Ghost Rider in My Cracked Rear View

PAPERBACK VERSION OUT NOW!!!

MY ARCH EMILY

 

available at Amazon

SURREAL ESTATE -- It's my property,

A Visit to J. T. Bleu's SURREAL ESTATE -- It's my property, I can do what I want with it. Enjoy, but don't take it too seriously. Have a laugh.

 

 

ON MEIOSIS*

Or

TO PUT IT SUCCINTLY

“I Think I’ve Lost My Mind!”

Reported to be the last words uttered by the world’s first comedian, OOG NAGA MOGASTEIN, who was beheaded by a hostile primitive audience of homonoids in Olduvai Gorge, Africa, after being pummeled with strange monochrome bones left over from an earlier humanoid clan known as The Honeymooners 

 

The next day, Kit Dada was — wait, who am I kidding?  This story is going nowhere. After a nipple-piercing, most of us realize that things go nowhere until feeling is restored and you are able to hang a hand towel on the nipple ring from your tits without cringing.

   Therefore, let’s say some time passed, days, weeks, years, in fact, and with the murderer of his mother still at large, Kit decided to enter a sanatorium somewhere on the magic mountains of Switzerland, because he had never really recovered from the run-in with his old man, who was still kicking, going strong, and living in England, where he had successfully beaten the murder charge, and at the same time managed to completely write Kit out of his will and any and all family inheritance.

   Kit kicked around the States a few years with Penelope, until they had a flare up, and old accusations surfaced. She fell in love with a billionaire in Rio, and Kit just cracked up. That’s when he sought help. He was glad to be in Switzerland. The sanatorium was placid. The Swiss on the staff were properly Calvinistic and efficient. He liked that. And this is where he discovered he had a witch’s teat on his nose. He always thought it was a harmless mole up near the bridge, between his eyes, until one wise doctor, who called himself Napoleon Jesus Christ, told him it was indeed a witch’s teat.

   “Why do you say teat, when in actuality you mean tit?” asked Kit, because he really wanted to know. “Why T-E-A-T and not T-I-T? Is it a British Oxfordian teat or a Webster’s witch tit?”

   “Who is the doctor here, my friend,” answered Napoleon J.C. “I’ve been practicing the medical arts for two thousand years and you question my credentials?”

   “No, it’s just the spelling…” but Kit’s words trailed off as usual until he was in a blue funk.

   It was around this time that Penelope visited him, with her rich boyfriend, somebody named Uuli Siushi, a Swede who made a billion dollars on Argentine beef futures, and now resided in Rio de Janeiro making paper airplanes.

   “Hello, Kit, they said you were feeling better today. It’s been a long time. How are you?” She handed him a box of chocolate and some flowers. She also barked like the actress in the Eddie Murphy movie COMING TO AMERICA. It was cute. But Kit would soon forget all about the incident. It would leave a poignant vacuum in his mind that kind of sucked.

   “You are going surreal again, Kit. I’m worried.”

   “Don’t worry about me. I know what I am doing.”

   “Oh? What’s that?”

   “Forget about answers, Penelope, what I want are questions. You know? You did it, Loopy. I know you did it,” said Kit, looking out the window for the media. He was always suspicious of Penelope’s passive-aggressive hunger for fame and fortune.

   “Let’s not start with that again, Kit,” said Penelope, turning away to put on more lipstick. Then she took a selfie and uploaded it to Anderson Cooper at CNN. “He’ll know what to do with this,” she whispered.

   “Not the Anderson Cooper delusion again, baby. Don’t you know he is never going to respond to your texting?”

   “He will when I tell him that I found your mind in the gutter over on 42^nd street. Oh, yes, that will get a response, Kit. Trust me!”

   “I always trusted you; that’s why I’m in this mess.”

   “I know, Kit. Isn’t it wonderful? Oh my God, he texted me—Anderson Cooper texted me. I think I’m going to die.”

   “What did he say, luv?”

   “Drop dead.”

   “Gorgeous he means. Just what I expected from those twits at CNN. Come here, babe, for a hug.”  

 

 *****

 

*Meiosis is from the Greek, and means “to make something smaller” or disproportionately less than it really is.  Got it?

This is where J.T. BLEU shares his novel

The relationship ended years ago, in her sophomore year, when they both thought their love was captured in amber—forever. How could it change? But things did change. And one day, he was gone.

                                

She always told him he was as variable as light waves. He told her she was just projecting. But something reached into the amber and snatched their relationship away. The love was still there, but it was an artifact now, from another age.

