“History”
(This is one of the first poems I saw of Jim’s and I was impressed, I’m not sure we ever included it in any of our hard copy editions, it was a bear to try to format then and it’s worse in html….)
History
too long without a lover
You’ve been looking in the wrong direction
live in the moment
turn your heart to the sun
…..Jim Wellington ….( circa 1971? ) |
Let’s see if I can format this for Jim…
Sunday, July 27, 2014, 11:11 p.m.
—(trying to format poetry that was meant to have a visual impact as well as two voices that trade off- & I don’t think it worked here. I put it up in “Radio Free Earth News” and it worked there okay, here the tables I had to use are visibly outlined. I may have to edit that out in the settings…)
—(5:18 a.m. Monday, July 28, 2014: I edited the boxy stuff out of visual range by changing settings in the appearance/mantra settings area of the dashboard. Now it indents the first line in each table cell. —Um, I suppose it could be worse…)
—(5:34 a.m. Monday, July 28, 2014: The line spacing isn’t working right. But like I said in the previous edit note, it could be worse. When Jim wakes up he’ll probably say it’s okay to leave this as is. —Or— We can put this together in DreamWeaver, take a screen shot and upload that as the poem?) (Check back later… ?)
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Saturday, August 2nd, 2014.
((( We’ve been much better at posting this stuff at Radio Free Earth News than we have about copying it here. )))
((( I should add a run-down about who posted what & when, but I’m not sure we have that information when it is posted / added to a ‘page’ and not posted on the ‘posts’ page, where internal editing stuff keeps track of when something was posted. )))
{ Jim posted most of the following, I think, and complained about what a pain in the ‘dupah’ it was to keep the formatting right in a couple things: }
{ ———djo——— }
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Aerendel Magazine
from Hard Copy Issue #2
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Number 2 ( Volume 1 – Issue 2 ) |
(Summer 1996) |
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Aerendel Magazine
from Hard Copy Issue #4
(Back when I tried to be cute and call it “AERENDEL KUHL-tCHURAL REVIEW —
(( thinkin that would be the way an illiterate might try to spell ‘Cultural’? ))
and one of my friends asked me if I was a Nazi ?)
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( Summer 1997 – Autumn 1997 ) (Not in the order anything appeared in the Magazine)
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{ This was fun- the kind of Title page – explanation column you see in most magazines and this was our take on that: ———Jim }
AERENDEL KUHL-tCHURAL REVIEW
PUBLISHERThe Aerendel Creative Cooperative EDITOR IN CHIEFGod This Issue’s Managing EditorStanley Freeboingen This Issue’s Poetry EditorJim Wellington This Issue’s ‘Reality and Politics’ EditorTrouble D. Phoxx On-Line Editor( If we ever go ‘On-Line’ ) This Issue’s Fiction Editordj otterson Resident Psycho-CosmographerStanley Freeboingen Staff WritersTjum Dao |
The Aerendel Kuhl-Tchural Review is (or will try to continue to be) published every once in a while by the Aerendel Creative Co-operative Writer’s Workshop [with a Post Office Box address that we no longer pay for… in Milford, CT 06460,] Unless otherwise noted, the Entire Contents of this issue of the Aerendel Kuhl-Tchural Review is Copyrighted © 1997 by the Aerendel Creative Co-operative and in the name of Each Story’s, Poem’s or Article’s Author. All Rights are Reserved. The Suggested Donation for a copy of the ‘Kuhl-tChural Review’ has been suggested at “One or two bucks a copy” — Contributions ( if we ever cover expenses ) will be used to help struggling writers, authors and “other creative individuals” pay their bills and/or improve their standard of living. ) Subscription Rates have been suggested at a rate of ten dollars’ Donation for six issues. |
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Lost or Found?one blinding flash I’m frightened now part of me
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YOU NEVER LEARNED (or: Is This cinematic accuracy?){ Did they jail Columbus for treating ‘lowly natives’ almost as if they were equal to Spaniards (of ‘Noble Blood’) ? It appears the ‘powerful’ will always seek to destroy discredit and condemn to anonymity or public shame anyone whose ideas conflict with (and thereby threaten?) their ownI do not contest the notion that the (man) commissioned by Isabella had his flaws, neither do I argue this world is any better or worse than it might be had the Europeans never ‘discovered’ this un-lost continent they later renamed ‘America’ (unlike you I know I don’t have ‘God-like’ understanding of this mysterious and beautiful universe-)I do believe I had ancestors here before ol’ Christoforo argued the ’roundness’ of this sphere But- }“You never learned to speak my language yet demand perfection from my mastery of yours You say you believe in freedom and equality but, do you perceive ‘Nobility’? in the form of a selected few whose reflections remind you most nearly of your own image? dj otterson 30 june 1997 |
(more later, I have to go do something in the ‘real world’—–Jim)
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{{{ Adding to “Copied and Pasted from a Friend’s Site Because he asked me to save a copy of a poem I’d Liked” : }}
{{{{{ Aerendel Magazine was founded online by a friend I met in Ithaca, and refuses to fade away completely. Last weekend the founder emptied a storage unit his niece filled with stuff that had been stored in her step father’s barn after her step father set his home on fire and blew his own brains out, never quite got over the cancer death of his long time spouse. Going through the stuff in the storage unit, the magazine’s founder discovered stuff he’d written way the bleep back in the sixties, seventies, eighties an nineties. He believes some of it might be worth reading. }}}}}
