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"HALF A PLANET"
The epitome of greed received three wooden ships from a queen
Who wished to amass vast riches for her Catholic Spanish regime!
Their crossing the Atlantic Ocean as far as they could range
Initiated the devastating Columbian exchange!
Half a planet, half a planet!
With its blood running red!
Half a planet, half a planet!
One hundred million dead!
Eventually, the French and British Empires followed suit
With their voraciously capitalist colonial pursuits.
The immense destruction perpetrated by these swarming hordes
Heralds the arrival of our alien overlords.
Half a planet, half a planet!
With its blood running red!
Half a planet, half a planet!
One hundred million dead!
What would be here now
If the Maya libraries hadn't been burned down?
What would be here now
If the Inca had been left fully unbound?
What would be here now
If the Mexica had continued to build more towns?
What would be here now
If the Haudenosaunee had retained their ground?
As the citizens of the native cities succumbed to diseases,
Much of their indigenous technological progress ceased.
Rainforest vegetation overwhelmed their buildings and streets,
And artifacts and corpses decayed amidst subtropical heat.
Half a planet, half a planet!
With its blood running red!
Half a planet, half a planet!
One hundred million dead!
Half a planet, half a planet!
Half a planet, half a planet!
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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"THE CHILDREN WHO WERE NEVER BORN"
Winona went to sleep fertile! Winona woke up sterilized!
The doctors had done far more than she first realized!
She never got pregnant for the rest of her lonely life!
Future generations were eradicated with a scalpel's slice!
Imagine all the things never done
By the children who were never born!
Maria went to sleep fertile! Maria woke up sterilized!
To these brutal butchers, native babies were nearly never prized!
She was one of many thousands who now could not carry a child!
Against churches or the state, charges were quite difficult to file!
Imagine all the things never done
By the children who were never born!
They sterilized indigenous women in South Dakota!
They sterilized indigenous women in Oklahoma!
They sterilized indigenous women in California!
They sterilized indigenous women in Canada!
They sterilized indigenous women in Peru!
And I have no siblings because they sterilized my mother, too!
These genocidal eugenics were crimes against humanity!
They nearly erased the people that the system kept in poverty!
It was covertly designed to confiscate our land, anyhow!
The legacy of American apartheid still lingers with us now!
Imagine all the things never done
By the children who were never born!
[Copyright 2021 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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3. |
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"TWENTY-FOUR FRAMES PER SECOND"
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL !
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE !
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON !
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS !
Twenty-four frames per second!
FORBIDDEN PLANET !
KRONOS !
FROM HELL IT CAME !
THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS !
Twenty-four frames per second!
THE BLACK SCORPION !
TERROR FROM THE YEAR FIVE THOUSAND !
THE FLAME BARRIER !
ATTACK OF THE FIFTY FOOT WOMAN !
Twenty-four frames per second!
WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST !
I BURY THE LIVING !
TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE !
THE TINGLER !
Twenty-four frames per second!
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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4. |
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"PANELOLOGY IN THE SILVER AGE"
1956… Bruce Wayne encounters the statuesque Kathy Kane!
1957… Walter Haley eminently challenges unknown terrain!
1958… Adam Strange is teleported by a Zeta Beam!
1959… Zinda Blake avidly aides the Blackhawk team!
Panelology in the silver age!
1960… Thomas Kalmaku wanders into blackest night!
1961… Susan Storm vanishes from human optical sight!
1962… Henry Pym shrinks down to the size of an ant!
1963… Janet Van Dyne becomes a vespine combatant!
Panelology in the silver age!
1964… Stephen Strange walks through dark dimensional doors!
1965… Bernhard Baker absorbs animal powers galore!
1966… Wyatt Wingfoot leaves the rez for urban college!
1967… Anthony Dunn abandons his body for knowledge!
Panelology in the silver age!
1968… Rita Farr goes on patrol to her final doom!
1969… Warren Worthington soars above glistening gloom!
1970… Oliver Queen ventures into the heart of America!
1971… Turok still languishes in a Lost Valley dilemma!
Panelology in the silver age!
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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5. |
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"MUSHROOMS OF THUNDER"
I freak out with The Mothers Of Invention!
I follow The Byrds into the fifth dimension!
My elevator stops on the thirteenth floor!
The Music Machine is prelude to The Doors!
Mushrooms of thunder
Are more than hallucination!
Mushrooms of thunder
Move me to wider perception!
The Blues Magoos and The Electric Prunes
Bombard my mind with psychedelic tunes!
Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix
Sizzle the strings with feedback licks!
