Something's Happening Here

Stopped at the red light in a two horse town today, and had a flashback. Oh, my god! I was 17 again. It was 1964. The 'hippie kids' were just becoming 'possessed', about that time. 'Beatlemania', was well on the way from Hamburg, and I was beginning to witness 'hippieisms' of the peace and love cult. By 66 I was an alum of the Vietnam war...via, the good old US Navy. That same year, Buffalo Springfield came out with a little thing...goes, "something's happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear".

I should say not...and not just about war, but what led up to 'peace and love', the counter culture, free love, Jesus freaks, LSD, and Mary Jane. Free minds and innocence were taken for a ride those years, and never got their cherry back. I was a boy from the hick sticks. I saw it all go down, but I didn't know what I was looking at. You know, get yourself a costume, and be a hippie too? Anybody but me, play that one? That was my take then, but even though...I sucked up, to get some 'sweet love'n', nobody left a 'brownie' on my pillow.

I wasn't invited to this hotel, or this revolution. I didn't know what I was looking at, or trying to take a taste of...until decades later. I'm still not sure what was in the kool aid, but luckily, I didn't swig enough of it to become what the hippies pretended to be against...capitalist pigs, and war mongers. The music went on. The dance never stopped, but the players got trashier, and meaner and began flashing hand signals, that rock and roller's just continued to scream to.

Supposed hippies started popping up in 'big money' enclaves, like Lake Oswego, Sedona, Arizona, Ashland, Oregon...flashing the big bucks, buying pretty properties and pretty people, and inaugurating 'liberal themes', that began...over the years, to seem, less communistic, and more fascist...in origin. That brings me back to...Hamburg. I tell you, man..."something's happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear." Can you dig it? I can't, and I will sure as hell, not be voting for it.

August, 1969...Woodstock, wood cock...whatever you want to call it, was put together by big money to make bigger money. It was a free for all of tits and 'hips' and leary dealings with mind expanding drugs of all kinds. Kids got laid. Bully! Kids got laid on morgue tables, too, and 'phoney hippies' got richer than god, and bought up the peace and love, and turned it into a liberal political party. Since then, nobody's been able to get close to the music, to see the stars, and freak'n Jesus shelf date expired years ago.

Now, Satan's running the show. Are you happy, hippy? We are just days away from a Presidential election. They want us to elect frauds, phony's and hypocrites. They say our vote counts. They say a lot of things, but every word is a lie. I want flowers and love, too...but not at the sacrifice of my country, of our world, so I say...get straight, and pronto. Wake up, sober up and smell the facism.

Whatever you do, I hope you look at reality, not through rose colored glasses, but as it truly is, cause it's here and it smells to high heaven, like a rat...to me.


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2016, at Deming, New Mexico

Art: Woodstock 1969

Enjoy The Porch

You try to help people...it backfire's. You try to help people...again. It backfires, again. You can't save people from themselves. You can't change people, from the fate of their determination. You only feel right, when you quit trying that.

The world spins, another day...another dollar. It's not right, but you're not going to make it right, for any of them. They wonder why you try. Are you crazy? Get out of their light. It's their time...to get it wrong, to make mistake's, to feel the pain...to say their lines.

How can you help them, then? That's it. Don't try. Do, but do no harm. Interact, or act, or not. Your part is done, has been...for a long time. You're not dead. You're just, not in front. You always were a bit of color, character...to give the background depth.

You can count a busload of people, in your life, the camera's rolling for your story. It caught the laughter and the tears, the lies, the fears...and truth of all. It's in the can. The world's a stage, you know. It wasn't just a line. You see...now?

Don't try to save them. Have you noticed, how little, they wish to be saved? Look at how careless they are, how callous of their life and the lives of other's. These are not world savers. These are life takers, eradicators. This old world is as tired of them, as they are of this world.

Let it go my friend...let it go. Give it a name, sign at the end...out'a here. Enjoy the porch, the Milky Way, the tethered fish cracker...hanging in the sky. Read, write, relax...build that little trailer, you've been wanting to so bad...take what life brings you. It will be ok. You'll like it.


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2016, at Deming, New Mexico

Art:Milky Way, from Joshua Tree National Park

The Strange Thereafter

Air, like truth...leaks out. Look for the guy with the patch. He hates leaks. Take this any way, you wish. It wont make a damn, for you or him, or her...the truth be known, in due course.

It can't be blown away with a missile. It can't be shredded and dismissed. It can't be chewed and swallowed. It will blaze in the sky of the night, with every word hid...and none will retract it, or edit out the shame.

The world, astonished, will stand side by side, a little taller than before it knew these things. It will not be the same, as it had been. Relief, can then come upon that, that took part, in the strange, thereafter..


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2016, at Deming, New Mexico

Art: google art

Dreams Interrupted

It was a heart stopper, that day in Dallas. It stopped the clock, the dream, of millions. My world became a broken book of hours. It was never the same after that. It turned. It made noises. But it never told time thereafter; it told lies...instead.

