Hidden treasures discovered while digging through Frank Moore's huge archives.
By Frank Moore, May 31, 2005
Creativity is like shitting.
Most people do it.
Everyone needs to do it….
More or less regularly.
Every shit is different.
There is nothing like a good shit!
Some people obsess on their shitting!
Some obsess on their own shit;
Others obsess on others’ shit,
Even buying it!
I just enjoy a good shit!
Oh shit,
I’ll let you in on a secret…
I play with shit!
Creativity is just playing.
by Frank Moore, January 29, 2002
Boundaries, borders
Are lies of power
They keep people in
They keep people out
They ain’t really there
Only in the sight
Of guard guns and dogs
The lines just ain’t there
You can just keep on walking
Toward me,
Into me
You could keep on walking
Except for their bullets of fear
Define and maintain your boundaries,
They tell us!
That keeps us weak and isolated
That keeps me from you,
Boxed up, bottled up
That keeps the wrong people out
Us protected in abstractions
That keeps our human spirit divided
Keeps Life separate from us
Keeps us warring, scared, hating
Keeps you from me
Keeps us hungry, thirsty, cold
Just owning
Instead of living deep and free.
Skin is not a border
Skin is a sea flowing everywhere
Touching, feeling, unlimited,
Breathing deeply
Giving, taking as one
Experiencing, feeding as one
A thick rich soup
Which can’t be canned or bottled
Healthy skin is thick and flexible
Healthy breath is deep and lusty
Our healthy body does not need
Limiting power,
Doesn’t need to hold in,
To hold back,
To die from not dancing,
Not risking,
Not feeling pain, joy, pleasure
Deeply
Just dying slowly
Within the tight shallow
Owning MY SPACE
And they laugh in the gun towers!
by Frank Moore, Thursday, April 11, 2002
i get worried if my words and images fit through veins clogged with fatty taboos of polite appropriate of comfortability.
i get worried…is the art that small that it fits through that pinhole of a hole…so small that nudes on the walls, words on telephone poles, any shift in the social power structure threatens the very reality fabric.
i’m too proud to admit the art poetry is that small. so my art becomes a roto-rooting balloon covered in razors tipped in draino acid, pushing pressuring uncomfortable unsocial grinding against the grain until the killer fatty clots of taboos burst out the other end and go down the drain like trouble.
i don’t really go after the hitlers, the mccarthys, the helms, or their brown shirts.
they are just limp-dicked power-junkies with swiss-cheese egos, each hole filled with inferiority. they are just moons with no power light of themselves, just reflecting fear.
no, i go after the nice people who never asked where the trains were going, boxcars filled with people. didn’t have to. only suspected, only heard rumors…after all, the general is a friend. never said, excuse me, i am a jew too, arab too, a jap too, a gay too, i’ve negro blood running in my body, aids too. i’m a commie who took home movies of our nude kids. so better put me on that train too. better put us all on that train. there ain’t no train big enough!
i go after the nice people who keep going to work after seeing their friends missing, after hearing rumors of blacklist and blackball. must write something about that subject to THE TIMES. he used to be such a pleasant fellow…but now he is a whining paranoid…not a sort to have to tea. he is like a wet messy fart. not in my backyard!
yes, i go after nice people. but my time in the belljar is about over. so i’ll leave you with this. what is happening in your backyard is what really matters. so be sure to weed!
A poem by Teresa Cochran about “The Jam” on Frank Moore’s Shaman’s Den, May 28, 2000, with Teresa Cochran, Giovanni Moro, Walter Funk, John The Baker, Corey Nicholl and Frank Moore
Hi Frank,
Here’s the poem I wrote about our jam in May. I wanted to surprise you with it on LUVER! 🙂
Music Jam
Here we are
In the Shaman’s Den
The Shaman on piano,
Bringing music out of infinite spaces,
Inviting us to follow.
We find our own parallel musical paths,
Each one different,
But present,
Like a harmony.
Joyous play
With shamanic toys;
We are all here.
The silent one, Booya,
Is no less present.
Here he is
With headphones;
An omniscient being,
While we trust him
To stay with us
And participate in our adventure.
And o the magical recording later!
It contains things we could not, did not hear
In our shamanic journey.
I feel as if I have lived
At least one lifetime
During that one-hour jam.
