Five prose/poem exccerpts from Mason Dixon Line Blues.

 Excerpts FROM MASON DIXON LINE BLUES (2013)

Over January 10th and 11th I was in Pennsylvania playing two shows in Twilight Memories.  A whole lot of memories came back when visiting the old neighborhood in West Philadelphia...even though it's been only two years....I wrote a book of sorts when living there on Buckingham Place.  Here are five prose/poem excerpts.   Someday I will do something with all these writings.  A lot of cemetery poems---one finds a foreign past and the so-called present.  These are all drafts and not finished quite.

Poem Among Tombstones Within Woodland Cemetery Upon Schuylkill River

I’m existence among

T o m b s t o n e s

Crows in cherry blossoms. Crows caw among cherry blossoms. darken sooty spots.                             REminders of the industrial revolution's pendulum past

even the dog taunts the root.  reduced back into the lure of the fantasy the rock

                        the ether the concrete nonexistent,

someone is blaring whose biology?

            YesterdaY, he noticed a back tooth upon the right side of the mouth

                        Has a crack.  The crack is not yet,

Painful, yet.

A Philadelphia MemorY

The cherry blossoms

On bucking hammer street were all photocopies of blurry medical textbooks involving

Exploded hearts.

Rain kept. Rain kept up.  They wouldn’t take me at the community Health center.  I had to live in the basement with my wife-- the house of two witches, mostly good, held

RoooST, roosT

            Rain kept rain kept Up.  So did the cold weather weathering and IT was supposed to be jiffY spring that never quite sprung.  I got sick. Real sick.  MostLy the physicaL body this time.  Though the brain did get a touch of the sickness.  I got so sick I could not drinK no whiskeY anymore.

I got confused and confiscated into the delusion.  What delusion?

           

Well it called Mortician jig hip thrust thump-- a new crazy dance sweeping the nation.  You know by the waY Dick Clark got his starT not that far far away.

I remember all this cause I left Filthidelphia--reading a Chinese poetry book called

Chinese Love Lyrics.

I barely visited China Town once during my Philadelphia Sojourn.

            When I read words back, not dependent if I wrote them or not, tha words change--they shape shift--literal and metaphysical

                        ---a trickster word thar

                                    I often will be aware of this as the Escapades--so I go back and will read it again.

Is this like memories?

Mysticism recollected-- then attempt at Public Medical Health Care, Philadelphia

YoU can dream mysticism when yer bodY is sick.  This I aligned well.

The last ghost creation’s white comedy of becoming lost.  Compromised sister again. 

Great fiery rain upon silver panes.  Dark deaths.

Bow woven front business North.

            Death path where the cherry blossom trees have been axed down.         Amnesia stones.

Decrying shadow--the dwelling vice a ROOT                ROLLING LINE SHADOW.

After eternal and after body truth.         

                        Sinister moon congregates!  I am socked speechless with horrific blows.

Dark to darkness.

            The story ask God questions.

I am at Health District five trying to get medical help.  The nurse won’t believe my symptoms.  She don’t believe who I am, who I say I am, neither do three clerks drunk on the high of social work.  Somber or Sober?  Queen blithe Bitch of the security guards.   I watch two episodes of The Jeffersons on the television In fatigue.  Some numbers are called.  The numbers apply to separate flesh.  Each separation of flesh is seeking some kind of laboratory work.//tests.

            I am told I cannot be helped with any medical care.  I storm out in anger fermented with body sickly into pale Philly morning and destroy a fallen tree limb in the courtyard.  I am deep asleep at noon.

Oakland Cemetery PA

Between a hammer and a whisper

I walked up hill--the small hill within the confines of the Pennsylvania cemetery. North East Philadelphia.  I walked the overgrown path that carriages used to roll with wooden wheels.  I walked through thorns --I had to break some thorns and kept walking.  I had to get caught up in some thorns.

I got down on my knees and prayed in the central axis I got down on my knees and prayed in the circle formed by four naked swaying bone trees.  I prayed to tha lord, even though lord don’t mean lord.

