Well Bottom Blues

Oh my God it's full of stars!


His Duty Free Gift For The Traveler

There is a line in the spoken part of Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s  “Theme for the Eulipions”: “Listen. Listen to his tune. Calls it his duty free gift for the traveler.” This song, and all of Rahsan’s works, lives as close to my heart as the Mjolnir I wear around my neck as a talisman of protection. I take that line as guidance from a wise soul and artist when I give away poetry online.

The song’s speaker also says, ” Calls himself a journey agent. A Eulipion. Says his friends The Poets and the artists and the musicians are Eulipions, too.” I once used A Eulipion as a tagline or a pseudonym, even signing some online work with a red Æ like the chop on Asian art. I wonder if Æ is still carved into the wall at old Mimi’s above that corner two-top at the end of the bar, next to a name it shouldn’t have been.

I have abandoned all organized religion, shaken the dust of the Abrahamic off my sandals, although I have acquaintances in high places and speak with them in need.  The ecumenical community of artists are the only body with which I am in full communion.

I give away a lot of what I call my pretty good poetry for free on the internet, posting it to Instagram which copies it to Facebook and putting some on Threads or here on this mostly ignored blog. These are the gifts out of the loaf and cup I solemnly share with artists everywhere. 

“Listen. Listen to his tune. Calls it his duty free gift for the traveler.”

Listen:  https://youtu.be/AHlek3o9bno?is=ySgNnA1k2feND2m9



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About Me

Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis,  What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).

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