Charles Plymell on Bob Branaman

The first time I remember Bob’s drawings I was sitting in a club in the early to 50’s in Kansas. There was the typical live combo of sax, bass, drums and singer. Bob had some paper and a pen and began sketching. We were among a large post-war sub-culture that associated itself with drugs, whores, and jazz and cars. We saw a lot of each other and went to parties and clubs and enjoyed the Benzedrine and Boo and cartoon life the nights had to offer.

Charles Plymell on Bob Branaman

The first time I remember Bob’s drawings I was sitting in a club in the early to 50’s in Kansas. There was the typical live combo of sax, bass, drums and singer. Bob had some paper and a pen and began sketching. We were among a large post-war sub-culture that associated itself with drugs, whores, and jazz and cars. We saw a lot of each other and went to parties and clubs and enjoyed the Benzedrine and Boo and cartoon life the nights had to offer.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE by Charles Plymell

for Joanna McClure
 
The moon is sometimes bathed in night’s full light
and the earth is aroused as when a woman bathes
turns in her phases bringing blood to half the earth
of men’s rallied avarice and ambition and battle cry
of eternal wars we do not know women would wage.

The eternal wound I know not of but almost certain
that the eternal sores of life are fed by fear of death
and my remorse is forever lasting as empty space
knowing that battles and wars will continue when
earth falls ill with battle and thunderous wars from
every side to keep the blood of innocence flowing
in collaterally damaged fatally wounded virgin birth.

SMOKE SIGNALS AFTER GRANT HART’S VISIT by Charles Plymell

qoud permanat enim disolitur, inert ergo. (Lucritius)
(for that which permeates is dissolved, perishes therefore.)

You leave once more….
car readied to the northwest winds
the smell of incense gone
voices of those who listened
to The Argument have joined new age
body spirits torn in the winds of eternity
dissipated into the commerce of the day.

Those who once climbed your ladder
bow their heads like the broken rungs
we’ve known so well where talent failed
signaling their sycophants to be silent
creativity but a word to them, not a life.

The visit over in the wake of climb without ascent
that graced memory’s spirits they’ve never known
lesser arguments piled draught in compost bones.

— Cherry Valley, April 10, 2012

CIVILIZATION SINCE THE AGE OF BRUNO by Charles Plymell

He was a suspicious person to the state and authorities; had the nerve to assert the sun was just another star and that there might be intelligent life in the universe. Such talk would indicate he must be on drugs. They put him in prison and when he confessed to his beliefs, he was burned at the stake.
Over seven million of his kind are imprisoned today. The private prison industry lobby gives coin to our Roman police of God and State. At least one candidate for president still lives in Bruno’s age and would consider subversive anyone who would commit heresy against god and State. We have progressed only in technology since his age, over 600 hundred years ago, but unnoticeable in the age of the universe.
There is a part of our brain that has been retarded, remains the same despite the progression of other parts. Might as well admit it, though we have placed symbols like flag and golf ball on the moon, part of our brain like a rat’s brain. The daily killing news might as well be the white rat shrieking at the brown rat or other “different” rats that invaded others’ gates of rubble in their underground, unseen communities. They shriek and show their teeth and kill; there is no such thing as innocence.  The populations of humans have become entangled in their land; their wilderness has shut them in. Their numbers have increased, but not their contaminated brains.
The instruments of death have been improved.  Fire at the stake has been replaced by the more efficient 9mm bullet. One more sign that Mother Nature can only have her revenge. The innocence has been lost forever. One too many coyotes strung on fence posts tendon tied within tendon, one too many buffalo killed for sport. One too many innocent youths killed. The land that looks like the running wolves will shake off its population like fleas when Mother Nature has her revenge.

Charles Plymell
April 1, 2012

–graphic by Dave Boles

sign posted in downtown wichita

Sculptures by Charles Plymell

Holders of the life stones sculptures by Charles Plymell for his forthcoming book from Bottle of Smoke Press: VORTEX TENT SHAKER VOICE

Vacate the System by Charles Plymell

“Satellite measurements have proven that artificial energies from power lines are similarly amplified high above the earth, a phenomenon known as power-line harmonic resonance….’this amplified energy interacts with particles from the Van Allen belts…producing a fallout of charged particles…”

“In 1983 , measurements from Ariel 3 and 4 weather satellites showed that enormous amounts of PHLR over North America had created a permanent duct from the magnetosphere, down into the upper air, resulting in a continuous release of ions and energy over the whole continent.”

“Since the mid 1970’s there has been a dramatic increase in flooding, drought, and attendant hardships due to the inconsistent, anomalous weather patterns. It appears likely hat these have been caused in part by electro and perhaps whether deliberately or not….seems feasible to introduce catastrophic climate change over a target country, and even without such weather warfare,continued expansion of the electrical power system threatens the viability of all life on earth.”

“In addition, if Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere exists, our artificial fields must mask it many times over, literally disconnecting us from life’s collective wisdom. This is not to ignore the plain fact of evil. but here must be some other reason why today’s power elite are so willing to bring the whole world to the brink of so many kinds of destruction. Maybe they literally can’t hear the earth anymore.”

Charles Plymell on Charles Plymell (part 2)

CURRICULA VITA

The next summer I went to work on my father’s land in South Dakota. Hisevery airport near his farms in the western states. He told me new cars were a fad anyway, and he could have older ones at the landing fields. He nodded off once and I took the stick to fly the Piper. It was a lovely machine. Later I would help some crop dusters in old double winged aircraft with larch mother that could maintain enough speed for lift while flying close to the ground. I rode between the wings sometimes for the fun of it. He had a 48 Dodge business coupe that I drove back to Texas one summer and joined my mother who was working on a daredevil thrill show in Oklahoma.

Charles Plymell on Charles Plymell (part 1)

CURRICULA VITA

I liked readin’ writin’ n’ arithmetic, but I never liked school and its silly rules. I never wanted to be around shitty-assed, snot nosed, dirty finks and bullies all day. I was never a joiner nor a team player. I was spared “kindergarten” invented by some German guy to make teachers the gardeners of the state and give their parents more time for industry. I was a loner, forever suspect to society and industry.

We were living in Yucaipa, California and luckily kindergarten was not the law yet, so I spent that year in “Paradise.” In the late 30’s up to WWII, Southern California was indeed a paradise, ruined only by population. Earthquakes and forest fires were negligible by comparison. I’d spend all day in my aunt’s orange groves with the smell of orange blossoms and huge navels  ripening  (Photo by Gerad Malanga ) until they fell from the trees. My education was developing in a brook in back of the house where pure sparkling water bubbled down the hill over beautifully colored pebbles, creating a vibrant reality, impressionistic like a mescal high. There was no smog from the basin then, only a gentle breeze of the cool mountain air that invaded the pores of the body. I explored the brook, watched the insects, frogs and snakes all day. The sun made everything glisten in suspense. My sisters, all in school, set up a “Yucaipa Valley Basement” school at which they taught me ABC’s, and tried to scare me by saying there were bodies in the bags hanging in the basement next door they made me to peek into. We argued over kid-things like whether it was Bob Crosby, Bing’s brother, who stopped along the road in a Buick convertible. We used illogical deductive reasoning that it couldn’t have been because he had on the wrong socks. My mother sang and played traditional  songs like “We’ll Never Grow Old” when she wasn’t driving the load of oranges in the field in a truck with no doors that I could watch the shiny blacktop roll by and drag a stick along the pavement to annoy her.