I found car parts in the woods, though no full car.  My lover found a hammer buried deep in the dirt road.

Philadelphia Stone

STONE.  The stone lettering.  The stone lettering can take you aback with stern declamation.  The letters make a worn phrase. Through the darkness to the light was inscribed in late nineteenth century lettering.  The triumphant stone angel blackened by acid rain and ancient factory soot.  The monument overlooking the Schuylkill River.  Where the bend occurs.

SKULL KILLS--

I keep finding dead snakes in this cemetery. Small serpents. Green grayish serpentine plurals.  A whole (dead) nest of them neath a large rock.  One among the crumbling leaves that were turning into dust.  The whole earth turns into dust.

Woodland cemetery.  A paradise garden to safe keep the dead and bring the living , devoutly together in life’s interactive. 

I place a dead snake upon one tombstone overlooking the river.   I then find one alive neath the leaves.  I prod the serpentine with a stick and give up out of boredom and or mercy.  I had a different mind that day.  Those days.  The mind was in disorder as well as the heart.  The heart disorderly into contempt and simplifications.

I forgot all praise.  I praise the blue sky and the streaks of sun shimmering the cold marble monuments in late winter or early spring.  Winter and spring keep on becoming the same here.

An older man and younger woman are painting the mansion’s columns white.  A new coat for the change of seasonal.  The decay is concealed.  One supposes.

Close proximity to the front burial ground gates.---There is an old liquor bottle that has human claws floating in a liquid that could be liquor or formaldehyde.  A paper is a tunnel inside with explanations in hand writing.  Message in the bottle neath the old Elm.  When you hold the bottle up to the light and try to read the note you can easily discern the word GOD.  

 The prostitute perceives a Ghost Man

I am the ghost that drifts past the soliciting prostitute.

A prostitute with flop shoe sandals on North Philadelphia summer after midnight I’m lost--lost in lost ness my lover just dumped me out of my grandfather’s old white ford truck and drove away drunk in the night  I am also drunk yet heightened by fear and terror that has shivered into the hot sweats of a psychotic bliss state of survival--4four young pimps in long t-shirts are emerging out of the dark park.

I walk by and do not even glance at the woman who is doing the seduction dance in all probabilities very poorly and I will not be a part of her wheel of fortune tonight as I have sent wild prayers silently expounding into the hot trickery infested atmosphere---

She is stomping her plastic sandals behind me on the concrete I expect words yet I hear no words I clutch my knife in right pocket knife extended I know those young pimps emerging out of the dark park are going to converge with her--

She is stamping her plastic sandals dollar store sandals on the cracked pavement--I wont’ fuck her==I won’t pay money to fuck her--I don’t want to wait for the 4four young pimps emerging out of the dark park who are looking to make money out of this ho.

I sing my own gospel songs bout how the devil and god are both gonna arrive from up and down and kill us all--I make the divine feel my sparse bleak spark of desperation---I am left alone and I continue alone lost in North somewhere Philadelphia tunneling deeper into my blackhole of lostness and condemnation (s).

Summer is arriving at another end.  This is my 33 summer in the outside realm.  My thirty fourth if one counts the time served in the womb before swimming through the water to that odd light that jettisons one into this physical realm to interact with the physical realm.

…………the problem is always focusing and completing anxiety dread what are these nervous twitching?

Four Poems from ANathema Blues drafts 4FOUR and 5FIVE

GREEN GRIEF (anathema blues draft four)

StaY longer stranger she never spoke

He was sewed shut with sloss iron like a chunk of time and high on shards
---Locked inside the outside of the oak dooR

never saw the money,--Over Yonder ouT in tha Street
hallucinating the heartbeat of mountains ---

shame is mY religion---I shall not be moved

witchblade knife and I round the corner

skip it across green moonlight.
I never lost one minute

Empathy

I like chicken language. Slanted sharp Farm tools---Smell of Autumn Hay

The sudden clearing when you reach the river

Train roar on the trestle over the Coosa
River suffering  ecstatic confusion of a 100 year flood

your eyes already sleeping in the valley,
and the dark haired woman with a nervous cough---
and I'm from the south,
sing the darkest doodle

woodpecker pecks till he gets his fill,---LOUD AS FUCK

I go and sing a new song for each room. EverY room has a lonely Elvis ghost crooning Moody Blue

