A Notebook – Since 2007
The song he sang bang bang
wronged his world in ruin.
The song he sang rang rang
in a public call box.
No one by picked it up
to hear his sad sack tale.
Who does not doubt
the flood zone maps,
the flow of the fire line?
One in trees, one underground.
One flies to the sky.
One climbs to a fallout shelter.
One portrays, one predicts.
In two camps the singers roam.
The songs below go gong,
in the trees so tinkle.
One pulls down, one pulls up.
One rises green, one drops red.
Near the end
his spindle
did him in
narrowing
down maelstrom
open mouthed
carnival
amuser
waits upon.
I dig it
he sd as
a dude does
no shovel
held his hands
one foot on
his barstool
warbling suds
next to us.
I rode into a fog, thin at first, the coolness refreshing, but visibility continued to reduce. The ray from the lamp on my Vespa bounced back at me. Visibility soon reduced to virtually zero, and I pulled over to the side of the road and rolled into the trailer park at Bolsa Chica. No tent camping. No sleeping on the beach. I tuned the time machine on the Vespa to 1954, the fog lifted, and I saw a few firepits spitting light in the darkness down on Tin Can Beach. I found a place in the sand off the road where I could park the scooter and spread out my cowboy bedroll. Some crooner with a banjo sang folk songs in the distance. I covered myself with my space blanket and fell asleep to Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene,” this crooner’s notion to swim out into the ocean and drown.
“Tin Can Beach” is episode 46 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.
She bops down to the beach to dance
in the sand by the water the seaweed
brittle and he trips aback and nearly falls
like the drunken sailor in the shanty
“Ho! No! Thar she blows!”
She desires to dance politely
he wants to throw the bottle
into the waves they bouncing
round two junks in the vessel
carried away in a rash riptide
With a message for the great white
whale they glide over the stonefish
ease through a fluther of box jellies
the moon full but the night not fair
the music stops the beach empties
He awakes in the bottle rolling in the ripples
with her sound asleep soft nipples
in the warm sand above the water line
calm and sober like the walrus
angel watching over you
What shall we do with a drunken surfer
who dreams full of fishes seaweed wrack
brack Saltwort Ale and other foolishness
who never caught a fish nor wave enough
to feed his wife out combing the beach
The bed cuts in two below
the double hung window
a winged grass summer
recruited fellow enters
follows hollows spends
the sun day in tiered
bell bottom cuffs.
The light suspended night
emerges sounds now audible
flushes waterflow distances
scratched glasses niblings
windowsill paint flakes
scent trail antennae erect.
Crawling to the bed
an 18 wheelerlegger
seen from 8 miles high
climbing the Grapevine
downshifting in the heat.
Slithers up the sheet
the fan worrying wakes
you just in time to see it
climb across the bed
to my side where
you let me sleep.
Welcome to Delete
City Without a Past
Population: Zero.
Your drive thru
will be deleted
upon Exit.
But the place is bustling
with buskers and hawkers
walkers and tricksters,
Bills and Hanks,
Waynes and Millys,
Saras and Dolittles,
venues to eat, drink,
shop til you drop, but
No Accumulating.
Tune to KDEL
for the latest news & weather
from Josh the Whisperer.
You are now leaving
Delete City
Come Back Soon!
Your visit
has been
deleted.
This year the 4th of July fizzles
like the silverfish on the floor
of the black and white cassock
closet in the church up the hill
through Hilltop Park in the dark
walk thru ocean arch morning.
This year, 2020, I recall and recall:
and the fish dash
as we rush
from the Sacristy
to the Service,
the altar pickled
in red, green, and blue.
We can’t know how much or what we’ve forgotten,
and where we are certain we remember we might
be mistaken; thus the value of the still life which
fixes or remedies one of the problems of our time.
After all, I really don’t recall
if she said BANANA YELLOW SUNRISE
or YELLOW BANANA SUNRISE
or SUNRISE, or SUNSHINE.
What I remember is that I got one wrong.
So I was still in the game, so to say,
if you want to look on the bright side.
He turns to an empty
whiskey barrel,
wondering if there is life
on the red planet,
or under the Venus cloud cover,
or inside her
granny panties.
