keith harden

as if i wrote a poem

Keith Harden

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as if i wrote a poem...

as if i wrote a poem

c2013 by keith

harden

table of contents 1. ....cover 2. ....table of contents 3. ....introduction 4. ....a good poem 5. ....hair 6. ....universe 7. ....crave #9 8. ....mr. jonah & mr. icarus 9. ....retired 10. ....boom boom 11. ....with my spirit in my hands 12. ....turning #12 & 35 13. ....5 tomato haikus 14. ....rainmaker 15. ....digital stoners 16. ....if you were a bird 17. ....sledge 18. ....the recyclicans 19. ....the lute, the laud & the lyre 20. ....subjectivity 21. ....the devil's in the hills 22. ....mad river 23. ....revenge 24. ....shock and awe 25. ....the night they bought the farm 26. ....helping hand 27. ....billy the kid 28. ....follow me down 29. ....blue stars 30. ....the fallen sparrow 31. ....bonnie dream 32. ....waiting on an angel to smile 33. ....gonna take a river 34. ....anna lane 35. ....beneath the cherry tree 36. ....alice and the subterranean wonderland band [short story] 49.....about the author

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introduction

This collection of writing is a mixed bag. There are 'regular' poems, some 'beatinuenced' rambles, song lyrics, a short story, some quotes, some one-liners and one-pagers. Most of the selections t onto one page. Naturally that excludes the short story. Before the days of computers and word processors I would just throw everything I had written in a box. This went on for three or four decades. When I moved from Illinois to New York State I didn't even open these boxes. When I moved to Nashville I left those boxes up in the attic and only recently have raided them for some of the items included in this collection. One of the strange things about digging into these boxes was nding some poems and lyrics that I barely remember writing. Who was that guy? It made me think about this idea. They say that every seven years your body replaces all of it's cells and if that's the case then all of one's brain cells would be different than they were seven years before. This makes the idea of memory/memories an interesting and mysterious subject. I like the way some poems look [visually] on their original "paper", whether that be from a piece of scrap paper, the back of an envelope, an old leather bag, a legal pad or an old piece of tablecloth. Some of what you see here are the originals and some are re-creations. Something about the physicality of these scraps feels good. Kinda like the difference between virtual dollars in cyberspace and holding cool cash in your hands... Like the old country-blues song says... they are ragged but right.

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a good poem

a good poem is a short poem one page is enough one page gets read one page

unless you're a book or a congressman one page is enough a good song is a short song 3 verses & a chorus are enough 3 verses get heard 3 verses & a chorus

unless you're a murder ballad or a zimmerman 3 verses & a chorus are enough

a good poem

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hair

sitting on the blanket red & white criss-cross weave one piece of too tall grass in her hand eyes cast downward her hair swept by the wind circles one ear & touches one breast not a single strand out out of place not a single blade of grass out of place

anywhere

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universe

We know that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate and there is a never-ending entropic unfolding of everything that exists In other words the cosmos is coming apart at the seams If the universe cant keep it together then how can we?

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crave #9

the $2 answer to the $64,000 question why do we crave? well... an expert-texpert chicken-fried authority says... please avert your eyes believe me, you dont wanna see how they make those thin wafers ya eat in church or how they make the snausages that dogs crave

dogs know how to crave with such sweet wiggly shame if ya dont like dogs i prolly wont like you god loves his palindrome 16 year old boys crave girls & mature women & nerds crave coal miners & Dallas cowboy cheerleaders crave quiet intellectuals & librarians crave the presidents crave

queens of England crave just got to have to have that pomp and circumstance some of them craven catholic priests done been cravin & misbehavin with boys & girls ruined childhoods, incalculable damage, stolen innocence, stolen souls, suicides

lord, please send Jesus back with a new agenda give him a big 'J' on his chest and superpowers Jesusman would save the day please strike them pedophile priests down with lightning and hit 'em with a brimstone... court-sytem justice is a parking ticket we can't help but crave revenge crave

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mr. jonah shoulda waited 30 minutes

mr. jonah & mr. icarus

mr. icarus shouldn't 'a' own so high thinking "i want to touch the sun" the sun had been up in the sky all day just shining & humming a sunsong getting hotter & hotter mr. sun forgot he wasn't cool mr. icarus forgot he was not a bird

the cramps slowed his swimming the whale had been in the water all day blowing bubbles & singing whale songs working up an appetite mr. whale forgot he was not a sh mr. jonah forgot he was not a sh

a long time transpired with the shes then one day they crawled onto dry land & waited & waited & went through trial & error & transguration & eventually they all forgot they were once a sh

it's ok to worship the sun & swim in the ocean & sh & wish you were a sh or a bird because long ago you were you just forgot but remember wait 30 minutes after you eat & wear lots of sunscreen & don't do what mr. jonah & mr. icarus did

