death – Page 4 – Kevin Trent Boswell

The Ghost of Tom Joad

guitar, bass, and vocals by Trent Boswell

Late last year, I moved to Portland, Oregon. It’s a wonderfully weird place. The locals actually say, “Keep Portland weird.” There’s a large mural of that saying, somewhere in the city. Everything about this place is quirky, eccentric, and hence, I should fit in here, just fine.

I also started a new job. I’m working in the mental health field. No, I’m not a doctor, therapist, and definitely not a psychiatrist. I just work for a company that trains us to assist people who have one or more mental health diagnoses, addiction problems, or who have lived on the streets, but are now in reliable housing, provided by the state. It’s a good gig. I get paid well, to help the people who really need help the most.

On Friday night, it started snowing, the temperatures were bottoming out as low as 18°F. That’s well below freezing, and it doesn’t even account for the windchill factor.

The other, less positive side of Portland, is that the homelessness crisis here is really bad. It’s almost impossible to go anywhere without seeing at least one car, RV, tent, or lean-to type shelter that someone is using to live in.

I first discovered this song from the band Junip. When I realized that it’s a cover of Bruce Springsteen, I found the original, and loved it, too.

This morning, it’s so cold outside, that neither my dog nor myself want to go outside any longer than is absolutely necessary. But, there are people out there, living in tents and sleeping bags.

I woke up to this song playing, I had left my phone on shuffle all night to help me sleep. I listened to it, looked at the weather, then became obsessed.

I’d never played this song before, but I learned it, then I recorded all the guitar and bass parts, and sang the vocal, and recorded it, and mixed it. Basically my whole Sunday went into this.

I plan to make a video for it, but I wanted to get this out, because I worked on it nonstop all day.

The Ghost of Tom Joad

Men walkin’ ‘long the railroad tracks
Goin’ someplace there’s no goin’ back
Highway patrol choppers
Comin’ up over the ridge
Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge

Shelter line stretchin’ ’round the corner
Welcome to the new world order
Families sleepin’ in their cars in the Southwest,
No home no job no peace no rest

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody
About where it goes
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light Searchin’ for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
Waitin’ for when the last shall be first, and
The first shall be last
In a cardboard box ‘neath the underpass

Got a oneway ticket to the promised land
You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock
Bathin’ in the city aqueduct

The highway is alive tonight
Where it’s headed everybody knows
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
Waitin’ on the ghost of Tom Joad

Now Tom said,
“Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy
“The Ghost Of Tom Joad” lyrics
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and
Hatred in the air Look for me Mom I’ll be there

“Wherever there’s somebody fightin’
For a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin’ hand
Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”

Well the highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody
About where it goes
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad

Words and music by Bruce Springsteen

the fishy word salad of the day is soup

discount buggers,
sitting too short in the saddle
to catch any light

but, far too tall
to be dead things,
since dead things
don’t sit tall in saddles

not quite full-fledged maniacs,
lacking in the forthright candor
of more honest lunatics

mockeries of invisible garbage

pieces you can’t quite sort
from all the other forgeries

ii.

the easiest lie to tell
is always the one
that was undisputed,
when you told it
to yourself

iii.

broken pieces
of education,
peppered liberally
over a plate of
wishful thinking

half-truths,
fractions of wisdom

chicken scratch cheat sheets
in secret breast pockets

decency spent
far too many wasted evenings
trying to shape a pile of vomit
into a snow angel

but, the toothpaste is already out of
the inner tube

besides, the inner tubes
are all useless now;

the tires were all stolen months ago

there is no sculpting
dour secular emptiness
into glorious, golden cathedrals

one does not simply turn
recidivistic destroyers
into genius inventor candy makers,
acrobatic violinist movie stars,
or unicorn blacksmith ballerinas

thespians of the eternal grift,
they have no thirst or pallet
for love stories,
only tragedy
and horror

it is exceedingly difficult
to shape small piles of
deformed turd nuggets
into the colossus

the thing is…
if you put a hat
over a turd…
no one sees a turd;
they just see a hat

and, god help
the poor bastard who
tries to put it on

sprinkle a big pile of rose petals
right over top of the whole thing,
and you won’t even smell it

but it’s still there

iv.

