Jon Rockefeller on Facebook

For Vivian

I
I just learned that my friends are dead
9 of ‘em in burning shadow-clocked mobile homes
Blazing early morning mourning about 5:30
And three of ‘em, tripped sticks, xanax eyes and booze-limbered bodies
Confused by the distorted turn of the loquacious night, so innocent and fun
Three of ‘em shouldered the door wide open and fell hard on the semi wet grass and slightly chilled air of the early morning Texas lake-side weathered turf
But this morning was not dewy and chilled
They fell to the earth, and landed on embers and char
Inhaled the chilled fresh air, but coughed up soot and smoke and the taste of campfire
Looked back and saw no lakeside, but a great big, bright home
All covered in catastrophe and ugly, depressing, life-changing wake-up calls
Not thinking party thoughts of comedy and good times and, “haha hey he just fell on the ground”
But instead, “oh no, my friends are in there”
And the friends
Jesus, the friends
What they were thinking, none of us could ever comprehend in a thousand burning comprehensions
Of understanding…
…Understanding

II
Burnt are the images the three won’t forget
And their regret is for sure a lasting ember
Burnt is the mobile home: a hell-like coffin
A scalding smothering with dragon-breath eye drops
The carbon of six destroyed families
Those poor families
And six remaining diplomas on graduation day
Burnt is the grass
The dew is back in the atmosphere
And the chilled air is somewhere else
Drifting calmly past random people, unaware of the dead bodies they’re breathing in

III
The fear in the three will be explained in great detail
And the fear of the six
That’ll only be expressed through imagination
All the last-calls and I’m-gonna-get-outa-here-in-a-fews
The three condemned to last in clandestine denial, staring past the hypnotic, vacillating fire
Confused in their jaded states
The apathetic medics who don’t think twice about what they’re doing
Not that they should
But that’s how infinitesimal it is
To them
And to us it’s a great misfortune of random events all cluster-fucked together, so rapid and random
And I was on the phone with somebody else, having regular conversations
Unbeknownst to the cloud of smoke that blinded God for an hour
I feel like that and I wasn’t even there

IV
Six of my friends burned to death this morning, one of them so very dear to me
They weren’t bad people
They weren’t great people
But they weren’t normal people
They were my people as I am theirs
And we will never talk to each other ever again
Because they’re dead
They burned to death
While I slept in my bed
Snoring with my two dogs
With the television on and the light off and the window shut and locked
And six of my friends burned to death

Vivian Rodriguez is back...going to PH tonight...is you goin'?

-Jon Rockefeller
03/06/2011

I'm Sure Their Names Mean Something

Big mouth plaster casts and migraine tortillas all along the cloudy river, up the mountain, down the tooth caressing her own little tea pot poodle bought in a backyard drainage facility only to be chopped up and served as stew. When she came down I instantly questioned her morals and ideals and all she ever leaked was awkward answers anguished and languished, forgotten by car accident memories and concussion games, flagpole infested and Pulitzer pressded, with a tiny pinch of bitters. Oh those bitters always find their way into doldrumming oil industry parking lots, all screen doors and questionable camera queues just waiting for that one cat to show his face – eyes primarily, but he’s particularly afraid of spitting cobras, and never got over Steve Irwin’s death. Explaining to him why the cameras were x-ray was like explaining algebra to a wall, because algebra is invisible, and the cat is the size of a small country. I hear it’s because he got tired of waiting in line for food, so he ate the entire McDonald’s. Bodies cant digest that stuff, with the lawn mower cap gasket blue and twilighted all bricked up just smiling too large for television, too large for the moon, which has grown legs in its old age but never can find the time to use them, sits in its recliner all day, which was a gift from carpenter Jesus, while taking dance lessons from posthumous Michael Jackson. Da Vinci’s the most promising student, if you base it on flattery, of course, but what would I know? The last article I read was about bob Dylan playing electronica music. I also heard that DJ Tiesto is America’s most promising folk artist. Folk died in 19-something, it was hit over the head with a giant tin pan in an alley. Talk about a successful factory. When captain Picard gets involved you know it’s serious, because Mr. Kennedy over there can’t keep a straight face, which is what’s making me laugh drool on my dogs dirty paw all smack marooned and whiskey bombed with a lack of music - sound in general, really. Aw that damn ragman with his circles and block, don’t talk tape furnished heart escape too late. Getting flak for that one crack made by earthquake, nameless, fameless, aimed out of misery eyelids livid and knocked out cigarette bird talking eating baguette, Frenchmen wife marionette. tickets licked it bought a bic and kicked it to where that manifest destiny died in its tracks on the trail lost in itself from those narcissistic conversations with itself, to pointing paintings and beating itself all over again and again and again and again surrounding itself with friends, finding itself with its friends in its crack dens and deceased kin watch it, kicking itself for wasted years, like that cat with the poorly located injury, who loved the girl, but she got away from Hemmingway. Minor blues injuries. Those damned inquiries where all you say to me and he to she and her to whoever’s cosmically next in line discriminatory coat technician laboratories. Whatever. Why would I care, I’m just an observer of all for all after all can’t quite all go to ball small little birdcages in instant mix for Kool-Aid addictions. This cat, he walks in sits down smokes in his room a light cigarette and puts it out a quarter too early, and appears a quarter past 3, a quarter short for a ticket, a quarter hour late, drops a quarter dollar, and realizes that this is all because he left the other three quarters in this old bombshell ceiling, half worn down by nature and fully drawn to be disguised, and this is why he has no whole. I says, hey you, why no whole? He say, hey you, don’t instigate, im a loose cannon, and once fed a shark with a bowl of raisin bran. I was then made aware of his amazing strength and will and wondered what whole cat would be like. So I says, where’s the rest of ya? He say, I said I left it. I told you this already, I left it in my bombshell ceiling and now have to travel all the way back to it to become whole, yet for some reason, every time I try to do that, I end up side tracked and paralleled, and helicopters follow me home every night I’s scared I’s scared. I offered liquid liver with brain contoured whisker diver dressing and a fresh Chinese suit from the future and he denied these things, he just loved that one quarter of himself, hated half of the whole and wondered when he could finally get his three quarters back. I then found out that this bombshell ceiling was no ceiling at all…or a bombshell, but actually a woman who’d been divorced for a couple years, and she had this cellar door, made out of a skull and spirits and souls, and an eighth was missing. Don’t worry about 7, 9, and 10. They’re safe and all right. All fight and fright continuing to brighten all sorts of days including mammogram phonographs printed by Satan, which of course would be rock and roll and while all these kids, conversed and mind constricted whitherspoon contortions and shortened motives in constant driftwood antics, concerned by the slightest sounds, weary by the movement of tectonic plates and natures mentality to move forward, forward, forward, echo. So he walks in sits down reads a mag article, looks up peers down the hallways, showdowed closely by pencil shavings, that damned snoop. Pistol brave and calling I do end up getting a response.

Suitcase of Reasons

It might be what I think it is I do
Why I get nowhere
And constantly mistake my senses
When it is why I do it to know about myself in those situations

And by myself I'm lost in my thoughts
Cause while I’m thinking
I cant get it out of my head
That why I'm alone right now is because of my own denial
And of what? There’s no description
Or maybe there is and im just blinded by my insight
Too distorted through the haze of my false knowledge

When I play my songs around you
Hoping that you’ll listen, you never do
You never catch what I’m saying
And all I’d like to do is communicate with you
But that just ain’t happenin’ now is it, babe
And when I rub my eyes open to the new days tomorrow
I’ll have a suitcase of reasons that weigh me down
But babe, you’ll be fine don’t worry