Oh this just took my breath away. The bad lizard. I always thought of him as more of a dragon. Or a Quetzalcoatl spinning his dizzying spell the world over. That dancing that dancing
Yeah they would have made him do that.
I came so close to meeting him in New York with a Velvet Underground and Nico. Not close enough though.
I love this poem I will treasure it. Cuz I know he escaped what I didn't for a time. We probably got to stick together whether it's in the etheric OR in solid material.
And I knew the promoter that took all the chairs out of bayfront and why that happened over there. I guess I woke up to you this morning Jim riders on this storm. Together.
Thank you for this.
I think he rode in on the dragon Moon and the year of the dragon.
The snow is melting this morning. I can make it to that airport now. And fly away and meet you somewhere dragonesque and where we can spin that wild black leather stuff free forever.
I'm obsessed with this kind of supposition. Every line and stanza hits and carries the reader where I'm sure the writer wanted them to go. A good balance of humor to go along with the serious subject matter. Throughout the poem I can feel the writers respect and love. The last line is especially haunting and powerful.
Bad people are not necessarily addicts. We know who the bad people are. One can be an addict and a good person and a piece of shit mother fucker with no apparent addiction . Not such a simplistic world
Do not sell yourself out, follow that dream, believe in your own craziness and passions and stick with the them, the corporate and entertainment world is the shits.....He just left one thing out ....come for a walk with me in my neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, also known as Chinatown, anytime, and see the folks in the streets, and try to figure out if they are dead or dying, have a close look at them, talk to them, have a close look at their mangled bodies and spirirts. Then the reading will be complete, then you can sit back in your warm house infront of some some screen and evaluate those proclamations..
Im inspired by this masterpiece and have a mischievous grin on my face this morning... had to read again while listening to "The Best of..." He was such an amazing spirit here and yes, he would have possibly been coerced into the dark side of our machine culture. It would be interesting to get Val Kilmer's thoughts as I believe he was inhabited by Jim's ghost for a while... Thank you for this multifaceted poem and its messages/warnings against caving in.
I think the poet may have overlooked that we are free-willed spirits. And, when did Jim ever do anything ‘they’ wanted him to do? Jim would be Jim in any time and any space. That’s what makes him Jim. And that’s why we love him. There’s a part of us that wants to be that spontaneous. We are just more concerned with the consequences than he was. May rest in peace.
I agree with the sarcasm toward the rescuers and their values.
However…
My father and mother sipped vodka from rising to turning in at night, and I suppose they cured me of being a drunk, and I suppose my mother smoking 2 packs of Pall Malls a day is why I never smoked a cigarette.
Even so, I lived on and just off the street for 5 years, and later for 2 years, and I spent a lot of time with long term homeless people in Key West.
All but a very few got up drinking and drank through the day until turning in at night in their hidey holes.
When they found out I had practiced law, they tried to get me to sue the city for selectively enforcing its open container law only against homeless people.
They used their government checks for booze and tobacco. They sold their food stamp allowances to buy booze and tobacco. They panhandled for money to buy booze and tobacco. They ate in soup kitchens and got food from food pantries.
They got mad at me when I declined to sue the city for selective enforcement of the open container law.
They found themselves a young lawyer, who took interest in their plight, and told me of a meeting they would have with him and for me to join them, which I did. And that’s how I met Sam Kaufman.
After he had met with them, we walked a while together and he asked me what I thought? I said I had clerked for a federal judge and had practiced law, and I thought he had a good case, but if it was me, i could not ask a federal judge to rule homeless people have a constitutional right to drink themselves to death. Sam said that was a good point, and he let it go.
Sam was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Florida Keys Outreach Coalition, a half-way house for recovering street addicts, run by Father Steven Braddock, who many years later told me that he once had run a security company in New York City, and Donald Trump was one of his clients. I asked Steve if Trump had paid him what he was due, and Steve smiled, and said yes.
A few years after Sam and I met with the homeless people. a federal judge in Miami, in what became known as The Pottinger Case, stopped Miami from using its police to prevent the city’s homeless people from sleeping outside, relieving themselves outside, and cooking food outside, if there was no place for them to do that inside.
Sam and I convinced Key West's city officials that we would file a Pottinger case against the city in federal court in Key West, if city police kept doing what Miami’s police did. Key West’s police backed off.
That led to the city building an overnight shelter for its homeless people, where they slept under cover at night, and then they roamed city streets and parks during the day. Not all homeless people used the shelter, but most of them did.
I had a blog that had a pretty good local following, and I wrote daily about a lot of things,, including what I experienced with the city’s homeless people and police, and with homeless people at the shelter, and with the people running the shelter, where I slept nights.
