EQ

2014-06-03 12:00 am

Statement to what. 
State What. 
I am not guilty of the charge of capital murder. 
Steal me and my family's money. 
My truth will always be my truth. 
There is no kin and no friend; 
No fear what you do to me. 
No kin to you undertaker. 
Murderer. 
Go to hell. 
Get my money. 
Give me my rights. 
Give me my rights. 
Give me my rights. 
Give me my life back.

The Sophist

2014-05-28 12:00 am

From dying lips was told,
A tale of winters melting wax,
Turning summers cold.
Stranger tales we will betell,
I'm sure,
Stranger sights we will behold.
Forever we will speak the truth,
Except regarding days of yore.

The Sophist

2014-05-26 12:00 am

If you could go back and change your life,
You look back on your strife?
Would I go back and change mine?
I look back and my life is changed daily.
For the better?
Questionable.
I look back at my life deranged gayly.
For the most part; 
Insatiable.
Satiated in my adolescence with hot knives 
hot paperclips unwinded
on hot tables 
while a hot ocean waited for hot iron;
Not able.
Enough quotes from a world of war to be the next supreme 
gentleman,
I changed my life enough to know that truth is irrevocable,
I'd choke a bull for a chance at life less like a festival 
of Bedouins negligible.

Aharon Yosef

2014-04-14 12:00 am

Vested in reality,
Blood of beasts and saints.
Destin blind with empathy,
Believing self divinely great.
And I suppose that's fine?
I mean, Hey;
What of judgements cast as mine?
Howbeit, 
What of judgements cast as they?
Pretending watch though eyes are blind.
Lay my head in shallow water,
Watch my face in clouds pass by.
Let me drown as hallowed fodder,
The message, 
Nearing.
The message,
Fie!
Simple timeless truths elude us.
Clouds in our heads,
Dreams in our skies.

The Sophist

2014-03-24 12:00 am

For all those lost in darkness of the rain,
Shelter's on the way, and sun will shine again,
Fluttering truths in their sleepless pain,
All their dreams estranged.

For all whose love still rules the heart,
Love itself possesses nothing for our art,
We row ourselves upstream in barrels,
Throwing Apollo ahead-start.

The Sophist

2014-03-07 12:00 am

Death of Cupid strewn loose,
And the putrid excuse;
Stupidness youthed in the ruin of Use.
Abstracted views abstracting rapid abstract logic,
Abstracted the Truth;
Abstractly vapid and loose.
And so now I live recluse.
I used 'abstract' too much,
And killed Cupid via noose.
I have a pact,
I tattered and abused, 
I packed and hid, scattered in the spruce.
I hate all I come in contact with.
I hate to introduce.
I hate you all like my old friends.
You all act too recluse.

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-05 12:00 am

Postcard from Spain

The deep blue Med,
Bleeding red,
With green seaweed.

Ten thousand immigrant flies,
Travelling in on the wings
Of the Sirocco;
From north Morocco.

The power of the Siesta Sun,
Making the sand in my shoe hot.

Luscious lips, not bruised
Neither battered nor burnt,
Grappling with grapefruits.

Paradise Beach,
Paraded with parasol palms;
Waves breaking
On a wind-kissed shore.

I may be bathing later,
I am still not sure.

A lone bathing beauty,
From the Lone Star state,
Ear to the phone.
Southern Belle;
Listening to Western Bell.

Had to go and see
My mountain,
Standing stark
In darkest Dakota.

Aqui,Casas de Lujo.
Here, Luxury Houses.
Cornish Cream,
Mandarin Palace.

Urban graffiti
In an idyllic setting.
Perfect paradox.
Jet plane trucking
Leaving tyre tracks
In the bright blue sky.

Sun-kissed shingle.
Sitting on a man-made rock,
The sea has shaped
To blend in with the shoreline.
Concrete clusters;
Indistinguishable,
From indigenous icons

Seaweed green, but yesterday,
Bleached red,
By the unforgiving sun today.
Granite granules,
Marble monolinths.
Sculptured saline symbols.

Yellow bouys bobbing,
Effortlessly.
Looking like a line of sweet corn,
Positioned precariously
On a willow patterned plate.

To my right,
A multitude of people,
To my left,
A hundred more.
But I sit here,
Surrounded by the solitude of silence.

Alone, with only my thoughts,
For company.
'Cept for the gentle breeze,
Whispering words of untold wisdom.
Gleaned from eons of eavesdropping,
On its many invisible travels
Around the globe.

The unseen listener of many conversations,
Keeper of Confidences,
Storer or Secrets,
Librarian of Lies,
Treasurer of Truths.
Spreading the gospel of God,
By the Mediterranean Sea.

I went away
And wrote.

Warm winds,
Helicopter hovering,
Gentle gyrations.
Drenched dog,
Bedraggled by brine.
Dappled writing,
Caused by the sun
Through the brim
Of my hat.

Beach-combing bum,
Scouring the shoreline,
With a plastic bag,
because of the hole
In my pocket.