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Tom Rush
(A Tribute To Tom Rush And Crazier, more Hope Filled Days / Daze)
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( This Is To Tom Rush /
But That’s Not A Title )
I’ve seen you reaching
to understand the feelings
of everyone around you,
like you thoughts yours didn’t matter,
you remind me
of the things I like best in people
People; we’ve known our share
(pass the wine friend)
we know that our heaviest burden
is that we care
too much for things
that never give us a second thought,
we’re soldiers in a war
to bring love to our friends
who fear it the most
have to admit it though,
we sure know how to live,
if livin is losin,
if livin is losin your soul
twenty times a day
(tied off with a crumpled bow
and tossed) at the feet of the living
whose dreams are bound to die
before their time
they’ll be back, Tom, the people
when their losing
brings them to the questions
we gave them answers for
when they were too young to ask,
when their breasts were new
and full of energy,
full of idealism
that told them
the world was theirs
they’ll drag their heals
and feel their tears
and wonder about dying,
the way we did,
before we saw them ready to fall
before we were ready
to fight all manner of gods
for their happieness,
to strain every muscle
in our hearts
to keep them from crying
pass the wine, Tom,
the waiting is on us,
empty as a corpse.
Jim Wellington (1971)
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(( I came home from work one morning, to an empty house. All my “hippy friends” and house mates had gotten up early to zoom off to New Haven to the farmers’ market.
I’d had a rough couple days, with a new friend named Richie, whose parents had kicked him out of their house- he’d scored some really bad acid and spent a couple hours puking his brains out in our reassuring bathroom.
-And a fifteen year old girl had wondered into the house, wide eyed and helpless, looking like somebody’s perfect daughter, flawless skin, beautiful eyes, thin young body wearing bell bottoms and soft suede shoes, a tight tee shirt of brown textured material with a wide cut between her hinted at breasts- the tee shirt held closed by criss crossed shoe laced leather. Long straight dark hair, innocent brown eyes. She was just barely hanging on to her sanity after some idiot had given her a first taste of Lysergic Acid Diethalimide .25 and she was calmly trying not to explode into millions of fragments that might never come back together right. I managed to let he know we believed she mattered, she was a wonderful human being with better than infinite potential. She wanted to hold my hands and look into my eyes and absorb that truth and feel really good about herself and the universe that was coming together to save her from her parents’ particular form of insanity. But that inrush of truth and beauty and hope and love threatened to explode her again. I think, somehow, I said something that had her laughing with joy and launched her bad trip into a much better field of exploration.
And I had to go to work in the midst of all this, leave Annie surrounded by friends I trusted to stand back and stand guard to make sure she was safe and happy and learning as much positive information as possible without exploding all over the place… (a poster of Jimi Hendrix turned and looked at her and said, “What are you doing? … What did I do?…” ) And Richie from Long Island finished puking his brains out and sat around for a while staring at a very frightening panorama of monstrous faces forming the air around him and later asked for a ride to the emergency room, and he survived- ((( a couple days later he was playing his guitar and teaching me licks from Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane… )))
-But I was freakin drained, dealing with long haul truck drivers who told me my beard looked like their girl friend’s private parts, and the clerk work at the trucking company office kept coming and never gave me a chance to sit down and catch my breath.
-So I came home to our hippy beach house and put on my newish copy of Tom Rush- the album that starts with Driving Wheel. And I cranked it a little louder than I would if anybody was sleeping upstairs or on the couch or passed out half hugging the washing machine… life was that kind of an adventure….
And I fried myself a couple brown eggs and got the toaster to work and found enough coffee left in the pot to bring it all together into one of the better breakfasts I’d tried to cook myself…
And I sat down in the living room (in the mix-matched furniture that only looked right in a rented beach house)
And the music filled the universe with magic- every note relaxed and soothed another part of me that I hadn’t realized was on fire. And Tom’s voice was the soul of compassion and I could see the old man with white hair sitting on a park bench, looking through fading eyes at a world worth loving, and I wanted to get up and dance to stuff my momma would have warned me I better not dance to, all night long. and I wanted to drop my guard and feel the pain of crazy people who had a lot more to offer than I’d ever realized.
Star Children from the other side of the universe were coming to earth and infiltrating our wild and crazy hippy get togethers and donating secret bits of love and wisdom and compassion and hope. And they were using unassuming genius folk singers to help them spread their message.
