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.

POETRY

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 4:56 am

Tasting the Edge of Dawn, by Charles Carreon

Image

In the chill morning
The dark, solid shadows of the pines & firs
Dominate the hillside,
Permitting only glimpses
Of the pre-dawn moon, glowing
Full and naked
In the cloudless, star-specked sky
Above the western ridge.

The dawn comes gently creeping,
Preparing the arrival of the sun,
A spreading ripple of radiance,
Silencing gentle chatter
In the gallery of the stars.
The eastern mountains,
Robed in darkness,
Backlit in silver-blue,
Call the earth to order,
True vassals of the sovereign,
Enthroned through no power
Of their own, their voices rumbling
In profound serenity
Downward through deep veins of stone
As quickening light touched
Their peaks
And opens eyes of snow.

A tiny man of flesh and bone
Wandering over the frozen dirt
That glitters with countless crystals
Of frozen water,
Will gaze about him and
Beneath him
And discover
A lack of tethers,
A great silence ready to respond
With echoes only to his any word.
Tree bark, lichen-patched stone,
Blades of dried grasses
Rimed with frost --
One need only forget
To be utterly lost.

Residing on a spinning ball
We cannot depart from
But only fall into,
We forget the cliff,
The abyss of no experience
Into which we will tumble
When death pulls his abrupt
And exceedingly impractical joke.

Nevertheless, all rise,
The sovereign Lord appears,
Speaking eloquently with
Ten million warming rays
To bathe, caress and possess
All the numberless creatures
Born of boundlessness.

Colestine, 1/30/94
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POETRY

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:02 pm

... That Naughty Girl, by Charles Carreon

that naughty girl
won't behave ...
Like a page from a comic book,
She's a total outrage,
And rules are confetti,
As she flies through the storm,
dressed in something revealing
to keep others warm.
She's ancient as the twisted trees
that cling to blasted peaks,
and youth is but the fashion of the day.
Poisons pump through her veins
in stifling succession,
leaving her intoxicate with rage.
Strong medicine's needed for this one,
and a quick trip away from
the carnival of pain,
But like Dorothy seeking OZ
and homesick for Kansas,
With a horde of evil minions
on her trail,
She must remember the trick
And click
Her heels together
and say goodbye to this place,
Hello to Auntie Em.
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POETRY

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:03 pm

The Boatman Song, by Charles Carreon

For all you boatmen out there ...
Put on your boat shoes and
Row, row, row,
Row those sentient beings ashore.
Just keep rowing as hard as you can,
And then row some more.
The lust for life is a never ending fire
that you cannot extinguish with your preaching,
So as long as you love Buddha
You must slave away
Converting beings to his Teachings!
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POETRY

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:06 pm

The Company You Keep, by Charles Carreon

Image

An angel broke into my apartment,
And stole all my things:
He stole my watch, so I couldn't
get up to go to work;
He stole my shoes, so I couldn't
go out in decent society;
He stole my memory, so I couldn't
remember who I was.
Just goes to show ...
You've gotta watch the company you keep.
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POETRY

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:09 pm

The Consummation of Snarfo, by Charles Carreon (14 years old)

Image

But today
Snarfo took over.
Of course, no one knows,
But Snarfo, you, and me
You see.
But, to be brief,
Snarfo won against them
Because, well they were so specific,
And he so vague
It was inevitable,
Victory, you see.
Their preciseness was bound to break
Under stress,
And the very cloudiness
Of Snarfo's offensive
Made infiltration of their defense
Unavoidable.

(1969)
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POETRY

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:16 pm

The Dice Man Meets Nixon and Me At 4:30 A.M. In the Downtown Portland Days Inn, by Charles Carreon

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That long night driving through the snow on un-studded highway tires, sliding once and carving a slow donut with a roostertail of snow, was the highpoint, watching others do similarly the vicarious thrill, arriving in the Portland Days Inn at 4 a.m. the apotheosis, laying down in my cheap bed paid for by my client the very peak, listening to the racketing piece of ice knocking about in the fan above me a step too far, that sound was like a crazy strange attractor spelling out my name in fractal images of repetitive not-quite-randomness. Having to get up in just a few hours to appear in court put edge on pain. Knowing I'd done this so many times before gave me confidence. Having done it many times before made me know that I had to lie down and rest every nerve even if it wouldn't sleep. Measuring out time in thin slices to move from edge to edge downward into darkness, I reviewed the books on the shelf which the downtown Portland Days Inn thoughtfully provides -- old books, usually some Reader's Digest Condensed Books, but some good titles, too, I bet somebody's got Tagore, and somebody else has Ivanhoe, and probably several people have Catch 22 but nobody's got Bambi. At any event I found with some surprise, delight, pleasure, that I had a copy of "The Dice Man," and this is in Room 517 if someone hasn't stolen it, I didn't, I was restrained, not looking for souvenirs when I already had the experience. This book, "The Dice Man" was something my friend Richard Coulter had told me about long before when I was a little experimenter. The Dice Man, the narrator of the novel had chosen to live life as Russian Roulette, extinguishing predictability with one stroke by willing over his will to the roll of the dice. But what really caught my attention was the mention of Nixon, and particularly, Nixon's "sense of history" in the introduction of the novel. You see, there was a photograph of Nixon leaning on his desk in the Oval Office hanging in Room 517. And at 4:30 a.m. I had this looming coincidence to deal with. Was this room the product of some clever interior designer's psychic weaving of subtle themes? Or was it, more likely, mere coincidence, a chance event? On that note, listening to the racketing piece of ice like a doomed ball in a demonic roulette wheel bounding not quite randomly, not quite regularly above my poor, benighted, weary head, I slipped off to sleep, or something like it.
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POETRY

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:20 pm

The Galleries of Sky, by Charles Carreon

This desert morning dawns a fair one,
The sweetness of moist earth and soft sun.
The fragrances of morning
On windy breaths ascend
The winding stairs of rippled light
Where thunder like a lion prowls
The galleries of sky.
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POETRY

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:22 pm

The Last Limousine, by Charles Carreon

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(For Trungpa Rinpoche and his crazy entourage)
 
We humans be sum crazy muthafuckas as a rap lingo slinga' might say.
Bad ass muthafuckas always gonna be that way.
Play that fuckin music till you can't even hardly think,
Make you wanna drown yourself in that cool chickie's drink
Being just a home boy on this dedicated ground
Walkin' what your talkin' is rarer than it sounds
Making lessons out of misery
And poems out of rhymes
Making love with everybody
And yourself another time.