Condensed, yet timeless.Love,
Teresa
Listen to the jam here:
Teresa is a Featured Artist on eroplay.com. You can read more of her poems here: https://eroplay.com/feature/teresa/index.html
November 23, 1993
1
Walking along
cold dark homeless
roads
clogged with ice fears,
my only friend
is the wind
chilling my bones
into longing
and lost
and beyond…
into a cynical loneliness.
Herding my sheep,
looking in windows
of unattainable desires,
looking at presents
useless
because
I don’t have anyone to give them to,
looking into the past
soft colored warm homes
that are no longer mine.
Everyone has left,
everyone is gone.
Even the sun has left
long ago,
long before the manger.
And the sun
will not come back
ever
again.
This is the season
of dark depression
and fragile suicide.
Yes,
I know
I can always bum up
the $29.95
to buy
the plastic hope and faith
at 7 Eleven
and pretend
it is my wonderful life
playing
in the video store’s window.
But instead
I wrap myself
in a jaded pretense
of dry ice isolation
of not caring,
and drinking
the stale
but warm wine of regrets.
2
The birth
of new hope
has always been hidden within
the long cold
winter darkness.
Huddled together,
clinging to our tribal warmth
as our only protection
against dying
into the scary
black
unknown,
we always have been blind
to the evergreen
hope of life.
It has always been
the first time
the sun
and easy hope
have gone away.
So we always think
they will never
come again.
The evergreen hope
has been hidden
away
in the womb
of the humble
and in children’s dreams.
The forces of greys
have always overheard
the possibility
of the hidden hope…
have always searched
for it
to pervert it
into human isolation…
or,
failing that,
to kill it
for all time.
But the forces of power
always overlook
the hidden human hope
rocking
in the baby’s cradle.
As power
goes on a desperate killing,
chopping
hacking
gorging,
eating
the old world up……
we huddle together
in the silent night
upon the hill,
rocking together
in our tribal body warmth.
The shaman,
the holy woman,
the medicine man
have always shifted
our attention away
from the dark
cold
outward
fear,
have always shifted
our gaze
to the guiding light
of new birth…
at first
in the stars,
then in the roaring
tribal fire
which pulled
all human feelings
within it,
and still later
into that corny
home hearth
crackling
with bright colors
popping.
Into this fire
we have always gone,
hearing
the drumming
of our innocent heart
beating
in a slow excitement,
meeting
again
our love of life.
We curl up
with our love
and wait
for warm spring
to arrive…
as hope grows
into knowing.
by Frank Moore
March 24, 1999
There are all kinds of art.
There is art that calms,
art that pacifies,
art that sells,
art that decorates,
art that entertains.
But what I am
committed to is
art as a battle,
an underground war
against fragmentation.
The battle is on all realities.
The controllers
have always tried
to fragment us.
Fragment us
from each other.
Imprison us
in islands of sex,
color,
religion,
politics,
classes,
labels,
etc.,
etc.,
etc.,
etc.,
etc.
they fragment
our inner worlds,
they blow
our individual realities apart,
and play the pieces
against one another.
They are us,
or a part of us.
They are the controllers,
the politicians,
the sexists,
the women’s libbers,
the pornographers,
the censors,
the moralists,
the church,
the media,
the businessmen,
educators,
the victims
and the powerful.
They are us.
They have divided us
from our power,
from our beauty,
from our lust for life
and pleasure.
They have divided us
from most of reality –
divided dying from living –
sex from living,
sex from pleasure.
We are kept in
boxes of fear,
of mistrust.
We are kept waiting –
kept waiting
to do what
we want –
waiting
for enough money,
enough schooling,
for everything to be right.
We are kept waiting
and protecting
and hiding
and suffering.
This is the time
to do battle
with the boxes.
As artists,
our tools
are magic,
our bodies,
taboos,
and dreams.
This kind of art
can be bubbles of childhood –
hidden places
where you can play and explore –
it is the kids’ under-the-covers world,
the playhouse,
the treehouse,
the cave,
behind the barn,
playing doctor,
cars at drive-ins
before going all the way,
Huck Finn’s raft,
tepees.
People are afraid
of this area of
lusty exploring
that they think
they have out-grown
— but they are sucked into it.