it’s really not important,
what I’m going on about

probably better if you just
take a nap
through the rest of this

if the impressive would stop
trying to elevate the unimpressive
then, they’d be more impressive

if they’d stop trying to
raise the dead,
it would be very impressed, indeed

if the unimpressive
would stop trying to
decimate the impressive,
they’d already be half the way
towards making a
positive impression

but, none of this
is due to change

vi.

seven in the side pocket?
my ass

there are four in this room
who can make that shot,
and you ain’t one of ’em

like I said, it really doesn’t matter
what I am babbling about

go back to sleep

or better yet…

there’s a small slip of paper,
rolled up around a dull pencil;
it’s not a number two pencil,
but rather, one of those
no-name brands

it’s in the top right drawer
of that bureau over there

it’s held in place on the pencil
by a rubber band

it’s underneath a pile of
old letters and yellowing catalogs

go open the desk drawer,
remove the stacks of papers, and
pick up the pencil

remove the rubber band,
unroll the little slip of paper
from off of the pencil, and unfold it

what’s it say?

that’s right,
it says,

“Fuck you.”

no, that’s okay,
you can keep it;
it’s yours

take it with you,
and share it with
the rest of your kin,

all the other
black holes

the liars, fakers, pretenders,
predators, thieves, naggers,
reality-twisters, dream-stealers,
complainers and haters,
would-be conquerers
of insignificant kingdoms

fighting razor tooth fang nail claw
over the right to wear a crown
made out of rusty wire coat hangers

or, a tiara crafted from zip ties,
and tinsel from
last year’s Christmas tree

two-legged, toothless dogs,
gumming each other to death
over rotten meat

the unintelligent,
masquerading as geniuses

half-geniuses and quarter-geniuses,
unintelligently masquerading as…
well, who really cares?

the impolite, leaning
on the good manners
of those who are too kind
to tell you the hot, vibrant,
fundamental truth

which is,
that you are
fundamentally
without truth,
or heat, or vibrance

I, on the other hand,
have misplaced all of my politesse,
and have no qualms about
sharing these things with you

I don’t recall which drawer
I left my good manners in,
or what I wrapped around them

but, I can tell you,
with great certainty,
that I’ve had
more than my fill
of the full measure
of you

I can
tell you
what you
can go get
wrapped around

vii.

the steely, red-hot poker of murder
in your eyes
is only a compliment to me

I would be perturbed, ashamed,
if you approved of me

I have no love for your kind

the secret whisperers, rumor starters,
terminally restless luddites
who shun such newfangled,
diabolical technologies as
empathy and dedication
to things other than self

nonconsensual emotional sadists,
pullers of wings from houseflies,
slayers of fierce dragons, or rather
harmless dragonflies

you are all that is ugly
in a world that was already
teeming with ugliness

busybody breakers of
other people’s toys,
ensnarers of time,
ambuscaders,
ambushers of vitality

there isn’t a pencil
on the whole planet
that’s dull enough
to write your little
shit story

there aren’t enough
rubber bands, twist ties, handcuffs,
thumb cuffs, shoestrings, or nets
on Earth to bind you

there aren’t enough
iron chains, piano strings,
or Mardi Gras beads made out of
concertina razor wire
to wrap around your neck
and throttle you with

nor is there a steamer trunk
heavy enough and sturdy enough
to fit you into, weight it down
with all the barbells in the gym,
wrap the whole thing in chains, and
toss it off the backside of the ferry,
just like Houdini, except,
hopefully less skilled
at the art of escape

you, who have such a knack for
finding beautiful things,
and shattering them
or, at least, doing your damndest to try

you will find
no welcome here

as if you
thought any more
of yourself,
honestly

which of course,
you would
never be

viii.