Some think that white boys can never be that way,
And others wanna listen to what Tarantino say,
Some think that Elvis was the Antichrist
Some think Manhattan is a drink with ice
But you can see it happen
Right in your home town
Earn your money down on Main Street
And give it to a clown
Kiss your baby in the morning
And tuck her in at night
But if you're half the man your father was
You'll never do it right

Now heaven's never been found
But people say they've been
Or know someone who knew someone
Who heard it from a friend
But hell's much more familiar,
We have it here on earth
We make it for each other
With each successive birth
Impress it on our children
Like sacrificial lambs
Burn our friends in hell
With smiles on our faces
Watching as the fire
Consumes the final traces.

Did he need a bodyguard,
A retinue of slaves?
Did he need a hand job
That everybody gave?
Did he need a limousine
To take him to the grave?

With deepest respect for the wildest lama,
One Last Molotov!
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POETRY

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:25 pm

The Lemming National Anthem, by Charles Carreon

All hail the One-Party System,
So well-organized that no one can doubt it’s
The best, most logical system that’s ever been
Devised by the smartest brightest guys.

All hail the One-Party Leader,
The man with the robotic sighs,
With handlers, and helpers and programmed
Responses that don’t need to be scrutinized.

All hail the One-Party Loser,
The man who ran as one a-terrorized;
His voters felt like dopes, when he scuttled all their votes
And fell in with the One-Party Line.

All hail the Great Corporate Leaders,
Who have made the world their own swimming pool
Filled with toxic sewage and cool designer luggage --
You know that Paris Hilton is no fool.

All hail the Great Wall Street Bankers,
Making plans to get and spend it all,
Sending freight trains stuffed with loot to their friends
In big black boots, who will send them back an even bigger haul.

All hail the Great Iraqi Warriors
Who staunchly defend their foreign sands,
Who give us names for terrorists, and target practice for our kids,
And help our friends the Saudis keep clean hands.

All hail the Great Attorney General,
The baddest goddamn Mexican of all;
He don’t need no stinking badge, cause torture’s not that bad,
And he’ll explain it in that room right down the hall.

All hail the Free Press that’s freely
Publishing nothing at all, but the latest profile shot
That proves that Condoleezza’s hot
Which just proves nothing at all.

All hail the Fake Politicians
Who are wondering who to sell out today.
If you haven’t got a lobbyist then you’re not on their Santa’s list,
And won’t you kindly just go away?

All hail the Great Entertainers,
Who thank heavens have nothing to say,
Made of silicone and methadone, their voices big as megaphones
Keep all unpleasant news so far away.

All hail the Brave Media Lawyers
Who sue children and ancients one and all,
Since copyright is God, it doesn’t seem so odd
That piracy should cause the nation’s fall.

All hail the One-Party Voters,
Who didn’t even really have to vote,
We knew that we could count on them, and figured all those
Stray votes in, and things came out just like we knew they would.

So all hail the Great Manipulators,
Who turned us to a land of pimps and whores
Who taught our kids to kill, to do it with a will
To the sound of a heavy metal score.

And all hail the Holy Excuse Makers
Who sell insurance from the Great Big Man
Who hawk incense and repentance and talk in great
Big sentences about how moral folks must take a stand.

‘Cause God is a lemming,
And He made us in his image, of this there is no room
For reasonable doubt -- So when you see that cliff a looming
Just get your feet a pumping – you always knew that this was your way out.
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SONG

Postby admin » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:29 pm

The Old Ve-To, by Charles Carreon



Image

Well you say
You're the Congress
Whatever that means
We'll ask Gonzales
When he's done eatin' beans
You gave me a bill
With time limits in it
So I'll veto that shit
And send it back to the Senate
And don't you step on my Old Veto
You can do anything,
But don't forget about my Old Veto.

Well I done decided
You know that's it
The troops are gonna stay
Where I say
The chips are gonna fall
Wherever they may
I'll raise the stakes higher
'Cause that's how I play
But don't 'ya
Forget my Old Veto
You can enact what you want
I'll just give it the Old Veto.

Well they say the nation's
Turning blue again
I'll prove that false
With a stroke of my pen
There is no power
Like the one to say no
So loot, motherfuckers, now go go go
We got 'em with the Old Veto
They can't do a damn thing
When I give them the Old Veto.

Well, I've blown Iraq
But I won't admit it
I'm after Iran
And I just won't quit it
Just try and stop me
I'm on the run
The light is red
That means fun, fun, fun
So watch out, I'll use the Old Veto
I'll run you down in the street
With my Old Veto

Yeah, the Constitution
Is a mighty fine thing
At least for me,
For you it stinks
'Cause I'm the Chief
I'm at the top
I keep the buck movin'
So it never stops
And when I lose I use the Old Veto.
I just tell 'em where to stuff it
And hit 'em with the Old Veto.
Yeah, they'll never know what hit 'em
When I hit 'em with the Old Veto.
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