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retired

for a really long time the lord worked in mysterious ways & god had so much to do it nearly killed him he took a long vacation watched the dinosaurs do stuff he let'em go extinct xcept for crocodiles & such later on he burned some bushes talked to some desert dwellers and made 'em feel special made 'em a little crazy then he sent down the plagues and watched people start wars they crusaded in his name go team, go then nietzche said "god's dead" "long live the proletariat" but god's not dead he's just retired humans have to man-up & take care of this bloody mess before we retire

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boom boom

i know the blues are sexy but i wish big pharma would stop with the john lee hooker blues cuts in their viagra commercials

i've lost the desire to play my blues records until the viagra commercial wears off hey admen; for your next commercial for stiffeners what about a song like "i can't stop loving you"

or maybe "forever young" [the rod version]

or

for the V. pill poppin' erection challenged onanist how 'bout a song like "hold on loosely" or maybe "you keep me hangin' on"

i could go on

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with my spirit in my hands

Mississippi sun - is callin out to me had enough rain - in the hills of Tennessee yes im goin away - with my spirit in my hands Mississippi sky - put the blind in my eyes way back in time - put the delta in my mind yes im gonna go there - with my spirit in my hands with my head held high with the light in my eyes gonna walk real slow thats the only way I know im goin to Mississippi with my spirit in my hands

Mississippi John - had a happy blues song saturdays he played - down in Avalon yes im gonna go there - with my spirit in my hands Sippie Wallace sang - the blues in the night every little thang - was ragged but right

yes im gonna go there - with my spirit in my hands

with my head held high with the light in my eyes gonna walk real slow thats the only way I know im goin to Mississippi with my spirit in my hands

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turning #12 & 35

the oldest thought is nonthought, mindless, remorseless still us moderns kill our four-legged friends and cook them on the fire without malice or mercy, hunger without anger

you look up and see splintering shards and realize that less than a minute has gone by and youve had all these thoughts your mind is boggled watching sparks fly

shooting stars trickling down into our fish eyes flashing, photosynthesizing, creating our DNA, warming our blood since pre-history, before native American paleo-Indians made arrow heads by chipping stone

the oldest profession is slowly working our way up to the top of this food chain weve risen, weve transcended crawling on our bellies in the mud laying in our own merde

billions of years ago when earth formed way before cartesian logic weve had this starlight converting itself into heated action

but what the shit! we sometimes still like the mud what the fug; we still like getting down in the dirt. let us wallow well go shopping later

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5 tomato haikus

early girls fried green red big boys wait for the knife june, july, august the red devils fruit came to bible belt gardens kinda grew on em color has odor just touch a tomato plant you will smell fresh green fruit or vegetable is to be or not to be ketchup or catsup pre-enripenment tomatoes are tomatoes post, they are sauce

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rainmaker

rainmaker make it rain rainmaker make it rain forty days and forty nights forty days and forty nights let the waters wash away - the sin and stain let the waters wash away - the sin and stain wash away the sorrow - wash away today wash away the sorrow - wash away today flood the ground - where the earth is cracked flood the ground - where we left our tracks where we left our trail rainmaker make it rain rainmaker make it rain let the waters wash away - the sin and stain let the waters wash away - the sin and stain flood the ground - where the earth is cracked flood the ground - where we left our tracks where we left our trail

rainmaker make it rain

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digital stoners

Even if we arent putting drugs in our bodies, feeling buzzed by being connected to electronic devices to a constant stream of data in myriad forms arent we digital stoners?

We are.

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if you were a bird

if you were a bird and you liked to talk & squawk & cheep & chirp & chatter & caw caw caw & whistle & twitter & tweet

would your words fly with you in formation? would a large talkative flock in flight be TMI? too much information in formation?

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sledge

When youre a sledgehammer the whole world looks like a sledgenail

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the recyclicans johnny's in the beesmint mixin' up the peppermint waitin' for a payment thinkin' 'bout retirement

look out kid don't matter katydid dog knows when but yer gettin' too thin ya better jump down a blackhole buy yourself kindle the chimp don't work cause the monkey's got an uncle [thanks bob]

i am he as you are ye i have to pee and we are all in leather see how they mew like a kitty so knew see how they flea i'm cryin'.......... i'm cryyyyyyyin'

yellow frenchy mustard drippin' from a hot dog bun phonographic record singin' hairy christian man you been an irish boy you let your erin go braless

i am the jpeg they are the wave files i am the walwart choo choo achew gesundheit [thanks john]

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the lute, the laud & the lyre

a lute must be held just right... just like a lover... when all is lost... hold it there till your tears are gone a guitar is so cheap... it conquers the world... three loud chords... hold it tight till the flame is gone... the lute got left behind... along with the laud, the lyre & the zither & other endangered species in another century... the guitar mounts the stage... or lays on the couch & the bed... it broke the rules, it went electric... like that folk fakir, zimmerman...

