THROWING LIGHT INTO THE BOTTOMLESS WELL OF DESPAIR

NEW WORK AT OTOLITHS.

DIG IT.

https://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/john-sweet.html

LIKE SUNLIGHT, LIKE GRACE

Thank you INK & NEBULA!

NEW WORK:.

http://inkandnebula.com/john-sweet.html

GRID OF POINTS by GROUPER

Like RUINS before it, the new Grouper release GRID OF POINTS focuses on the combination of Liz Harris’ piano and vocals, again given the Grouper lo-fi treatment to sound like its coming to you from a distant room in a large, empty house.  Beautiful, haunting, primal, unsettling – this is truly metaphysical music.  That large, mysterious space between what you hear and what it means is subtly profound.  The trick is in figuring out why.

MORRIS LOUIS DAYDREAM

THE RIGHT WORDS

pockets of sleep & pools of rage and

if the poem is left unfinished
then it won’t need to have any meaning

if the mountain is sacred

a massacre is inevitable

a blanket of lies to cover it up

you map them out in your head,

one for your husband, one
for the children, and i am left here
without enough pieces to make a whole

i am afraid, always

i breathe in, then out, but

can’t get enough air

what we become in the end are our own

prisons, our own prisoners,
our own priests

days rise up like clouds above the

hills, like the
threat of brilliant blue skies

heat without warning & a blanket of haze

and i am there at the front door with
flowers and with lies and
i am godless

this story is a dead end,

just like any other

we are dogs fucking on floors

of broken glass

we are poets

waiting to be blindfolded

waiting to be marched out

onto some bloodsoaked field and
shot because the power of words,
of course, lies in the power of fear

because the weakest are always

the easiest to kill

all it takes from you

is a little goddamned effort

LIKE A MAN WHO OWNS THE KINGDOM OF ASHES

MEDITATION

THIS RIVER OF FILTH THROUGH THE DESERT WE CALL HOME

ADVICE FROM THE RIVER WALL

THE DECIDING VOTE

and one of her legs is

caught on a strange piece of
machinery and she smiles

not the sun but the
next best thing and there’s no
pain she says and there’s no
blood but this day has dragged on
                                                too long

clouds have moved in

the hills have grown taller
more angular
more threatening

the dying season
you see

age of fear
age of starvation
age of genocide

take your pick and
cross your heart

build cathedrals to the
highest part of the
empty sky

make your
empty hands holy

ENIGMA IN THE HOLY HOUR

BELIEF IS THE WEAPON OF THE DESPERATE

and the grass all dead and the

weeds spilling across the driveway

no sons of ghosts no

need for lies

sunlight on faded flags until

the idea of america becomes
                              confused

i have my own theories about

who needs to be killed

i have a headache

three in the afternoon

end of july
and the air too thick to breathe

don’t make a sound

don’t waste your time on prayer

call this place

you’ve arrived at the ocean
or call it the desert
and then consider the need for rain

park in front of the apartment of

a girl you used to know
and then wait

five years becomes ten

ten becomes twenty

don’t let your children

catch you growing old

don’t be afraid to consider

suicide from time to time

in the end you can only

reject your despair or
embrace it

THE FLOWER-SELLER TELLS THE TALE

BLUES FOR A UFO

from their Bandcamp page:

BLUES FOR A UFO is music made from frustration and compassion. From a place of anger and of understanding. We have been living across from a huge construction project – a ten year overhaul of an old research and devolpment complex in Dearborn owned and operated by FMC, and it is ruining our lives. Day by day and bit by bit our house and mental health fade. Our beautiful historic home has cracks and issues and is covered in dirt and cement dust each day, with the sounds of cranes rumbling and cement trucks beeping going on for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. We tried to move, and found our home had been devalued until the work was done – in ten years.......


During this past year, our friends Dion Fischer and Aliccia Bollig-Fischer, had some issues of their own at the bar they run in Corktown, an up and coming neighborhood in Detroit. A multi-millionaire developer bought all the land around their historic bar and made a plan to build muti-story condos and high end reail. The UFO Factory lost it's egress for trash and grease storage and removal. They lost the chance to maybe purchase a tiny side lot for extra parking. They tried to take the developer to court to at least get their trash egress reinstated, and the judge threw out the case. The little guy was losing to the millionaire developer.

And then total tragedy struck. On the very first day of construction work for the new $150 MILLION dollar condo development, a cement truck ran into the side of the UFO Factory – splitting it's load bearing wall right open. The employees in the bar at the time escaped – but the bar has been structurally damaged and condemned by the city of Detroit.


We KNOW what this feels like. We KNOW how it is to be the little guy and have the huge corporation steal the life out from under us. And while we have tried, truly tried, to change our own situation, we've had no luck. Which is why we have taken our time and energy and turned it in a direction we can help.

This is new music, born out of frustration and sadness and anger, and hope. A hope that our energy can help heal the situation Dion and Aliccia have found themselevs in. A hope that making art and music gives way to release – a release of frustration and sadness, even if for only a little while. The knowledge that our love for the culture of Detroit, for the culture Dion has been a part of and spent 20 plus years supporting, could help in a time of need.

