a trace of truth

the conspiracies are hinted at in the media
whispered
between the radicals

we are in active revolt
subverting the agenda of the neoCONs who would enslave us all to their dark visions
of only the cream rising to the top
and what the hell about those left behind


You Will
legislate Noblesse Oblige
claim what the ignoble barons
refuse to give up to fix
the toxic dumps they leave
behind with their corporate crusades
Tax the rich to feed the poor
and raise their standards of living
before they rage against
your blood-streaked castles
and the frantic winds of fate
leave you at the mercy
of the peasants you causally despised

I have come across time and space
through universes and dimensions and indescribable realms that flash into my mind
as thoughts too huge for my head
overwhelming
a feeling like I will never be able to inhale again
as if breath itself has left me alone

a translator of the spirits words

sent in this time
NOW
to put my finger
in the crack
in the Dyke
holding back
an ocean of blood

I reel around and confront the spies
huddling in packs behind my back
assure them I am The One
that My Magic is nothing
they ever
want to fuck with...

scream at them
like some raging madman,
"I will not be a judge
in their court of impossible standards!!
You will not silence me!!
You will not convince me freedom
is bought with anything less than blood!"



the artists paint un-noticed
singers sing for drunken dancers
ministers preach for those romantically involved
with their religious icons

"You used to be so amused
by napoleon in rags
and the language that he used . . .
he calls to you
you can't refuse" Bob Dylan


the explosive discontent
seethes inside the kids shooting up malls
classrooms
each other

dreams starving to be dreamt

as we live paycheck to paycheck
crouched between our bills
cursing at roaches
living for the occasional surge of hope
a 'pay day' feeling

we blow our exhaust into the blue sky
commit suicide slow as a liver breaking down
as instantaneous as a shot gun
a hot shot hypo
as final as a prisoner
discouraged and discarded
hanging in
a cell
in Cook County Jail

I once told you:
when I first started waking up
DO NOT GIVE ME POWER
give me your hungry, your sick, your poor

you thought I wanted to give them a blue pill
get them out of the way
create a new world on their bones...
brought forth a Nazi vision of efficiency
asked me to march to a forgotten band
to resurrect some sixth reich

I just wanted the means to care
for the
ones you decided to write out
of your hero's tales

this world doesn't need another
barker for democracy

calling on the huddled masses
to flee their dictators
and come live in a dream
we have of ourselves

work yourself to death
to shop at the better stores
to buy yourself a knife to cut
a few pouches of flesh from under your eyes
make your reflection in the mirror
seem more like before you knew
you were mortal





you don't need another politician
running for office

You need a spirit waking
savage grace
the whisper that only the holy ghost hears

I can give off great warmth
that sometimes burns


association with the Great Challenger
can only lead to confrontations in the flesh
the spirit is the only oasis in this hellish planet


the only true freedom will come
when a circle of voices sit at a table
where all concerns are equal
One Species Under God

we must emerge from the myths of nationalists
isolationists and fools

give all children a peaceful path thru the carnage
protected by armed missionaries

we must surround
the embattled animals and children
BAYONETS DRAWN
protective always of the unique
respectful of the truths of the times
our ancestors acted witihin
the fields of truth
they could no more escape than death

this page is my throne
these sentences my kingdom
my stories my spells

the people who inspired me
are innocent of ever entering
into any pact with the devilry of chaos
they are innocent
all of their sins are my burden
I will take responsibility for the actions

I asked for peace and you said no
I asked for war and you marched along...

You wondered who
I would choose
after I said you were all chosen

I told you the truth as it came to me
unbidden from the spirit world
the ramifications of the powers given me
have turned my life into a symbolic performance

I resent most of all the secrets my enemies keep
I should have been told from the start
that I started growing wings at five
that I was a king
that people were watching me
claiming I was performing miracles
a messiah...

Perhaps those who manipulated me
never thought I would wake up?
Did you mistake me for someone
you could lead around thru
pompous ceremonies
institutionalizing your power
for these next thousand years
as I reign from this quiet room
in my flesh
and on high when this burden of life is lifted

Speculation as to why you do this to me
is a pack of rats eating away
at my squirming brain

They told me bush had ordered a 120 million
dollar crown

did he think I would accept this crown?
at the time I thought it was for him...