---From MY ARCH EMILY

Proofread my novel today at writeon amazon:

Self Portrait -- #32

His uneven beard, dark black (which seems strange considering his brown hair that gets so bleached and brown-blond in the tropics) and thick growth on the cheeks, white at the chin (he will be 50 in 13 days), appears uneven—like fields and crops ravaged by drought, up near where he wishes he had thick sideburns(like Elvis, like his dad, even)—instead just wisps of whisker and spaces of smooth skin leave a gap of an inch or so up to the hairline at the top of the ear. (He has said that if he had full sideburns his high school acting career, in fact, his life would have gone another completely different direction).

 

Idiot.

 

It’s just another symptom of his Dostoyevsky period, as he calls it.

 

Oh, and as he paints these words, he battles ennui, of course, and melancholy and his own peculiar inner struggle with demons, old and new. He wonders if there is another way to say this, then gives up. Yet he proclaims some kind of satisfaction using a double negative, thus disavowing the need for happiness.

 

He wants to cherish his individuality and unique depressions--like a romantic poser. It’s always the same feeling, for what else can it be? He doesn’t analyze it too deeply, or care to, because his mind is too eclectic and super-charged, hungry for more knowledge and insight, this acts  as a counter to his ennui—you lovely dark lady, you.

 

He looks at the notes in his yellow legal pad and realizes that what he types here is all out of order, muddled, transformed, transmogrified from his original conception. Fucking Dada, when he wants to paint the Mona Lisa. The work will probably go through many incarnations until it is unrecognizable from this very script you are reading. So what he writes now may not be what you read—that feeling is there again, just off in the corner, fuck off Emily, no wait, I love you—and Dostoyevsky save a chair for me. but you know, I must say, "I find happiness with Emily over there behind the cupboard."

 

Music plays on the stereo (he still calls such things stereos); the Kenwood sound system that he and his wife bought three or four years ago over the Christmas season. Bach is conducive to writing. The cello suites, Pablo Casals, and yet he would play Landslide by the Dixie Chicks, over and over again—until it became a joke—he even heard it on David Letterman afterwards, applied to the President. It seemed like poetry, at the time, something from Wallace Stevens. He was moved by the thought of aging, death, time, aren’t we all? Sometimes the simple is most correct; Ockham’s edginess and perspicuity, says it all. He didn’t try to figure it all out. He just let himself go in the flood of tears and emotions. It was so different to him, crying like that.

 

The air in the room is chilly, he likes that, he says he came to Sapporo to be close to Russia and to live in the cold weather and to enter his Dostoyevsky period, he would read Russian writers here, in this very room, where he is now writing. His introduction to Dostoyevsky was through “The Master of Petersburg” by J.M. Coetzee, the South African writer. Fantastic book, he loved everything about it and fell in love. Demon possession, my ass.

 

He lived in South Africa for six years—from 1980, arriving the very day of John Lennon’s assassination, so how could he ever forget? Now you understand. He stayed until October 1986. You won’t see any of this in the self portrait that he paints right now. It’ll all be way under the last coat—deep down, layered, deep…almost inside the canvas.

OKU, The Deep Interior

On living in Japan

     *** 

So far ahead of you--I waited.

Time/space/light meant nothing.

Traveling far, dressed smartly, yet without wisdom, beyond reason,

my shallow fears aged my jeans until

            they were rags.

The t-shirt you tore off my chest, a badge of honor,

            used to humiliate me

Its ragged edges soft but viciously torn

Stopped—Again—Waiting

Next time, I'll be traveling light, I said.

 

 

If you care to remember, I had to throw it away (the t-shirt).

            Oh, and my sandals vanished, too.

Then I was naked, a baby, again, so old with pain — I know, blah, blah, you are not  listening again.

But that’s how I measure time, that’s how I try the tedious hours.

In stasis, I created nothing, but with indolence,
           

returning—I found vacancy and space.

Inn Reverse, (allow me some lazy doggerel, because I will never grow up),

 

where I wrote a verse,

            In that place where you found me, counterpoint and then fusion,

And so, we lingered;

I remember the tatami—the pungent aroma, particularly;

             you do too,

If you are being honest

You enjoyed the view from the window on the balcony.

Magnum Opus

Magnum Opus

 

If this turns into

Such a work let it be true;

It is a small thing.

