CJ Boyd Sexxxtet

Singing in the rain

Return to Eden

Micah 1:6-8 (NIV)

6 Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble,
a place for planting vineyards.
I will pour her stones into the valley
and lay bare her foundations.

7 All her idols will be broken to pieces;
all her temple gifts will be burned with fire;
I will destroy all her images.
Since she gathered her gifts from the wages of prostitutes,
as the wages of prostitutes they will again be used.

8 Because of this I will weep and wail;
I will go about barefoot and naked.
I will howl like a jackal
and moan like an owl.


Last night, the Franklin House hosted a group called, the CJ Boyd Sexxxtet. The build up to this evening has been long and surrounded by snakes, spitting venom and coiling a misunderstanding with rattles of childhood and innocence falsely hissing from their tongues. Such inadequacies some gods must adore!


It often makes me curious, by what manner did development of sexual enslavement become realized as a religious virtue? Christians would gladly point to Genesis and say with omnipotence and dangerous pride that we have been doomed since Eve took the fruit in the garden, causing god to become an angry god, and strike shame upon our bodies. Baha'i followers would say that modesty is a virtue, this being taken from Christian teachings as well as Islam and Hebrew writings of the Jewish faith. Atheists may be found to say simply that they are not comfortable with the idea and hipsters say that playing naked was so '04, passe and cliche by now.


It was a small group of social misfits, deviants, outlaws and curious lovers of poetry and music that came together at our house last night, in nervous anticipation of what would be.


The voyeurism we have learned since childhood, in the form of entertainment and television, has allowed for a separation from idea and action. Sure this has always been so, but never before, to such a degree, have we had people who have strong memories not of participation in something, rather of witnessing it on TV, or in books. We have the ability to glamorize the character of the whore, the junky, the rebel, and never have to actually know they exist. For years, the only naked body we are around sober is one on a screen or page. There, anything seems possible, all is okay, desires are comodified. And isn't that what we are striving to question? The commodification of people and ideas. The buying and selling of a world that is made free. It all may sound good in print and on a bumper sticker, but how silent the room is when none are here to preach!


"Revolutionary" new churches are springing up all over the place now, made up of young Christians talking about Christ like he was Che Guevera, wielding a beatnik beard and smashing a system built upon the control of one another. How then, once church ends, do we not simply live the ideas we talk about?

I want to make clear that I am not a member of any particular Church or belief system, and this is what most religious people would say is my "in" to be open. This utter lack of faith is what allows and makes easy my heathenous ways. I spit at that and tilt my bottle of wine over on the grave of Bacchus to wet his lips in hell. You see, when not relying upon a learned system of beliefs that are shared by my peer group, family, teachers, lawmakers, and damn near everything else we experience, one does not have a safety net on which to rely. You are quite simply cast from the garden again, this time, with no fig leaf and most times, no understanding of what will come. You are left to discover. You are free. Being cast from the gated mental communities that hang banners in the name of love and use ropes made of guilt to fly them, is in truth, a return to Eden.

I cannot decide if it is a sad commentary on our lives that there were people in attendance last night, in their late 20's and early 30's who had never been around nude strangers outside of the context of a strip club, or if it is a celebratory idea that we are witnessing the change and creating it here. Ego is there for a reason, and if that creative bastard does something beautiful, let it be that I suppose, beautiful. Beauty unrecognized is no beauty at all, just a shadow.


After the music last night, we formed a circle around a fire in the yard, and began to talk. Simple discussion at first, comfortable and dominated by a few. The fire was stoked again and the conversation grew. One girl pointed out that, because she knew no one there, she could be honest. Truth in a stranger, an angel in us all I suppose. We talked of awkward sex, regret, and passions. We tossed out some ideas as being simply not relevant anymore, not here, not now. We spoke of learning by experience rather than education, and this we all agreed was how we became who we are. We talked of futures and pasts, and were there in the present, if even for a while.

A few of us split off to enter into small trance of joy and absinthe, song and verse. We stripped off all and howled like jackals of Micah. Paid homage to hilarity and the holy! goof. Prophetic poetries came from all sources of the cosmos and we ere breathing it all in with the smoke and seat and drink. It was of great consequence to us all. This is where live, from now on, in an ever present state of union.

The evening fell with our bodies limp on the floors and couches of holy! ground. It would be naive to speak of all of this as a revolution, or as a declaration, but it would be negligent to deny the honesty and soldiering without regret. There is no control to be exerted over a people who do not function on guilt, rather on ideas. Some say that the most dangerous thing is to believe your own ideas. I say no. I say the most dangerous idea is one that tells you who you cannot be, in the face of what is. Today, we will not be invisible, nor silent...

There is so much more to speak about on this idea of sexual identity, and freedom being inherent to our own knowledge of our desires, and it requires discourse. Honesty and an openness to allow yourself to realize your desires is a hard step for most everyone of us. None of us have it easy, and those of us that seem to have either already fought the demons of insecurity, or are simply full of shit. It is okay. You will be you forever.

This is just a beginning to a long series of writing's I plan to do on this subject. If you were present last night, please add your tale in the comments, if you were willfully absent, please tell us your thoughts.

the house clatters
shudders with child feet
expands with our breathe
talks with our speech
damp like perpetual spring.
summer is late
the climate is wrecked
by stupid consumption
even science agrees.

but it is ok.
the house breathes
we are alive in it.