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subjectivity

Objective truth is constantly being bitch-slapped by subjectivity.

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the devils in the hills

gather round you people a story I will tell the tale of an outlaw you should know him well the seeds of trouble planted - like bullets in a gun the devil reaps his harvest of the innocent and young and the secrets lay buried so shallow in the ground theyre surely bound to rise up they will not be kept down blood signed and sealed another shady deal and the devils still out there hidin' in the hills if you cant find redemption out there on the road nothin but a wasteland is what the future holds

the seeds of trouble planted - like bullets in a gun the devil reaps his harvest - of the innocent and young and the secrets lay buried so shallow in the ground theyre surely bound to rise up they will not be kept down blood signed and sealed another shady deal and the devils still out there hidin' in the hills

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mad river

from Ashtabula to an old dirt road the Ohio hills have a hidden code theres a memory there that takes you down to where you spent a year in Galion town he was a Miracle whod lost his way the kid next door who said hed play a game to try and free your minds but what you found was not so kind and the Mad River runs all the way through the Indiana plains to Ohio back again and the bad memories all fade away through the Indiana plains the river soothes the pain she was a Miracle whod lost her way he was the boy next door too shy to say that he wanted her to be his girl but she lit a fire that burned her world and the Mad River runs all the way through the Indiana plains to Ohio back again and the bad memories all fade away through the Indiana plains the river soothes the pain

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revenge "...in the end, no blaze of glory 'feel-good' nal revenge can be had because you and everyone who ever lives in the real world is gonna die... vengeance is not mine, it's not yours nor is it anyone's except for mr. death's... so screw you, and all your good-guy-always-wins-happy-ending hollywood action lms..."

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shock and awe Occasionally I get on a high horse and gripe about stuff [cause it's fun, isn't it?] then El Nunya will blow it's westerly winds again and fair weather will come back into the picture and the bitching will stop........ We learn from our mistakes isn't that how it goes? We fess up to feel better. Not always... Not when you are corrupted by power and can whitewash or cover things up. After W took us to war in Iraq and no weapons of mass destruction were found his handlers made statements to the press in order to absolve members of the executive branch and the intelligence agencies from blame.... things like "mistakes were made... we thought they had weapons of mass-destruction..." The neocon war-mongers drank the war party kool-ade. Iraq did not attack the USA on September 11th, 2001. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's march to war was completely, utterly misguided and criminal. Our military forces bombed the shit out of Bagdad. Shock and awe. Well over 100,000 people were killed in Iraq during the war and there are a million refugees.. If that's not mass destruction then what is? Operation Iraqi Freedom, mission accomplished? W still has not apologized for this crime against humanity and all of his other screw-ups. I bet by now he even believes his own lies... But don't think that W is the only president with large amounts of blood on his hands. What about that lying Indian-killer Andrew Jackson? Even the 'sainted' Honest Abe killed native American Indians in large quantities. If there's a hell they're their. I apologize for getting a little bit political and/or self-righteous... It won't happen again... Well, on second thought it probably will.

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the night they bought the farm

it was a very strange romance underneath the stars they weren't afraid to take a chance out behind the big red barn he said their secret would be safe in the rows of golden corn but innocence was stripped away just like the clothes they wore their kind of love they had to hide everybody knew it was wrong runaway horses on a mountain side the night they bought the farm they tried to nd a hideaway shelter from the storm oblivious to time and space oblivious to harm blood red wine from a tainted cup was spilled upon the ground all for a song she gave it up and then her horse went down their kind of love they had to hide everybody knew it was wrong runaway horses on a mountain side the night they bought the farm

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helping hand

goin down to hand out street gonna pass the hat around gonna play my five-string open-back till my fingers get too cold too cold to make the sound

goin down to play for some friends in the unemployment line hard, hard times are here once again they know life can be unkind land of plenty - its time to change your name your plate is empty - and nothing is the same dont want no bailout - just a helping hand we need another roosevelt - to help us make a stand we need a helping hand

headed south - when I ran out of luck tonight ill sleep - in a broke-down truck had some land - but the well ran dry everybody needs - a slice of the pie goin down - to hard-time street gonna pass the hat around had to pawn - my five-string open-back now my voice is all thats left to make the sound

land of plenty - its time to change your name your plate is empty - and nothing is the same dont want no bailout - just a helping hand we need another roosevelt - to help us make a stand we need a helping hand