Gone is the moment
For forced photography,
A thousand photos,
But only one picture.

Stranger on a foreign shore,
Leaving only footprints
In the sands;
Taking nothing
But memories.

Beached rowboats;
Wooden rafts,
Made from discarded
Wine crates.

Dusti Rodes (2002)

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

In fields of Barley 

 If I tried to tell you truthfully
 You probably wouldn't understand
 Just how good it feels right now
 To be trespassing in the fields
 Of the Farmer's fertile land.

 Watchin' the Hawk huntin'
 Field mice, voles and the odd rabbit or two,
 Who in turn are out in the morning sun.
 Foraging for food to keep their families fed.
 Feeding on the filling green ears of barley
 Growing gracefully in a swaying breeze.

 Maybe she'll end up catching
 A dozing dormouse
 Taking forty well-earned winks
 From the furore and frantic frenzy
 Of activity that fills the field.

 Walkin' with my four-legged friend,
 Teachin' him of fetch and catch.
 While all the time, the real lesson is
 Learnin' to like the lead.

Dusti Rodes (2013)

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

From ‘Blowin’ the Blues'

#When a woman gets the blues, she hangs her head and cries, when a man gets the blues, he boards a train and rides ... # (traditional blues song, author unknown)

Down in the Deep South, it can take three days to even SEE a train going through a station. Let alone have one stop there.

I guess his story started on that fateful night back in sixty-three. Someone had just killed Kennedy. John F, that is. He was shot while driving in a motor cavalcade down in Dallas. It sparked off a whole lot of conspiracy theories for decades to come. Even after the death of J.Edgar. Maybe he took the truth to the grave with him! Who knows?
I never really knew him then; I was but a little picca ninny on my momma’s knee, down on the plantation.  Barely finished suckling on her teaties. Papa said he was ‘nothing but a no-good nigre,’ and wouldn’t mount to a pile of beans. Just goes to show how wrong some people can be.

Sometimes Life can deal people a low card.
With him it had thrown away the rest of the pack and was only using a deck of deuces and threes with an occasional four. And it wasn't shuffling them, too well or too often.

He was what the white folk call 'coloured' not 'Black'. A mulatto and an albino one to boot. It was probably down to the unfortunate circumstances of his conception. His mother was 'Red' from Rhode Island. An 'easy lay' or so they say. But that was no good reason for her being gang-raped on the streets of Harlem now, was it?
His startling appearance often provoked a strange reaction in most people. Raised eyebrows, spinal shudder and shoulder shrug of revulsion, or a sharp intake of breath on initial sighting were common.

Standing a shade under seven feet, even with the stooping shoulders and strange way of holding his head slightly forward and lent to the left. Developed from years of attempting to listen with his good ear to what lesser sized folk were trying to tell him. His two hundred and sixty pound plus of bone and sinew barely covered by his leathery weather-wizened skin that had been exposed to the extremes of the elements for far too long. 
Long days of toiling at whatever work he could get. Bitterly cold nights spent in any shelter he could find. There wasn't any fat on that frame. Thirty-seven years of constant shortage of food had seen to that.
Cody Jarrel, cut a vision once seen, that few would forget easily. If ever....

Cody sat slowly drinking the dregs from the bottom of the empty bottles left by paying patrons of the bar.
He shuddered so violently, it wracked his frame to it's very core.
Sheltering on the back-stoop of the Shanty Shack, from the rain that had been incessant in its task of soaking him while he tried to seek some sleep to rest his weary body throughout last night.
It had succeeded, so he let out another shiver that clinked his spine.
Down in the doldrums, yet again, the future was looking real bad for him. And little did he realise it then, but it was going to get even worse before it could get better. Much worse.


Dusti Rodes (2007)

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

The Camden sessions

I'd observed it for a while,
His developing love affair,
With the long-necked lady.
Pretty in pale blue,
Adorned in silver,
Shining like the stars.

The gentle coaxing to obtain
Audible verbal response.
The warm embraces,
Fingers firmly plying
Intimate places.
To go where no-one
Had ever been before.
Or since.

Alvin Lee?
Oh, yeah, he was good,
But he wasn't Smokin'.
Fastest fingers alive,
In my opinion.
Eric Clapton?
Rightly deserved the title,
Slowhand, in comparison.
And what Hendrix stole
From Smokin's skills
Is another story, completely.

Long gone midnight,
Silently sitting, slouched,
On the sofa.
Jist jammin' the blues.
Echoes from deep down,
In the Delta, reverberating.
Needing no artificial amplification,
Electric or otherwise,
To portray the genius.

Rampant riffs,
Luscious licks,
Complex chords,
Paranormal phrasings.
Rumour has it that
Robert Johnson,
Did a deal with the Devil,
At the crossroads.
Some say so must have Smokin'.
There is no other way,
That he could play,
Like that.

But I know the truth.
He was gifted by God.
And forty years on,
I still feel humbled,
And very honoured,
To have heard the musical magic.
Performed nightly in Smokin's front room, 
for an audience of one.


Dusti Rodes (2007)