10 Favorite Songs as selected by A.J. Kaufmann sometime in 2015, after the release of "Stoned Gypsy Wanderer".

Bulat Okudzhava - Pesenka Ob Arbate I could swear I still got flashes from a period I was too young to remember, when I was about 2-3y/o and...

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

"Liquid Blues" (29.03.2022)

Your dress is sharp tonight
Your looks could kill
There's a blackbird in the mirror ball
There's denim and steel
Scent of leather in the air
A lock of time and bone
Please release me from this endless
Bitter movie roll

I'm trapped in liquid blues
With your high heel shoes
I'm dancing on a tightrope
Led by midnight news

If my strings could speak another
Language of the shore
I would choose some French I guess
To take your body home
Or some German nocturnes
That could fill the summer air
With surprise and soft white lies
Black corroding spells

Fly me up again to reach
The southern Texas haze
I am late again for planes
And trains, I'm always late
I could pick up any line
Call anybody's phone
But the answer should would be
Babe, I'm stoned alone

Thursday, March 24, 2022

"Peyote"

Summer fields evaporate
Into the moon, into the bleak
Horses running thru the rainbow
Crystal bubblegum chick
Driving umbrellas of stairs
Further down the spine
Feel your head collapse
Look into my eyes

Travel down, leak your blood
On the surface of the sun
Summer fields evaporate
Into Neptune heavy clouds

Hear a distant country song
Floating on the wind
Carrying back your seventh sense
Singing of your grief
Resting in a shallow grave
Just nearby the road
Singing of the bullfrog king
Valleys full of soap

Where your creed don’t matter
Where the whole world sings
It’s peyote, brother
Ride on eagle wings

Have somebody teach you
Under side of blues
Skies don’t carry nothing
Birds don’t make no dues

Psychedelic boys and girls
Gather round the fire side
Sing on stoned and wayward wolves
Skies don’t hear them cry
Ain’t no thunder coming down
Whipping round your name
Everything is in the drugs
Evolving without shame

Have somebody show you
Under side of love
Moon don’t love the ocean
Sand don’t love the dove

"You in the Crowd"

You live according to your pain
Lovely lady, get rid of that burden
Make up your mind and join the laughing crowd
Can’t tell the fools from the wise men

But it’s beautiful, the way they see the morning
Wonderful, the way they can’t stop talking
Charming souls, on their way to love
Join them and release your heavy thoughts

An extraordinary rainbow walks your way
Sudden hand-claps shake the just born sky
Unforgettable, that’s all you are today
Everything illuminates your mind

And it’s beautiful, the way you see the morning
Wonderful, the way you can’t stop talking
Charming soul, on its way to love
Join them and release your heavy thoughts

Some of them would tell you it’s a circus
Others would’ve called it Judgment Day
We just call it birth of brand new morning
Wait till dinner time, it’s not come yet

Somehow I believe you’ll find your pleasure
Chains that you once wore are memory
Nothing holds you down to the ever changing ground
You enjoy the dawn while others sleep

And it’s you in the crowd, without any pain
Without any burdens of the mind you’ve crippled long
Hear me sing a song and I swear we’ll move along
Freedom knows the answer and you’re never really wrong

Keep doing your thing, lovely lady
Keep the colors burning in your head
Some of them would tell you it’s disaster
I can only smile and watch it spread

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

"Starving Skin"

What’s wrong with the world today
Has it lost its mind
I’m starving skin on skin
Leaving everything behind
Now woman can you help me
I feel I’m gonna drown
What’s wrong with the people
What’s wrong with this town

Starving skin needs your skin
Starving eyes need your eyes
Starving hands need your hands
To fix this hideous hole in the sky

What’s wrong with the time today
Seems I’m always late
I’m starving skin on skin
Looking for a new faith
Now woman can you help me
I feel I’m gonna lose it
What’s wrong with your love, hey
What’s wrong if I choose it

Starving skin needs your skin
Starving eyes need your eyes
Starving hands need your hands
To fix this hideous hole in the sky

What’s wrong with the streets today
I feel like a complete stranger
I’m starving skin on skin
And I’m looking for some danger
Now woman can you help me
Just take me to your room
What’s wrong with your face, hey
It resembles the moon

Starving skin needs your skin
Starving eyes need your eyes
Starving hands need your hands
To fix this hideous hole in the sky

"Postcards from Japan"

You're surely not the first one
Though you could be the last one
Standing at the ruined
Poetry's threshold
I’m sending you away
On postcards from Japan
Your heart's a used up
Centerfold

Naked girls dance
And I think of romance
But I feel too old
And of no use
Somehow you can find me
Watch out, you might blind me
I feel just as naked
As those girls

You’re getting all my postcards
When the time is right
Some twenty, thirty
Years from now
Waiting in your mailbox
Patient like a tiger
Waiting for your hand
They never bite

You’ll get all my love
In an empty envelope
Write me a letter
I’ll give you some time
The longer you refuse me
The more you entertain me
I’ll wait till you’re older
Imagine wine

I swear I’ll treat you kind
You just step towards the door
You knock just once
You learned your line
God, you look so old now
I swear I’d like to hold you
I’ll keep the blinders down
This one more time

And just in case you’re wondering
Probably very long
Whatever happened
To your writer of song
He’s stuck inside his window
Nothing really changed, love
Sending you regards
And wishing you good

I’ll smoke a cigarette now
I’ll make myself at home now
South of heaven living
Suits me fine
Dancing stoned with Dante
Weeping with the children
Every dawn I witness
Hurts my eyes

I'll be sending you some flowers
Flowers from Japan
To which I hope
You'll add in time
Tears and many stories
Joy and sense of worry
Bliss and pain
And other proper lines

Make those flowers mean much
You still remember postcards
Get out of this threshold
It is lost
No place for a young girl
God, you’re still a child now
Get yourself some candy
Fix your hair

Time’s treating me so kindly
We get along so well now
Keeping all our best
For the great event
You’ll be sending me your love back
On these postcards from Japan
And I promise I'll get back to you
Forever

And I promise I’ll get back to you
Forever

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

"Victoria Park" (New poem, 2022/03/15)

I stagger through Victoria Park again
holding on to your heroes
your eyes in the morning after

occasional forms
move my feet and mind
beyond the trees

Oriental trips
other streets and cultures
other bodies open

mellow wings
and ideas of helmets
held-in-suspension – no more a poet

aping the plan of the century
I once knew a girl
soft as ikebana

oceans were her friends
she was the horizon -
square eternal field

now she's Victoria Park
carrying signals from heaven
on through theatrical headlights

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

"Neon Geese" (New poem, 2022/03/01)

stars change position
I watch the Milky Way road to hell
distant Bavarian songs
yolk beat of life

I sit like a woman at the well
trying to sift water from jungle
jungle from flower
flower from seed

I form roads
for American cars
build a hammer of excuse for construction workers
sometimes I miss the village

there is nothing left from it
just echoes bizarre
of a warning
nuclear assault on Japan
the Nam
Afghanistan
and all the war criminals together

dance, dance a lucky dance of rich folks
getting richer on the backs of the poor
getting poorer every day
fighting wars no one really started
participating in destruction
no one really wanted

when I was in school
some airplanes hit some towers
then it was the downfall
then I imagined
terror
but it had a white fat face
not Arabian meadows

so now
I watch the technology fasting
on sometime world from an old song
a purity of life
radio waves from Venus

finding comfort in
worn out LP covers with tropical birds
ringwear mind and spirit
this must be another planet
with neon geese traveling
the atomic lightbulb sky