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billy the kid

What if Billy the Kid carried a guitar instead of a gun?

he did and they called him Woody Guthrie

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follow me down

i could say i dont know how i got here

maybe i just let myself forget once i drove a blue train right off the tracks gambled on my future but i lost the bet

i ran into home grown savior on the road

said he knew the way to Beulah Land but I would up down in old New Mexico with a single six-gun burnin up my hand gotta dig a hole - six feet in the ground hide this gold - cause the lawmans comin round i never have known - the right side of the law i never was shown - my right from my wrong i can hear the hounds on my trail followin me all the way to hell follow me down - follow me down i cut a deal with the undertaker to let my woman know the day I die he said she already sent the flowers must mean she has a guilty mind

you hold the cards the dealer dealt ya gotta dig a hole - six feet in the ground i can hear the hounds on my trail
followin me all the way to hell follow me down - follow me down

somewhere a queens waiting to be drawn theres a truth nobody ever tells ya good luck says hello but then its gone hide this gold - cause the lawmans comin round i never have known - the right side of the law i never was shown - my right from my wrong

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blue stars

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fallen sparrow

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bonnie dream

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waiting on an angel to smile

its all about goin the distance every step feels like a country mile blues become your whole existence waiting on an angel to smile lord I hate this bizness lay down a twenty ya get back a dime this city is a real harsh mistress waiting on an angel to smile bullets fly through a clear blue sky any single day could be your last ride its a mad, mad world - so unmerciful waiting on an angel to smile things go wrong and they stay that way they gotta be bad before you change ya know youve never been truly free ya got too much skin in the game bullets fly through a clear blue sky any single day could be your last ride its a mad, mad world - so unmerciful waiting on an angel to smile

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anna lane

show me the way to oklahoma now that the dust is gone show me the way to the rivers edge now that the flood has dried show me the way to the real far east now that the monsoon is past show me the way to the forest deep where the pride of the lions used to sleep and I aint got a lotta fight left in me no I aint got much gumption left and I aint quite as strong as I used to be and all that I want you know I aint got it yet

show me your sweet love - anna lane show me your sweet love - please, baby please show me your sweet love - anna lane and Ill show you kindness like youve never seen yeah Ill show you kindness like you wont believe

show me the way - to begin again now that the end - is in my face show me the way - to get back up i sure gotta find me - a better place show me your sweet love - anna lane show me your sweet love - please, baby please show me your sweet love - anna lane and Ill show you kindness like youve never seen yeah Ill show you kindness like you wont believe

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beneath the cherry tree by the garden planted just for you and me that brought the little hummingbird that floated oh so free

pink and orange blossoms screaming color at the spring i can barely stand it when i think of you and me underneath the cherry tree

no more northern winters that wear the spirit down lovers without love on the frozen ground gone is the garden planted there for you and me gone are the blossoms screaming color at the spring gone is the hummingbird beneath the cherry tree

i can barely stand it when I think of you and me underneath that cherry tree

beneath the cherry tree

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gonna take a river

it's gonna take a river it's gonna take a strong undertow it's gonna take a blue blue sky there's gonna be some sleepless nights it's gonna take a river it's gonna take a month of sundays now it's gonna be a long boat ride it's gonna be a long goodbye under the water - don't wanna drown under the weather - i'm falling down it's gonna take a river i'm gonna nd a at bottom boat if we wanna keep markin' twain it's gonna take a lot more rain under the water - don't wanna drown under the weather - i'm falling down it's gonna take a river it's gonna take a strong undertow it's gonna take a blue blue sky it's gonna be a long goodbye

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alice and the subterranean wonderland band

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Lewis Carroll

You feel like you're ying... ain't nuthin' better... Tonight you're ying and a couple of nights ago you were playing musical instruments you hadn't played before with complete mastery... sweet dreams... You and your bandmates are playin' some snazzy bluegrass guitar licks... mandolins are choppin'... banjos are blazin'... ddles are ddlin'... a sweet sounding woman is singin' a high & lonesome song... They say you may still have unfullled ambitions if you y [sans plane] in your dreams or at least that's one interpretation. Lately your dreamights take you over meandering streams... winding rivers... nice little lakes... You're in and out of a good dreams that generally come about 30 minutes before you fully wake up. These bodies of water of course indicate that you have to get up outa bed and go to the bathroom then you're back to bed... back to dream a little while longer.