I Learn from Mr. Presley to go and to sing to all them ghosts I do not know:  

 Dog daYs (anathema blues draft four)

Drove my black truck down to tha Coosa river when tha engine went broke—I thought I was in a coffin—I Set tha motherfuck on fiRe--

Birds of my secret childhood thought the sun was going up---

In the next chapter trouble went down.  Tha road went wrong like a three legged dog with rabies----

Dry bones under a pardon’s scalding violin...you own the inside of death---

Dark water under dark water where the light breathes brightly dark you move those mountains while I rambled river songs ---

I kill tha motherfucking moon and don't you forget that!? I learned this on the playground---I learned it from a blue sapphire preacher who got killed crossing the afternoon street.---I learned it whiskey eyed red in shame---

We will kill the old red rooster---Sister, every GodDamN dog sure must have his day  ---

DOG daYs (anathema blues draft five)

Drove my black Ford down to tha Coosa river when tha engine went broke—I thought I was in a coffin---

—I Set tha motherfuck on fiRe--

Sparrows of my secret childhood thought the sun was going up---warble whacking in tha outta pLacE MagnoLia trees---

In the next chapter of the weekly television series trouble sure went down. 

Tha road went wrong like a three legged dog with rabies----

Dry bones under a pardon’s scalding violin...you own the inside of death---

Dark water under dark water breaching dark murk water where  light breathes fierce lightning brightly till gaping dark roots deeply sinister.

You move those mountains while I rambled river songs ---HARK AXE HAPPENSTANCE

I kill tha motherfucking moon and don't you forget that!? I learned this on the playground---I learned it from a blue sapphire preacher who got killed crossing the afternoon street.---I learned it whiskey eyed red in shame---

We will kill the old red rooster---Sister, every GodDamN dog sure must have his day  ---

Blackout mirror skY ---reflections plum red fires--------------------

THree divergent drafts of the poem Daughter, Anathema Blues

DIVERGING DAUGHTERS

Here are three divergent versions of the poem Daughter from Anathema Blues.  This is obvious mythos storytelling as I have no daughters in the biological sense. The father is a traveler from a night of a new moon.  The night of a new moon is the most shadowed heavy night.

 I recall the boat and water imagery sources from the pond at the Black House/Black Castle, Stone Mountain, Georgia from 2005-2008 autumns. 

THe unicorn image is all ambiguous sexual mythos.  The peacock imagery sources from the memories of seeing and photographing real live peacocks in a Louisville Kentucky Cemetery way back in 2003ish...? 

The language is flowery and exaggerated into fantastic stupidity.  Shape shifting into birds goes contra against the mythic crypto nonsense of the medieval unicorn. 

THe masculine rhinoceros feminized into the slinky feminine of the horse with a phallic horn. 

The natural runs contra and friction against the fantastical reaches/wretches of the unicorn.

The narrator drifting into sleep within the first two versions reveals a lack of imagination--a real lousy excuse for the fantastical to conveniently manifest.

I agree and disagree with all these comments.  This poem may not even make the bound version of the book.

ANy poem is my daughter, son or childhood.

The photographs source from the Proctor lost photograph archive.  I believe the girl is a great great Aunt who passed away unfortunately around the age of 11 or 12 years old.  The man in the fotograph is her father.  He was an officer in the Rome, Georgia Police Department.

My daughteR (Anathema Blues Draft II)

When I go to sleep. When I drift to sleep. ThaT weird TimE I must feel vital in LifE… My daughter shape shifts into a unicorn.  My beloved mutilates into a unicorn. 

My daughter is my wife.  My beloved mutilates and untwines into a peacock……into a screech owL.  