After I published that I thought homeless addicts would be better off dead, than continuing to booze and drug, the shelter banned me for life, because I had threatened to kill homeless people.
Having no place to sleep nights without being arrested by city police and taken to the county jail where I would stay 30 days and be released, then I would be arrested again for another 30 days, etc.,I went to a city commission meeting and told the mayor and city commissioners what had happened -, all of them knew me very well, Sam Kaurman was one of the commissioners- and that i was leaving the commission meeting to go to the police station to sleep in its front lobby, which was not inclosed, or be arrested and taken to jail.
When I rode my conch cruiser bicycle to the police station, a lieutenant came out and said I could sleep there at night. That made the front page in the Key West Citizen.
I slept months of nights in the staton’s front lobby, until my father’s estate learned of it and helped me get inside.
During that time living on the street, I met a really interesting, some would say weird, or wyrd, homeless woman some years younger than me, who had been banned from the shelter for life and was repeatedly put in jail for 30 days for hanging out around shopping centers during the day and sleeping outside at night in her hidey hole..
We became an item, and I wrote often at my blog about her and my adventures on the streets of Key West, aka Key Weird, where the weird go pro.
If Kari had given up vodka and cigarettes, we might have had a great life together. Even so, we had a really interesting time, until she had a massive seizure and died in her mother’s home, where I had gotten her on Greyhound with some of the money from my father’s estate.
A friend of mine does the tech work and chimes in with me at The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast, which can be watched at YouTube and at Torrent platforms. The podcast we did on Kari now has around 500,000 complete watches at Torrent platforms.
Homeless outlaw cowgirl shaman with the blues saved Key West from Hurricane Irma obliteration
Im 68
And here to say
Its not too late
Always thought my fate
Had an experation date
But here i am
Enjoying every misstep
Just like a piece of bait
As i wait
I freakin' love this. You hit it straight out of the park.
These types of police are everywhere now. The slippery slope is real.
Pure, unadulterated genius!!
I’ve read this gem 5x so far this morning and laughed harder every time.
Thank you, Vampyre!!
Oh this just took my breath away. The bad lizard. I always thought of him as more of a dragon. Or a Quetzalcoatl spinning his dizzying spell the world over. That dancing that dancing
Yeah they would have made him do that.
I came so close to meeting him in New York with a Velvet Underground and Nico. Not close enough though.
I love this poem I will treasure it. Cuz I know he escaped what I didn't for a time. We probably got to stick together whether it's in the etheric OR in solid material.
And I knew the promoter that took all the chairs out of bayfront and why that happened over there. I guess I woke up to you this morning Jim riders on this storm. Together.
Thank you for this.
I think he rode in on the dragon Moon and the year of the dragon.
The snow is melting this morning. I can make it to that airport now. And fly away and meet you somewhere dragonesque and where we can spin that wild black leather stuff free forever.
⚡🐲🐉🎸🥁⚡💛💫🌟
I'm obsessed with this kind of supposition. Every line and stanza hits and carries the reader where I'm sure the writer wanted them to go. A good balance of humor to go along with the serious subject matter. Throughout the poem I can feel the writers respect and love. The last line is especially haunting and powerful.
'sing a duet with Linda Ronstadt' made me snort in a most unladylike fashion.
Bad people are not necessarily addicts. We know who the bad people are. One can be an addict and a good person and a piece of shit mother fucker with no apparent addiction . Not such a simplistic world
You're gonna have a hard time with this page. You're an angry fellow.
This is phenomenal. Way to come with heat. Thank you. 🙏🏼
Do not sell yourself out, follow that dream, believe in your own craziness and passions and stick with the them, the corporate and entertainment world is the shits.....He just left one thing out ....come for a walk with me in my neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, also known as Chinatown, anytime, and see the folks in the streets, and try to figure out if they are dead or dying, have a close look at them, talk to them, have a close look at their mangled bodies and spirirts. Then the reading will be complete, then you can sit back in your warm house infront of some some screen and evaluate those proclamations..
Im inspired by this masterpiece and have a mischievous grin on my face this morning... had to read again while listening to "The Best of..." He was such an amazing spirit here and yes, he would have possibly been coerced into the dark side of our machine culture. It would be interesting to get Val Kilmer's thoughts as I believe he was inhabited by Jim's ghost for a while... Thank you for this multifaceted poem and its messages/warnings against caving in.
Brilliant!!
I think the poet may have overlooked that we are free-willed spirits. And, when did Jim ever do anything ‘they’ wanted him to do? Jim would be Jim in any time and any space. That’s what makes him Jim. And that’s why we love him. There’s a part of us that wants to be that spontaneous. We are just more concerned with the consequences than he was. May rest in peace.
