***
The water moved about, among and between us
Like a cool lick of autumn between our chilled thighs
Your teeth chattered yut-yut-yut-yut
And I mimicked your shiver, our skin goosefleshed
As you threw your arms around my neck
Your lips purple in the night air, your eyes luminescent like Kali’s
Your black coiled hair like barely-constrained baby snakes
Your bikini midnight blue, but paler, moonlike, underwater
We were breaking the rules: no brown girls in this pool
But our nighttime love breathed and slipped all bonds
Now tonight, I walk the cool slate of my flat, barefoot
A quarter of a century later
Worrying like a forlorn, half-mad desert spirit
Why you never inscribed a book to me.
***
So this was when I was working in Nigeria. This colleague of mine was telling me about juju and I didn’t believe him so he arranged that I attend this ceremony. He said, ‘There will be a part of the ceremony you can watch and a part that as a white man you can’t be allowed to witness.” I said “OK,” so we went this one night and he introduced me to this ancient woman, I think she was about a hundred, and she was so old she was just one big wrinkle. She didn’t speak any English but she talked to me then drank this kind of liquid, I’m not sure what it was. Then she began to do this dance and at some stage, I shit you not, right before my eyes, she changed into a goat. Now, I am an atheist and I can’t say I believe in this one way or another, but I saw what I saw.
***
“Can I speak to Salim please?” the lawyer says into his cellphone as Centurion blurs by the Gautrain’s windows. “OK, what are the other lawyers’ names? It must be Hanif then; is he in? OK, then please tell him to contact me regarding the Loren Louw case… El-oh-ahr-ee-en, El-oh-yew-doubleyew. We’re taking his farm from him as he owes us a lot of money.” The lawyer is dressed in dark blue jeans, a checked shirt, brand new rubber-soled brown leather boots. He has been on a continuous stream of calls, mostly in Afrikaans, asking people on the other end of the line whether they are in Croatia or not, and about other matters. This one about the farmer’s dispossession, presumably on behalf of a bank or other creditors, relayed in English, piques my interest. In sitting down, he has allowed his beige coat to fall open, revealing the black handle of a chrome-plated pistol tucked into his waistband. It goes without saying that passengers are not allowed to carry firearms on the train. Reminds me of the Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd, a protest song about an interwar Oklahoma bank-robber with a reputation as a bit of a Robin Hood for redistributing stolen cash to the poor: “As through this world you travel / you'll meet all kinds of men / Some will rob you with a six-gun / some with a fountain pen / And as through your life you travel / as through your life you roam / you won't ever see an outlaw / drive a family from their home.”
***
Pirate Bill 2 years ago (edited)
Well, it was February 1971 and I was one of the last draftees. I decide to go see the Capitol in Washington, DC before reporting to basic at Fort Knox. I stuck my thumb out in Toledo and before long I was somewhere in Pennsylvania where I ran into this kid who was thumbing around, too. I guess he was about 16 and I was just 18 but you know I was old enough to tote so that made me the elder expert in matters of life and love and all other "etceteras". I don't know the kids name. I suppose I did for a while but, now, all I remember is that he was running away from home because he said his dad was in the CIA and was an intolerable nutcase. We determined that we might find a place to sleep at the University of Pittsburgh and headed there, directly, to try and find a place to crash. From the student union some straight types directed us to a crash pad and on the way this guy with long hair and a beard, driving in an old green station wagon, picks us up and takes us to the address which turns out to be a vacant lot. So the guy with the long hair and the family wagon says, “Hell, you can crash at my pad," which we agreed was a good idea. Turns out the hippie guy (whose name has also long been forgotten) was an artist and had a lot of very cool things in his house, among which was his own grave-marker, fully memorializing his life in everlasting stone, sitting right there in the living room in front of the fireplace. Being a hospitable sort of guy, the hippie fella brings out a grocery bag full of pot and we all proceeded to get stoned and for the very first time I listened to “The Dance of Death and other Plantation Favorites” by John Fahey. I have been a fan ever since.
Billl Ruxton 1 year ago
Don't fall into the trap of overly analyzing His playing, because you'll just get existentially frustrated. LISTEN and enjoy what His genius has given us. Yes, you semi-intermediate fingerpickers can sort-of approximate what he's doing, but you'll never do it as clean as John, because GOD touched Him and only Him in Takoma Park Maryland, right at the edge of the tectonic plate between the Piedmont and the Coastal Plain, where the universe bends dimensions, and Man can only kneel and let one's fingers try to fret the Quantum fingerboard of several dimensions at one time.
Patrick McCluskey 10 months ago
Whoever posted below that John is fine and well living outside Salem, you are a liar. I knew John the last 8 years of his life and played in a band with his manager at the time (Terry Robb) and had many, many interactions with him during that time including jamming with him a few times. He was a beautiful guy with a troubled past. I was given his Martin D1976 (very rare bicentennial guitar from Martin) for YEARS. In fact, I probably wouldn't have had to give it back to him had I not reminded Terry (multiple times) that he gave it to me for safekeeping. I have lots of memorabilia, though. He was an amazing and interesting guy, but he did have his demons. He died living in a fairly dire house, middle of a cold winter with no heat (in Eugene, Oregon) with a half dozen other indigent people (who din't die from exposure), suffering from an obvious emotional problem, after he'd been robbed of everything he had from his ex-wife, Susan. That's what I saw, first hand.
***
The bicoloured stray dog dances sideways on the beach, its paws a delicate counterpoint timpani to the febrile scuttling of the tiny crab it faces. The moment is pretty, tricky, as the dog matches the crab’s transverse scramble wits its own Lipizzaner gait, catches it in its mouth and bites… death nests coiled in the petals of beauty.
***
My grandma was the best man I’ve ever met – and I’ll explain what I mean by that. She used to be a regular housewife and just do the cooking and cleaning. She lived on a farm outside of Glasgow and her husband never came back from the war. So within five months she had learned how to raise the entire engine out of the Land Rover, strip it down and how to clean the valves by hand and so forth.
***