He reaches for his watering can,
always a few drops to go,
dribbles a few words
of too late love.
They sit across the bar
from one another,
smiling back and forth.
The water runs out his mouth,
over his lips,
and down his chin,
his clear-cut neck,
a waterfall of love’s
last cleaning.
Hey Joe, where you going all tangled up in blue?
Gonna change my attitude, walk on down the avenue
Fly away on a magic carpet ride down to Graceland.
Goodbye, Joe
Hey Joe, what kind of mood you in with that cat-like grin?
I’m moving off the dark side of the moon
Going over to see Jerry Lewis at the Paradise.
Goodbye, Joe
Hey Joe, what’s that seaweed vine around your neck?
After months at sea I washed up on a beach
Now I’m drinking water from a coconut cup.
Goodbye, Joe
Hey Joe, who you seeing, hanging out with these days?
When the going gets tough, the tough get lonely, that’s what she said to me.
Gonna put on a tie and suit up for a career in the red dust.
Goodbye, Joe
Hey Joe, where you going with that book in your hand?
This here book is Penina’s Letters.
Going down to the water and toss the whole book off the jetty at D&W.
Goodbye, Joe
Hey Joe, why do you sing songs when we know you can’t sing?
This is my song to the world that’s always singing to me.
I’m taking voice lessons from a locomotive trapped in a tree.
Goodbye, Joe
Hey Joe, what’s that in your DNA?
Trains, uniforms, wheeled and track vehicles
Off the rack guitars and SWR surf films.
Goodbye, Joe
Hey Joe, been down to the cathedral lately?
You don’t need a church to pray.
Jesus said, two of you gathered in his name,
and he’ll take you home, he’ll take you home.
I’ll be performing “Goodbye, Joe” from the JoeZone, live at 5 (PST), tomorrow, Sat Jun 6, on Instagram: @joe.linker
Two riders were approaching
on hogs and wearing leather.
“Let’s stop here,” said one to the other,
“for a cool drinking beer.”
They passed the time on songs
that ofttimes rhymed.
On the trail or in the big city.
They parked the hogs in the gutter.
At the bar the one he uttered,
“What’s that you got in the vat?”
“Saltwort Ale,” the barkeep did tell,
combing his beard with a hand.
“Two lights for us, my friend,
the day grows warm and thin,
the dust is finding its corners,
the dogs want shade and water.”
“No light here,” the barkeep says,
“and we don’t serve no rhymesters.”
“But we are the two riders,
two riders who were approaching.”
“This here’s a craft brew pub,
not some seedy tavern.
Take your hogs and dogs across the tracks,
go see John Wesley’s mother.”
The two riders went back to riding.
On the trail where we last heard their cry,
they were still approaching.
Two riders were approaching.
“Yippi-yi-yo,
yippie-ki-yay,
we’re gonna go
our own way.”
Yippi-yi-yo,
yippie-ki-yay,
we’re gonna go
our own way.”
“Two Riders Were Approaching” is a song I wrote and performed on my show “Live at 5 from the JoeZone” on Instagram on Saturday, May 9. I used the chord progression Am Dm E7 Am. I changed a few words and lines here, and I discarded here a few of the lines sung live, as follows:
“…where the hodads hang their hats”;
“The hogs are hot and tired”;
“I don’t care if you’re the four horses of the apocalypse.”
If I ever play “Two Riders” again, I’ll probably change it some more.
Meantime, tune in to Live at 5 from the JoeZone Saturday nights (PST), a pandemic quarantine social distancing live video hour (or less) of music, talk, stories, and such to help pass the time and ease the mind.
I wrote this song, as I explained on “Live at 5,” to celebrate the latest Bob Dylan recordings, his first with all original songs in eight years. The title of my song, “Two Riders Were Approaching,” is the penultimate line in the Dylan song “All Along the Watchtower.” As I asked my audience, “Have you ever wondered what happened to those two riders?”
Photo: Pic I took of a photo at the Oregon Historical Society “Barley, Barrels, Bottles, and Brews” exhibit in 2019: two musicians and a bartender at the Cowdell Saloon in Antelope, Oregon, 1913.
The Coming of the Toads 