New Orleans, the Scorpio city

Some guy told me that New Orleans is a Scorpio city. I told him I haven’t been stung yet. I’ve seen the stinger but never taken it through the heart. He says you never see it until it hits you. But I think he’s lying as I sit in a bedroom with a full jazz band made up of two house poets and whoever can play from the audience joining them while the second loft of the room paints their naked bodies, tracing their beautiful curves in war paint and the third loft above stares down painting the entire thing on their canvases. The musicians stare upwards and I move into the next room following more sounds of jazz and easy vibrations into the front living room watching collaboration erupt from the night sky. I’m thinking of nothing other than this mansion is a powerhouse with so much culture it overflows into the alleyways and there’s so much color and psychedelic aspirations and people just finding their oneness, I’m a poet and I can’t think straight following the upright bass and beat of the drums. There’s drunk in the room and then there’s dream and these people frolic between the outer realms of existence and the things that make the creative being full (flow).

Advertisement

Poetry Tour, update #2

  

I started out this trip with one of my haikus:

The sand turning pink 

like the desert sun 

setting into the mountains

tattooed on the back of my hand as a sigil in the form of an arrow pointing forward, though the artist’s intention was for it to point inward. Over the week it has served its purpose guiding me forward on the road with the necessary flow to get me there, and then it gradually faded leaving me to turn to my own personal magic and power to stay afloat. I typewrite poetry on the street for interested tourists and fellow travelers and read it at night to small gatherings in bars and living rooms, exchanging my dream labors for donated currency and couches to sleep upon. Without my feet tethered down to any one location I find myself adrift through a sea of various characters and personalities all revealing themselves to me through conversations on dreams and a sharing of self revelations. We examine the human mystery and aspire to the occult. Running in the same circles, it was only a matter of time before we stumbled into each other’s present moment. And here I am, I have gotten to the point in the trip where new faces appear familiar, reminding me sometimes of those I know from home, and we exchange dialogue as if we have known each other for a long time finding comfort in each other’s company. There is no end to this joy of meeting strangers I know. All this and I continue with the same resolve, a journey forward with the spring rain clouds pummeling the increasingly green southeastern terrain under my feet, thunder clapping at my back, a knapsack strung over my shoulders, and that beauty of the muse frequenting my conscious mind and perhaps awakening inside my heart the further out I go. Actually, I’ve caught glimpses of her now getting ever closer, hanging around the outer edge of each audience, smiling and nodding her head as I speak her dedication, snapping her fingers to my haikus, and laughing as the whole room fills with wild wolves howling out her icaros mantra, “Hoooowwww? Ow! Ow! Owww! Hoooowww!!!” 

I figure if I keep it going, it won’t be too long before she meets me on this country’s other side. And when I find her there, I will lie down a humble mountain perfectly glad to have the fortune to be here now and breathing alive.

Spring Poetry Tour, update #1

 

Last night, I read in Richmond as the rain poured outside with the essence of love-making, flooding the streets with cool natural air and cherry blossoms floating in these newborn streams.

One woman wrote my words on her legs and arms in permanent ink as I read aloud and the calligraphy smeared and splattered across the canvas of her skin as she tried to keep pace with my voice. I had to rouse my audience out of the dream space I had crafted for them when I finished. I sold dream catchers and mixtapes and people talked about how my writing style reminded them of their own painting process.

In DC I led an entire living room of strangers in howling at the mother moon. It happened spontaneously out of a reading of a short story titled, “howling at the moon in SF”. The second time that happened this tour. There was a collaboration between myself and a dancer and a bassist. Together we made the sun rise. A living room with a magical unicorn and an interpretive play, with 70 or 80 concert goers all squeezed in so tight some people stood outside and looked through the windows, even I felt like I was dreaming.

I find I’ve been very collaborative lately, more so perhaps than ever before. A woman told me of this film she’s been working on, a play that takes place inside her vagina and she asked me to be a part of it. She’ll use green screens and other effects to make a stage out of her sex for the performances to take place within. Imagine that…a unicorn playing trumpet in the entryway to the womb. I can’t make this stuff up. A friend gave two pieces of orgonite he made, one for my cellphone and one for my heart and I also got a piece of Egyptian Quartz. And now I’m driving to North Carolina listening to mountain music and feeling more awake, the greener it gets.

 

Haiku Generator by Marshall James Kavanaugh and Brian McLendon

The Haiku Generator is a collaboration between myself and programmer/general-all-around wizard, Brian McLendon. I wrote the words and he wrote the code. Together we created an application that randomly combines my phrases in hundreds of different variations, creating some really beautiful haikus for your enjoyment. This is Version 1.0 and there are sure to be new installments in the future, some with graphic and visual content. In an internet era, this seems like a fun way to publish one’s work.

TRY IT OUT, HERE.