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You wake up and squint at the light of the late morning but you're still not ready to get outa bed. You're still somewhere between dreamtime and coffee when logic and proportion have fallen back asleep into the sleep of the sloppy dead. You lazily ponder the similarities between the the 'language of dreams' and the literary nonsense genre and you've got a couple more nonsensical dreams to go before noon. Other than lazily strolling through the summer garden making a daisy-chain and pulling some weeds, you have no real plans today and because hot weather makes you feel sleepy and stupid you decide to stay in bed and close your eyes for even a little while longer... driftin' and driftin'... As the rell valve slowly oats and the stopper accepts it's fate and the hissing of the water subsides, you lay back down in bed and put a pillow over your ears knowing that you may or may not have to get back up and shake the handle on the terlet. They can send a man to the moon but can't make a quiet blah blah... You re-snooze at the exact moment that the water stops and sits on the wet side of the bacteria-brown scumline inside the porcelain back of the terlet assembly. You are never not impressed with the amount patience shown by the chemical formula H20 and you wonder at it's ability to bravely sit and wait for it's fate of being ushed into duty, ushing doodie... You might be out of the house for a month but the water in the tank waits. Except for a certain amount that's evaporated, the rules of engagement are clear and cloudless. Water must behave according to the laws of physics and the most well known law is gravity. Whether the White Knight talks backwards or forwards, when hand meets handle the water mindlessly rides down into the bowl and that's a real no-brainer because water has no mind. Water does it's thang, ushing, swooshing, washing, cleansing it's way to the sanitation district facility miles away from most residential neighborhoods but the trailer park near there is not so lucky when the wind is right [or would the wind be wrong]? Water has some of the strangest properties found in nature. We all know that it can be liquid or a gas or a solid but did you know there are 19 types of ice? Water is everywhere in rivers, streams, babbling brooks, lakes, ponds, seas, oceans and

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swimming pools and water is essential to life. Water is the absolute best except when you're ve years old and you drink way too much Koolade and you have to pee real bad but the pills Mother gives you didn't do anything at all to eradicate the boogieman hiding at the bottom of the stairs... When the tank is full and silence is complete you shift from alpha to beta waves and you feel your dream-body oating through a tunnel [no, not a sewer, this is not your subconscious acting in a symbiotic relationship with the toilet innards although your mind is often in the gutter and you've had lots and lots of sex dreams but in all your time spent in here in Dreamland you haven't had one single wet dream but on the other hand you've never own as a result of your own volition in Awakeland]. You begin ying again and wow, it feels so good with your arms spread like wings. and you're zooming through the air through the tunnel curving downward, descending through big round tubular shaped hallways that are lined with cobblestones... you are ying but no, you're not a bat or a hornet or an underground raptor chasing a snow bunny down a rabbit hole, you're still fully human. This is a familiar feeling because in your dreams you are a frequent yer... Down, down, down you reach what seems like the bottom or the oor of this underground world and you see rows of wooden church pews with folding chairs behind them [the cheap seats] and the place is quite crowded with people and birds and animals including a duck, a dodo, a lory an eaglet and several large playing cards. This anthropomorphically integrated congregation of sorts was listening to a concert performance by internationally known stars of stage and screen Alice and The Subterranean Wonderland Band [ATSWB]. For an

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underground cave this is a relatively intimate venue and the kind of place Alice always used to play when she was just small [time]... As you approach the bottom oor of the cavern it serves as your landing strip and your legs come down and you run for a couple of seconds, a few light steps till you get your footing and your safe landing is complete [Fatal crashes are statistically rare during REM sleep, it's much easier to die in a car crash while sleeping especially if the driver is awake at rst, then falls asleep]... Am I being too parenthetic for you? I'm sorry, I'll try to reign it in... Can you ll out this survey below? It'll only take ten minutes... Not interested? Only one more more question, OK?.. Would your reading pleasure be heightened if things were more paragraphical? This dreamight was a veritable breeze as they say in ight school, with only one leg, no annoying layover at LaGuardia, no switching planes in Detroit or Atlanta, no lost luggage, no pat-downs or security checkpoint hassles, no men on chessboards getting up telling you where to go. You didn't even need a cape or a superhero costume to y, your pajamas are aerodynamically designed specically for comfort and that's what keeps the customer satisfaction high and in fact there is no complaint department for this dream-airline and talk about cheap! There are no planes to maintain, no pilots to hire, no ight attendants or even airports. No credit cards or passports are needed, your ticket to ride is your subconscious desire to rise above your current status, not in the sense of climbing the social ladder but more in the sense of freeing up your creative potential. You don't even need a social security number just a place to turn off your mind, relax and oat downstream and fall asleep... This trip to the netherworld was pre-plane old-school sleep-ying, the kind of air travel done by anyone who could muster up the levitational anti-gravitas. People in the olden days like our rst president George didn't have Air Force One and didn't need it because he understood the concept of freedom from years of piloting himself whilst sleeping.

