walking all day

seen the arrow on the doorpost saying this land is condemned all the way from New Orleans to Jerusalem I traveled through east Texas where many martyrs fell and I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell well, I heard that hoot owl singing as they were taking down the tents the stars above the barren trees were his only audience them charcoal gypsy maidens can strut their feathers well but nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell see them big plantations burning hear the cracking of the whips smell that sweet magnolia blooming see the ghosts of slavery ships I can hear them tribes a-moaning hear that undertaker’s bell nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell there’s a woman by the river with some fine young handsome man he’s dressed up like a squire bootlegged whiskey in his hand there’s a chain gang on the highway I can hear them rebels yell and I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell well, God...

Triacastela, Galicia, Spain 3 March 2018 Let me tell you a simple little story— though crammed with centuries of plot and an eternity of doubt— about faith and how it can cause roots to spring from a replanted dead tree or life to issue forth from long-dead tissue but this story is not a story about that kind of faith because that kind of faith challenges those laws of biology and our reductive understanding of the way life really happens and we are chained   so fast to those stones that it takes a mind-clearing hurricane to bring it into being but I’m only talking about leaves growing on living trees about the tapping from the inside of a shell with a solid beak about the simplicity of breathing out and in and if you were listening you may have heard me tell you a simple little story and if you were not listening you may not have heard me tell you a simple little story— i...

In the brief moments of this fleeting afternoon in this fluttering existence on this flying-through-space-randomly- though-not-really-flying-randomly- through-space planet that has granted us a flitting movement of existence through stages following stages following stages of language to culture to history to story and all this has floated by me in the cooler breezes less humid less weighty with the steam of late summer dog days and on the dog days is my fluttering existence of this fleeting afternoon fully felt and sweated out through even the light cotton breathable clothing I’m wearing

Mansilla de las Mulas Province of León Autonomous Community of Castilla y León Kingdom of Spain Writing these words w ith distraction rushing through every door of perception and these are the words that issue forth from this room of distracted consciousness with hundreds of doors thrown open to the cataracts and hurricanoes that spout till they’ve drenched our steeples and open to the sulphurous and thought-executing fires and these words have issued forth from this room in the great still eye and these words have paused the great existential storm throttled by this current colloquial alphabet on display right here and arranged with meaning