Canopy Glow (2008)

When I closed my eyes in Noni�s field
We were lying on our backs.

"Noni's Field" Live Dec. 2nd, 2006

Canopy Glow (2008)

Most of us have heard crashing so loud.
We hear a constant wave that spins between our temples piercing content with its sound.
We lost the 20,000s several years ago.
Gradually we feel it washing blank the range in which we hold the things we know.
Put your ear to a hummingbird's wing.
Place the hum against the ring.
Listen to its still and violent motion making.
Treading water.
We are dense waves.
We don't float.
Our stories all just sink below the mess of wake the millions of paddled palms our cupped hands make.
Overhead the goose flies low, necks curve darted straight as compass needle, dislocated from his mate.
He found her body rafting toward the mouth of the river when she disappeared with the current underneath the tree trunk bridge.
Out toward the mouth.
Out with the spilling water.
We saw it coming like a spirit soars directed.
Gunshot smoke and a sinking thereafter.
He fell fast to the ocean while the red painted feathers floated down.
John Audubon thought about the wiring as he swam toward the twisted neck and the broken boat body bobbed.
Examining the belly for the bullet's tiny piercing, he cried, "Oh!"
When a secret fluttered, a migrant hummer detached its grip.
Overhead his heart sped spooked and we splashed as the gail swung cold and some fish folded in the crest slap.
It lapped at our heads, but we received it like a reprimand that we were too consumed by motion to perceive or understand.
John J. Audubon, his gifted replication.
Painted with precision, perfect vision like the shot stain.
And the whole world swam in deaf anticipation til the goose fell like a shed shell from which the humming secret sprang.

"John J. Audubon" Live at the Broadway Theater in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan

Canopy Glow (2008)

High water carried her down stream
She watched the water's living things
She thought, it's not a mound with six planks of wood
The cardinal points to hold you up
Or a mountain where a shed self could

Feed the roots and honor the tongues of the animals
Drift into the moss and bloat where the peat bog pulls

"The River" Live new hazlett theatre 4/15/09

Canopy Glow (2008)

You paper cut the air above the tundra when you came back in silence, in sheets, and the neighbors called me up out of my sleep to watch you unfold the blanket.
Wrap me back into the womb.
The first thought is fear, and brother, it emits a crippling bend.
A shame you can't know that you carry until you've seen it offered down.
Watching shielded in the silence, shielded in the knowledge that has no use for language.
Standing on the lawn at a distance.
Watching shielded in the silence, shielded in the knowledge that has no use for language.
Standing on the lawn until you wish to be crushed in its collisions.
You paper cut the air above the tundra when you came back in silence, in sheets and the neighbors called me up.

"Northern Lights" LIve at Rocketown, Nov. 1st 2008

Canopy Glow (2008)

When I can't find the word I'm looking for
or I reach into the drawer with four tries
but nothing sticks, there's no telling why I opened it.
I try, but I just forget.
What there once was, I have not forgotten.
What there once was, it won't leave me alone.
The synapses still fire and direct my thoughts,
they just seem tired of hunting for homes.
And I'm not brave enough to say that I am not afraid,
should I return to confused bits of blindness,
a tongue wanting words in the sweet speech finds a form,
then returned to the bald toothless need of a child hunched and cradled
(his spine returns the curl to fit the cleft of an arm).
O, we are embarked and return to the place we start to thrash against it.
It's a wild thing to accept, and who can hold it?
Think about the loss of anything.
Well, someday if you wake to a nameless stranger in me, lead me outside.
Let me go.
If I'm already there, just let me go.
I'm not.

Canopy Glow (2008)

When you get up
When you wake up
Put your hands up
Pick yourself up
And you pull yourself up underneath the dugout cubby enclave of the sidewalk overhang,
cement buckled upward and the rain came dripping through the crack.
We hear the voice of Italo sing of a holy fire.
When he stomped,
the dirt fell on our eyes.
Hell, he stomped.
It was a mystery to me when you crawled out from underneath the sidewalk overhang.
Cemment buckled upward and the rain cam dripping through the crack.
We heard the voice of Italo sing.
In the second zone of the city a baby born in the nightclub mold where goons dry heave the factory glue all crust-lipped and bloddy nosed.
Fire took the roof off,
hollowing the carcass
(licked it like a bone).
Sway and mone to songs of some pitchless praise,
stoned.

"Italo" Live at the Cockpit, Leeds England on February 12th, 2008

Canopy Glow (2008)

An astronaut lost his finger to the back of a grain truck
and I can't stop thinking about it. I'm thinking about it.
Isn't everything strange?
Buildings as brick boxes to be opened,
turned sideways and cracked.

"All The First Pages" Live from Rocketown, Nov. 1st 2008

Canopy Glow (2008)

You were baptized by a dollop from a cool whip bowl
(finger flung)
Sulfer water, holy water from the drinking fountain of the high school cafeteria
Among the great cloud when Margie whispered "Amen"

"Cafetorium" Live at The Drake Hotel Toronto Saturday February 28, 2009

Floating World (2006)

Yesterday, the land went dry.
I sprinkled ash of my neighbor's urn
Over the yard.

Sprinkled in the hope
That should I cut out

Floating World (2006)

One: became the widowed son.
Them, to me, "Out of sight, out of mind."
Someone said that to me and I smiled.

Two: Listen as he sings through you.

Floating World (2006)

Someday they will build monuments for us.
People like me walk out the door,
We'll pull you out into the streets
Of far off countries. If I'm ready to go,
How could I let you dwell in delight?

Oh see, all things are so bright and spiritual.
These seeds are growing in extraordinary colors.
Convinced? Even I believe that I have grown something.
It's cased in light.

"Genessaret, Hoodwink, By Number" Live

Matt Joynt

Floating World (2006)

Through silence,
When something fell,
I saw a smear of red across
The neighbor's leg.

The land was dry as dead.
He crawled with dripping heels.

Trailing black bits followed out of the mound,
Clung to the speckled skin where glue blood spattered.

I saw a bone, a nail hooked and hanging from the foot of man.
I knew he thought it dead.

"Yuki! Yuki! Yuki! and Hanasakajijii Three" Live

Floating World (2006)

Oh, night set on when I fell down
In the corner of the field.
Cuckoo, I too sang,
Spit the blood of welling thougohts.

Waking with a hundred grains.
Salt stains ringing 'round my legs.
I could not face you.