#06 / 2003 Peace Tour: Out of Nashville again

LEAVING NASHVILLE AGAIN

#06

Heading out today after two weeks at home with my son Doug. We already passed off our trip south as a dry run. Now we have tried to address everything we did wrong, picked up everything we forgot, and now it is on to the Big Apple after a stop to see my cousins in Indiana and our two gigs booked in Pittsburgh, thanx to Barry Alfonso. Then we will be at the People’s Poetry Gathering sponsored by the Poet’s House in Manhattan.

We found a great place for $85, the East Village Bed and Coffee. You can’t touch a room in NY for less than $150 and even the most modest room can run up to $250, so we are grateful to find the place.

Joe is volunteering at the festival and will be assisting the sound men at an Alan Lomax tribute on Saturday night. Discussion will include John and Alan Lomax’s early southern field recording trips and subsequent recording trips by Alan in the American South and the Caribbean. Music will include Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger, plus others.

Nashvillians might know John Lomax III who has lived in Nashville for years promoting and writing. After the Lomax tribute Joe is heading to the Marble Cemetery to assist at the midnight Edgar Allen Poe readings.

We will also attend as many open-mics as possible and keep putting out the message that war is wrong. Our thoughts and sympathy is with the 101st Airborne the nearest units from our home place, and all the other soldiers who are out there dying for this ignoble cause. 

So, today is my big day and it has been fraught with so many technical difficulties. I look at my life and see 99% of my frustrations and anger is directed at this world of electronics that I have to maintain. We have managed to get out a CD thanx to our mentor up in White House. I have created a cover for it, but getting the HP printer to print is another matter all together. 

OK, breathe deep, in 4 counts, hold 4 counts, breath out 8 counts. Keep doing that and things will get better. Breathe, breathe. So thanx to all who are reading and following this journal. I’ll be checking back in the next time I pass a library. 

Here’s a new piece by our Beatlick brother John Knoll. I have adapted it to the feminine gender and will be performing it as part of my new poetic series considering death.

DEATH WISH

No small question, death.

I asked him where he wanted to be buried. 

He said in the back yard beneath the spiraling juniper.

It was romantic, but I couldn’t see our children 

agreeing to have their father wrapped in an Indian blanket 

and buried to the sound of crows and magpies.

We’ve come too far from ourselves to know much of anything. 

Behind a white veil a little girl dances in the arroyo, 

naked like Eve in the Garden. In the mountains, 

bombs staccato our day like echoing voodoo prayers from the dead.

It’s your lips I can’t forget, 

telling me you fell in love with our best friend. 

But you’re dead now, your body sends up smoke from the Crematory. 

Wispy black ashes dance in the air and flutter to my hand. 

I know this is not how you wanted it to be. 

But I’ll keep the Indian blanket wrapped around me at night 

to keep your scent fresh in my mind. I’ll wear your tattered jeans 

and no one will know, because we wore the same size.