But this kind of art
can have a more
heavy-duty
magical side to it
that shocks,
offends,
and breaks new ground.
This side is what is locked in,
the subconscious,
the womb,
the underground,
hell/heaven,
pleasure/torture,
the coffin,
the grave,
birth/death/rebirth,
dream/nightmare,
the hidden world
of taboos.
Artists of this breed
need to be
warriors who are willing
to go into the areas of taboo,
willing to push
beyond where
it is comfortable
and safe
to explore
and build
a larger zone
of safeness.
They need to be
idealists,
willing to live ideals.
THE DANCE WITHOUT DANCERS
Frank Moore
2011
What we have here is
only the first smell of fresh magic.
Matter is hollow tubes
containing fibers
of packets of possibilities.
Matter is symbol,
is metaphor
containing possibilities.
These packets shape matter.
These packets, in turn,
are reshaped by
each body /object
they pass through.
We are affected
by the stars,
and the stars
are affected
by us.
We affect the Tarot cards
and the I Ching coins
we cast.
The physicists affect
the subatomic particles
they observe.
By reshaping
these inner packets,
the material reality is reshaped.
The inner rivers of possibilities
are two way on the linear level.
The magical effects are always
two way.
The light of the sun warms us;
but we affect the sun through
the same channel.
We have entered the level
of the dynamic web
of relationships
in which the individual
does not exist.
In place of the individual,
there appear points
of personal responsibility
in a dance.
It is not the sun that warms,
nor is it us who are warmed.
It is the dance of no dancers,
the dance of relationships
that warms,
and that is warmed.
Reality creation
is a dance.
We are the dancers.
But in truth,
it is a dance
without dancers.
If we really take
on personal responsibility
for the dance,
we surrender to the dance,
give up individual “control,”
give up individual linking
with the results.
By taking on the personal responsibility
for the dance,
we are the dance.
We melt with the dance.
We are only the dance.
We admit these facts.
It is not a question
of becoming,
but of remembering
and admitting.
It is a question
of being,
living,
dancing lustfully,
without controls
or limits
in responsibility.
The life dance
is beyond morals
or limits.
It joyfully digs
into the dance
to the juicy black core.
This is the poem that Frank wrote for a class of medical students at University of California, Berkeley:
NO CAN NOTS
by Frank Moore
Sunday, April 28, 2002
Talking to future healers
& teachers
& maybe future
muckrakers & troublemakers
Well,
Not really future
Because hopefully
You are doing IT
RIGHT NOW!
Hopefully
I’m not talking to the future guards
Of the corporate normalcy
Armed with can nots,
Limiting futures from birth,
Enforcing coloring only within the lines,
Enforcing doing everything
THE RIGHT WAY
THE NORMAL WAY
This poem was published in the book Skin Passion, a book of poems and paintings by Frank Moore.
By Frank Moore
February 2, 2003
When I cried out,
they said crying out
was not “appropriate behavior”.
I do not think appropriate behavior
is good.
Everything
that is not
appropriate behavior
makes me feel.
Don’t trust
Anyone
Who labels
Things
As not appropriate behavior!
Art,
Poetry,
Music,
Sex,
Love,
Belly laughs…
All outside of
Appropriate behavior.
That’s where I live
In freedom!
Connie completed the fading into death
this afternoon.
She has always lived in her young mind,
always was a black sheep,
raising black sheep,
always wanted to know,
always hungry for education,
NO MATTER WHAT!
WHATEVER IT TOOK!
Deaf to CAN’T,
to dumb rules!
No time for social frills,
no time for BS,
no time for limits.
Just time for deadpan joy of just everyday,
for no-nonsense love,
for pushing and demanding for
possibilities.
She bit,
or pretended not to hear,
just going for what’s right
like a tank…
running you over.
You were a fool
if you believed
her mcgoo act!
Hero? Yes!
Always growing beyond
working in a doctor’s office,
after getting a college education,
after the leaving of Jim,
threatened by his black sleep wife,
after pushing me onto THE REAL WORLD,
after raising Jerry and me,
after getting out of Utah as a free thinker!
Just taking Tums and aspirins,
Connie at 79 lived a very rich life…
always young in life…
now always
will be young!
Jerry and I are so lucky
to be in the black sheep family of
CONNIE!
© Frank Moore 5/19/2000