I refused to let you make me a king
blew up your disney fantasy
of the Lion King returning to reign
over all the animals...

the shy wizard walks thru rogers park
tries to smile and greet
as the music in his ears
talks of soldiers and god and angels
and the coming revolt

I see how my emergence is effecting everyting
the dollar rocked when they realized
I was playing them for intelligence
I made that damn thing go over 14k
to show them that I can
and I will take it to 0 if I have to


I have reached out to everyone
shown my heart
humor
tears
the fallibility you never expected
the humility that you need to share

a core of lightening and fire
a creature who can beckon storms and lightening and fire and soldiers

a creature whose desires manifest
like a twilight zone prophecy

a TRUTH
who arrived in a Trojan horse of fiction...

a cosmology that surprises the messenger
most of all

a christ who had to teach by example
in a world that only wants fame and wealth

I had to write
don't want fame no more no more
to show you that I am not about the money


they great they want me to become
an unholy icon in their anti-passion play
I am not here for my benefit
that should be obvious to all of you
after the pile of money I turned down...

I cut out the middle man and went directly
to my audience
and that must piss them off all the more


I want to speak of a new culture
that can flow like water
thru the old ways
a baptism warm and soothing
holy water that glows gently around
the entrenched beliefs
accepts them as islands
in an ocean larger than all the heavens.

a hurricane crashing into those turned enemy
by sheer routine
blowing down their straw houses
screaming what they are afraid to whisper

I offer respect for respect
revolution for the wicked

I was a creature with two identities
when I first began to wake up
scott ridgway and the voice...

Now I Am The Voice

I let the red and blue states
blend into purple
as the blood soaked arthur
rose to power on Merlin's Magic

the mad wizards' sainted apprentice
raised a crusade of equal voices
demanding justice before peace

you thru your powers into this reluctant ruler

I pray to my god for the strength
to rip myself off of the crucifix

vowing to lead all people
threw the minute gate of peace

the assassins are still lined up outside my gate
how they would love for me to disappear
into a quiet madman


I no longer care about your gallows
the asylums and jails
the definitions

You can no longer kill the message
the messenger could dissolve into dust
and manifest my fondest wish
dissolution

release

flight

I encourage you to spread my poems by whatever means necessary.

AN AMAZON WARRIOR IN GOD'S ARMY

http://dreamingnblue.ebloggy.com/A


special guest poet.... she gave me no name for this poem, so I will just give it her name, symbolically, as the attributes she desplays. A wonder poem, too.

DREAMING IN BLUE

is how I have known her during our writing back and forth and dreaming up better worlds. I love reading her life. THERE is an over coming of adversities, as well as hope...and joy and ecstacy and wisdowm, encased in the life of single person's wanting and loneliness and erotic and yet quite polite turns. I feel better about myself that she calls me a freind... that is about the nicest thing I can think to say to her...

http://dreamingnblue.ebloggy.com/

I scan the shelves seeking wisdom--
in the words of others,
Dreamers and Prophets
Older, wiser, more aware than myself--
to quiet the cacophony in my head. . .
To still the chaotic rumblings
beneath the complacent shell of my everyday,
Voices echo from every title, page, index. . .
"You cannot UN-know, Truth-- you can deny--
lie to yourself,
Paint on the polished veneer of the civilized animal
domesticated, tied to the stake,
roll over, show your throat and belly,
whine and cower--
but when the time comes,
When Greed and Malice and Hate come to grind
the bones of your most cherished
to pulp and powder,
Will you stand and watch--
or raise tooth and nail--
torch and pen-- to see a different tomorrow?
Your visions were not false,
Your dreams did not lead you astray--
only deeper into the primordial Question-waters,
Your blood and the blood of generations before you--
calls you to this. . .
Listen. Do you hear the drums?"






