Mississippi Pickup by B. Jones and Hunter Kennedy

[Rare mp3 audio file of a young B. Jones playing a ukelele, singing Mississippi Pickup - 4 MB]

Deer heads in the back of a Mississippi pickup,
I wander up the back way to ask her if I fucked up.
I slept in the swarming Houston headlights,
Gotta find a way to get it back on tight.
I took a walk down past the dumpsters to the dog pen.
I'm watching those old men watching it right then.

Two bears thrown in with those deer heads.
Clean 'em neat mount 'em on the sleeper beds.
A black man offered me a piece of brain:
Said, it looks sunny now but tomorrow it'll rain.
I hit a jack rabbit spun like a flower
And I'm checking my lifeline trying to guess the right hour.

Got the Big Bend high-speed vibrating body,
At an Elvis convention I'm drunk in the lobby.
The moon thrown shadows spilling over those long legs.
Daddy got his momma ten time before the song ends.
Tents peeling off - bones in the wind,
Twenty-five bananas sitting with no skin.

And the javalina sleep oh yeah,
And the javalina sleep oh yeah,
Checking those cards, playing for a paw print,
I'm praying and I'm hoping, mostly hoping for deliverance.

And that eight-point buck with his does and his sweet grass
Waiting for the daddy with the season pass.
He's got time to spare now in the back of that pick-up
With a thousand-yard stare saying why did I fuck up?
Well, momma don't go hanging it up on the wall
Say I'd rather be lucky than any good at all.

Well, momma don't go hang me up on the wall
Say I'd rather be lucky than any good at all.

On the Table of the Gatekeeper

Here is the bloody business of killing...

From this:
to this:
to this:
to this:

"Star"

At the Gate of Bones,
The Keeper carves his words out of the Flesh
of the Fugitive Gods,
Cutting to the Bone
Again and again,
Blood running through the ruts,
Heiroglyphs upon the Table,
The Altar of Sacred Violence...
The Heart of Religion.

The Birth of Tragedy.

[Middle English tragedie, from Old French, from Latin tragoedia, from Greek tragōidiā : tragos, goat + aoidē, ōidē, song.]

Old bluesmen,
Bent and broken over the Wheel,
Singing still, saying:
"As long you can sing about it,
It ain't that bad."

A life made just bearable enough to keep singing,
Standing knee deep in blood,
Surrounded by bones,
Watching the Keeper carve.
Waiting for the silence between screams
To sing again.

An Entire Range of Experience Unmapped

Photo by S. Walsmith

All our heart's courage is the
echoing response to the
first call of Being which
gathers our thinking into the
play of the world.

In thinking all things
become solitary and slow.

Patience nurtures magnanimity.

He who thinks greatly must
err greatly.
- Heidegger, The Thinker as Poet

What runs through the cut woods?
Spirit through the Pages.

The Lake in East Texas.

Walking with God:
Groundskeeper,
Boatmaker,
Fish Cleaner.

Fishing.
Catching Nothing.

The Little Things:
How to scale a fish.
How to cut the meat
Away from the bone.
What to do when
The two got mixed together.

And in those slow days...
Teaching me language,
Teaching me how to fish.

And to always remember
The Water.