The Goastt, Etc.

By Archie Von Rilke

Dateline: Louisville, KY, 6/21/14

It wasn't the most awesome concert experience I've been to, although one of the opening bands blew me away with their precision and professionalism.   The first band, sad to say, was a throwaway, a power trio of dirty hippies dressed like Pigpen, (think dirty cowboy hats, greasy jeans, and flannels) playing raunchy psychedelia...not much to report there, but they did have nice guitars, as compared to me (a shitty ol’ Gretsch with electrical problems, a borrowed Telecaster and a borrowed Breedlove C350) but sounded only slightly better then when Matt Atkins and I play.

Except between acts I saw and briefly met the man, Sean Lennon.  I’d read and seen his interviews, and never really knowing his music, invested a lot of preconcert time listening to his new album, Midnight Sun, and two previous albums, La Carotte Bleue and Friendly Fire.   His latest albums are with his well-practiced band, The GOASTT.  He was a nice guy.  Obviously exhausted but kind, graceful, honest.  That’s what I got for the handshake and my mild intrustion into Mr. Lennnon’s life as a working musician.

 As usual for these types of venues, there was lots of strong beer and the legendary Zanzabar Pizza... Hot out on the patio, broiling inside with all the human traffic:  die hard Beatles fans, lots of indie rockers, barflies, frat boys, and jocks from UL.  Tattoos galore.  A typical midwestern local music venue:  you can find these types of bars all the way fron Lexington to Dayton:  a small stage, a long bar, in a sketchy neighborhood.  I guess what might bother Lennon bothered me.  All the Beatle fans expecting the second coming.  I wanted to be amused and actually learn from this dude, his music, his way of playing.

 

In the middle of things, The most amazing band by far was the Richie White Orchestra, fronted by Cesar Padilla, with some help from Lydia Lunch.  Hard, punky, prog, driving and loud and mesmerizing.   Great songs like "Marlboro County" and "I Be Michael"...the best "local band" I've seen in ages. I don't wanna talk the band up too much here, but check them out on Facebook if you wish.  I also met Cesar during the break and he was puro superpadre tambien.

*            *           *            *          *

When The GOASTT went on stage in a quiet and breathless moment, they started into their new album without as much as blink...Lennon's and Muhl's vocal work and the sheer drive of the band pushed the audience right up to the sonic wall, producing near replicas from the album, Midnight Sun.  The space was small and crowded and noisy with not the best sound, yet they rocked it.    There were small jokes in between, a contest to identify an old Patsy Cline song,  and weird asides to Paul Getty--the subject of of the band's most interesting and sardonic songs.  I was wishing he'd do more from La Carotte Bleue, such as "2012," or early stuff from Friendly Fire, at least to cut back on the heavy intellectual psychedelics he offered.   I left with admiration, and was stunned by the energy of the band and their tight sound,  but I had some hard questions:  Why was the Richie White Orchestra so f'n good?   Why is any local music scene so rich with veritable unknowns?  I remembered I’d be playing in late July in a “jam band” that did full live renditions of THE LAST WALTZ.  As a poet, I’ve read for five for 500.  Swirling in my brain, the importance of Lennon’s work in the light of the singer/songwriter movement that took from American poetry its punch and its relevance. Shit.  I’d die to have that kind of talent as a lyricist.   What I really wanted to do.   What is the strength and depth of Lennon's oeuvre?  Is it "all too much?"  After listening to his early sentimental work, on Friendly Fire, can I find a balance between that and his new heavy, driving, symbolic, allegoric and metaphoric psychedelic explorations of our culture?

I have to admit I like sentimentality and insist that my students risk it in the stories and poems they write.  Sure it can be overdone and become maudlin or cloying.  But the brief exposure of the human soul, the artist's soul, is worth it.  I briefly felt that when I shook Mr. Lennon's hand.  I hear it in his songs, and sensed that, when he was on stage, even in that small hot tight venue, for all the genius of his songs, the deep and clever lyrics, the chord progressions so affirmative and revelatory.  I know there are some things any son cannot deny his father.  As undeniable as when my father's 84 year old sister says I walk, talk, act, and look just like my long lost father.