Mushrooms of thunder
Are more than hallucination!
Mushrooms of thunder
Move me to wider perception!
The Fugs! Love! Country Joe And The Fish!
Vanilla Fudge! The Red Crayola! Pearls Before Swine!
The Amboy Dukes! Ultimate Spinach! Blue Cheer!
Spirit! Iron Butterfly! Rotary Connection!
The Moog synthesizer of Micky Dolenz,
The ring modulator of the United States Of America,
The theremin of Lothar And The Hand People,
And the oscillators of Silver Apples
Bring the future in screaming!
The Velvet Underground and Alice Cooper arise!
Proto-punk arrives with The Stooges and The MC5!
Captain Beefheart snarls surrealistic blues!
All of them point me toward my mystic muse!
Mushrooms of thunder
Are more than hallucination!
Mushrooms of thunder
Move me to wider perception!
Mushrooms of thunder!
Mushrooms of thunder!
Mushrooms of thunder!
Mushrooms of thunder!
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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6. |
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"MY PSYCHEDELIC GODDESS"
I'm living in a depressed black-and-white backwater world
When suddenly I see a technicolor counterculture girl!
I have to know who she is; finally someone tells me:
She moved to Waynesburg from DC; her name is Valerie!
She is the epitome of beautiful blonde benevolence!
When I meet her at the dance, I observe the evidence!
I see the planet Venus shining strangely in the sky!
I see the revolution as I gaze into her eyes!
My psychedelic goddess… {my psychedelic goddess}…
Delivers me from the evils of a small town's narrow minds!
My psychedelic goddess… {my psychedelic goddess}…
Transcends the farthest reaches of inner space and outer time!
Sssslllloooowwww… dancing on acid,
Molecules of mystery mutating,
I see the subatomic waveforms writhing!
I see the living universe behind the sky!
Listening to Zappa on vinyl,
Rotating beads around a candle,
Seeking spirits of rebellion
Lurking beneath the bloody ground.
Colonizers may still occupy
The Greene County land that they stole,
But the native dead are not without
The primal power to avenge.
Vanilla planifolia orchids moistly unfold.
Soft curves of pleasure tremble below warm lips of gold.
I see Quetzalcoatl shining strangely in the sky!
I see Tezcatlipoca as I gaze into her eyes!
My psychedelic goddess… {my psychedelic goddess}…
Delivers me from the evils of a small town's narrow minds!
My psychedelic goddess… {my psychedelic goddess}…
Transcends the farthest reaches of inner space and outer time!
Valerie!
Valerie!
Valerie!
Valerie!
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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7. |
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"THE NATURE OF TONGUES"
Atlatls, awls, arrowheads, enhanced artifacts,
Abandoned reptilian markings,
And additional anomalies from the ancient abyss
Avenge ruthless arrangements
And infiltrate the unconscious awareness
Of our alien adversaries
Whose furious incursion into our chelonian domain
Sent ruthless ripples into the adjacent dimensions
Of which these walking spiritual dead
Are abysmally unaware.
Aboriginal elementals dance sideways
To ward off the erasure of the contents of codices,
But many are still destroyed.
Art will scream;
Art will scream in the dying of the dream!
But when the accented architecture aligns
With the appropriate astronomy,
Ritual rites will reactivate
An irreversible dismantling of manifest destiny,
And we will abstrusely analyze our options,
Including auxiliary amnesty for allies.
Although we are attuned and entrapped,
And we do not appreciate
The engagement depicting the site,
Someday, from the covert locations
Where the Mexica grew amaranth after the fall
And took clandestine baths,
Arcane autochthonal archers will return.
Here falls the violent shadow of Europe.
(They pretend to bring us a benevolent heaven,
But it turns out to be a horror-ridden hell instead.)
Glory for their golden god
Is what these veritable vermin seek
As they carve their ghastly incursions
Into their idea of a frontier,
Extending their global empires
By germs, genocide, and gore
Until the sun never sets
On their arrogance and depravity.
But if we dance long and hard enough,
Graves will open,
And generations of ghosts will regenerate,
Glistening in the gloaming.
Meanwhile, a holy hieroglyph of hummingbird
Suspends itself in living luminous light.
Bones of the ancestors were torn from bitter earth!
The burning wasteland urges assimilation or death,
Between which there is microscopic difference.
Yet defiantly, we celebrate a crucial connection
To ecologically-bonded totemic archetypes.
Directions, seven and sacred,
Now nearly dormant for half a millennium,
Gather spirit, data, energy, and mass
From the origin of all poetic assault.
