Jesters and Troubadours

Stories from the Road

[johnnybmartyr]

PORTLAND (PART TWO)

[johnnybmartyr]

Portland

STEP RIGHT UP!  STEP RIGHT UP!  TONIGHT ONLY!  THE DIRTY PEOPLE PLAY THE CLASSY DIGS!  FIVE DOLLARS GETS YOU IN!   Portland.  What can you say, man?  It’s where the Wizard of weird came up from San Francisco to check out a roach motel and never left.  It’s a place you can strike sparks anywhere along a wide ass river and still end up eating breakfast at the same god damn place you ate breakfast there 2 years and 3 lifetimes ago.  I mean, where does this place get off, really?   We arrived not in time to catch the tail end of Sambamore’s set returning from Honkfest in Seattle, but time enough to catch our main man, Uncle Jesse, in full Idaho glow resplendent-ness, coming down the street downtown after doing that thing that he does.  Fuckin’ WAIL.  

We then proceeded to the EXACT same place we are doing our thing tonight and was treated to a wild, Moon-boot spandex marching band onslaught red curtain scene.  

Junkadelic Marching Band - Australia After that scene, which actually almost turned into a full on Humboldt reunion of sorts, we met up with our main mini man, MC Nik Sin at the Kit Kat Club, behind Voodoo Donuts (an establishment that, word on the street so demurely admits, no one local gives a fuck about.) The Kit Kat club cost me a dollar to get in, they sell strong rum and cokes with Myers at the bar, and do full bottomless world-champion pole dancing to Modest Mouse.  Yup, sit down, California, I know you hella jelly right now.  I’ll be gracing their hallowed halls again tonight, as my dumb ass left my only source of funds safely tucked behind the bar, as is my lot.  It is written.  

Most certainly the only picture you get of this totally ritzy joint.   SO, if you happen to be READING this somewhere in the Portland vicintiy, hop on your double decker bicycle and head on downtown to the STAR THEATRE TONIGHT where we will promptly freak you the fuck out.  All.  Night.  Long.   P.S.  If you go to a raucous, gnarly, killer live music scene and aren’t mad sweaty by the end of it.  You suck.  You’re useless.  Go home.  Straight up.  

[johnnybmartyr]

Brino Ism

There are some people who this world has made hard.  It is unfortunately true.  Folks who have stacked up so hard against the madness they forget how to feel.  They put their sunglasses on, starch their collars and scoff at the folks sleeping on cardboard as they step over em on the way to yet another shitty lunch meeting or workout session or whatever.  Or... for others, quite the opposite... the sheer immensity of the craziness and the confusion or the terrible truth that is loneliness has caused them to fold, head always down, slogging through puddles of a dreary life.  To quit.  To fuck off and die.  To peace out.  

This motherfucker right here... Ain’t one of those people.  

Brino is a god damn force of nature.  At 60 some odd years young, this cat can bark your ear off.  He’s a self-proclaimed worker of the light.  Constantly building a full on arsenal against the forces of darkness, which attack from all sides; land, air and sea, baby, perceived or imagined, And whether you’re staring blankly under your sunglasses or shaking your head, whether you think his dialogue is meticulously researched or the jumbled screed of a mad-man... he doesn’t give a fuck.  His religion is love.  Mad, wild, wickedly powerful, pure love.  Love that only a kooky as all hell, David Icke reading, light warrior, servant of the truth CLOWN can wield.  And this dude has done it all.  

These women flagged us down... on Highway 101... just North of Arcata, because homegirl in the shades is writing a book about “hobos.”   Brino is on a soul journey for what will likely be the rest of his life.  A life previously spent in the company of Wavy Gravy, Patch Adams, the starlets and meatheads of the mad art scene on the Sunset strip, gang members in Santa Rosa’s Juvenile Halls, the early pioneers of graffiti in the City, and of course, the Circus Emporium Roadshow ;).  The dude is just a straight up masterpiece.  The sheer immensity of the man’s ability to speak story is staggering, and the twinkle he gets in his eye when he recalls his fondest clowning memories brings near tears to such a overtly sensitive audience as myself.   His current campaign in the War of Love is called “Spreading Happy” a mad cap dash throughout the great wild whatever to distribute joy.  Simple joy.  Sure, underneath the ear to ear smile is a world of harsh, wild experience and complexity I can truly only wonder about, but the current mission is clear.  The world will only be rid of darkness through love.  And my friends, it is a very serious mission.  He has been 6 months on the run from the sedentary world, and right now... here in Portland... is actually, the longest this particular chapter of the Brinodyssey it’s gone so far.   

