Poetry & Songs, by Charles Carreon

Identified as a trouble maker by the authorities since childhood, and resolved to live up to the description, Charles Carreon soon discovered that mischief is most effectively fomented through speech. Having mastered the art of flinging verbal pipe-bombs and molotov cocktails at an early age, he refined his skills by writing legal briefs and journalistic exposes, while developing a poetic style that meandered from the lyrical to the political. Journey with him into the dark caves of the human experience, illuminated by the torch of an outraged sense of injustice.

SONG

Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:25 pm

Paper Bag Blues, by Charles Carreon

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(Sing to the tune "In the Summertime (when the sun gets hot)" but a little slower.)
 
Well in the afternoon,
When the sun gets hot,
And the shadows don't move in the parking lot,
You bring a paper bag
With a bottle o' wine--
We just sippin', bullshitin' an passin' time.
 
Well if ya just sit still
You can chill yourself
As cool as sweet wine
On refrigerator shelf;
You can rest your bones
And relax your mind,
You can have the kind o' pleasure
Even kings don't find.
 
Well as the bottle gets low,
Gotta sip it slow,
And as your bones get loose
We'll sing some paper bag blues--
We'll sing some paper bag blues--
You'll be swayin' and singin'--
Singin' paper bag blues.
 
Well you gone home,
And you left me alone
Nobody gonna call on the telephone
The shadows creep,
And they lay down flat
Right on the cat
And the kitchen mat.
There ain't nobody comin';
I got noplace to go,
And I finished up the last
Of the Oreos.
I got the paper bag blues--
I got the paper bag blues--
I'm gonna lay down in the kitchen,
And sing the paper bag blues.
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POETRY

Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:26 pm

Path of the Waning Day, by Charles Carreon

The Voice of the Heart
Leads through a jungle.
Sitting in a boat,
Steering with an oar through turning currents.
The waters twist through winding courses;
I follow the path of the swirls.
You cannot see the sky,
Only green light sifting through the leaves,
A glimpse of blue,
The sun like a jewel flashing high in the vines.
I am a young traveler;
It takes youth to travel this path,
It takes suppleness to follow the currents,
Endurance to keep on without clear means.
In the jungle of the heart there is still threat,
There is danger for the traveler, and fear.
The waters comfort.
The waters console.
I follow their twisting winding,
Through the trees, old as crumbling castles,
That murmur with the Voice of the Heart.
I follow the stream, that never loses its way,
I follow the paths of the waning day,
And leave no tracks behind me.
I follow, and the sound of the waters is with me.
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POETRY

Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:28 pm

Pat Robertson for President, by Charles Carreon

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i give thanx for the message of hate
that tells me I'm not too late
to get a hotdog and a straw boater hat
and a ginger beer and barbecued rib
'cause i like the cut of his jib
i'm gonna vote for that guy!
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POETRY

Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:34 pm

Pig Party, by Charles Carreon

Well we're having a pig party
2-Nite,
Empty the ashtrays
And put the chairs upright

Then lets
Get down
At the Plushie-Tushie Palace
Do a job
Blow outta here 4 Dallas

On the nod
Like to make it home for supper
Doin drugs
Feelin skewered thru the scupper

But when we
Get down
At the Plushie-Tushie Palace
We can raise
Some holy hell between us

Back at home
And I'm feelin kinda nervous
On the phone
Twitchin' like a demon

I wish they'd come
To the Plushie-Tushie Palace
Then they would
Not ever have to tell us

Wouldn't have to
Ever ever tell us
Treat us just
Like ordinary fellas
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POETRY

Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:39 pm

Pistolero, by Charles Carreon

Alacran Y Pistolero

[Regarding the writing of Pistolero ... Once upon a time when I lived in a yurt in the middle of a meadow with two children and a beautiful young wife, we had a neighbor who was a handsome, crusty fellow with an Eastern-European accent, and a cheerfully brusque manner of friendship. His name was Walter Von Finck, and he had run a commune of sorts, gathering fellow-travelers, and their labors, for the great mission of redeeming mankind. Or somesuch. He had made us a part of his grand collective exercise in the summer of 1978, esconcing us in the house called the Big House then, the Mouse House now that Buddhists run it. Tells you something, eh? But after one summer, during which Tara swelled up with Maria (not depicted above) and we moved into Medford to be near our midwife, we knew we couldn't do Walter's trip. As numerous other people felt the same way, Walter's commune, Rainbow Star, eventually ran out of communal steam. But we still liked living out there at Rainbow Star. We moved onto the property owned by Walter's divorced wife Chris, one of the former original Rainbow Starians, and built our yurt right across the meadow from Walter's little shanty-palace, where Dr. Shandor Weiss now lives under the watchful eye of Vajrasattva. When we convinced Chris to rent a place on her land to build a yurt, it was quite a coup. And a lifesafer, because we were so poor we couldn't actually afford rent on a single-family house in Ashland (shit -- now you couldn't rent that house for less than $1,500 a month -- but $275 was too much for us then). It was a distinct weird coup of ours, and for a long time we didn't really talk that much with Walter, though he was our neighbor. But one day he came up the road with a bag of coffee. That's when we all starting drinking the speedy bean. None too soon, I'm sure. Gave us some motivation. But Walter stayed pretty crusty, even when he was friendly. He was always criticizing the choice of our house location, telling us we were spiritually blind for not realizing "what was going to be built there." Well, nothing was ever built there after we tore our yurt down, but that's another story.

Back in the time I'm talking about, Walter and we had become good neighbors. After the quiet that ensued when we effectively seceded from his commune and nailed down a homestead outside of his autocratic influence, a warmth based on mutual respect arose.

So one night he came over and said that we should come over and watch The Magnificent Seven, with Yul Brenner, Ernest Borgnine, and lots of other big stars. It was showing on TV, and he was going to fire up the generator and we could watch it all together. Man, was that exciting.

Our kids never saw TV, and I mean never. They rarely saw electric light. We cooked and read by kerosene light or propane lamps, after the first year of living in neolithic obscurity. Our stove was so small it had been yanked out of a tiny travel trailer. I was snooping around a hermitage up in the hills built secretly on a monk's land earlier this year by an expatriate Australian, and sho' 'nuff there was our old stove. Still crankin' out the meals. At any rate, it was good times.

We weren't quite as backwoods as the folks in that Close To Eden movie, but it was as close as city kids were likely to get. So on that night, we went over to Walter's place and watched the hell out of this old Western classic, while the generator thundered away on Walter's mud porch. Heavy feng-shui coming over to Walters, with a four-stroke generator pounding away in the entry area.

Well the next day I had a fever in my brain. All that western gunfighting action had roiled my neurons, leaching out old stimulation programs that had been wired in my early developmental stages. A man, I realized, was at his most manly as a gunfighter. The decisive image of the showdown in the plaza. A bullfight where each participant is both bull and bullfighter. The duel, made mechanically swift. Two face off. Only one survives. No equivocation, no ambiguity, no uncertainty. One winner. One dead guy. Ain't no question who the ladies are gonna go for.]


Pistolero, go away.
I've been kept awake all night by you
and your friends
Clinking glasses, smoking, gambling
All night in my kitchen.
 
Pistolero, I remember you
At high noon
In the main street,
Standing with a wide stance on
tapered legs
in pointed boots,
Your gun-hand loose and poised
over a low-slung holster
Hanging heavy with iron.
 
You and your revolver --
You squeeze the trigger
and the hammer slams down
On a forty-four center-fire cartridge:
The crash of exploding gunpowder.
Smoke drifts
from the muzzle of your pistol and
Your enemy's laid out cold.
 
You repeat this action again and again
in a false-front Western town.
You practice on old whisky bottles
perched on a fence, and
The flying shards delight us,
Seeming to explode of themselves,
Balanced on that slender rail.
 
A wild magic you wield
in a gunfight you turn, wheel,
Blast them from an awkward angle,
Run, dive, roll, take aim and
shoot again.
You make a mess of little towns,
whether you're a good or bad guy
You're always shooting up
saloons and hotels,
Smashing out windows,
breaking down doors,
Crashing through railings,
allowing furniture to be splintered
Apart on your head --
 
Pistolero, gunslinger,
we've fallen in love with your
kind of justice.
We shed no tears for bad guys
Who disturb the peace of
innocent townspeople
Who destroyed the buffalo?
Who annihilated the Navajo?
Who are all cut from the same
Whole cloth of pure white goodness
Which is never stained by the blood
of ruffians,
Or torn by the anguish of whores,
Or disturbed by the stuporous stares
of alcoholic Indians, leaning
against railings that do not break,
Falling heavily through glass that
shatters without drama,
Collapsing at noon in the boring dust
of a real street in a town
Where Wyatt Earp checked out
of his hotel an inconceivably
long time ago.
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POETRY

Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:57 pm

Plan "B", by Charles Carreon

Nothing's quite so sure
as this, the moment when
something's gone amiss . . .
It's creativity then
must intermit, at the
pleading of necessity,
to show us how to make the
best of it.
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SONG

Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 9:01 pm

Planet Earth, 2008, by Charles Carreon



Image

Well I never thought
I would make it this far
To see the fall of the wall
And the rise of the Reich

No I never thought
I would have to live
In a brainwashed country
With an enemies list.