We are donating half of all proceeds from this new music to help the UFO Factory pay bills – all the bills a business has even if it is closed and the building s condemned. Insurance vendors, gas and electric, water, money for a new soundsystem, dollars to buy a new set of kitchen appliances....whatever is needed – we made this music to help. To help us in our time of utter frustration, and to help Dion in his time of temporary defeat.

Somehow, we will all beat this time of sadness. Please join us in supporting an institution in the Detroit arts and music scene, and help all of us have a little faith that the little guy can rise again.
Thank you.
Windy and Carl
August 2017

songs
Blues for a Ufo
Watching the Stars
A New World 

credits

released August 21, 2017

Recorded & Mixed August 3rd - August 17th 2017.

written and performed by Windy Weber & Carl Hultgren

THE TOWER, 2 A.M.

YOUR APPROACHING DEATH, VIEWED WITH JOY BY OTHERS

CHRIST IN HIS DECLINE

SOLITUDE

DYING DAYS

BELLS IN NEW TOWNS

New Landing album ships May 4th.  These folks are on a hot streak over 10 years long.   An amazing band with a huge arsenal of sounds at their disposal.  There's a song off the upcoming release streaming at both Bandcamp and the El Paraiso websites.  Sounds incredible.

El Paraiso Records

Bandcamp

OF ALL THE DAYS I'VE FORGOTTEN

ABSTRACT ARGUMENTS FOR THE CASUAL DESTRUCTION OF EVERYTHING

Coming soon, or else.  First version wasn't quite what I'd envisioned, now it's more what I was aiming for.  Time to stop before I fuck it up beyond repair.  Copies available in a month or so, with any luck......

THE UNSPOKEN FEAR

DID HE JUMP, OR WAS HE PUSHED?

OUR LIFETIMES WASTED WAITING

FEED THE ADDICTION

New work at Eclectica:

http://www.eclectica.org/v22n2/sweet.html

ONE FROM THE HOLY HOUR

3RD OVERDOSE

NORTHEASTERN VARIANT OF THE TRUFFULA TREE

RE-ENTRY

THE GOOD FIGHT, CHRISTIAN MOTHERFUCKER

kiss yr god w/

her mouthful of razorblades

close yr eyes and

pull the trigger

let whoever you hit

become the enemy

A review of HABEAS CORPUS by CINDY HOCHMAN

Glass Lyre Press

https://glass-lyre-press.myshopify.com/collections/chapbooks/products/habeas-corpus

There are people out in the world, I suppose, who genuinely like Gertrude Stein’s writing.  Personally, I like her in theory.  I like the idea of her, the attitude and the bohemian lifestyle and the fuck-you-if-you-don’t-like-it approach to things she seemed to have.  Her writing, though, tends to make my eyes and my brain glaze over after a few paragraphs.  Brave work, yes, and totally necessary to the evolution of modern writing, but I like her better in paraphrased soundbites.

Which is where HABEAS CORPUS, Cindy Hochman’s fine collection of prose poetry, comes in.  She has a similar attitude to Gertrude, and she enjoys some Stein-ish wordplay, but Hochman makes all of her words count.  A lot of Stein’s work has always left me with the impression that she was just playing around for the hell of it.  Hochman, on the other hand, gets right to the point.  She hits you with her images and ideas.  Occasionally, she elaborates on them; occasionally, not.  She works like a surgeon, all clean motion and exact incisions.  Whatever isn’t necessary to bring her point home is left on the operating room floor for the lesser poets to fight over.

HABEAS CORPUS is a poem cycle, a conceptual piece, a literal body of work, with the individual poems named after body parts and culminating in Full Body Scan.  An excellent literary device, and well-played.  Each poem stands on its own, but still serves the greater good.  The poems themselves range from short-and-cryptic to longer, more fleshed-out pieces.  Humor is a driving element, and it’s handled well.  Smart-ass phrases and images are mixed in with much more subtle bits.  Sometimes the jokes are there just for the sake of a good joke, but more often they serve to drive home a darker subtext.  They need to be stepped away from, thought about and then returned to for the full meaning to be revealed.

Even the cover deserves mention, as it too fits the overall concept.  An excellent image, and kudos to the design team.

This is a short collection but, really, the length feels just about perfect.  Again, the surgical comparisons apply.  There are no wasted words or images, no fat to trim.  The body is perfect.

 

GODHEAD

PORTRAIT OF D

IF THIS ISN'T YOUR BAND'S NAME, YOUR BAND SUCKS

SHROUD - A 2ND LOOK AT SOME RIGHTEOUS MINIMALISM

acrylic on canvas

Still one of my favorites from last year’s library show.   One of the few that actually came out exactly how I’d envisioned it, although it took quite a while to get there.  This minimalist abstraction stuff is time consuming.  Almost all of my canvases have layers of failure hidden beneath the final image.  I go through a lot of Titanium White.

Dawn’s looking into some new venues for a show this year.  She’s been doing some figurative nudes lately and, even though a 12 year old can walk into the library and check out a copy of AMERICAN PSYCHO, showing him or her naked boobies is a big no-no.  So, we make a good time – she has work that’s morally reprehensible, I have work that’s artistically insulting.  Niccccccccccce.........

