young thunder

Little horses of the sea
wetting their cowlicks on the holiday Friday
falling asleep in the sun’s crescendo
capturing the orange coral and young thunder

We went to the beach in San Clemente on Friday morning. I wore the yellow dress into the ocean, thank you Meghan. The beach was almost all children, there were few parents. I saw a baby shark dwelling in a shallow area. I jumped and wanted to swim very bad, but I didn’t have anything suitable for the water. I wet my skin with the ocean wash and licked it off my arm. The waves lapped a little higher and the teens folded into the waves and the yellow dress was soaked on the bottom. I wore my new sunglasses. I bought them the night before on Hollywood Boulevard before we played the Knitting Factory, right when Nick heard a Michael Jackson impersonator tell somebody to shut up. In Williams, Arizona, I walked down the Motel 6 hallway and walked past a devious 8 year old girl, who grinned with all her teeth and reached up to the payphone and jammed the 7 button a couple of times with indescribable intention and a powerful focus on me.
Improvised music is not easy, it is difficult. The rewards are the pulp of ecstacy. As players, we are getting to know each other. I am on tour right now with Jackie O Motherfucker. I am singing. Our first two dates were with The Dirty Three at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles. We played a show on Friday in San Diego and now we are headed to Dallas for a show on Wednesday. On Saturday in San Diego, I got very stoned and spun a spook weave for these kids I met at a party, entertaining them with vittles of apocalyptic predictions until their faces puckered with sadness. I felt like Karl, as passionate and as devistating! Then, so sadly and mysteriously that night, I lost the keys to the van. This is the twin disappointment to my other loss at the end of the Yellow Swans tour. At the Portland show, I lost some of the merch money, which itched me, you know. I feel this San Diego key mystery is still unsolved, I think it will show up. Luckily, we had another key, but I lost the lock clicker. The kids I was predicting suffering to at that party ended up giving me a ride home and strangely, they couldn’t find their keys as we were trying to leave. The boy looked and looked and I suggested he just check around the periphery of his car; maybe he dropped them. We went to the car and voila, they were on the sidewalk next to the car. Please, let me have the same happy ending, I can’t stand to lose something, I hate invisible baggage.