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Washington and his white horse Pegasus winged it quite often. As for the nocturnal plane-less air adventures of our second president, Jefferson? Airplane was not a word he knew. He dream-ew with more than ample arm-power that was part of a strong constitution and overall good physical health which came from doing a lot of farm work as a boy. Thomas declared his independence from gravity during many dreamful nights... So after your safe landing you're getting your bearings and your PJs magically transform into standard issue boot-cut Levis and a denim shirt with pearly snap buttons. It's like you've just had some kind of mushroom and you're seeing things because you're not surprised when seriously lightweight and comfortable Dr. Martens appear on your feet. Maybe in the next dream your subconscious will afford you some Birkenstocks... The 'pewed' faithful gather down here in The Underground every night because there's no TV or internet in Dreamland. All are enthralled by the silvery sound of Alice's truly original voice. Once in a generation someone comes along and sings so beautifully, so straight and true it seems to be a heaven-sent gift... This 'one in a million' voice reverberating through the cavern sounded quite a bit like the voice of Alison Krauss but this particular singer was a wunderkind from another time altogether, maybe a couple hundred years ago. Alice looked like the Alice [or her nearly identical twin sister Lacie] from Alice's Adventures In Wonderland... Even her speaking voice was melliuous. Could it be history repeating itself repeating itself?

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She couldn't help but see you ying in and looked over to where you were standing in the back and motioned for you to come and join the band for a song [only in a dream, right?] and put the strap hooked onto a gorgeous A-style mandolin over your shoulder and strummed the rst notes and nodded for you to go ahead and play... Somehow in this squishy reality you know just what to play and it seems to t right in with what the other musicians are doing. Alice's angelic voice soars above the music and quivers it's way into the space between the molecules into a place you can't see but you've felt... that space where the air itself shivers and shakes. Her voice seems to transmit some strange spell that surges through souls. Hers is a nocturnal aural emission that soothes savages, nine-to ve secretaries, rednecks, Nashville mayoral candidates, European tourists and US government census bureau employees... Alice looks you right in the eye while hers gleam and twinkle and you feel a bolt of soft gentle lightning surge one iota past your threshold of pain for an instant but that recedes a nano-second later and you are comfortably ecstatic like your rst trip on mescaline [don't forget, this is still a dream sequence]. The pure unadulterated impulse of love in the form of a musical note travels right through your heart and then proceeds to move up and down your spine and the backbone of anyone in the vicinity. The place practically lls with a pool of

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tears... dang me, take a rope and hang me, she sings so purdy she makes your heartstrings ring... It's hard to believe that she didn't win but she wasn't even a nalist when she sang on NBC TVs hit show THE VOICE. They found out she mostly existed only in The Underground and there are major partisan political differences between the Down Under Dreamland Democrats and the World Wide Awake Mad Tea Party. Most think the real reason she was denied a smashing victory in the sing-off was not politics but jealousy. Cee Lo Green and Blake Shelton went gaga for her but rumour has it that she wouldn't go to dinner with Adam Levine [she hates tattoos] and that she and Christina Aguilera were like oil and water. Alice respects Christina's singing talent but thinks she's a nasty-ass ho-bag... Speaking of subterranean mandolins and things with strings, some of the smartest people in the world who study quantum physics and ponder the universe 24/7 say the fabric of the cosmos may be comprised of lots & lots of little strings, unimaginably small [there's no pill that could ever ever make you that small]... Oh so many strings... gazillions of strings... more like a gazillion times a gazillion with a gazillion zeros stretched out to forever... a number of strings so huge it's beyond our ability to comprehend... All of these strings all vibrating at their own individual wavelength... String Theory is what they call it. Maybe that's why we resonate with lutes & guitars & mandolins & banjos & bouzoukis & cellos & dulcimers & pianos & stuff... all those vibratin' strings... Did I mention that this Alice plays ddle really well, just like AK and has been playing well since she was a little kid... a pure prodigy in a league of her own. Makes you think that there may be some bleed between parallel dimensions...

