What is Life About 
By
Linda Hibbard

Problems and Change
Change and Problems

Is Life a series of solving Problems?
Is Life a series of Change?

Is solving Problems creating Change?
Is Change creating Problems?

Is it a Problem?

self-portrait in tar


and words aren’t actions,
and prayer is as
meaningless as regret

the temperature is a nervous
stutter between rain and snow

the town is a vast expanse of
empty parking lots, of
grey shot through with crushed
plastic and dead leaves

i have wasted my life

i am afraid of growing old and 
dying in front of my children

i am afraid of
growing old and dying

in the end we are only
something
subtracted from nothing

the drowning years


it’s always the same stupid shit,
always these self-inflicted wounds

his 15 year-old girlfriend pregnant, the
asshole from the barfight in a 
coma and not expected to live but
brenda laughs, says why not

dead-end job at the minimart and her
boyfriend doing six months in county, and he
says his stepfather has a place down
in north carolina

tells her he’s had a crush on her
since middle school, and she
asks if it’s gonna be a boy or a girl

and he says he doesn’t want to know

doesn’t really give a shit
one way or the other,
and she nods

tells him she needs to
leave a note for her sister

needs to feed the dog

small, ordinary acts to help her
feel like she’s
moving into the future


the forest of the profane


early autumn frost in the
shadows of sunlit buildings, all
blue sky and junkie dreams

man walking past you says he’s
got god in his veins

says there are other
versions of hell that have nothing to
do with faith, and his smile
is filled with blood

this town is where i live
but it’s not my home

this idea of judas as scapegoat
needs to be reconsidered

despair is a sickness
not a weapon
but it will always be used by
tyrants to beat you down

will you suffer the first blow or
will you burn down the castle?

will you set the gospel aside
and hear the truth instead?

all choices come to an end when
the dog you fail to praise
decides to take your tongue
                           as his own


skeleton afternoon


this is the man with no eyes who
tells me he pities my blindness

this is the party to celebrate
the death of the deathless kingdom

i fuck his wife in the back seat of
someone else’s car or
he seduces my daughter before
they both disappear

a stalemate

a gun for every starving child
so they can all grow up safe

even here in this cramped and
sullen space between 
disposable gods
we are all someone’s enemy


notes on ideology


good times in the suicide
factory down on your hands and knees

swallow the cock or swallow
the barrel, and
how many choices do you really need?

how many lives are you planning on
screwing up other than your own?

goddamn kids gotta grow up
sooner or later, i guess

can’t be sucking at their
mother’s tit forever

they need to know they’re useless

need to know how much blood is
required to solve each problem, and
maybe you have to smack them around
a little to drive your point home

maybe a house gets burned to the ground,
maybe a car gets stolen or some
fifteen year-old girl from the
trailer park out at the edge of town
gets knocked up, but this shit
happens every day

you fuck or you get fucked

you walk or you crawl

a lifetime of  meaningless rules and
blown chances, and then
you die

and the story ends the
body is found,
but how do we get there?


same goddamn way
every time

14 yr old girl sits on her bed,
curtains pulled,
father’s gun,
instructions on her laptop screen

knowledge is power,
right?

puts the muzzle to her head and
pulls the trigger, and so
turn the music up a
little louder

send flowers

bring shovels

a lot of bodies left to be
buried before this
part of the story ends


halcyon


tired of being so fucking
old, and tired of all
the goddamn years i wasted

tired of being on
the wrong coast

or not being able
to forget your face

of everything i write
sounding
like a suicide note

An Autograph from Mingus

	Charles Mingus was my first jazz obsession. When I was an adolescent, my older brother Bart worked in the mailroom at Columbia Records and was often able to bring home swag from the label. I glommed onto Mingus Dynasty, the follow-up to the landmark album Mingus Ah Um. I was especially taken with the tracks that went beyond the jazz I was familiar with, the ones that had adventurous compositional structures, “Far Wells Mill Valley” in particular, which combined influences of classical composition with wildly swinging jazz. This wasn’t the somewhat forced and stiff “third-stream” music I’d later learn about, it was a consummate artist putting all his influences and resources at the service of his music.
	
Mingus’ earliest recordings as a leader tended to lean heavily on his classical compositional proclivities, and then, around 1955, he took a wholly new tack, eschewing written arrangements for a looser approach, where he’d talk his band through arrangements in rehearsal, aiming for greater spontaneity. By the late fifties he’d started bringing both approaches together, along with liberal doses of blues and gospel, forming the style that would characterize his music for the rest of his career, a brilliant tension between the composed and the spontaneous, emphasizing the individual sound characteristics of his sidemen (something he learned from Duke Ellington, one of his mentors), creating a repertoire that drew upon a wide variety of influences to make music that was both eclectic and idiosyncratic.