Maria at 28/02/07 1:10 AM | 0 comments





I scan the shelves seeking wisdom--
in the words of others,
Dreamers and Prophets
Older, wiser, more aware than myself--
to quiet the cacophony in my head. . .
To still the chaotic rumblings
beneath the complacent shell of my everyday,
Voices echo from every title, page, index. . .
"You cannot UN-know, Truth-- you can deny--
lie to yourself,
Paint on the polished veneer of the civilized animal
domesticated, tied to the stake,
roll over, show your throat and belly,
whine and cower--
but when the time comes,
When Greed and Malice and Hate come to grind
the bones of your most cherished
to pulp and powder,
Will you stand and watch--
or raise tooth and nail--
torch and pen-- to see a different tomorrow?
Your visions were not false,
Your dreams did not lead you astray--
only deeper into the primordial Question-waters,
Your blood and the blood of generations before you--
calls you to this. . .
Listen. Do you hear the drums?"






Maria at 28/02/07 1:10 AM | 0 commentsll writings by John Scott Ridgway are protected by the law... but I encourage you to spread my poems by whatever means necessary. One day you will understand.

Bin Laden is stranded of jacob's ladder

holed up and tired and sick and feeling like he has already died a thousand heroic deaths
and what's one more?

lot of people feel that way
are born feeling that way
longing to explode in rightous anger
dreaming of going out taking down enemies
killing off as many as the good lord allows


HE CAN BE SAVED
BY a creature
of SAVAGE GRACE

by

OUR TRIBE
THEY GREAT THEY
NOW
IN these
the last moments
of OUR TIME




FIGHT FOR PEACE
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY*







Let the eagle sing love into osama bin laden's name


Let our poets weave his smile into

MIGHTY SONGS OF PEACE





*jacob's ladder: film about dying vet's learning their fate.


*our god GENERAL MALCOM X... if you have not read his SACRED WORDS, your ignorance is probably sickening to the CREATURE OF SAVage GRACE... THAT CAN BE DANGEROUS TO ALL INVOLVED. GET WITH IT, GIRL.

the eagle turned on saddam and attacked

the eagle turned on saddam and attacked


18/02/07
4:05 PM





Saddam was one of our warriors way back
we crowned him a prince

he fucked up and we fucked up
hell everybody was fucking up
it was war & shit never goes the way anyone really wants

son went all mad dog in the end
when we decided
to use the kurds
to take him down

HE HITLERED UP
for security purposes
went to war

saddam's head was so dangerous
the executioner ripped it right off
the crowds screamed and cried
tried to drive his mighty spirit away from the gallows
rightly so trembling in fear
at the horror of his coming wrath

His spirit surprised everyone & no one
with a wave and a tear
he forgave them their place in history
as great men do

as
great men

expect



sorry old soldier left hungry alone in your fox hole

wish i could have told you

we are praying
for you


to all enemies we sing: our hearts are still open
our minds are still free

we were not effected
by they great they's
enchantment spells

we too are sickened
by
the
rotting diseased cloak of these lies







we are coming for you

i am
a man of my word
the word
your word
our word



YOU ARE FORGIVEN

forgive us


We just didn't make it in time saddam
this stoic crusader was still marching silently
through the carnage
seeking rank on missions top secret
waging war from under deep cover
pretending always to go along



waiting

waiting

waitng

for the order

to come down




you know how that is

I

salute

u



we all salute you



writings by John Scott Ridgway are protected by the law... but I encourage you to spread my poems by whatever means necessary. One day you will understand.

the hunter awakens bleeding

Hunter awakens bleeding from his wounds
home
by jsr

18/02/07
3:50 PM
the warm blood on his chest
reminds him
he is NOW
the hunter
and the hunted

warily checks on his weapons and his family and friends

somebody is gonna die
tonight

best he can hope for
he doesn't know their name
doesn't care so much if it is him
he won't notice that

he just doesn't want to
know/feel

another
name

for
the dead

jokesters unite

light up the doobies
reclaim yr rights

we are
NO LONGER VICTIMS
to the whims
of jackel$ and fool$




NO
not in this night


racing down from the stars
ready
screaming
itching for a fight

that's our eagle tonight



dedicated to my bud PAULY SHORE...
He's IN THE ARMY NOW.

