Black Rain

Lyrics from the song "Black Rain" on Ben Harper's forthcoming album " Both Sides of the Gun "...

"Black Rain"

You left them swimming for their lives
Down in New Orleans Can't afford a gallon of gasoline
With your useless degrees and contrary statistics
This government business is straight up sadistic

Now you don't fight for us
but expect us to die for you
You have no sympathy for us
but still I cry for you
Now you may kill the revolutionary but
The Revolution you can never bury

Don't speak to us like we work for you
Selling false hope like some new dope we're addicted to
I'm not a desperate man but these are desperate times at hand
This generation is beyond your command

And it won't be long
'til the people flood the streets
To take you down
One and All
a black rain is gonna fall

2:36: an ode to Bukowski

2:36

On the side of my computer is skoal
The LONG CUT
In my mouth the LONG CUT
And I’m typing this out
It’s 2:36
And counting

My trousers are down
Undone
And I’m still
Wet down below

Not in a rush
I’m in no rush
My trousers are down
And I’m still
Wet down below

Woolfish Modernism

Upon reading and talking about Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse:

Looking at the opening scene we get James Ramsay presented with two ways of looking at the world. One from his mother, that of optimism, hope, and faith, and the other from his father that of logic, reason, and disbelief.

" Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow, " said Mrs. Ramsay. " Mrs. Ramsay is the harbinger of hope for James who wishes very much to go to the lighthouse the next day. Mrs. Ramsay sees the good in providing faith and hope to her son, while Mr. Ramsay insists " 'But,' said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, 'it won't be fine.' "Mr. Ramsay's pessimistic view of the weather shapes the way he sees the world and how he wishes his son to view it as well. Life is not fair, and of course as a man of the late Victorian period Mr. Ramsay as a boy had his belief in faith dashed as a child, and does not want his son to suffer from a similar experience (Eliot's Prufrock feels the same way).

The book sets up such dichotomies of man and woman, and faith versus empirical reasoning, yet Woolf more importantly, as do many modernists, suggests that by setting us up with a third-person omniscient stream-of-consciousness narrator we are left alienated from the Dickens and Trollope and Eliot we were so used to seeing in Victorianism. Does Woolf suggest the need to feel alienated as a reader? Should we side with Mr. Ramsay and his pessimism, or opt for belief and hope in a world, where we orient ourselves towards a lighthouse: a goal, a vision through a narrative that opts for subjectification through it's characters ?

A Depression-filled Confessional or The Self-Deprecate Seeks Solace in Sympathy

Sometimes my head isn't screwed on that tight
My vision is out of focus,
I see objects that
overlap each other.
Life's sketches are all wrong. I'm looking through
an abstract painting, when I want to be seeing
something more tangible.

My words don't come out very well
either. Kind of like spilled
milk.The deviation of
my narration is - unintentional
I'm sorry.

Trying my hand at Poetry

I Saw An Old Man the Other Day


From his rugged chin worn
That looked as rough and tattered as his leather boots
Climbing up the whiskered path to his lips, luscious no more,
Merely dry and cracked
His nose was bent up not quite in it's place
It reared to the side
Like an arrow pointing somewhere far off on a deserted road.

At the end of the line of this ageless treasure
Were two "Chinese fans" at the edge of his eyes
That made him squint close together
I was astonished to find in this fixed sight -
A feeling of tranquility that passed through my body
The glaze of his iris seemed to catch my attention
It led to a sublime other dimension
A sea of secrets, magic, and wonder, in store
So many faces, and places he'd been to before.

As I stood there in awe, pondering what to think
That old goddamn chap just gave me wink
Then slowly moved from his motionless stance
One foot, then the other
Like my youth at the high school dance.
With that jig in his stride and a smile on his face,
That old man left, and a young boy took his place.