 

Without Question

WITHOUT QUESTION

I lived,

         But you were the best

I loved;

        There is no Question;

You

        Bedewed with such sensuous luster

That  

       I became lost in your soft

Hair

        Glorious wreaths of luxuriant, silken pleasure,

Full

       Of the moisture of life

Soft

        Under the desert breeze

Midnight

        At the oasis, like that song, you touched my

Soul

        This I declare in the courts of deep thought

Sacred

       Memories of when we were lost, knee deep in

Green

       Grass and watery birth, among

Flowers

        And dreams:

Truth

       Only accessible in that flashing split-moment of

Bliss,

       When we vowed by groans and moans,

To increase,

       No words were necessary

        In that sea of haste

Our desire,

        Expressed in the poetry of sound

Without irony,

       Without question.

 

____________________________________________________

 

BOUND FEET

BOUND FEET

By jtbleu

 

Stride

On cobble stone

The dead

Road like snowflakes

Mingling

In gentle descent

There is no resurrection

These particles

Only fall

Even if one

Awaits human touch

Some imprimatur

Yet they will die

Upon the soil

On this sweet earth

Rocks are cold

Hibernating

Plants and microbes

So minute

The weight of

Iron wagons on

Flat trails 

Ride the piles

And the white leaves

Pale traces

Of congealing gray

Pure

In the gloaming

A mass

Most holy

Of pied porcelain

Pounded

Icy and cool

Cold

Freezing snow

Silent icicles

Crushed hard as

Tiny feet

Stir the sherbet

To taste

The just dessert

Of their labors

And many tongues

Devour the flakes

Unwittingly

Changing the shape

Of nature and

Arouse these

Mended beauties

Continually in motion

Dreaming of luscious

Respite

But like Roman

Legions

Advancing

On the frozen world

Tonight—and so long ago

Vanquishing empires

Wooing the male beast

All are ground under

The pressure of light

Impressions

And the quiet

Moon—goes by

And they go by

Bound feet

Wrapped or shorn

A poet’s sad

Plaint for form

And structure

Out of slush

And piles

About to melt

Forever gone

Using mere words

To sculpt

A salvation

For them

As they stride

Or slide

Tripping along

Or awaiting

The gentle

Spring

The lark’s song

To live

Again

 

 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

SKETCH IN PASTEL 

 

 

 

 

     The everlasting cure is the purest medicine

  Some "experts" say

  Take it now Test it later Have a nice day      

L’ALLEGRO

ON

THE AGE OF ICE

 

THE PROCESS OF HARDENING

AND TRANSPARENCY

OR GOING OPAQUE

THE AWFUL CHILLS

JUST BEFORE THAT

SLICK SLIDE INTO

OBLIVION

 

TO UNDERSTAND

IS TO KNOW

HOPE

AS A FROZEN DREAM

COME FROM THE

STARS

 

IN SUSPENDED ANIMATION

OUR SILENCE FACES

OUR DREAD  

 

CRYOGENICS

A TERM SO ASTUTE

AS TO BE DESCRIPTIVE

RATHER THAN PRESCRIPTIVE

FOR ROCKY TEARS

DROP AND CRACK

THE HEART THAT

SHED THEM

THAT THE EARTH

MAY REVOLVE

AND TIME REMAIN

CONSTANT

 

 

NOTHING IS NEW

HERE IS ONLY ICE

 

WE RECREATE THE PAST

AFTER LOOKING

DEEP INTO THE FUTURE

WHERE OUR GARDENS

AND CREATIONS

AWAIT A NEW GOD

WORTHY OF OUR FORESIGHT

RESPECTFUL OF OUR

ANTECEDENT SELVES

THE FORMER DEAD WEIGHT

LACKS THE INSIGHT

OF ICE

 

WE ARE LEFT WITH

COMPARISONS TO WATER AND AIR

 

ASSOCIATIONS THAT REFUSE

TO SETTLE MEEKLY

INTO THE MISTS OF TIME

LIKE STEAMING VAPORS

FROM A KETTLE

THEY VANISH

 

THE LIGHT WEIGHT

BRINGS THE THINNEST EVAPORATION

GONE

 

ALONE

I STUDIED

DENSITY DOWN

TO THE SMALLEST

PARTICLE OF MATTER

 

AND THEN SOME SNOWFLAKE

DARED TO SLICE THE SWEET AIR

TO PIERCE MY HEART WITH YOUR MEMORY

 