DA BALLAD OF john da booFIST

Can't imagine myself moving through crowds of lepers
manifesting the prophecy
that goes along
with this

HOMECOMING


BAPTISE YOUR OWN NAME
NEED NO ONE

become a FOOTNOTE
in a computer buried
in a nuke withstanding mountain in Utah
why not?

MAYBE u can save the dead

as long as you take into account all the other
unweildy tombs SCREAMING in the libraries
the faces in the tv's and computer
that made epic on the silver screen

AND THE SACRED GONZO


B proud
to be
acknowledged
BY ALL
as
one
who ponders great questions

not one who comes up with great answers
WE DON'T NEED ANY MORE GREAT white MEN ANSWERS
for
now
just
learning to listen will take tens of decades


so we're pretending real
in this pipedream of peace
this toddlertext teetering
uncertainly
through the
infinite jest




All writings by John Scott Ridgway are protected by the law... but I encourage you to spread my poems by whatever means necessary. One day you will understand.

family guy did an episode about this entry

gets me to the woods




I would like to see Obama and Hillary in bed together
all greased up in red leathers and howling

better yet some kind of foursome

I am sure bill will agree with me on this
if he doesn't already have
an elaborate fantasy
or thirty some
to share
what with his reknown for 'pussy talk'
which seems to me like a way for two guys
to turn each other on
without having to actually get dick poked

he probably had a little dally in some oxford ho

they can admit inhaling, sure...
we all do that


but the poking??? the poking of but??????


in
my dream
of
peace

some will poke but

All writings by John Scott Ridgway are protected by the law... but I encourage you to spread my poems by whatever means necessary. One day you will understand.

occurs to me

This prose was written at the height of my campaign to straiten up the world and still preserve the sactity of the state and the church... I was filled with the glory of god... and a lot of drugs.



Occurs to me
home
by jsr

18/02/07
1:00 AM

as I sit here looking out the window at heavy flakes of snow swirling down onto Sheriden road and covering cars and dusting the dog walkers leaning into the brittle wind, that this sudden shift of mine to memoir and poetry and battle on mode is being taken as entirely fiction by some, yellow journalism in the school of Poe's Pym; and while you would most certainly be right as the critic's who trashed the journey's of poor pym for being lies -- as if fiction were anything but; you would also be down right recklessly wrong. I am as serious as when my dog is in danger. Or
the most deadly of fart attacks from Broccoli and cheese and milk and turnips and toads!!!

Shit happened I can't explain.
Things just got weird.
No shit, I know what people call me and the names I use in my acts, but I have no idea who the hell I am, or what to name this emerging creature.... and I was pretty damn well convinced I knew how to describe myself right down to the molecular level and I was prepared to do so at the drop of a hat and you can ask anybody about this -- they will tell you I talk too much about everyting and it gets annoying. My muse let's my fingers chat on and on all day, the dear one listens and laughs and sighs, always the cheerleader/warrior/whore at heart.



A wave hit the shores of lake mitch a few weeks ago, and me and a few others had our makeshift surf boards ready...

Thanks to the emerging miracle of praying with keyboards, we have been inviting you along. We welcome you to our surf. Sorry we had to pretend it was a yacht and we have street cred and fat wallets and all. We couldn't let you recognize us as scroungy, weedibbled surfers who you probably wouldn't normally have the time of day for... this is a court of impossible standards, and we are the jesters, which grants us the privilege of doing things our own way, mostly; has to of course be some self censors for the sensibilities of kids and the vanity of queens.

We hid behind our silly masks... smoked up in our mansions... until you mistook us for gods on a segment on Entertainment Tonight and alarmed we began to scream NOOOOO

-- and that's when we said
FILM ME SHITTING,
DISGRACE ME,
BLEED ME,
PUKE ME,
USE ME,
STEAL ME,
KILL ME --
WHATEVER....
jUST DON't
make me an unholy icon
in the eyes of this
ancient & new creature
THE emergent one
of SAVAGE GRACE.


