s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Shadows Echo Four Four Time
 Kathleen Florence & Rich Ferguson

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Life can be what you wanna make it on a cadenza of stanzas. You can recline with your sweet side, or riff your chili peppers ’til they sing dixie in reverse with a heaping helping of fretless frets on the side. No need to have a barcode for a birthmark when you’re born into the pages of a thesaurus of ruckus. Sometimes you gotta dare to go where no words have ever gone before. Sometimes you gotta suit your tongue up for the verbal ride of its life. If you have to leave some behind in the process, it’s all part of the honeycomb flow. Some will be lost in the dust waiting for Lady Gaga to show up at the party, others will think it ain’t a party until someone’s going gaga over them.

Periphery puzzles slide sideways skipping over hopscotching hours haunting holy over hope flowers straight up. No rocks no pushing daisies the days of crazies are mellow in my cup. It’s overflowing this gut knowing push pull strong enough to hold a winter’s worth of rebirth in the beat beat belly of a song worthy of singing and ringing on and on. Sometimes a drink from the flow helps us get along instead of wondering what’s right or wrong open or closed who can know the mind of a mind but the mind that minds its own. Pick up the phone dial yourself a bottle of believe it. Feel sky nature make it and there’s nothing much to do on a Sunday groove but walk through dance and sing the blues cause they come too and the ice melts when the heats up up and my mama’s song comes in flashes electric orchestral and always when I need reminding that we can feel more than we see.

What the echoes keep telling me is how they’re continually learning how to unplug themselves from the status quo and go with the flow. How, rather than repeating themselves on an endless loop, they’re Betty Boop’ing the blues, jazz-flapping beige days with wide-eyed self-confidence. Those echoes tell me how even the ugliest of mornings can prove to be a lovely day if you look at them in the right light. Those echoes say they like how our alright un-uptight outta sights keep growing more fearless when exploring the outer limits of inner visions. Those echoes tell me they know just the place we can go to relax. They say there’s a little place in L.A. called Echo Park.

Song timing takes the time it takes when you come from the land of ice and snow and birthday cakes birthing the sugar of a guitar glowing stardust moon swoon left on the spoon after strawberry dig dig got dug and you dig it. Cut a rug peel layers like a lap lap in a swimming pool keeping lanes lined up so no foolish drowning takes anyone down. When we go to town with riffs drifts sugar mountain lifts crashing the reverb to bird equalling flight nouning the right to echo ourselves into action, there is causation there is cause to pause to catch the breath that keeps us. No satisfaction is no answer for the dancer who also plays bass in case- in-point to a sound view that counts the steps to a second verse or part two the best part of the summer come soon watermelon moon, come watermelon moon. Dance steps down in the summer of shade is a parade of words on echo.

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Kathleen Florence writes poetry for the stage.  She puts down words to perform them up, monologue sing speak, move story sound around river flow. Born on the border of American beats and Canadian concretes, the language wordplay stirred from this bird has some sibling associations with her work as a visual artist and writer of grrrrl grunge rocker songs. Kathleen Florence blogspot→

Pushcart Prize-nominated poet Rich Ferguson has shared the stage with Patti Smith, Wanda Coleman, Moby, and other esteemed poets and musicians. Ferguson has been selected by the National Beat Poetry Foundation, Inc. (NBPF), to serve as the State of California Beat Poet Laureate (Sept. 2020 to Sept. 2022). He is a featured performer in the film, What About Me? featuring Michael Stipe, Michael Franti, k.d. lang, and others. His poetry and award-winning spoken-word music videos have been widely anthologized, and he was a winner in Opium Magazine’s Literary Death Match, L.A. He is the author of the poetry collection, 8th& Agony (Punk Hostage Press), and the novel, New Jersey Me (Rare Bird Books). Ferguson’s newest poetry collection, Everything is Radiant Between the Hates, will be published in January 2021 by Moon Tide Press. Rich Ferguson website→