HOLY!HOLY!HOLY!

because of the route we have navigated we have managed to construct a world in which Christian values such as faith, hope and charity manifest themselves metamorphosed as schizophrenia, depression, and narcissism

I was born on a day when god had was sick
the sun bent like it was a hot spoon under the weight of our hours
xxx
have I not reason to lament what man has made man
xxx
we don’t rescue our souls so often
as we should
we don’t re-use our souls so often as we should
xxx
our souls made new each morning
xxx
holy st. mary lou
you are waking
holy st. mary lou
sedated motor city
holy st. mary lou
steel companies pumped with steroids and sterilizers
holy st. mary lou
be---born
holy st. mary lou
double line contracting
holy st. mary lou
yr metal heart is beating
holy st. mary lou
yr brick ecology is bulging
holy st. mary lou
bare yr barbed wire beak
holy st. mary lou
spread yr brick red wings
holy st. mary lou
crush us like berries
beneath iron butterflies.

to be holy is to be unholy
god made no profanity.
who
speak of body
but are belligerent of naked
who
speak of society
but shun it
who
speak of bodies
but kill them at an unnaturally fast pace.
does the knowledge of life kill you?
perhaps
but without the knowledge of the sacrificial body yr boulevards and stopsigns stand on
we are nothing.
holy st. mary lou
there is red soil beneath yr black gravel veins.
holy st. mary lou
oil clots the arteries of circulating dirt
holy st. mary lou
the water grows tired
holy st. mary lou
the water’s tendons are cut
holy st. mary lou
the water can no longer run
holy st. mary lou
the water is bought and sold
holy st. mary lou
your cathedral windows are
flashing signs bigger than 20 men
holy st. mary lou
you will never see yr name in lights
holy st. mary lou
yr best paint gets smothered
holy st. mary lou
ACE STEEL CO
is yr welded art
is yr welded soul

the more I think of you o god o nothing the less to thought you yield

I was walking along train tracks behind my apartment
it was dark
I could not see or hear the moon
cars passed on the highway like strings of a massive rhythmic instrument.
I saw god.
I passed her as I walked
she was leaning inside a blue ’95 two door pontiac grand-am grabbing a menthol smoke.
she came out of the grand-am and closed the door.
she was beautiful
I gave her a kiss.

last I seen I wuz sliding fingers across the milky ledges of her legs,
jesus wuz as confused as we were.
I thought about Christians getting eaten by lions
while we counted petty gripes against life
I thought about jesus rising as
she clung naked to my body
I clung to hers
and the silence.

last I seen she wuz wallowing tacitly in the rooms white spots,
whatever lite came through the window
snagged her breast tip
her eyes and breathe
sought light like a hungry woman
and her face rattled, she purr-hummed like a motorcycle
into the night
as I swam in the soft grid
her eyes were splayed across
she asked what I was thinking I said i don’t know
which was partially true
as the lights started looking like confessionals so we both recited shantih
and did not know why.

and loved
and swallowed
we did not sleep
she was gone before the
sun woke and the walls
spoke her name.

gentle thing
lazier than a dog with a limp
or a road in heat
I almost thought we lost it
at the table
to the shit gamble of industry.

she asked what I was thinking I said i don’t know
which was partially true
as the lights started looking like confessionals so we both recited prayers and did not know why.

DA
I heard these words on the hood of my car
tapped out by the rain in three different ways.
GIVE: the love: spread it like jelly
as if it was not yrs to gives.
LIFE: is yours and not yours: it hangs by a thread from the moon to you.
have sympathy in yr control:
the you will slide away.
you will slide away
you will never see yr name in lights.

we are god’s gobs:
salty spit
in the crowded dancing basement,
a drop in the beer bucket.

I was a god,
I was a twitch in the hand
I was a metaphor
I was just leaving
in a past life
I was
grateful.
to you
who made a poet
who sings of joy
within joy itself.

the cj boyd sexxxtet at the franklin house

come on everybody. this thursday. 5:00 pm.

czech out cj boyd here.
www.myspace.com/thecjboydsexxxtet

the franklin house manifesto

we are here. some of us have gravitated here out of sheer love, and others as refugees from a world where that love was absent. we are here now and this is just a start.

we began as a family unit, mother, father, husband, wife, children, brother, sister. what was, at one time, a rental property to fit the needs and wants of that family, quickly became a gathering place for dissidents, artists, poets, misfits, and those who found solace in a home filled with books, art and food. those who took note that the living room was just that...alive! the place where conversation and critique, praise and understanding came together. those who noticed first that there was no television in the gathering room. those who needed to research their lives and found encyclopedic bibles of humanity falling from the tables bearing names of minor gods like whitman, rimbaud, baraka, ginsberg (holy!allen!) miller, kerouac, and the heavens list reads onward to eternity, and they thanked them with small prayer over dishes and children.

the yard has since been deemed holy! and now brings food for any who enter it. the garage which hosted automobiles now holds in fire of art and spray can whispers. the basement of darkness now sings with life and adolescence. human ingenuity and creative spirit have struck chord and ring true.

this home belongs to anyone with breath to share and will remain as such, even if the walls are ground to dust, we will ride the wind as dirt and cloud your vision of what america is. what the world is. we are no tomorrow, but today.

no time but now.
no life but death.
no yesterday, no tomorrow,
but today.
this day we begin.