1927.

Nothin’ but the blues, everybody’s talking ‘cause talk is cheap.

Hard field work prisons, slavery, life, death, love, loss, leaving and living the blues with a feeling.

It was nothing but the blues talking.

While living, singing, and playing harp blues in the key of C, I trimmed long fingernails down to the quick brown fox jumped over the fence. WYSIWYG. Small slivers of enamel snow spiraled into air floating to cobblestones.

It was a clear truth after three days in the Sierras on narrow Roman passages, chopping and climbing in ancient forests removed from civilization’s discontent.

People moved fast and furious in Cadiz. I sensed their malcontent maladjusted wild crazy freedom from being closeted, closed in, no sky, no air, stoned frustrations manipulating mainstream desires down ways and means with cause and effect in the big city.

It was all a relative reality in the absolute reality and most of my relatives were dead.

Their grounded headstones decorated with names, ages, epitaphs collected dust living with memory.

Weaving A Life (V2)

Passing Through

Smiling makes you happy

Diamond mind wisdom

Women lay out golden chains

Men yak in phones

Gleaming significance weighs inlaid rubies, sapphires

Black Nil stones harvested from deep Earth

Glitter like 1000 stars

Path leads past mannequins

Wearing fashionable silent plastic splendor 

Unloading facsimiles of threaded prayers flowing from a woman’s mouth

Answer stirs ice

Question stabs ice

Scientific dissolution in liquid’s formless form

Shy beyond description

-    a girl weighs lettuce hills

-    cucumbers whisper adjustments

-    cell phone eliminates an old man's loneliness

-    a sharp hatchet congratulates bloody meat

-    a woman stabs ice memories

-    dead dog’s head rests on a counter

 Ice coffee is bitter sweet my sweet

Hammock infant swings high/low

Contemplating an old woman

Stepping through puddles carrying a plastic bag with two tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, daily bread

Eye contact dissolves in the wake up

Sing song chopsticks carry an infant

Wide-eyed catastrophic entropy factoid

Coconut, sewing machine, hyena laughter

Small talk, broken light vegetables green life

Where do you stay, asked man.

I stay in blue sky

Is it a hotel? A guesthouse? No it is blue sky.

Pure land poetry

Jazz poem

Visuals

Passing through

Professional stranger

Ghost Other

Eye hand heart – two won’t do

Show up sit awhile smile draw meditate on emptiness

Witness point line shadow less form

Imagination

Observation

Experience

Rhythm of place

Grow Your Soul

Free Ice Girl 24-28th

Ice Girl in Banlung in e-book format on Amazon is free from 24-28 June.

Ice girl sells in Banlung, Cambodia. It's a wild west town south of Laos. It's near The River of Darkness and animist cemeteries.

She is an independent author/publisher. This is her story with a gonzo attitude.

She meets Leo, a wandering Chinese boy.

After being released from a Chinese Re-education through Labor unit near the Gobi he walked south.

He taught university students in Fujian how to be more human.

He walked to Hanoi, Sapa, Saigon and Laos collecting stories.

Ice girl and Leo share ideas and stories about cultures and the human condition.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Samuel's Truth

"The important and only vital question is, how much greater, finer, am I than I was yesterday? Have I fulfilled my possibilities, made the most of my potentialities? What a marvelous world if all would - could hold this attitude toward life." - Edward Weston, photographer.

*

November 1969.

Leaving 101 into Eagle we passed white memorial shrines to dead Vietnamese. Farmers and boys grazed oxen near gravesites.

50,000 soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division lived at Eagle.

Mick drove along winding dirt roads past the main post office, barracks and a church. Buildings, clothing and landscape were brown. Eagle would be my residence for the next year if I survived.

Mick turned off the road and downhill to a small shipping container marked MAIL. I climbed wooden stairs to the company clerk’s office and commanding officer’s headquarters. The room displayed pictures of a president, defense secretary and hierarchy.

“Welcome,” said the first sergeant of the 265th Radio Research Company.

“Thanks, it feels good to be here.”

“I understand you volunteered for the 265th.”

“Yes. I looked at the 8th RRFS, talked to some guys and decided this would be more interesting duty.”

“It’s definitely more interesting. Not as plush as down south. Our mission is electronic code breaking, linguistics and traffic analysis. We provide critical intelligence to the Screaming Eagles at headquarters and in the field.”

“Fine. I’ll do my best.”

“I’m sure you will. Samuel will show you around, get you settled. Welcome to the 265th.”

“Thanks Tops.”

“That’ll be all.”

Samuel, a small wiry African-American company clerk was a virtual resident of Nam having extended his tour for five years.

“Better money to be made than going home to abuse, derision, scorn, apathy and unemployment,” he said issuing me a sleeping bag, M-16, ammo, gas mask, helmet, flak vest, Boonie hat and survival knife with a serrated edge for tearing flesh.

In - out dialogue.

“I know what you mean.”

“No you don’t. None of you white guys have a clue about real life in America. Better drugs in Nam cheap and good quality control. Let me know if you need a little weed.” Access. He pointed to my hooch up a hill.

“Top will meet you there. Take you on the grand tour.”

“Thanks Samuel. Nice to meet you.”

“See ya around.”

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A memoir.

*

Spike Lee co-wrote and directed a film released June 12, 2020. Da 5 Bloods follows a group of aging Vietnam Veterans who return to Nam to find a fallen commander and buried treasure. It received excellent reviews.

Seamstress

Away from ice girl’s eyes wet season life shimmered in green rice paddies. Beauty, creativity, dance, and music described sensations. Sensations rested between an object and a concept. Stimuli engaged disquiet.

How do you manifest this waking dream, asked ice girl.

It’s all process, said Leo. Any explanation is a well dressed mistake.

Across town a seamstress returned to her guesthouse. She splashed water on her face, changed clothes and spit into red roses. She kick started her cycle and went to the market inside a dark labyrinth.

At her corner stall she keyed multiple locks. She stacked numbered wooden shutters. She dragged out her Butterfly sewing machine, ironing board and manikins.

Dummies wore exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling faux pas silver stars, moons, and small round reflecting balls.

Her skill designed fabrics for women needing elaborate sartorial refinement for engagements, weddings, and cremations.

She evaluated serious fittings and adjustments. Her sewing universe process was selecting fabric; measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, pushing her machine treadle, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections, and ironing.

Needles inside a slow prism flashed light and shadow as threads danced through cloth in endless conversations. Needles talked about traditional conservative morals and opportunity-value cost.

Thread followed their conversation securing 1,001 small mirrors. Together they measured precise calculations establishing a stop-loss number. All explanations have to end somewhere. Cut.

Ice Girl in Banlung