As Bob Seger said, the songs reach you at the end of evening, there in the hotel room, and you replay what you saw in your head until you sleep.  Dayton's a long way home and your travel has just begun.  The GOASTT cd?  It sits in a stack with all your faves on the back seat while the Replacements drive you home.

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Things in Light Poetry Series 2014: The Cast and Crew

The Things in Light Poetry Series continues to be a totally bitchin' phenomena; readers dig the hell out it. As we sift through submissions in order to bring you the best in new work from humanity's poetic representatives, we thought tonight's post should be a celebration of the amazing work we've already received. With that in mind, here are two new poems each by Ardith Brown and Albino Carrillo.

"Why this combination?" one might well ask. Well, as our managing editor explains it, the poets mentioned above and published below all had the same Shakespeare class together at UNM as undergrads. Our managing editor was there, too. The group of them performed a scene from Othello as an alternative to writing a midterm essay for the notoriously rigorous professor MacPherson. Those were halcyon days, a place to begin thinking about the power of words.

Tomorrow we begin the second chapter of the 2014 series with the poetry of Rebecca Aronson. Stay tuned.

Snake Farm

by Ardith Brown

Off an alley near the University

the dealer's younger brother says

my name sounds like a clipper

ship sailing away from the desert.   

He says Albuquerque needs more

boats, and I pretend to laugh when

he offers me a bump. His cocaine

eyes, wild and glassy-green, flitter

and pierce me like two snake fangs.

He grabs the twenty dollar bill

rolled up near the ashtray, licking

his tongue to rid his sticky

mouth of loose tobacco.

I am not the only girl surrounded

by snakes. Posters of boas adorn

airbrushed blonds, their huge breasts

weighing down the beige wallpaper.

Harley models writhe, their serpentine

guile strangled by itchy scales on waxy

lipstick smiles. Do you like snakes,

the dealer sneers as his brother

notices my brand new tan line.

He says I look sexy in turquoise.

I could run you up, if you want,

says the dealer on my next visit,

pointing toward a coiled up rubber

band next to his nudie magazines.

Instead I ask about the silver chopper

in the parched yard.  A large pit bull

is barking--its red eyes mad and bright--

at the new addition in his dusty,

weed-filled lot. The brother yells

shut up and asks if I want to ride.

Birds, San Antonio, 1992
by Ardith Brown

The wedding was not the apocalypse she imagined.  

Endtime, dystopia--call it what you will, but her dress

did not explode or combust. Late October was still hot in Texas.

Sweating through itchy lace, she could barely stand up for the vodka.

A marching band and jet fighters competed for the minister's voice,

but she wasn't interested in the Bible.  It was mostly exposition;  

anyway, she didn't quite believe. All the crystal and glitter

reminded her of discotheques on LSD, of tragic infernos,

sad Victorian women trapped in a muted Renoir.

She thought it unwise to get drunk at weddings,

but it was eighty degrees and the pressure was outrageous.

Booze wasn't sufficient to still the jackhammers fragmenting

her head; instead, she focused on the Virgin of Guadalupe

surrounded by roses and pink aura. Unusual to feel so totally clean.  

There would be friends and children, death and monsters,

days of confusion and depression, yet God would lower

her down soon, crush the hibiscus petals beneath her feet.

She wished for great flocks of grackles, their iridescent

bodies, black and shiny, whistling sharply to settle, settle.

But there were no birds. Silence wrecked her flight.  

Grass sparkled, but she wanted to forget the lawn,

how this night softened her own feathers, clipped her wings.

Married. Until today, time had worked against her--

distorted biological clocks. Grandmothers and aunts

hovered over the cake; small children danced.  

Odors of perfume and coffee smelled of hospitals

and unbearable civilization.  Now the bridesmaids

were poised, squirrels twitching, heart rates heightened,

each vying to catch the throwaway bouquet.

Momentarily she leaned toward the coast,

toward Corpus Christi and Galveston,

slouching a gray posture past the border all the way

down to the Gulf of Mexico where the water opened up,

a whale's mouth swallowing her delight.  Smells of salt

corrupted the reception, and out on the beaches the hotel lights

twinkled and blinked, calling her like diamonds on a neckline.

I lost hope.

I wanted do die right there.

I wanted to swim away and laugh,

an atheist at the coming of the Lord.