. Thanks for trusting us that this one wave will break peacefully, soothingly, into a gentle, graceful night of silent mourning.'


The entire world has become symbolic to me. I suddenly have the eye of a real poet or some such mythic shit, seeing stories with layer after layer after layer even in the most mundane, cliche dance of a dust mote in a sunray. This is not supposed to be happening to me; I had my last chapters all written as a jovial atheist. Oh, well....

There are so many ways to arrange the words; conversations that need to be peacably had over each and every verse of this new bible, this manuel, this gonzo, this text book, this pipedream of peace.

All writings by John Scott Ridgway are protected by the law... but I encourage you to spread my poems by whatever means necessary. One day you will understand.

mother things just got weird

mother, things just got weird



I wrote the prose below last year, after one of the hospitalizations forced upon me last year, by a doctor who put me on speed or something that kept me awake once for a week at a time.. I was going back and forth then between accepting God's Will... the miracles that came later would convince me.


17/02/07
11:27 PM
Yea, had some crazy ass dreams
for a week or so, while I was awake. This is the truest story I know how to tell.


There were a few days of blurry faces looming around my hospital bed. I was restrained for some reason not yet clear... and I was sure that I knew every human I saw before, somewhere.... convinced deeper than my sex and hunger that I would remember, be suddenly jolted into knowing past lives, cosmic adventures.... the undreamed. I was at Ressurrection hospital first, in Evanston, and you can check on that if you want because it sounds too made up for fiction, though just about right for the mystics of the everyday.

I thought perhaps the staff were paid actors on some reality show and I was getting the big sting; the whole country was in on the joke, except me, because I was the watched one, some terrible angel who you humans were cautiously awakening.... again.


This was going crazy and then coming back... most of the way. Inside my chest and gut, there is something stirring that I wouldn't notice before and I feel like I have changed deep and true and all romantic and wild.

The radio station suddenly didn't like me, or something.... who knows? They say they just want music now. They have no idea how funny peace and I were hitting when we riffed. It will be a damn shame if no one gives us money to film some of our skits.

I more than likely blew the opportunity somehow... maybe when I started going after people before I reached the conclusion that I had to forgive everyone, as they have forgiven me (yeah, right.... got to inspire them to do that). Fearless radio turned out to be spineless radio, maybe.,.. unless I am wrong, which I am a lot, and hope I am. Those are some damn talented folk. Still, They have lost me. Each according to his own. Radio is hardly the major thrust of my career.

A total thanks to those who have already pledged their time to the scrappy beginnings and are prepared to show up at cook county dressed warm with their dogs to try and show our support with the bruised and battered and dying. I'll let you know when it is safe to come out fighting peacably.... like I would know?



I was transferred from resurrection hosp. after waking up and nodding out on waves of white fluid pumped into my iv.... as I was leaving, someone pulled out a brand new catholic bible with a green felt cover. I kind of sneered it off, thinking at that poiint that i was to be the new Picard, a pilot of what would amount to the earth as ship; a creature undreamed come from afar, and now manifesting in human form again to make some cosmic sales pitch for humans to get all peaceable so they could join the intergalactic space orgy that is the apocolypse in this game (or is after you earn as much through study and hard work or some such bleeep).


AT St. anthony's, since i got all mad dog in the end with the cops, they slapped my vomiting ass in the cracker jack box. ... Yea, for some reason when M called an ambulance, I decided I wasn't going with them, or something... so a small herd of cops took me down hard. Who can blame them? A couple of my ribs.



Laying in a barren room puking and puking and the pain a wolverine gnawing on my spine, I started thinking I was already dead, or about to die. I had already lost like ten pounds. They took a couple days figuring out what to do with me, as I yelled and ranted to get relief from the pain trains* slamming into my fusion -- the huge block of bones disentegrating from plain old boring gravity. The psych ward workers were more used to coke heads and really, really crazzy people who were more or less like infants, and suicide cases and cutterS and pukers AND homeless people who found the place their best alternative in a cold chicao winter... I was sure that I was all of them and none. . . I remembered the radio had branded me Pain and it made sense to be there admidst the tragedies of mental break down.


