Nasreddin Shifflett sonnets

I was lucky enough to prevent a heroic crown of sonnets around a character named Nasreddin Shifflett this past weekend at an Appalachian Studies Conference. That sounds more prestigious than it really was, because basically I stood in front of like six people, most of whom I already knew. But the ideas were scattered, and sometimes they take seed and sometimes they don't.
I felt a strong pride in the work I do, which I don't often find due to the overwhelming obscurity of my creative work. I am not a marketer, and unfortunately in a system ruled by money where people validate their work through how much they sell to people, most of our creative industries are more ruled by marketing than doing the actual work. That's not meant to disparage all successful art as bullshit commodity, because good stuff does sneak through. But I find my time on this earth limited, and I can't dedicate that limited time to trying to convince others to focus through the unrelenting fog and acknowledge what I do. That's difficult to accomplish, and takes precious time away from actually working on new shit.
This is from a project called Freestyle Sonnets where I'm writing 76 heroic crowns of sonnets. A crown is where last line of one sonnet becomes first line of next, and the last line of the last sonnet in the set is the first line of the first one, thus making a circular crown, so to speak. In a heroic crown, the fourteen sonnets - in addition to being a circular crown - also have their last line combine to compose a fifteenth heroic sonnet. It's fucked up, mathematical, complicated, and fun as hell because I stick to the freestyle concept of not thinking about it and just letting my mind or heart or gut or whatever shoot words into place.
Anyways, since I presented this cycle of sonnets this past weekend, and I've yet to self-publish the first two volumes of freestyle sonnets (probably late spring for those books), I figured I'd share the Nasreddin Shifflett heroic crown - about a hillbilly mystic mountain man in Appalachia, touching on various aspects to mountain life (poverty, there's one about moonshining, one about ginseng harvests, one about privatized prisons, junkyards, so and so forth).

#197

Single drop of spirit born upon mountain top,

Nasreddin Shifflett birthed simple in dimly-lit

ramshackle cabin carved into Blue Ridge backdrop,

to mother of rabbit means, as well as dimwit

father who never bothered with numbers or books,

getting by with calloused hands able to twist dirt

into sustenance for his small flock, “stupid” looks

which knew not the names of famous men in silk shirt

pictures from history; but he could scan green land,

distinguish each plant, knowing their benefits range

in the old world ways of cunning folk, learned firsthand

listening at his grandma on limited grange

graciously scrabbled together on steep hillside,

piecemealing sacred life where faulty lines collide.

#198

Piecemealing sacred life where faulty lines collide,

blood native to this continent had existed

long before a new-found “civilized” world had tried

to buffer these “wild” men with crudely enlisted

indentured Celts, who pioneered west, through thick brush

of unplowed land, creating legal claims for lords

back east; further more, runaway slaves made bum’s rush

into hills to build life free of devils’ accords;

these various misfits for order intermixed

in meandering proximity, giving birth

to marooned people of mountains, living betwixt

the feral past of man, and this civilized earth,

developed with disgust for just one drop non-white,

so many ruled wrongly developed strong insight.

#199

So many ruled wrongly developed strong insight

into rhythms perhaps ancient, or maybe just

ignored by ears refined beyond accepting sprite

song or dark muses speaking of sin, cents, and lust;

classical training ain’t true to frontier’s strange twang,

so we made our own music, from soul, not the mind,

“always on the sunny side” young Shifflett’s voice sang,

echoing through hollers, hollering back in kind,

finding kin and kindling, forming choirs around fires,

feasting in communion with canopy of stars;

down below, fine folks muttered hymns under sharp spires,

navigating paved world in gold chariot cars;

our world’s too wild for soothing sounds to be applied,

hooting and stomping through days, with nowhere to ride.

#200

Hooting and stomping through days, with nowhere to ride,

Nasreddin Shifflett applied worn boots to railroad

ties, where tracks creepy crawled round blasted mountainside,

to haul plunder from earth’s belly, steel snakes’ full load

whining slowly away, while our mystic sat still –

idling – absorbing energy from all that work,

forged by lava fire, compressed into tools for will

of man; simple spike for example, born from murk

of iron and carbon, sledge-driven into ground,

to hold the snakes’ path in place, under heavy weights

both literal and psychic; the human force found

in each single chiseled spike intensely creates

power which can be conjured from cunning insight;

building sigils from detritus – that’s how we fight.

#201

Building sigils from detritus, that’s how we fight,

letting shined hot rods revert back to rust, resting

in pine shade, adding other dead rides; rural blight

filling fields with mechanisms, junked yard nesting

into edges of vast compounds, spread as needed

across family land, creating immense charge

of chi – dilapidated feng shui, lounge seeded

and scattered, storage shed schoolbuses looming large,

vehicles missing windshields, doors, quarter panels –

deteriorating hulks which once had power

still have power stored, psycho-kinetic channels

unseen but swirling in invisible tower

tornado of energy, attempting to stall

the spread of shineface logic, developing all.

#202

The spread of shineface logic developing all

with profit in mind, not sustaining existence,

much life requires time to take root – spring, summer, fall,

long dormant winter building rhizome resistance

to death’s incessant grip; Nasreddin watched ginseng

slowly grow wild on backwoods spiritual paths,

healing energy blossoming bit more each spring,

as larger biosphere commanded, despite math’s

devious calculations, valley world’s value

grew, imposing on poor folks the notion to pick

communal land plants for personal misuse through

selling off simple access to self-health for sick

stack of quickly diminished coins, abstracting fruits

into complicated wealth schemes, lacking deep roots.

