More with Will Mayo

A while back Will Mayo sent me some brief bios.  Arlo Guthrie was born in 1947, so I think I'll start with him.

Arlo Guthrie's Surprise Visitor 

by

Will Mayo

I met this gentleman, with his long brown hair and beard and trimmed down physique, backstage at one of his concerts back in 1984. He was very cordial and well mannered at my accidental interruption.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

I stood stock still. Surely, this, I presumed, must be somebody famous. I knew little of the matter then.

He then proceeded to walk onstage and rock the audience to the rafters. Neither one of us ever looked back.

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Remembering One Long Past

by

Will Mayo

Still, it was the first President Bush who, when approached by a homeless man on his way to church asking, "Mr. President, will you pray for me?" , replied, "No, but come on in and you can pray for yourself."

So the President and the beggar sat praying in the church. Years passed. They came and left, came again and again. The beggar left a dollar each time in the collection plate drawing the envy of millionaires. They all stayed and prayed though the President eventually left office and moved away. But the beggar in the church remained. He stayed, became a part of the community.

One day, as it happens, several years later, the beggar died of cold and fright on a winter's bench. Word got around to the parish where he had prayed. The rector in particular was quite disturbed.

"Would anybody," he stammered, "Would anybody care to take up a collection for this poor man's burial?"

Monies flowed in across the River Styx in surpassing amounts. It was staggering to think how much this church, full of billionaires and patrons of the arts, cared for this little peasant. Staggering, too, was the tomb built for the man. It surpassed in grandeur many a monument in the nation's Capitol. Sunlight gleamed across the concrete surface and it was said that if there was a God in Heaven he smiled that day.

Funny thing, though. His name was a mystery, so they simply chiseled in "John," nothing else. It could be heard far off in their prayers, "...John...John...John..." And then there only remained the whispering wind.

Easter Sunday, 2017
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Miss Dickinson Takes Up Her Pen 

by

Will Mayo

An explosion went about inside Emily's brain. A gun went off. A scream was heard in a neighboring house. She commenced to write. The world would never be the same again.

McCandless In The Wild 

by

Will Mayo

"Happiness is only real when shared," Alexander Supertramp said before he died in the land of ice and snow. The bear, the deer bore witness to the pain. And then they too went away.

Photo by Travis Mars -- 2006

In The Ruin Of Love

by

Will Mayo

Is there a ruin where there lies not love?

Where lovers have not made tryst

and fumbled at every button?

Where what has pleased the eye 

has not then too pleased the skin

as bodies wrapped to and fro

in the ruin of what once was and what will be?

There in the fumbling down ruin

lies many a lover's kiss

in the ruin of all that once was deemed holy.

So too do I taste you upon my lips

though you are not here

in the ruin of being,

in the decay of body and soul.

Here lies one man who once hoped, once dreamed

and now casts an eye another's way

and so then beholds another ruin.

It begins again.

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I don't know if I've posted anything by Ted Curson.  I remember that he was a special guest at a gig I went to back in the 1980s.  The song he played that evening was "Graft and Corruption."  I remember him banging on a cowbell.

Here is his "Song of the Lonely One":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVgthBNwlss

Another song of his is "LSD Takes a Holiday":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiw8gMCrj-M

This is "Ted's Tempo":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuI83GqOfOA

I'll finish with "Straight Ice" from The New Thing and the Blue Thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8DKulkUPW8

Enjoy!