Homecoming, from the Navy to that...lies and secrets; changes, no one take's responsibility for. I dreampt a dream, a dream of another world, like that first world, that had died...but changed, changed in little ways, like a world looking for answer's it couldn't find; meaning to its death, by every permutation, every file in its bleeding mind.

Finally, I awakened. It seemed, I was back, from a war in a jungle far away...but home, was never home again, and everything was wrong. Over the years, I came to realize...my world had sent me elsewhere. The ship of my life was dead. The life pod saved me, sent me outward on a journey of investigation and discovery...sent to find hope, where there wasn't any.

I came here. The answer's here. If it were not...would I have been sent? The reasons for all things amiss, can be answered here...in this false world. There is silence here, and secrets and lies. Yes. This is the place. What have you done, in this place...that makes all of this necessary?

For, I will pick you apart, as a man would a chicken...bone by bone, until I find out, or you give it up. My fate, is not to waste my time. The thing sought, must be found. The time, of those taken...given back, in perfect tune, from the beginning.

Your lies will be uncovered. Your criminal acts, sung by fellon birds, as guilty as jailers...and all the world's will hear the words, and truth will shatter the lying clock, and time will cease forever. Your 'time', its damnable mechanism, will be understood. You branded every being with your necromancy, to make them pay for your drug, of stolen hope.

This is not the end, nor the beginning. You will love the beginning, for it will never end.


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2016, at Deming, New Mexico

Art: google art

Country Wisdom

There's more news in a rural town, than a big city. From where you're at...you can spit to where it happened. They might not like you. They might not cough up a furball, in your direction. They might not like the 'curious sort'.

Doesn't matter, so. Don't say a thing. Don't give it up. Don't look their way or ask them...who they are? Just bide your quiet time. Become a legend in their midst. They only got one roll, and you're it. They'll come 'round sooner or later...tell you everything they know, which is, more than likely...nothing much.

People love to wonder. Very few know. The city keeps it tighter. None of them know a soul. Farmers all know farmers. They were raised with uncle Billy Bob and Old Joe fixed every car in town, and every tractor. The local Doc, was payed to stay, not to be a genius of the healing way...just be there to tell us stuff, make us feel safe, with those caring professional eyes.

Tell us some shit, and we'll go away...live our days till, our lot is up, and we pass away eternity in the old town cemetery. It's ok. We don't know much, and we wish to know less. It's hard to keep a small town's mouth shut, christian's, as, pretend to be such.

Don't let them kid you. Country wisdom knows more than it vaunts. It passed from time, before time...ever was, and it stayed in the hands of the royalty...gentry never knew. Don't say no. They look at you, like you're a witch. 'What chu look'n at, never seen a thing like me? Oh, bullshit!...Your mama! Prob'ly your daddy too. We all got warts, in the good old ...country USA.


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2016, at Deming, New Mexico

Art: google pic

Look Away

Seem to be 'leaking' follower's, like an old car tire leaks stale air. Wont be long, before life's ease of ass, will end. The legs will have to work again...churning out the toil.

They never say a thing. They're not friends. They're just, to lazy to delete their disinterest. It's funny, in a way. I used to call them 'weasels', those scurrying noises, behind the dashboard.

The 'grey mice' of non entity, the fat and greedy 'taster's' and waster's of all we are to them, 'the buffet for today'...then, when we're skinned and boned, they go away...back to chat up someone else's cloister, if the weather's fair...in the overbite, at a gallery somewhere.

Like, twas said before, there's ways to favor silences, quietness...disabuse of verbal interest, query, question, absolute obtuse suggestion of a course direction, leading one to nowhere. Try a view, that can't be bought...out across the desert, there. Here, try a bite, of this droll dirt...and laugh away, and go away...ass wipe.


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2016, at Deming, New Mexico

Art: Clip from 'The Ballad of Cable Hogue, 1970

That Thin Time

Things to do, other things to do...not to wish the world bad, nor give...where nothing's given back, just other things to do, now...other things to do, the watering's, the scratch...tuning of the instruments, gathering the winter's wood, the bailed hay, and dry...the wall against the wind, the thoughtfulness and care...to lives, not human...now, their time of need is here.

Weather turning cold, harvest in the barn...cover all the cracks, batten down the decks...lash the lines and tack, keep away the wet...stoke the coals of comfort on the grate, prepare the cinnamon and cider, 'gainst the bitter dark, trim wicks of oil lamps...kick back, a song or two upon old strings...still know the words of ancient things, spell's of smells from yesteryear, as kittens scamp about the floor.

Dogs wet noses, beg and gnaw...that favorite knuckle bone, of all...brought in, from out of doors to while the time away, aside the fire...the howl, the whistle of the wind about the eves before the Halloween, that thin time, that we dread and yearn, and bar the door...to what's to come, yet all the same...it come, and nothing can be done for that, but wish the best and pray, a 'write' by candle light, a read upon the bed...and sleep, away the winter's night.


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2016, at Deming, New Mexico

Art: freeyork.org, Harvest Storm