Planet Earth, 2008
I know exactly who to blame
You can call them by their real names
They're not ashamed
They think they're the masters
And we're the slaves

Our soldiers break down
A man's front door
Put a gun to his head
And his face to the floor

We always shoot first
And never ask questions
We believe what we're told
And buy what we're sold

Planet Earth, 2008
Our crimes have blotted out our name
In the name of God
We've gone insane
Spilled innocent blood
In Jesus' name

Our leaders are liars
Some say they like it that way
Cheatin', double-dealin'
And gettin' away
But money's made of somethin'
Like the hours of our days
That we grind away
Tryin' to make it pay

Planet Earth, 2008
Hell on earth
In a thousand ways
Could we just stop killing
For one damn day?

Our kids are half-crazy
Black and white
Singin' rap and cheap metal
Every night
Their hope for the future's
Not very bright
They know they've been sold out
They have no rights

Planet Earth, 2008
How long will people have to wait
For the sun to shine
On a decent day
Where the workers smile
And the children play?

Planet Earth, 2008
When the billions rise
It'll have to change
And until that day
There'll be hell to pay

Planet Earth, 2008
I Declare a global holiday
No more bosses after today
Just break the chain
And walk away.
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POETRY

Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 9:20 pm

Plastic Doesn't Breathe, by Charles Carreon

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Image

One summer I was too poor
to buy new shoes. When my old
ones got really worn out, like falling
apart to where you look psychotic
if you wear them in town,
I took to going barefoot when
I went to town. That was funny.
I used to go barefoot all the time
When I was younger, but now, with
all these kids, I felt like a poor
hillbilly. Finally, when I got a little
cash, I broke down and got a
pair of blue jogging shoes at
Sprouse-Reitz for five dollars. They
were even too big but they were cheap.
So I wore them without socks and
looked psychotic.
What I discovered after I'd owned them
for a while was that they weren't made
of rubber, as I'd assumed; they were
made of plastic.
I knew because they clicked when
I walked on linoleum, and nobody's
Nike's or Adidas ever did that.
Eventually I discovered that they
were plastic in every detail, from the
thread to the fabric, to the insole to the
tongue to the wrap-around leather-looking
stuff that's supposed to be suede but
is as plastic as everything else.
And none of it breathed.
Plastic doesn't breathe.
It doesn't inhale or exhale
And it's not holding its breath.
Eventually my feet got sick
of those shoes. They were too big,
they made me look psychotic, and
they didn't breathe.
I threw them away and
breathed a sigh of relief.
Those shoes had started
to give me the creeps.
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POETRY

Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 9:22 pm

Pocket Essay Re: Ramones, by Charles Carreon

Why Ramones play like they do:
To destroy the enemies of human freedom.

Why it sounds so good:
Full-spectrum sonic sun
pulses pure crystalline idiot bliss,
kicks nirvana into overdrive.

Why it's played so fast:
To harmonize with the buzz
of human anxiety in this smoke-filled age.
To give you the speed to escape.

Why it sounds so harsh:
To subdue conflicting emotions
and eradicate fear.

What you can do with it:
Cut LA in half with one clean stroke,
Raze Century City with a backhand swipe,
Vaporize the Hollywood sign with a glance, and
blow away all eight lanes of the
10 freeway with a single puff of breath.
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Postby admin » Fri Sep 27, 2013 9:23 pm

Practical Wisdom, by Charles Carreon

Practical wisdom, 'swhat I say.
Practical wisdom everyday.
Practical wisdom
like a pocket flask
or a Zippo lighter
Ready when you call
and you don't have to fight it

Practical wisdom
like a little boy's hand
in his daddy's grip
Hold on tight
Never slip

Practical wisdom
like a momma's arms
Hold so strong
To keep away harm

Practical wisdom
like a maiden's smile
all sweetness and innocence
for a little while
all truth and consequence
after many a mile

Practical wisdom
like a ploughman's palm
rough and callused
from always keepin' on
Work till sunset
Rise at dawn

Practical wisdom
like a policeman's gun
Always in the holster
Never pulled for fun
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