OUR THOUGHTS NOW CRUMBLE IN SNOW DUST

THAT WE MAY BE HEALED

FROM DEATH

BUT IN THE ICICLED GRAVE

AS WE WAIT

THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF  

NEW LIFE

COME THE DAY

WE MAY CONCLUDE AT LAST

THAT THIRTY-TWO DEGREES FARENHEIT

IS SALVATION

EVEN ZERO CENTRIGRADE

OFFERS TANGIBLE HOPE

HOPE WHICH EQUALS ZERO

nothing

AND IN THESE

DEGREES OF DECLENSION

WE SALIVATE

IN SPITE OF THE COLD

IN THIS THEATRE OF ICICLES

WITHIN OURSELVES

WE WONDER

 

IF WE WILL 

 

REMEMBER

THE

 

FREEZE

**********************

 NITE TIDES

-----------------------

I

Bring the ancient monster back.

Watch the leviathan

Rape a lamb

And birth a myth;

Or lie with a lion and

Mother a religion:

Teach us the logic

 In this monstrous

Promiscuity.

2

Godzilla will

When he comes and shakes

 The earth and topples

Our steeples. We never

Feared a nativity as much as

We loved your enormity;

So strong as to chide the ten million gods

In the unsounded deep, in the East, while you stir the water

And panic our shores.

 

This every wise man knows, and the brilliant women

 

Still laugh at us.

3

Modest Medea, just last week, heard some fool utter the following:

“Intent is motivated by the undercurrents of fascination.”

It’s not Greek nor was intended to be

 

 (it does not fit their idea of mind), and so, bemused,

She sat under a volcano waiting for sustenance,

And killed each child individually;

For supper

Had to be prepared.

But no one was hungry

 

Except Tamora,

 

who loved her two sons so much that it 

Made Medea mad with jealousy.

4

And there was Hedda

So angered at the substance within her that a new

Golem, kicking and screaming, was born by

Parthenogenesis from her head.

This new remnant, a table set for three, remember? 

 

 inspired many psalms about hypostasis and faith 

That are still being sung today.

 5

Yet it is a dark time

 

Words have been abbreviated to sustain

 

 The atomic weight of our guilt, which fits sweetly on the head of a pin

 

As it should, along with the dancing angels.

This is so as to not cause pain among the villagers

 

 who have suffered enough.

Silence is helpful, too, in covering bureaucratic stains

Because 

 

Less is more when counting lies.

Non nobis, Domine

 

Composed in solitude,

Now forms auditory spheres,

 

Where multitudes dance in the fire,

 

Until everything breaks forth in strange eruptions:

Passion

 

Distemper

This allows gracious idiots, like me,

 

To play the final note;

Which lingers from blood to blood

Successively,

Generation upon generation

Our birthright, Our empery

Our stardom assured…

Ode on the Infinite Whole

To John Keats with apologies

▒

 

I

 Twenty-four years your name writ in water,

While forty-eight years found me hard by shore;

Just a vagabond blown like a flower

Or seed: skimming waves, wind, poetic lore.

Go back sick tide rot yourself in motion,

For he was too young to go before me,

But how can I scope such an ebbing thought?

Alas, he from Charmian sails to sea,

His love to her pledged with one notion,

To render beauty words carefully wrought.

 

II

              Not drowsy perceptions in senseless inks,

Just watchfulness and sensation itself

Created and matured as one thinks

Of grapes turning wine, aging on the shelf:

As his Indian leaf bore the written child

Of his brain, his East Indian lover,

In leopardess stealth, held magnetism

And sensation’s imperial power

In check and command for the sacred wild

Journey into his romanticism.

 
III

Yes, I suffer migraines after high mirth,

They leave my senses numb, weak and distraught;

But there is solace found often on earth

At the feet of poets and all they taught:

A paradise beckoned all my dunce dreams,

Yet the heavenly guesses left me savage;

So I bade adieu in my journey east

Finding Pallas, Zen, him—not for an age,

Gave me access and cognizance in reams,

And time to change human from senseless beast.

 

IV

Your unfinished lifetime is complete

As all that is half remains infinite;

With double years I found you dead, yet sweet

Strains of your lyrics live as holy writ;

I am too old, too old to follow you,

Too soon to leave my house unfinished

And laurel bare, with but solitude’s O

In murky suburbs of hope diminished

Beyond thought’s beauty and what is my due:

Finding your truth in the infinite whole.

 ▒

By J.T. Bleu

Tokyo, Japan 2004-First Draft, Sapporo, 2006-2-25 Second Draft