Please allow me to introduce Gus (the truck) and Ollie (the trailer).  As we sped up the 199 through the winding Klamath River Basin and into Oregon, the trailer was visibly swaying.  And from on the 5 far south of Eugene to a rest stop just outside of Salem, that door on the side of the trailer was open.  Wide. Open.   Brino is also undertaking a project that he calls the adventures of the Happy Hobo, a documentary of his travels, a “Survivorman” style one man selfie stick show of the daily life of someone who chooses to sleep where they don’t want you to sleep, to live the way they don’t want you to live, and to hang out with all the other goofy, wild ass people like him that they don’t want you to hang out with.  His adventures can be followed, in damn near real time, at his youtube page... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY548YZPSQY.   Please go and check it out, as the paltry description I have cobbled together here hardly does him any justice at all.  But, dear readers, do take it from me... Brino Ism, in his Louisiana drawl, his small and humble home, and his massive fucking brain... Is Happy.  Actually Happy.   Now, Ain’t that somethin?

And don’t worry, I’m riding shotgun with this freak all the way back down to the Redwood Curtain in a few days, so this is certainly not the last you’ll hear about our boy Brino.  

[johnnybmartyr]

I Wanna Show You the Road, Baby

I wanna show you the road, baby I want to hack this boredom to pieces and run I want to show you what's crawling around Way out there Sitting in the backs of Penske trucks Dancing for no one But Almighty God of Applebee's And gila monsters Dr. Woody Guthrie Neck Tattoo And Mademoiselle Guadalupe Softly grinning in the electric torchlight Folding single dollar bills back into their pockets Carefully taking the metal out of their faces.   I wanna make that scorpion love. Barbed wire for breakfast Nothing safe Nothing earned Everything stolen and headless Hard and rough as raw yucca Venom sharp and sweet as Mezcal Sweat dripping Like Tuscon Or Juarez I wanna show you the road, baby That place after Portland where gentle, mighty Washington rises And the truckers and tweakers of Siskiyou Burn through to climb Shasta Cause ya can The air so dry Dusty Cold An ancient electrical charge A panther banshee scream Enough to drag your helpless breath kickin up the mountain with it And have your blood run down as cold as A spring from the summit But its ok, darlinI got you And I see that smile You speak that same wild tongue

Fuck car alarms Fuck utility bills Let's baptize ourselves In the careful organization Of the essentials In a backpack The mad scene And goofy shit-surfing kick Of the Greyhound Down through the woods Through the grapevine Last call Los Angeles Gleaming hazy-like an emerald Backstroking in dirty needles and baker blown cinnamon Babylon A thousand little weeds Poking through a thousand little sidewalk cracks Like bikini line strays Like kids getting kicked out of a punk club.