	After hearing Mingus Dynasty, I started buying other Mingus albums, and then, in 1972, when I was just short of 16, I saw him live, one of my first jazz concerts. It was a New York homecoming for Mingus. He had been only intermittently active since 1965 and had just released his first major-label album in 8 years, back at Columbia after more than a decade, Let My Children Hear Music. The concert at Lincoln Center, like that album, featured a large ensemble playing new compositions as well as many of his career classics. It was also my live introduction to a number of other jazz greats who appeared as guests to help celebrate the return of Mingus, including saxophonists Gene Ammons, Gerry Mulligan, and Lee Konitz. Mingus and Friends in Concert, recorded that evening, is the first of a number of jazz albums to include my applause.

	From then until 1977 I saw Mingus many times, in concert halls and clubs. A Carnegie Hall concert in 1974, featuring a number of Mingus saxophone alumni in a jam session, was released by Atlantic. On Mingus at Carnegie Hall, the discerning listener can hear how much more self-assured my applause had become in just two short years.
	
I caught Mingus at least one time each at The Five Spot, The Village Vanguard, and The Bottom Line, and numerous times at The Village Gate, where he had two-week or month-long residencies. Most of those times at the Gate it was Mingus with his tightest quintet in years, featuring tenor saxophonist George Adams, trumpeter Jack Walrath, and pianist Don Pullen. During those longer engagements other musicians, like singer Jackie Paris and trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, would often sit in. 

	At The Village Gate, Mingus performed at the upstairs space called The Top of the Gate. Most of the time I’d sit at the bar—which was just outside the main room with the stage, but from which you could still see the band—because there was no cover, just a drink minimum (and back then 18 was the legal drinking age in New York). But one time a friend and I splurged for a table. We had arrived early and got great seats right by the stage. Shortly after we sat down, as Mingus was setting up, tuning his bass with his back to the audience, he let out a big, brassy fart. Next thing we knew, Mingus turned around and graced us with a big shit-eating grin. 

	It’s the closest I ever came to an autograph.
	

Bodhisattva Projecting 


                                            
                                             Orgone


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tempest


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the spring has (rung (in the dietary removing (a cause and 
not a grown thing (left-most removing (rightmost rightmost
rightmost (lapping at the silk (an order and order an order (
faster through the thread and colour (reacted in synthetic (
a hammer guide (a metal armament (less speaking and more
spoken (****************(outside in the distance (cold
cold cold (foundational without sighting (the spring on the
tongue (99999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999 (alphabetical conniption (
less tragic than the one before (_________________(outside
and out of order (stupefaction to the modal interview (a clap
and the thunder has arrived (god and god and god (0000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000 (000000000000000000000000 (00000000
0000000 (except you are the same (a static and a deep hum (
found connection (found extraction (found reduction (growing
growing (growing (growing (sight gone (sight come (asterisks
against the climbing side (northern facing (eastern facing (.....
...................(it's good to be back (modular and entrapment (
floor design (wall hanging (get out of the town (sweet sweet (
tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetttttttttttttttttttttttttt (tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeettttttttttttttttttttttttt (ah)))))))))))))))))))))))))
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))  

                                             Orgone


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tempest


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Carry (over_under) Carry


velocity speaking after tone removed and impulsed through the cataleptic normalised without synthetic movements and interrogation as scientific impulse drivers conscript and writhe in torpor now removed and collated into breakage and anticipation cast out and found without the forming and selective tired flashes of liability 


this = skull


magnetic in the skyfall betterment longitudinal as ascetic entertainments re-modify entrapments known to fakir tempestuous and lotus shunting a speed so formal not antiseptic and renowned in thought and name so juxtaposed    




+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++
+++++++++
++++++
++++
++
+





solution breathes itself to life with transcendental 
longing at magnetic height and muscle complexity 
as selfsame as the honorifics embellishing through 
mud brick anti-natal concluding only wake and 
enterprising 

Oratory Illumination (fracture)



illegitimate                        [phone as rung]




promulgated over this                               +
                                                  


                              
                               a shell to crack and take
abandonment so well



[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]




this colour comes in articulation writing sound through 
causations known and unknown a crown atop the head 
and breakneck pace



+running+
+running+
+running+




[the bell [phone]] has... 


Oyster as Baptismal



explain
         (explanation)
explain
       (explanation)


+
+
+



vulnerable to this reciting 
notation is the key



vouchsafed as
vouchsafed as




hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm



now the number is...


(,,,,,)

 

Bio: Nathan Anderson is a poet from Mongarlowe, Australia. He is the author of Mexico Honey, The Mountain + The Cave and Deconstruction of a Symptom. His work has appeared in BlazeVox, Otoliths, Selcouth Station and elsewhere. You can find him at nathanandersonwriting.home.blog or on Twitter @NJApoetry.

harmony in the midst

of an orderly universe

. . . earth's chaos



invisible

from outer space


Christina Chin / M. R. Defibaugh





lonely night 

how long this cold

winter river



train leaving

for home



Christina Chin / M. R. Defibaugh





boarding

the same train . . .

different destinations 



a cluster of felled branches

in the olive’s shade


Christina Chin / M. R. Defibaugh





a few strands of hair 

caught on her lips

golden field season



her sequined gown

blows them away



Christina Chin / M. R. Defibaugh





uneasy night

the whining horse  

in a haunted barn



the old nag telling

his fate 



Christina Chin / M. R. Defibaugh