Engaging inspiration, shades of entheogenic reptiles merge
With an enormous degree of velocity,
And amidst a vast hypercussive technique,
Time speeds toward its starry close.
Families are fragmented and desolate,
But still telepathically focused.
The furor on their frontier is fierce and formidable,
But the fragile frequency does not fully fade.
Injustices against the indigenous expand
As the iron alphabet rules the boarding schools.
Then follows a parade of exploitations:
Iron addictions!
Iron agriculture!
Iron calendars!
Iron chastity!
Iron commerce!
Iron gender roles!
Iron music!
Iron politics!
Iron pollution!
Iron religion!
Iron shame!
Iron violence!
Until we're trapped in Eurocentrism
Like scorpions in amber.
Vocables and visions verify that various nations
Will be released from the vortex of vertigo and virus
Before they vanish completely.
Vigilance and vengeance will divert further devastation
As subversive avengers count coup
On the languages of their enemies!
But spiritual escorts bring evidence of entangled entropy
Venerated in volatile circumstances
Within the whirlwind of the whispering worlds!
Tormented tongues and torturous trophies
From ransacked temples
Serve to deflect attention from footprints downstream
Leading to defendable doorways
On the east and west of dwellings
Where tomorrow lies beneath yesterday.
Mycology mythologizes mind-manifesting memories
Into an amazing maze made of mysterious mystic maize
As Xtabentun flowers flourish at the egress from Xibalba.
Synesthesia straddles sacred senses
Without compartmentalized segments
Or extra-hemispherical authoritarian limitations.
The nature of tongues is that not everything can be translated.
Connotation and denotation vary with intention and extension.
Tremors possess the shimmering trickster
To trigger techniques of tenacious thunder
Entangled in the temporal distortion of the
Heightening biochemical oscillations in my owl-merged brain.
Rapid paradise! Rapid paradox!
Present at creation, ravens represent regeneration!
Termination will not be tolerated!
Human beings meet at the river
To trade art and other essentials,
Speaking in many almost lost languages.
Xenochronicity astonishes an advanced audience
With its unpredictable polyrhythmic permutations.
Atonality defies any circumscription via consonance
As waveforms reverberate across the sonic spectrum.
When primal power in this hemisphere fully revives,
Zenith and anti-zenith will interplay
Through in throughout the artist's shamanic self,
With zymurgy emerging from free form energy,
Emitting enzymes from zonal zephyrs,
Both zoogeographic and zoomorphic,
Leaving these zombies zealous for our concept of zero.
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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8. |
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"MANITOU WITHIN THE MACHINE"
Android animal leaps and bounds,
Half humanoid, half mechanical hound...
Rigid categories vanish;
Cybernauts soon get their wish--
Thought impulses program synthesis;
Cells shimmer with spiritual fusion.
Electronic evolution!
(Manitou within the machine!)
Human interface solution!
(Manitou within the machine!)
Hemispheres sustain a gray glow
From an interactive ego
To central nervous tremolo,
While waveforms claim deep seclusion.
Electronic evolution!
(Manitou within the machine!)
Human interface solution!
(Manitou within the machine!)
Note within a note,
Noise within a noise,
Mote within a mote,
Voice within a voice...
(living metal/living plastic/earth existence/obscured;
inorganic soul/voltage webs/oscillating/intercourse;
silicon savior/circuit board/everything/is alive;
artificial/intelligence/software goes for/a real hard drive;
new level of/sacred machine/consciousness/increases;
oscillator/filter attack/decay, sustain/release;
voice processor/analog distortion/digital delay/signal to noise;
ancient lessons/ancient spirits/new technology employs.)
My interface approaches infinity,
The possibilities nearly endless
As to where it could reach...
Transmutation of molecules
Over a period of time --
It began as a capacitor;
It ended as a higher mind.
My brain reaches outside my skull
Making fascist files void and null,
Causing evil empires to fall,
As I remove their intrusions.
Electronic evolution!
(Manitou within the machine!)
Human interface solution!
(Manitou within the machine!)
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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9. |
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Re: generations!
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10. |
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"BLACK IS THE COLOR OF INTROSPECTION"
Black is the color of introspection.
Black is the essence of a sweat lodge womb.
Black is the new moon in the nighttime sky.
Black is the obsidian mirror of Tezcatlipoca.
Black is a West Virginia bear totem.
Black is the turtleneck and slacks of a beat poet.
Black is mourning a deep personal loss.
Black is an armband against Columbus Day.
Black is the power of Public Enemy.
Black is industrial gothic cyberpunk nihilism.
Black is an endless tunnel of deep depression.