news anchor
spin games

rewriting history
playing both
the victim
and the hero

convince us,
once again,
explain to us,
what a paragon of virtue
you are

I’ll wait.

you are the weeds,
choking out beautiful flowers,
because you envy them

but, you wouldn’t be happy
being a rose

not even if all the work
of being a rose
was done for you

the moment you actually
became a rose,
you would instantly
become jealous of the orchids

you’d swear that you were
being cheated
by all those selfish petunias

you’d be
stabbing marigolds in the back,
shanking them with
a bundle of thorns
you made in your
unlocked prison cell

stealing their soil and their sunlight,
telling all the dandelions,
honeysuckles, and carnations
what terrible, awful creatures
the petunias and orchids are

and, all the joy
of being a rose
would perish

somewhere in the dark,
shaded corner
of a dry bed of dust
where nothing
ever grows

go on,
be as angry
as you like

I tried to
warn you

I told you
to go take
a nap

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roads

once, the roads all lay
wide open before us,
turning in hundreds of
different directions,
taking people on magical journeys
to numberless destinations,
along magnificent trails
of gorgeous scenery

yes, there were always
a few dead ends, here and there, but
one could always
turn around

you could backtrack,
without experiencing
too much anxiety
over lost time

you’d happen upon
interesting choices,
unmarked intersections,
where there was
no signage
to help you navigate
your way

it was all
up to you

choose your own adventure,
twist-a-plot, flip a coin,
“eeny, meanie, miney, moe;
my mother told me this way…
and you… are… not… it”

and so, you’d set down a path,
with guesses, hopes, and fears,
but no real way of knowing
what was up ahead

it was all an exciting gamble

you might meet your death
but, you might find treasure,
fame, or perhaps,
unravel a mystery

“once there was a way
to get back homeward.”

see? Paul knew the deal.

but now,
the roads have all
narrowed

many of them,
if not most,
are blocked off |||||
completely impassible

storms have knocked down trees,
barring the way

some roads are blocked by protesters

many streets are just
too full of potholes

you can’t drive down them without
wrecking your vehicle

all the roads,
even the dirt ones,
are littered with toll booths,
every half a mile

insane fees extracted like teeth

the “protection money”
extortions of gangsters
looks like chump change
in comparison;
third-graders,
threatening to beat you up
for your milk money

half the available highways
have fallen too far into disrepair;
you can’t walk down them,
for fear of stepping in a hole,
breaking your ankle

of the remaining roads,
those still open and drivable,
the traffic is maddening

each thoroughfare
congested with vehicles,
all belching exhaust, and
piloted by madmen,
caught up in the throes of
full blown road rage

too many cars,
even though the travelers
on all of these roads
already know…

there’s nothing
at the end
of any of these highways;
nothing they’d actually want,
anyway

the obsession is no longer
“where are we going?”

it’s now
“how long can we keep driving,
before we run out of gas?”

we no longer worry about
how long it will take us
to get there, because
we know…

there’s nowhere to go

now, we just try to lose ourselves
in the experience of the drive,
desperately trying to forget
why we ever got into the vehicle
in the first place

we no longer
ask ourselves why we
even have a vehicle

such questions would only
cause us to think about
what is at the end of these
endless roundabouts, and
dirt paths, running through
fruitless orchards,
as far as the eye can see

asphalt and concrete
conveyor belts,
mindlessly herding us
through the turnstiles
and metal guide-rails
of urban slaughterhouses

what was so important?
that we had to build these
heartless machines?

pay all these tolls?

deal with all these
crazy people,
rudely plowing ahead
in all these ugly boxes?

and, more importantly,
if whatever it was…

isn’t even there,
anymore…

then,
why the hell
are we still
out here?