***

You Don't

by Albino Carrillo

You don't
Listen to the
Darkness eating
Me alive.  When
My bones shake
In the night.  When
The terror of my own
Death echoes like
A police baton
On my skull.  Even
The sun knows
My pain, why don't
You.  The easiest
Task is falling
Away into the
Antigravity that'll
Spin me away
Like a lousy planet.
The most difficult
Being just the
Utterance of one
Word.  Whether
I can dance
I'm the morning.

On the Death of Childhood Friends

by Albino Carrillo

There was one time we were all
Gathered around a campfire
In the sandias, when it used to rain
And march was cold still in the lower
Passes between the high desert
And the ponderosa forests.

Chris was there, and Darrell-
We'd walked up with a keg
Of beer, made a fire in a
Dried out riverbed.  You
Never think you'll die
Then, when the class

Has gone away and
All you have to do is climb.
I think of Kenneth next,
Singing to Wagner
As he swung between
Love-boys, declaring

That even the pennies
On his eyes should be
Melted down when
The time came.  When
His brain stopped working
One day on stage

We He knew he'd be gone--
So afterwards we feasted
With money he left us--
Besides the food and
Booze, he left us each
A bottle of morphine

Tablets, dilaudid, and Xanax
To play with.
His parents told
Us they loved us for
Him, and only in death
Accepted that he was gay.

If you think
I have more to stay, listen--
Times I've been to
Funerals an carried caskets
Put money in baskets
And taken the Host.  Which

Is eating a part that
Reminds you most of death,
What's next.  Then there was
Countdown-- a prelude to what
Comes next besides
The lazy sun who knows its

Turn day after day without
Completion.  I give to you
The ultimate quantum
Of days:  hallway visits
Those transient times

When bells are really
Ringing outside, in the spring.

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Things in Light Poetry Series 2013: Albino Carrillo

The fourth installment of TiL's 2013 Poetry Series features a poem by New Mexico expat and lo mas chingon Albino Carrillo.

STRUCTURES AND HABITATS

1. Stretching in the Lightning Storm

This morning it rained as I Wrote

a world into your life of hillside,

deep thickets of Columbine.

The storm moved in; I wrote to ease

my entrance into the Weather, and later

slid along city streets

with big drops soaking my jacket,

the Mexican student who smiled

at me through her umbrella.

O friend who does not leave me abandoned,

I am thinking of you as the perfect

stranger who wants my

odd assortments of poems to read at moments

when, undressing, we realize

windows and shutters are moving with the grace of air.

Tonight, slow to admit to love or boredom,

I am thinking of 

the mysterious animal that waits

beyond my headlights when I drive

through the southwest, the sky

darkened by the absence of moon.

  

2. Church of Empty Fields

Where I write this

the land is epistle yellow.

I dreamt readily about it

under rain Clouds, sleeping near Cerrilìos.

That night

there was a sense I would disappear:

the western rhetoric of pine ceilings,

the small blue-bellied lizards

in the honeysuckle,

they’d leave with the rain.

Before I loved you that night

I dragged a dry stump

away from a clearing,

the chain cutting into my hands.

Somewhere along these lines, again waiting,

is the swiftness of your gesture

dragging the emerald heart to rest.

3. Centuries of Music

The planting was late,

taking place in June. The music

wrapped the room

like a Navajo blanket.

You'd chosen the peppers carefully-

deep red pods to cook during winter.

Only days before

I burned dried Russian thistle,

crab-grass and pale 

branches in the dark yard

where I’d set-up my telescope at night.

The distance created in the flames

was the cold elm covered in hoarfrost.

It beat me one January. June was late,

music took the place of air.

***

Albino Carrillo, a sixth generation native New Mexican, received a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Arizona State University in 1993, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of New Mexico in 1986. He has published poetry in many literary journals, including The Antioch Review, Puerto Del Sol, Blue Mesa Review, CALIBAN, The South Dakota Review, Columbia: A Journal of Art and Literature, Sou'Wester, and World Order. Carrillo's poems are anthologized in both Library Bound: A Saratoga Anthology (Saratoga Springs Library Press, 1996), and The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007). Carrillo's book of poems is In the City of Smoking Mirrors (University of Arizona Press, 2004). Before teaching at the University of Dayton, Carrillo taught in the English Department at the University of Minnesota, and at Union College of New York, where he held a Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Carrillo is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

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