I had to sit down and write the above poem, straining to feel and find the words that fit together just right
I typed up two copies and gave one to Annie (the fifteen year old hope of my lost tribe’s wildest uncontrollable generation) She kept a crumpled up copy with her and read it read many times after being used and abused by flower children and people who hated flower children. She went to a Tom Rush concert because of that poem and loved every second of it.
And I thought I lost my last copy of that typewritten poem but found it yesterday in a stinkin mildew and mold ridden mess in a storage unit a family member had filled with stuff that my brother in law had not burned when he set his house and fire and blew his brains out, never getting over the loss of my sister to cancer….
And the original is inside a plastic page protector and this copy will be saved on five or six hard drives and on the web in at least three sites.
Yeah, life is still worth living. Even if the only wine I want is the spiritual kind that warms you to the core of our universal soul and spirit.
—–Jim, July 12, 2014 (Full moon tonight) ))
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I’ve Seen A Lot Of Green
I’ve seen a lot of green things lately
growing, trimmed to fit a grasping
need to feel our power over life
and cars still speed past my window
in a hurry to get to somewhere
they’ll probably wish they weren’t
yet their noises sometimes call me
to follow as far as your door.
Don’t ask me how I feel
I’ll tell you, whenever something touches me
or reaches for my eyes or mind
some complicated network
made of things like telephone lines
somehow pulls impressions
to a place where they’re measured and
set in line with things that have
happened
before.
Don’t ask what turns me on
the music that once filled me
echoes of small ideas and wasted energy
though I’m sick of reacting to things
I can’t control
I’m lazy and lagging
I want to start something
that makes sense
beyond all this
but I’m tired.
Don’t ask me what I want
I’m afraid to tell you
someone with soft hair
whose eyes I wouldn’t push
away from my mind, leaves
an image that won’t let me think
to the time I’ll stop my dreaming.
Don’t ask me what I’ve found
I’ll skip over the rulers of darkness
and light
and mathematical formulas
that can teach you why
the Earth moves and grass grows
and forty thousand people a year
have to die in cars;
And I’d tell you
I’ve learned that I need her
Her!
and daily look for reasons
to make her laugh
which set aside
fears that keep my hand
from reaching for hers.
Jim Wellington (4th try, August 24, 1971)
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Swapping Old Poems
Monday, 28 July, 2014. -( 21˚C / 70˚F @ 11:00 pm in our neck of the woods. )-
I think the following is actually the first poem that I’d written that Doug ever saw. (it was not quite all the way out of the typewriter when Doug stumbled onto it.) (I hardly ever left stuff lying around like that where just any weirdo (( who would have had to been let in, or broken in, or invited – in this case )) could happen to glance the wrong way and realize I wrote poetry now and then. Most of the guys I worked with in those days would have respected the hell out of a porn writer, but would have stepped a couple steps back and wondered how far they were from the nearest door if they know I wasn’t afraid to write poetry.)
“Grey-Hounded”Evening —————Jim Wellington (1970) |
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I had typed this on my old electric (suitcase model) portable typewriter. I don’t remember the make or model, but I do remember it was light blue in colour.
Both Doug and I were feeling dumped by our ‘significant others’ (but I had no idea at that time, that he’d been married and forgot something on his way to work, came home to get it and caught his wife ((Now ex-wife)) emptying their house and about to run off “with a van full of crazies from some whacko California Evangelic Christian Commune” with their daughter in tow. Doug, a security guard with a license to carry firearms, was in uniform with the gun on his hip and the crazies took off in a hurry. His wife ran out the back door and across a couple neighbours’ back yards and jumped in the van and left the baby in her car seat on the kitchen table.) So Doug’s suffering was a whole lot deeper and more profound than mine at the time. I hadn’t had a clue.
I also didn’t realize he’d read the piece of paper in the typewriter until a couple days later when he handed me one of his poems (and swore me to secrecy, the company he worked for might not trust a gun toting poet to guard their clients in those days ((1991-ish?)) )
—————Jim
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I think this might be a song I tried to write on a piece of cardboard that came inside a new shirt. ———Jim——
—–>
“To a Waterfall“You kept my love alive— Sometimes the slightest thought of you But you I saw you Ah you— The night sails away But you- I found my wings From time to time The higher I flew I watched you stumble And you- I stood in the wind And you— a million years And you- I knew you from a timeless dream And you- Out here where there’s no life to be seen But you— and me— On the edge of a cliff I took the plunge And you You needed me but you and where? You might have saved both our lives with that smile- Times haven’t changed But you- I hear you crying And You! You! ……….Jim Wellington (duh- I think I started trying to write this in the early 70’s and wrote it out in this form on that piece of shirt cardboard around 1989.)
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{ This was the last of what was uploaded, copied here from Radio Free Earth News on Saturday, August 2, 2014 -8:37 pm EDST ———djo——— }