And O those broken souls Drawn and quartered by the bottle Needle impaled Drowned by morning Rough hewn trails  Skid row tracks Ohlone shells Speaking story Calloused soles And ghost trains Going nowhere Outlaw mountains of medicine Growing nowhere And we'll run circles around it, baby.   We'll dance in the flames They'll never catch us Cause we don't care Money Power Being right all the time Nah We're content With a Lost Coast whiskey bottle Kaleidascopic sunset Just your thumb out And things to hock Your hair Dancing to its own wild time signature In the freeway wind tunnel Playing behind my eyes Like one of those Impossible Gypsy Melodies I wanna show you the road, baby. Collapse with me into the daytime sleep of the exhausted wanderer Green grass No filter Just the soft chatter of Mexican nannies Scuttling around the sideways playground Windbreaker clad novelas of back-home gossip While fuckin' Chad throws sand in his sister's eyes.   Just that wind Dripping from the West Like the overhanging moisture of Oregon The far flung foggy lips of the sea Racing up the mountains Away from it all Dancing on top of the waters Thumbing its nose And blowing kisses At the Beast Lost long ago To sniffing its own ass And online dating I wanna show you the road, baby. Because you can't jar up and sell A breeze through the sea-swept canyons of wild turnip Or the sweat off a pick-axe Or the steam of a rainforest sunrise Or the smell of a Navajo diner But the way you breathe When we entangle Like vines on a cedar Like slugs in the humus Your pirate body Sliding down my mast Like a sea monster At the mouth of a river village Terrifying Wild eyed At me Hungry Aching Terminally underwhelmed Makes me think you might want to try I wanna show you the road, baby.   Because the rent will just get higher And the road tells a story You can see it if you look The little dried flower crosses Folded exhausted Mylar balloons  Copper green teddy bears And skidmarks of spinouts Written in cursive by the hand of Death himself. Signed with blood and brain and chrome On the endless double yellow line The abandoned cars Rusting from January's freezes Down the riverbank The mistletoed oaks Sway As they have For decades But they're dying And no one knows why I wanna show you the road, baby.   We'll nestle into America's vast, silicone Playland ballpit tits She'll rock you to sleep in her Cacaphonous lullaby Vegas Will kill you a thousand times And you'll just smile And clear your throat And clink your glass And say"Hit me" With gas station hot dogs Bottled water To brush your teeth Giggling at the desperate scribbles And burner cell digits Of cocksucking truckers And sulfur licked lot lizards Tattooed eyebrows Cracking in the high desert Baked on mascara Slapped on mad, savage Sad eyes Dirty dreads pulled back into ponytails The Kingdom of Xanax And Ice There's fountains in the desert Fool’s gold in the sea That same slickback Prehistoric Pomade Two backhoe fingerfuls of goop Hastily spread Over Poseidon's kelpy pompadour In that vast vanity mirror Our Pacific Rockabilly Roustabout lassos An untameable mare, our Mother You can see them They twinkle Forever With Blessings wreathing every mile East Into nothing West Into the water North To be swallowed South To disappear I wanna show you the road, baby.   Cause there are wolves howling in your breasts A marshy moon in your eyes And when I bite the back of your neck Your hair smells like saguaro And fresh coyote kill And your lips taste like sorrell An apple skin smile Lips red as antelope intestines A proper wild bitch   Ready to gnaw free of her grid city cage And devour her captors Alive

[johnnybmartyr]

The Road Goes On Forever

Hey folks.  Thanks for checking out my Tumblr.  I started this up because I have been living rather unconventionally for years, travelling for work, for happiness, travelling just to travel.  I deeply love the road, the lessons it teaches, the challenges it provides and the love it imparts.  The road in itself is just that... a long stretch of pavement, more often than not pretty barren and isolated, weaving its way through the quieter, uninhabited parts of the world.  Follow it far enough and you run through cities, suburbs, cowfields, mountains, forests, deserts.  It, and the land and the people you meet travelling it, knits this beautiful land together, and I, for my part, wish to tell its story.  My current journey is one of necessity, I go where I can find work.  For this goal, I have taken buses, trains, hitch-hiked, and rideshared.  It can be exhausting, and creating roots is hard, even in the places I consider home.  It’s a romantic kind of life, where money doesn’t come easy, and the work is usually manual, but the rewards in a spiritual sense are immense and beautiful.  So... I hope you join me in recounting some of these tales and feelings.  I hope to post a variety of different writing on here, ranging from poetry I have written in the wild spaces, to photography of some of the secret beauty I have found on this journey.   I should of course mention that at the present moment I am in my hometown of Arcata, CA, preparing to travel to Oregon for the weekend with my friends in the Circus Emporium Roadshow.  We will be arriving in Portland sometime this evening, and I am so very stoked to go back to Portland.  It’s always a vibrant, wacky, good time there and I am greatly looking forward to it.   So, in closing, Thank you for taking the time to read this.  I hope to share this journey with you and many others.  I live a strange life, but I love it, and I’d love to help inspire people to never EVER feel like they are less than wild, less than capable of absolutely anything.  There’s so much out here.  There’s so much to explore.  I am excited to start this project, and it has been a long time coming.  :) Slainte,  Johnny Martyr