#203

Into complicated wealth schemes, lacking deep roots,

men first dug holes into these mountains to extract

coal – powering that black-and-white world, simple boots

trudging into earth’s bowels with shovel, compact

pathways caved in at times, causing collateral

damage with public; thus dynamite tactics were

developed, blasting and scraping, mechanical

monsters replaced men’s muscle, energy transfer

from inside gaia to silk pockets, sediments

lost, landscape reshaped by bulldozer blade razing

heavenly hills down to denuded detriments,

scraps of what once was, poisoned well-meaning phrasing

legally stating the land was reclaimed; once tall

proud ridges flattened to manifest false windfall.

#204

Proud ridges flattened to manifest false windfall,

but worthless hollers still hide lost souls attempting

to tread water where economic wells have all

dried up; yet beyond relentless bills pre-empting

a simpler life in the hills, beyond the tragic

“Freebird” deaths of uncles and sons, past the turning

out of women’s dreams into tricks, there’s still magic,

a collective will of the wisp that’s still burning

bright at night – luciferin guides through long struggles

of darkness, the fire of the cunning fox shining

lime green as earth spirit aura guiding juggles

of manmade trifles in natural land, pining

for man’s hollers being full of wild rebel hoots,

some still sow redemptive seeds without thought for fruits.

#205

Some still sow redemptive seeds without thought for fruits

attached to actions, mashing corn into copper

kettles welded for self over all, putting boots

to wooded path hidden from sight, ragtag hopper

fermenting lightning under white shine of half-moon

crescent, smiling down like cheshire angel, distilled

spirits fill plastic and glass jugs – gallon platoon

to march off, concealed in metallic muscle, skilled

drivers at wheel, avoiding authority’s eyes,

flashing lights in rear views – fuck the law; we’ve always

scratched out this hardscrabble life despite wolf’s disguise

in white lamb’s cloth; we’re black sheep by birth, pointing gaze

at guidance of lunar light, not blind legal book,

fueled by spirits, circumstance forces us to cook.

#206

Fueled by spirits, circumstance forces us to cook,

sometimes disabled by the very hard life we

recklessly embrace, caught like human catfish – hook,

line, sinker; bottom feeders allegedly free,

trapped in our own rural rubble, rubbish broken,

and we know it, having had our noses rubbed hard

into our own natural lack, these words spoken

constantly combined with little past prison yard

or army deployment moving us before death,

leaves us self-medicating, numbing the self-hate,

stabbing endless pain with methamphetamine breath

and oxycodone bloodstream – speed up/slow down fate,

altering perception briefly, from life’s cruel ruse –

from birth, feeling firsthand how this world will abuse.

#207

From birth, feeling firsthand how this world will abuse,

taking up serpents daily, speaking in broken

tongues these suit-and-tie devils seemingly confuse

as foreign language, thinking their wealth is token

into paradise, but these golden idols they

worship ain’t possessed by holy ghost spirit – hell

no; we cast them out these hills; all days are Sunday –

we believe with all our hearts, struggling to expel

evil – ain’t no grave gonna hold our bodies down

when Gabriel’s trumpet starts to sounding on earth;

law ain’t about what’s right – we can’t worship in town;

but where law can’t reach, we experience rebirth,

in our being, through sacred promises we took,

aiming to live good life, not just reading good book.

#208

Aiming to live good life, not just reading good book,

this region fell upon hard times, struggling to find

means to keep folks occupied, as idle hands look

for trouble to get into, troubling peace of mind

of others with criminal mischief, which happens

all over; thus they built these prisons privatized,

operated at profit; applied for captain’s

position, standing guard over men brutalized

by life, made mistakes, mostly out-of-state, sent here

to solitary confinement in these mountains,

tucked away, making wealth off civilized folks’ fear;

it’s ugly, but trickle down ain’t made no fountain

of options out here, so I watch what y’all accuse;

we’re all behind walls, no matter which side we choose.

#209

We’re all behind walls, no matter which side we choose,

what used to be land of my ancestors got claimed

by federal government to preserve (abuse)

wilderness areas, yet all these hills were named

for men who got run off by decree, eminent

domain forced mountain folks down to town lives lacking

the deep roots in nature we felt as resident

of those ridges; protecting land from attracting

actual human interaction, pretending

nature exists separate so that no one “owns”

these minerals and old growth, until bills sending

bulldozers in for selective extraction, stones

not left unturned by raw greed; but my mom and pop

was raised to believe your forced ways will never stop.

#210

Was raised to believe your forced ways will never stop,

you dam all that you can, trying to harness raw

energy, for your endless desires, talking shop

as in “buy” but never as in work; I stand tall

with simple roots, though y’all have beaten back my sense

of self by suggesting I’m stupid, unable

to accomplish much on my own, inelegance

of existence in my genetics, unstable

behavior looked down upon, but fuck yeah, I can’t

recognize the blessings of fences; I refuse

your “civilized” lessons, that animal and plant

and man ain’t the same, in good ways, from the same ooze

of primordial traditionalist life slop –

single drop of spirit born upon mountain top.

Heroic Crown #15

Piecemealing sacred life where faulty lines collide,

so many ruled wrongly developed strong insight,

hooting and stomping through days, with nowhere to ride,

building sigils from detritus – that’s how we fight

the spread of shineface logic developing all

into complicated wealth schemes, lacking deep roots,

proud ridges flattened to manifest false windfall;

some still sow redemptive seeds without thought for fruits,

fueled by spirits, circumstance forces us to cook

from birth, feeling firsthand how this world will abuse;

aiming to live good life, not just reading good book –

we’re all behind walls no matter which side we choose;

was raised to believe your forced ways will never stop

single drop of spirit born upon mountain top.