why are we
still on
these

tacky footpaths,
made of gauche steppingstones,
leading only to the madhouses

these dry, dead riverbeds
where five out of every ten tankers
are beached, or rudderless

three more of them are sinking

and one more has been pulled over,
by the police

only one out of every ten vessels
on our peculiar, asphalt rivers
is in good working condition,
and sailing on nicely

and, even that one
still lacks any sense of
where it’s headed

what fever is this,
that overtakes us,
compelling us to pursue these

godforsaken
freeways
of the damned

infinite trails of
tamed wilderness
that lead to
absolutely
nowhere

remission, poetry by Kevin Trent Boswell

The music and poetry of Kevin Trent Boswell

it’s everywhere

the highways are littered with
broken bottles and empty people

or, was it broken people
and empty bottles?
I forget

there’s no room in here,
for all your wanting

paper airplanes
hang like gliders in the paused breezes

the earthworms break the surface
and bloom into roses

parting rain clouds
leave panels of stained glass behind,
just floating there,
for all to marvel
at their prismatic splendor

the parks, bus stops, trains,
the stores, and everywhere else,
they’re all overflowing with
discarded hypodermics
and an educated proletariat

or, was it hypodermic education
and a discarded proletariat?

clearly, it doesn’t matter,
which end of the pipe
you try to put the stopper on

there’s shit pumping
out of both ends,
nonstop

The God of War Wants Me Dead

Mars made yet another
Attempt on my life today

I was at work, and
Starting to get a bit stir crazy
So, I took a break and went for a walk

I walked up the hill,
The same hill that I walk up and down
Every day… without dying

It rains a lot here, almost all the time
So, I’m used to the hill being muddy,
Slick, just a bit less than safe

I’m used to planting each step very carefully

But today, just as I was taking my break,
Stretching my legs, climbing up and down
The same hill that I never die on,
Mars was changing zodiac signs,

You know, up there, in the big, blue sky thingie

As soon as he did that,
He was automatically squaring
My natal Mars position

Mars square natal Mars is, um… challenging

Seeing his moment of opportunity,
He tripped me

I went sliding down this muddy,
Goddamn hill, the same way I never do

Mars is exactly square (in my birth chart)
To my natal Sun

He’s an out-of-sect malefic for me

So, it’s hardly the first time
He’s tried to take my life

He doesn’t hate me or anything;
It’s just that he looks at me, and
Thinks to himself,

“I really should go ahead and murder him.”

So far, he’s failed every time

Maybe he isn’t really
Trying very hard,
I don’t know for sure

It’s tempting to think that maybe
He’s not that good at his job;
But, I know better than that

I think he’s just pretending to try to kill me

I had to go into the bathroom,
Lock the door, take off my boots,
Remove everything from my pockets,
Take off my jeans, and then
Wash them in the sink

I wrung them out, as best I could

Then, I put everything back on, and
Went out and stood by
A shitty little space heater,
Looking like I had pissed myself

It took two hours for my jeans to dry

This is why I’m pretty sure
That Mars only wants me to think
That he wants me dead

He just finds it entirely too amusing
To almost murder me

we

in desiring ourselves,
we desire to fancy
ourselves as creations
of god’s divine light
it is true, we are first;
shattered and broken
vessels of sound,
which could not hold light

dance with us, come
come, and be joyful
be mirthful, be drunken
come, and forget
we are the new wine
the skins, having bursted
the host could not drink
and, did sorely lament

let us throw shadows
in every direction
join us in the song
which shall never be heard
the cheerless dirge
of uncelebrated things
a melody of madness,
fallen short of the word

for, nothing is anything
if anything is nothing
and, what is our reward
if we have not control?
so, let us pretend
that we are the light,
not the darkness
which shall never be whole

telling all those
who would stop to listen
how they, and not we,
fell into disrepair
how they, and not us,
are the lost, lonely devils
whose deeds caused the light
to weep in despair

let us join in agreement
and be not divided
details of narrative,
we shall conceive
and, dividing all things,
we fall into slumber
allowing ourselves
a story, to believe

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from the forthcoming book,

mandala, versicles of heaven and hell