After being an asshole, and being a man of my word, I had to give them something cool for helping me out. I don't think these people make nearly enough money, so it came to me to give them a painting, cabrini green, which used to hang in cook county and never quite made the transition to stroger. Something right about my work hanging in a psych ward. I wrote up a contract so the employees own all rights to prints and stuff, not the church or the hospital...

Other than the hospitals and homes, my paintings are all at MERCY home. Love them gals and guys and they can always use another hand -- it's abused kids and stuff man.


I got some stories All tragic and true and funny, and met a couple damn fine poets and a whole hell of a lot of buds... I was almost the only white guy there and that made it all kind of jovial and cool... I learned while driving cab that blacks get along better most of the time than whites... I would get sick of white people and work the black neighborhoods, personally, because they were chatty and knowledgeable most of the time. When I was eighteen, I sobered up for my first time in a dallas white ghetto filled with people of color who treated me with respect and love. Period. The economy was good there in 1980 and I never heard about no crime.

I especially liked this woman, J., a psychologist or something who told me I needed more soul, and ain't that the truth. Indeed, I let her put some braids in my hair, for the hell of it. M. thinks I am too old for such fashion splashes and wants them out.. they fall out in two days norm.

J. is the one who told me they were not black ghettos, but white ghettos filled with people of color (who can be white now, too, because there is no real white or black anyways... as she also explained with her fire and grace). Never would have thought of that without her musing.







Here's the HEADS UP...

The bit with the comic books was me thinking I could raise some money for charity, and the bit with the peace bears was a joke based on national lampoon's cover about a dog being shot if you didn't buy a copy. I thought it was funny to threaten to kill a peace bear unless people quit killing each other or something. M. missed the point and now all the little peace bears are hidden in the closet. They are still peeking out, I guess... but you know little peace bears, they are wary as all hell.

So, here is the boring health story:


I was in a coma state for 30 hours, during which my mortality was in question. I guess in the end I got violent, like some pain ravaged dog... M. called the ambulance and I got it in my head not to go with them, so they called in like five beefy cops who took me down hard. I was already half in the coma, lucky for them or me or all of us.

All writings by John Scott Ridgway are protected by the law... but I encourage you to spread my poems by whatever means necessary. One day you will understand.


This is the truest story I know how to tell. Freshly released from the hospital and writing frantically to fix and edit the new stuff on the blog, after having taken a week or more going manic, then 30 hours off for a coma, and then another week to begin to figure out why the shit got too crazy for me, and why I came to believe in the old cliche that I was some christ like thing, or angel, or leader or a teacher or some such pipedreams.


My visions of my powers have settled down now to merely inspired by the great men of old and now, so I have been released to tell the tale....

They don't let you out of that ward when you talk to angels. I am looking forward to a little reunion when the shows start on Common Ground. All these folks get in free and a coffe on me (if I have enough money that day).




Here is the newest, what I wrote in the hospital will go up when I get the blog fixed up.

My body was reacting against a drug I had been taking for ten years, suddenly throwing me into a series of literally maddening seizures.



This dream came while I was awake, or apparantly so to those around who expect some excentricities, but clearly noted that the hatter was mad...... . I was in wonderland kansas and barton fink and johnny got his gun and this thing went on forever.


THIS IS TRUE MEMOIR WRITING,


Swear it on my sweet amazon mother's smile, and this is going to be told WITHOUT ANY EMBELLISHMENT.... WARNING, A BIT OF MY SOUL IS ON DISPLAY AND THAT AIN'T ALWAYS CLOSE TO PRETTY.


Perhaps I should gonzo a bit of humor up between the bouts of the pathetic, who knows? Not me, I'm just a boof. And all I got is honesty, like gene wilder modestly once said.

I was vomiting for almost three weeks, some kind of flu, standing at the sink eating crackers and trying to keep the pain pills down long enough to douse the fire burning under those THick, red, angry scars.