When I fall hard into my death bed, my daughter leaves our small old farmhouse through the backdoor and the back porch screen door slams and daughter walks into the rain

my daughter is the water, boat beating with rain----

Her spectacle Spectacular spector ravishing, her promenading toward us with pale face straining eyes, She was rising into slumber sexualizing the various chorusing morning choirs and the cry of warning and forget-me-not came into his filled with water and the directions that were futile---

My daughteR (ANathema Blues Draft III)

When I drift to sleep. ThaT only TimE I must feel vital in LifE… My daughter shape shifts into a unicorn.  My beloved mutilates into a unicorn.

My daughter is my wife.  My beloved mutilates and untwines into a peacock--

When I fall hard into my death bed, my daughter leaves our small old farmhouse through the backdoor and the back porch screen door slams and daughter walks into the milky rain

my daughter is the water, boat beating

I am the fishing boat full with rain and leaves.

DaughteR (Anathema Draft SIX)

My daughter shape shifts into a unicorn.  My beloved mutilates into a unicorn.  My daughter is my wife.  My beloved mutilates the un twining into a peacock

I recall a memory inside a Louisville, KentuckY graveyard--

When I fall hard into my death bed, my daughter leaves our small old farmhouse through the backdoor and the back porch screen door slams and daughter walks into the rain

My daughter is the water, boat beating

I am the fishing boat full-- with rain and autumn  bright crimson leaves

Field Upon Western Fringe (For Hunter Savoy Fortuna)

The following is a prose piece that is part of a collection that is dealing with my North East Experiences.  The book is comprised of journalistic entries, poems, travelogs and probable nonsensical tangents.  The book may or may not be called Pennsylvania Blues/Mason Dixon /Mason Dixie Line Blues.  the intent and form are lost in the spring sources.  The book meets somewhere between journalistic documentations melding into true imaginings/non truth imaginings.  Field on the Western Fringe explores the mystical currents flowing beneath a day outing at Cobb Creek Park, which is existent at the fringes of Western Philadelphia.  I believe where the creek crosses Baltimore Avenue forms one of Philly's city limits.  I could be wrong.  This prose started simple and got almost long winded.  This is a mini environs travelogue as well as spiritual dialogue of the events impressions that day.  Occasionally satirical and expressionistic, the piece is a story without a story and an allegory that is in pursuit of mutilated humanity.  Language often stacks too much upon each other and gets lost in metaphysical hoodoo that trespasses beyond black and white magic till perched on the edge of supernaturalist buffonery.  I spent this day grotesquely documented here with my good friend/sister Hunter Savoy and of course Jenny.  All events are true.  I do not understand why the dog skeleton punished me though.  Possibly I do though.

                                                    Recent drawing inspired by the Birch Tree Below

Field at the Western Fringe (For Hunter Savoy Fortuna)

Drifting through the germinating foliage of Cobb Park, western fringe of Philadelphia. Two women and one man.  We enter the canopy of trees- which forms a skeletal vault between us and the blue chalk blue sky.  We cross the creek by taking off our shoes.  The deepest part of our crossing only goes a little bit above the ankles.  My wife almost cuts her self on sunken garbage.

The creek flows and babbles a clarity of translucent darkness.

We walk upon the field that has sent spirits to suture the amnesia drunkenness of dreaming.  The physicality of the pastoral isolated engulfs us.  Look!  Here, the large encompassing field with the stark birch tree that haunts my imagination.  Sunbeams crash down unfettered with their luminous physics and life giving catastrophic. 

Drifting into adrift silences. Three souls who cast three ghost shadows. Drifty eyed, we wander till we drift into the dissipation of individual solitudes.  My sister plucks  yellow flowers.  She then climbs a broken rotted tree at the edge of the wood.  The tree falls.   The fall is silence.   My wife haunts the birch tree and finds an unknown animal bone nearby. I look for an entrance through the vine fortified forest then troll about where the trash has been honed into the pastoral landscape scrape.