I think you missed the point. Poetry shouldn't be read through a stringent, literal lens.
There is always the option of fleeing to the woods like I did, you can avoid all that crap, with the bonus of staying alive.
Bad lizard
I agree with the sarcasm toward the rescuers and their values.
However…
My father and mother sipped vodka from rising to turning in at night, and I suppose they cured me of being a drunk, and I suppose my mother smoking 2 packs of Pall Malls a day is why I never smoked a cigarette.
Even so, I lived on and just off the street for 5 years, and later for 2 years, and I spent a lot of time with long term homeless people in Key West.
All but a very few got up drinking and drank through the day until turning in at night in their hidey holes.
When they found out I had practiced law, they tried to get me to sue the city for selectively enforcing its open container law only against homeless people.
They used their government checks for booze and tobacco. They sold their food stamp allowances to buy booze and tobacco. They panhandled for money to buy booze and tobacco. They ate in soup kitchens and got food from food pantries.
They got mad at me when I declined to sue the city for selective enforcement of the open container law.
They found themselves a young lawyer, who took interest in their plight, and told me of a meeting they would have with him and for me to join them, which I did. And that’s how I met Sam Kaufman.
After he had met with them, we walked a while together and he asked me what I thought? I said I had clerked for a federal judge and had practiced law, and I thought he had a good case, but if it was me, i could not ask a federal judge to rule homeless people have a constitutional right to drink themselves to death. Sam said that was a good point, and he let it go.
Sam was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Florida Keys Outreach Coalition, a half-way house for recovering street addicts, run by Father Steven Braddock, who many years later told me that he once had run a security company in New York City, and Donald Trump was one of his clients. I asked Steve if Trump had paid him what he was due, and Steve smiled, and said yes.
A few years after Sam and I met with the homeless people. a federal judge in Miami, in what became known as The Pottinger Case, stopped Miami from using its police to prevent the city’s homeless people from sleeping outside, relieving themselves outside, and cooking food outside, if there was no place for them to do that inside.
Sam and I convinced Key West's city officials that we would file a Pottinger case against the city in federal court in Key West, if city police kept doing what Miami’s police did. Key West’s police backed off.
That led to the city building an overnight shelter for its homeless people, where they slept under cover at night, and then they roamed city streets and parks during the day. Not all homeless people used the shelter, but most of them did.
I had a blog that had a pretty good local following, and I wrote daily about a lot of things,, including what I experienced with the city’s homeless people and police, and with homeless people at the shelter, and with the people running the shelter, where I slept nights.
After I published that I thought homeless addicts would be better off dead, than continuing to booze and drug, the shelter banned me for life, because I had threatened to kill homeless people.
Having no place to sleep nights without being arrested by city police and taken to the county jail where I would stay 30 days and be released, then I would be arrested again for another 30 days, etc.,I went to a city commission meeting and told the mayor and city commissioners what had happened -, all of them knew me very well, Sam Kaurman was one of the commissioners- and that i was leaving the commission meeting to go to the police station to sleep in its front lobby, which was not inclosed, or be arrested and taken to jail.
When I rode my conch cruiser bicycle to the police station, a lieutenant came out and said I could sleep there at night. That made the front page in the Key West Citizen.
I slept months of nights in the staton’s front lobby, until my father’s estate learned of it and helped me get inside.
During that time living on the street, I met a really interesting, some would say weird, or wyrd, homeless woman some years younger than me, who had been banned from the shelter for life and was repeatedly put in jail for 30 days for hanging out around shopping centers during the day and sleeping outside at night in her hidey hole..
We became an item, and I wrote often at my blog about her and my adventures on the streets of Key West, aka Key Weird, where the weird go pro.
If Kari had given up vodka and cigarettes, we might have had a great life together. Even so, we had a really interesting time, until she had a massive seizure and died in her mother’s home, where I had gotten her on Greyhound with some of the money from my father’s estate.
A friend of mine does the tech work and chimes in with me at The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast, which can be watched at YouTube and at Torrent platforms. The podcast we did on Kari now has around 500,000 complete watches at Torrent platforms.
Homeless outlaw cowgirl shaman with the blues saved Key West from Hurricane Irma obliteration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ0Dc03eksU&t=629s
Wow. Very interesting!
This is soooo good and I loved it. I'm a poet myself and had my fuse (or fire) lit early by Mr Morrison and friends. In fact, they changed my life.
Excellent writing and a total keeper. Thank you.
my offerings are here: https://danoneill.substack.com?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web&r=3zg2g