CAUGHT BETWEEN EVERYTHING AND NOTHING AT ALL

THE GHOSTS IN THIS TOWN

ATROCITY 1

The Difference

if her fingers are cut off
one by one
to the music of laughter

if her laughter is a sound
i would
describe as god’s anger

is a prayer i would hold
in my broken teeth
and when i get up to leave
she pulls the sheet over
her breasts and says
don’t move

says don’t breathe

don’t spoil the moment
and sometimes this is fine

sometimes
i can’t be too sure

it is only a
small ocean between us

EVERY UNDECLARED WAR

STILL DREAMING

I HOPE THAT THE DAY PASSES OVER

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT - IT'S HOT AND IT'S HAPPENING

Seems the guy who was plagiarizing my work a few years back never went away.  He joined some ambient/drone/spoken word group, and is now using both straight lifts from my poems and his own ham-fisted ripoffs as the "spoken word" portion.  Not much to do here.  Lawyers?  What am I gonna do, sue him for 25 mil?  Fisticuffs?  Pistols at 20 paces?  I'll probably post the link to his artist page at some point, so others can judge for themselves.  Right now, though, I'm kind of buried beneath a pile of work that needs to be typed up, cats that need to be fed, and my Banshees at the BBC cd just came to an end, so I gotta put in some new tunes......

In the meantime, here's a saucy photo of 2 surrealist heavyweights, Max and Leonora.

DEAD MEADOW!!!!!!

Their 3 album run of SHIVERING KING, FEATHERS and OLD GROWTH is the flawless cornerstone of 20th century stoner rock.  Not to be missed.  Their new album, THE NOTHING THEY NEED, is no slouch either.  Slumbering, lumbering and heavy.  Highly recommended.

WHY WOULD BILL SHUTE LIE TO YOU? THE DUDE ROCKS!

My new collection, HEATHEN TONGUE, is currently available in limited quantities from his Kendra Steiner Editions.  Due us all a favor and buy one.  Do the math - has Trump bought one?  No.  Is he a fuckwad asshole?  Yes.  Will buying one help elevate you above this level of awfulness?  Best not to risk it.......

JOHN SWEET

“Heathen Tongue” (KSE #392)

edition of 61 hand-cut, hand-assembled copies

$6 USA postpaid (see below for postage rates outside USA)

payment via paypal to   django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com

please leave note with your order listing what you’re buying and mailing address…thanks!

From the man himself, Bill Shute:

"Happy to welcome back Central New York state poet JOHN SWEET for another chapbook of new poems. KSE first published a collection of his in 2008, and I had been reading his work for probably another ten years before that. He is truly an original–with an instantly recognizable voice and poetic form.

Sweet’s poems are lean and sculpted to be razor-sharp. They embody real-life voices, beaten-down by real-life problems, with the extra salt in the wound of bullsh*t and hypocrisy and permanent war and militarized police and domestic violence and insane fundamentalism and mass delusion. The speakers in Sweet’s poems are survivors, and they are leaving poetic messages in the bottle of a KSE chapbook, giving a testimony to the insane, violent, corrupt, painful world that  has been created around us, and he does not flinch when documenting our own complicity. His work never whines and never editorializes and never presents any pat answers. It should be clear to all by this point that this experiment we’re all part of is not working. In a restrained but tense voice, Sweet’s poems point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. His poems cut through the crap, and there’s no macho posing or laughable “outlaw” self-deception. If I peel off the blinders, this is what life is like. Friends, that is an amazing accomplishment, if you think about it. I remember that kind of feeling when I first read Theodore Dreiser….or Richard Wright…or James T. Farrell…or Georges Simenon…or David Goodis….or maybe Celine.

With dozens of books to his credit over the last few decades, and probably hundreds of individual poems published in printed and online literary journals in addition to those in the books, John Sweet continues to have his finger on the pulse of what’s wrong with this society and its people.

When we had the KSE 9th Anniversary event in Dallas 3 years ago, I read poems by three KSE authors in addition to my own poems: the late Doug Draime, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, and John Sweet (in fact, if you look at the pic that I use as my Facebook profile photo, and look at it closely, you’ll see it’s one of Sweet’s books I’m holding and reading from, NOT one of my own!). I believe in these poets’ works, and I am proud that KSE has gotten behind them and gotten many new creations of theirs out into the world over the years….thus, I’m glad to present these TEN new pieces from John Sweet. If you’ve never read him before, I can assure you, you won’t soon forget his work once you do read it. Get your copy now. Limited hand-cut, hand-assembled edition of 61 copies."

THE POETREE JUST KEEPS GROWING

http://duanespoetree.blogspot.com/2018/04/john-sweet-writes.html

THE CONTINUING SAGA OF THE REBELLE SOCIETY

ANOTHER LONGISH POEM,

WITH A TITLE PARAPHRASED FROM

SNIFF 'N' THE TEARS.....

http://www.rebellesociety.com/2018/04/06/johnsweet-what/