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As close as I can gure it, The Golden Voiced Fiddler likes to get down to earth [beneath the earth] once in a while with people and/or musicians of the Commons. She knows what the great composers of yesteryear knew, that some very elemental, essential human things can be learned best from the simple, beautiful melodies and customs of everyday people. With time and effort and the meddling of the genius-class, the commoner's folk-craft can be forged into higher art. So Alice gets down with the regulars, the Joe-six-packs and the Jane-Does, The Bobs & Bettys, the Jack & Dianes and she is unselfconsciously comfortable and sweet when mingling below. She has 467,000 followers on twitter and her tweets are not about going shoe-shopping. She doesn't muddy her message with such triviality. Under the hashtag @alicewunderkind her 140 characters are used to impart pearls of wisdom or even beautiful haikus but remember you can only receive them if you get on her e-mail newsletter... contact her at ATSWB@dreamlink.net... So here I am well into the good part of the dreamcycle strumming this mandolin and singing harmony with Alice and her Subterranean Wonderland Band down in the Gathering Of The Underground and all eyes are on her and though she is always the center of attention she is nonchalant and unpretentious having learned the value of humility. She kept her head and received two thumbs up when she sang for the Red Queen of Hearts and other jaded royals & knaves... When above ground she wears Jackie O sunglasses not to be hiding her celebrity [which is huge in underground circles] but because she spends altogether too much time down in the darkness below and it takes a while for her eyes to adjust.. Alice is a natural platinum blonde of Icelandic descent, so fair she was sometimes mistaken for albino when she was very young. She came from some high-falootin' ancestors whose bloodline can be traced back to Finland but they

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ed to Greenland then to America to get away from the Nazis in WW2 and were so impoverished after the war they wound up living in a remote deer hunter's cabin in Kentucky on the Cumberland Plateau. She knows the difference between a rainbow and a moonbow and shit and shinola she knows the value of networking and all artists and musicians need patrons of the arts like Dukes & Duchesses & Earls and those courted by Earls and they need the philanthropic assistance of the well heeled and those who've inherited fortunes that were made in the Gilded Age. Alice has done her time and paid her dues and she was tired of needing food stamps to survive so by golly once she got on the path she never looked back. She sought all revenue streams from passin' the hat at basket houses, to Rockefeller endowments & McArthur grants and ticket sales from Carnegie Hall. When asked about her 'druthers Alice said she likes playing for people in the uppercrust of society and needs their generous donations but she feels more connected to her roots when playing for the unter-volk as they're sometimes known. It's the downtrodden, the wretched, the poor, the 'real' downhome folks who have the truest appreciation and understanding of her gift... The songs that Alice and her band were playing down in sub terranea were brand new to me and even though I'd never played them before I started to get in sync with the other musicians. I tried to get the scoop on the sitch from the players next to me but they weren't inclined to say much between songs. They muttered and grumbled like servants who didn't want their master to hear what they were saying and they seemed to be afraid of displeasing a towering presence like Alice who sometimes seems to be ten feet tall. She is known to have a temper and when angry can count the songs off at a ridonkulous tempo that can give you tendonitis if you try to keep up. Still, our musical back and forths were bordering on telepathic with not much more than quick glances and cues and a wink was as good as a nod. Against all odds I kept progressing in my performance ability from one song to the next. Riding on the sonic wave created by Alice's voice we [as a band] scaled the stairs to new heights by leaps and bounds...

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I had never taken mandolin lessons and had barely even strummed a G chord on the little 'gourd' but I was holding my own on this little eight-string sunburst nished beauty. Perhaps Alice had sprinkled wonderland-mushroom powder and fairy dust all around the bandstand. Or perhaps my new-found chops came from some kind of divine intervention... In light of all the other dream-distortion effects and the general hookah smoking caterpillar like squirminess of the situation, perhaps I'd made a dark deal with the Devil hisself long ago without realizing it. I had been to 'the' crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi and jokingly said I would sell my soul if I could play the mandolin like Bill Monroe or Sam Bush or even like Charlie McCoy [not the Nashville session guy who is a great harmonica player and musician but the old blues guy who played with the the Mississippi Sheiks back in the 1920s, 30s and 40s]...

The band took a fteen minute break and we popped into the Dreamland Hookah Bar right across the back alley from the Gathering Of The Underground venue to smoke a bowl. I couldn't hold back any longer I just had to let it blurt so I asked "Hey guys, [yeah, it was mostly guys] how long have you been here, how