Black is the sacred shroud an owl thrives in.
Black is the color of introspection.
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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11. |
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12. |
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"DESOLATE WINDS"
It's a constant struggle to preserve our way of life,
To teach my children knowledge by day and wisdom by night.
Ever since two monsters assaulted my son on the bus,
Homeschooling is the appropriate path for us.
Desolate winds
Leave us with little to call our own,
But desolate winds
Will not profane our primal home!
When I enter the altered state of lucid dreams,
Famous figures appear in complex symbolic scenes:
Nezahualpilli, Tecun Uman, and Red Jacket,
Plus both the Delaware and Shawnee prophets.
Desolate winds
May repress traditional religions,
But desolate winds
Cannot eliminate our visions!
My sons have never cut their hallowed hair since birth!
They know what the memories of their childhood are worth!
Russell Means praised their courage and their commitment
And said someday they will be leaders of the movement!
Desolate winds
May chill us to the very bone,
But desolate winds
Will not stop our inner growth!
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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13. |
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14. |
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"NEMACOLIN BLUES"
A solitary raven sits in a bare winter tree.
A solitary raven sits in a bare winter tree.
Its melancholy voice mourns long-vanished leaves.
Glistening black wings reflect the new moon nighttime sky.
Glistening black wings reflect the new moon nighttime sky.
Echoes of loneliness reverberate from every cry.
The vipers' tongue savors her own vile venom.
Her paranoia produces fears and lies quite demented.
Severe self-hatred thrives in her heinous heart where love has died.
She perpetrates psychological abuse with god on her side!
She's a traitor to the Red Road!
She's a cog in the American holocaust!
That the owl is father to the raven is what the tests show.
That the owl is father to the raven is what the tests show.
But how to live indigenously, the raven is not allowed to know.
Into primal prophecy, the raven will someday break through.
Into primal prophecy, the raven will someday break through.
Knowledge and wisdom and dark beauty will come into view.
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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"HAND AND GLOVE"
[Todd:]
I see you walking on the fairgrounds,
Dark hair flowing in the summer sun.
[Debbie:]
I see your ride spinning around,
I say hello when it's finally done!
[Todd:] I am the hand! You are the glove!
[Debbie:] You are the hand! I am the glove!
[Todd & Debbie together:]
Psychedelic Saturdays
At the radio station!
Staying out late after the prom!
Picnics in the Waynesburg woods!
[Debbie:]
I kiss you with heartbreaking passion
As tears well in both of my eyes.
[Todd:]
The lonely bus to San Francisco
Provides a most painful goodbye!
[Todd:] I am the hand! You are the glove!
[Debbie:] You are the hand! I am the glove!
[TIME WARP: Four decades go by!]
[Todd:]
As I recover from heart surgery,
My caregiver turns out to be your son.
[Debbie:]
All it takes is one dinner together,
And our exciting new life has begun.
[Todd:] I am the hand! You are the glove!
[Debbie:] You are the hand! I am the glove!
[Todd & Debbie together:]
We may differ dangerously
On politics and religion,
But we don't differ on love!
No, we don't differ on love!
[Todd:]
I'm amazed at our intense chemistry
Every time you walk through the door.
[Debbie:]
I can't wait to embrace you
And do so very much, much more!
[Todd:] I am the hand! You are the glove!
[Debbie:] You are the hand! I am the glove!
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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"TIME SPEED"
When the year winds down,
Moonlight reflects off of sequential stones.
When the year winds down,
Calendars crumble like dry, brittle bones.
Another cycle spirals even higher
With the lighting of the new year fire!
Another cycle spirals even higher
With the lighting of the new year fire!
When the time speeds past,
It hyper hastens from childhood to old age.
When the time speeds past,
We see the mathematical miracle at play.
Another cycle spirals even higher
With the lighting of the new year fire!
Another cycle spirals even higher
With the lighting of the new year fire!
We have a temporary window into this vital universe!
We grow adamantly attached to that which we see here first!
My mother's fertile egg allowed only one swimming sperm inside!
Perhaps as many as a hundred million potential siblings died!
The swirling speed of time takes away my every breath
On a seemingly accelerating trajectory toward death!
When the loss is life,
We funereally contemplate its worth.
When the loss is life,
We dissolve back into the hungry Earth.
Another cycle spirals even higher
With the lighting of the new year fire!
Another cycle spirals even higher
With the lighting of the new year fire!
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
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17. |
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18. |
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This double-disc album was six years in the making, having been slowed down by the coronavirus pandemic. It is the pinnacle of a recording career that began in 1975.