Despite deep and steady back Pain that would have normally stopped me from writing, the words seemed to just flow through me unbidden. All I had to do was make myself sit here. When the typing became praying is beyond th is boof.


i felt like i was catching hold of electric currents, in places deep in my unconscious.... and organically growing into a being i am just now imagining.

A leader of some kind of crusade, however sickening the word sounds.... a man struck by some holy, awful, gorgeous experience that I will be spinning out now that I am back at the helm... a week or so mostly off writing has my fingers damn itchy.....



WIth the health, right now I am eating vegetarian, off cigarreettes, taking a bare minumum of pills and exercising... but when my brain went awry, I was just puking up everything and going half crazy from withrdrawel after ten years on the stuff, and having seizures....



I became possessed by dream after dream. It could not have happened at a worse time. A series of seizures...
I became convinced I was a conglomeration of different fictional characters like in Dune, or Stranger in a strange land... in other words, a christ like figure....

Well, that and other things. I think my jesus was a salesman who was telling earth that he could show them how to make the planet a space ship and join in som e intergalactive orgy....

I felt I was Paul Atreides being tested, that one false move and I would be considered too dangerous to emerge.

I started listing the names of a bunch of comic books at one point, which seemed to alarm everyone. I really need to either polish my first drafts more or keep them secret.MOTHER, THINGS JUST GOT WEIRD
home
by jsr

TheTOO LONG FORGOTTEN POWER of the word

is being ripped out of the hands of the elite
and handed to the poorest child
good time for an internet revolution


a bloodless coup
fought from our hobbit* holes
as we grow plump and gracious

ALL GOOD PEOPLE

pray for the day everyone is forgiven
and we can lay down our guns and come home

CRUEL SHOES

traded in
for black steel toed boots
then sandles

and finally
just barefeet on sand
again

I WISH I COULD EXPLAIN THIS EMERGING CREATURE TO HER

I am afraid
I WILL WAKE UP
and this being I am becoming
will be gone
i'd prefer not to go back

she hates this guy and is talking like she's leaving

now after the hospital stabalized
and i feel like this new thing
confident and prowling taut

the mad scared her deep
it has yet to really hit me
or I've moved on

seeing me back compulsively slammming out words
is too close to the mania before the mad
for her
the anger comes out in bitches over the small shit
she wouldn't usually sweat

i don't feel like there is anything else I want to be doing
and there are no words for that she has ever understood

i am mourning for her already
expect to lose what you love

you always do
sooner or later
one way or another

it doesn't amount to a hill of beans

MAYBE THIS WILL BE A MAP

LEADING OUT
INTO THE STARS

AND BEYOND


maybe
we will gonzo up a new world


or three
or some number not even invented yet...
some number too big for our puny heads???????????

All writings by John Scott Ridgway are protected by the law... but I encourage you to spread my poems by whatever means necessary. One day you will understand.

SAVE OUR HISTORY OF THIS CRUSADE OF PAIN

SAVE US ALL

I was those monks on craggy,cold windswept shores
keeping the words sacred
as wars
ripped the hearts out of man
and the con made them think rightous
murder and mayhem

illuminated bibles
died in mountain passes
fleeing with my family in the night

drank many a fine bottle of wine
and layed many a fine ones

then I was struck by a passing chariot
and left for roadkill

passing cars had their stereos up too loud to hear
my screams

not their fault
ain't nobodies fault

just gotta dust myself off
skip on
be grateful for the soft flesh between scars

we owe history...

forgiveness on every side

there is enough for every soul living and dead

let our loved ones sacred hatreds be buried with their coffins

the hunters sacred pantheon explodes

from a fist exploding in the mountains of Denver



from SEA TO SHINY SEA


red eyed and pissed off
we stand up and tell they great they

NO MORE


now we feed the poor
warm the elderly
stop your wars...
and start ours...

good flood this time

WE



ARE COOL ENOUGH TO CATCH THE WAVE



THIS TIME







TO GO SURF ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
AND MULTIPLY



WE HAVE TO be RESPONSIBLE



run OUR ANGERS BY THE SOOTHING PRESENCE OF PEACE