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long has this band been together?" A brave Asian stand-up bass player with a perpetual smile looked around to make sure Alice couldn't hear him and told his story... "When I was a teenager I fantasized about being famous and I wanted to be the best cellist who ever lived so as I laid down to sleep one night and looked out the window at the sky from my bedroom window and I said I would sell my soul to play the cello as well as Paganini played the violin... Being self-motivated and full of youthful energy and desire I sacriced the fun of my childhood to practice cello and piano, I entered college on a scholarship at the age of 16 and then played rst chair viola with the New York Philharmonic for ten years then switched to cello when the position opened... I gured I'd bide my time till the Philharmonic's cellist retired and I would reach my desired destiny... One day when buying forever stamps at the post ofce I was killed in a random shooting by a postal worker who went postal after being red and losing his pension after they found thc in his urine on a surprise spot check designed to ferret out USPS employees who used drugs... I was sent down here when Alice was recruiting players for the band and they force-fed me this piece of cake then put this unwieldy double-bass in my hands and I've been stuck here for what seems like ve years but I'm not sure... It's a nightmare trying to keep the banjo-ist from rushing the tempo... I don't know if this is a bad dream, a full-blown night terror or if this is purgatory but I'm guessing I'm here because I said I'd sell my soul to be a great cellist... " Next, the guitarist of the band told his story... He leaned in and said, "Over time I have formulated a theory as to why I may be here... In college I was a music major but I minored in philosophy... They lled my head with pretzel logic and we debated the meaning of existence and railed against the persistence of deism and the absurdity of monotheism and upon advice from a dormouse I fed my head and fed it some more with the contents of the bottle that said DRINK ME and between that and the academy's form of knowledge-based bias my life became one long continuum of conict without resolution and one opinion was as good as the next and I came upon conundrum after conundrum and ran squarely into a paradox till my head ached and my soul was so full of existential angst that I had a mystical out-of-body experience which led to an epiphany wrapped in an enigmatic nervous breakdown and I conded in my [catholic] university adviser that I had no faith and that life had no purpose or meaning and I saw no point in living... At that very moment I was struck by a bolt of enlightenment and this was my once in a lifetime chance to shout 'Eureka' without embarrassment... It couldn't be simpler... Once I realized I was afraid of

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dying and that I was much too cowardly to actuate the mechanical process that would result in my suicide, I decided that living was the way to go... Out of the blue I slipped on a banana peel at a fresh fruit market in Miami and fell right into the path of a Mercedes convertible and as the lifeforce was leaving my mortal coil I unwisely blurted out four little words... 'there is no god'... Why I didn't utter something sweet as my last words like 'tell ma that I love her' or even something silly like 'ah oh spaghettios' I'll never know..." The guitarist continued his story..

"They say that when you die God sends you down here to the Underground
till you admit he [yes, he is an old white-haired guy with a beard and white robes] exists, but so far I've seen neither hide nor hair of Him and it's been several years... I haven't seen Jesus or Buddha or John Lennon or anyone holy... I learned a hard lesson... Never casually say things like 'I'd sell my soul for a [ ] and never admit to being an atheist and only reveal your agnosticism in the North Country... As for when the band rst started this gig..", the guitarist said, "Go ask Alice... I think she'll know..." -------------- I understood the moral of their stories being this... don't toy around with soulsales or insider soul-trading or atheism and take a real good look at gift-horses in the mouth and always know that charitable contributions have strings attached and when you wish upon a star and your wishes are going to be granted by someone in the record biz make sure it's more than a verbal agreement, make sure you get it in writing and make sure you get an entertainment attorney to look it over and beware of hidden cameras at stop signs and audio recorders and super-pacs and too-gig-to-fail banks and be ready at all times to click your heels together three times and say out loud "there's no place like home"... When we returned to the Underground stage Alice was waiting there and asked, "Well what do you think after your very rst set? I hear the potential for some absolutely fabulous mandolin music coming from your strong, sure hands and the gig is yours if you want it." I felt like I was being pulled apart by two opposing teams of horses. I steeled my will and resolved myself to nding a different dream. I laid that beautiful little sunburst mandolin down, down, down and woke up, up, up and there next to me on the bed was my oldest friend,

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Stella. Looks like the lonesome blues are my true calling. I picked up that Stella six-string and played an old song by Mississippi John Hurt, "I woke up this morning with the Monday Morning Blues.." I added my own original couplet as the last verse, "I'll see you little Alice when the veil's done come around, I'll see you little Alice, when the veil's done come around, Down in the Wonderland when I'm six-feet underground.."

Keith Harden

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about the author... Keith Harden is a lifelong scribbler, note-taker, collector of stories, lyricist, songwriter, musician, singer, graduate of the folk-blues-rock & rollschool of hard knocks playing every kind of gig imaginable for more than 40 years. He has recorded and released more than ten albums of music from folk to blues to americana and alternative rock. He was born in the tiny town of Tolono, Illinois and lived in California (when his dad was in the army stationed in Santa Barbara) he then lived in Ohio for part of his teenage years, and back to Illinois for a lot of years then several years in upstate New York. Keith currently lives in East Nashville, Tennessee. for a complete bio, photos, music, etc go to; www.keithharden.com keithharden@aim.com c2013 by Keith Harden

K.H. in the Attic Studio Geneva, New York Autumn of 2001

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