I cross the 1920s or 1930s stone bridge upon the freeway.  I cross the creek alone upon stone, above.  Vehicles are flying by on death dealing car dealership wheels.  I walk against traffic. I walk against the body that is walking shape shifting into an elderly infirm gentleman lacking the gentle.   I veer immediately left on a path that follows a ridge above the creek.  You can smell the sewer that is dumping into the creek.  I soon discover the place where 4 months ago I found a weathered frigid dog skull.  Scanning eyes scan for scavenging.  I find other bones of the road kill dog.  The winter has bleached them well. 

Reality feels odd and clumsy.  I have left the girls back in the field.  The scenario feels like I have left the girls back in some ideal Eden nestled within the isolation of pure obscurities amongst this dirty old city.  Pastoral beauty in Philadelphia existent--a sodden fancy much rooted in the toxicity metropolitan soils.  I have enacted a breaking and entry into a sodden comedy dominated by a leering Rodney Dangerfield impersonator at a militant middle aged birthday party.  No pastoral amongst those bloated baby boomers sagging into bovine decline nursing home fanaticisms.   Speculation concurs I have left the pastoral with no good god damn reason.  I have traveled outside the bounds of dark and white magic into the realms of buffoonery.  Mysticism has gone astray into the shallow  equivalences of pornography.

I am a dirty fool rummaging and collecting scattered dried out bones that once assembled a canine.  I sure got Road kill Blues.  I get hog washed into a religious dialogue with the blues of road kill. The blues here of this mongrel dog is blue neon radiation. My troubled animal instincts cloistered in the cloudy sopping morose opaque of spiritual radiation poisoning.   The phantom ghost of the dog recognizes me as the thief that stole his bodily skull, back when nature was solemn beneath a January snow.  The ghost puts a sizzling curse upon.   I got rabies of the soul.  Confusions and vertigos contort.  When I return to the pastoral field, nausea seizes into visceral obdurate epilepsy.  I wretch disturbing the meditations of my wife.  I am vomiting the eggs consumed for break feast back upon the earth.  What leaves always returns, even with reluctance.

Yes, what leaves always returns, even if struck with reluctance.  What leaves will return into the violence of silences.

Otherness.  Oblique otherness.  The echoes of each ghost seemingly go unknown and are gone. Despite, the victory of salient silences existing amongst the biological blues, the temporal experience of existent subjective experiences expounds with the flash and flashiness of hopeful temporary.  Due course makes due course.

The ghosts, which have departed into their own individual drift return to be the casting silhouettes of the wandering souls upon this blessed pastoral.  The souls pronounce the promise of misinterpretation and return with lust to the seething seeking flesh.  Yes! Eventually, the eventualities of family communal familiar slowly surge when the collective blood lulls with mysterious tides.  Coagulation and the spontaneous combustion back into human flesh. Magnetizations summon the severance of solitude back into bundling kinetic actions.  The eventualities of convergence convene with accordance.  Each of us --are once and always fossilized echoes upon diverged peripheries that blood pouring etch  flowing back into each other.  We return backwardly into flesh manifest--accidental cowardice.

Evidence of mysteries find us on the return path.   We pass the rotting carcass of a white dog strayed into death. The white fur is like out of place textile carpet.  Speculation notates details.  We observe the uselessness of violence upon a corpse in the copse.  Drooling euphoric astonishment corrosively copulating with unfettered childhood,  must have inspired a couple a couple of kids to jettison a brick at the putrid corpse.  They don’t know the living can’t punish the dead.  Everyone gets a plethora of chances to become King fool amongst the mutilated orgy commencing through living life. However, a solid sordid lesson will be learnt and what gets learnt is simply stark in the absolute reaches.   The dead will often punish the living---Harshness-Relentless--Remote.

 Warily, we return toward grotesque pornographic montage called Filthidelphia.  Two young woman and one dull man.

The flowers my sister has gathered are offered in a ceremony later in the evening to my other sister.  I have forgotten anything.

by Matthew Pony Payroll Bones Proctor

Two more recent drawings capturing the aftermath energy of that day.