Grateful Dead

thank you stuman for suggesting my favorite forum, love yer little saying too!

I really need to come here more often , I just dont get the time I used to have . Thank you all for posting your words .. " Life is`nt about running from the storm, it`s about learning to dance in the rain "

I see colors in theMorning sky Look above me and I See the eagle fly There stands Shasta Mighty as a king I start up Casaval and I Hear the angels sing Four hours I climb And everything is still And then the wind blows As I top off Misery Hill Now I see The summit rising high Guess I know what it means to Kiss the sky Here I stand Upon the summit peak I'm feeling so high That I don't even speak And I wonder As I'm looking all around I could stay here forever But I guess I'll Just go down That's an oldy. Lived in Mt. Shasta for 12 years. Made it to the summit of the 14,162 ft. peak 10 times by 6 different routes. 5 of those times were winter ascents where I became first person of the year to the top. thanks jm

First off, I love this thread. I have been reading post after post finding inspiration to write myself. So for all you who post here, please, keep it up!!!! I run the poetry slam in San Antonio and every week for the past 59 weeks I have written and performed a new 3 minute slam poem. A lot of them are hippie and music related because I am a hippie who loves music. This poem was inspired by a baby sitter I had when I was 8 who taught me at a young age to appreciate jazz, which I think helped open my ears to the Dead when I was only 13. Its kind of long but I hope you enjoy. THE JAZZ SITTER In certain circles she was known simply as The Jazz Sitter A mousy whisper of a girl who had no interest in the 16 year old boys her friends craved Nor no appeal for the 16 year old girls she secretly desired But to a growing pack of 8 and 9 year old boys She was the only woman----Other than our mothers ----That we truly loved Her street worth: 5 dollars an hour plus all the ice cream she could eat She wowed parents with Wise Beyond Her Years babysitting skills and Made us boys weak in our scraped knees with Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens We were smitten Crippled by school boy crushes two times more mystifying than any other because At 8 to her 16 We were still years away from thinking of her breasts as nothing more than sources of nourishment Me? A musically malnourished munchkin raised on a steady diet of Dad’s Rhinestone Cowboys and Mom’s Dancing Queens And back in 78 when punk infested every scene The Jazz Sitter pierced her ears with music more rebellious Than Johnny Rotten ever dared to be And when the Jazz Sitter sat…..We listened We had no choice or else Popcorn? burnt Popsicles? withheld Bed time? Criminally early We yielded to her power and she exposed us to her passion We were baptized anew as Jazz Babies And given musical transfusions that replaced our anemic Barry Manilow blood With fresh new pints of Mingus and Dolphy For his ninth birthday, Steven sent his parents scrambling for a psychiatrist when he asked for Herbie Hancock’s Thrust Evan refused to eat dinner for weeks until his parents took him to see Miles Davis brew some bitches And I cried for Coltrane and then spent my tenth birthday shooting up The Love Supreme behind a locked bedroom door I fell in love with her And then I fell in love with jazz She taught me seek compassion in chaos and comfort in sonic sheets of sounds And had me believing that Miles Davis achieved perfection with Kind of Blue But years later, when I laid eyes upon a Kind Blue Eyed Beauty one hot July night at a poetry slam I realized that I misunderstood the whole lesson Miles Davis created The Platonic Ideal of beauty and slapped it on a slab of hot wax And the day after I first met her I dropped that needle in its groove and Without saying a word the sounds that filled my room celebrated Her Beauty with notes played years before she was even born The Man with the Horn captured that essence that she captured and that afternoon I realized that I had been captured And though I hadn’t thought about my Jazz Sitter in years I realized that she had captured my heart and trained it to look for real beauty In music In noise In chaos In places I never thought it could be And it was only when I found it for myself Behind a strangers kind blue eyes Would the Jazz sitter set me free And let me truly fall in love J.T. Gossard http://thehallucinogenicbible.blogspot.com/

Forever gratefulGrateful aligned unexplainable unexplainable unexplainable time Drenched of colors sound surround stomp patchouli acid ...jingle and rhyme streaming dreadlocks streaming living pores Grooving moving flying motion like birds What you and I heard is What you and I heard Miracles on shakedown street Dance... what you & I heard what you & I heard

The farthest you'll ever have to goto reach someone you love is when the journey can only be completed in your mind. How comfortingly ironic then that the trip takes but an instant and you always have the fare in hand. Conversation is always more interesting than recitation, so speak your mind and not someone else's.

Nice diatribe about big Pharma and advertising if I got it right. I don't need anybody to say it, I definitely know I didn't male it through the 80s. I died during the 7/4 show in 86 -- been haunting them demons evere since..

It was beautiful and completely without pretense. I'll take it raw every time.

The wound you left gapinghas raw, oozing edges and a hollow, black center. Some try to fill holes with drink, food, or meds. But I cannot. EXCEPT last night a chocolate was soothing Dark-you were no milky guy. You were a rich taste that burst on the tongue and trickles to the belly to stay there. Warm and sweet, yet complexly strong flavor Giving energy. (I know it's awful, but it just came out as is) ********************************** I am not young enough to know everything. Oscar Wilde

nothing means anything any more my word your handshake there is nothing standing behind it anymore It is all empty Of substance Nobody stands behind What they say They just expect you to believe, be easily persuaded, or just give up and go away. it all means nothing assurances promises all empty every thing comes with a warning yeah, I got it dude I lived through the 80s Although there are those Who may say to my face That perhaps I didnt make it out alive. The perishable part Is rotten from the inside Adamantine mind shine In a world of lie cheat and steal What you do You do for money You never found another reason Why? For when what would be The last helping hand Reaches in To steal your meds And says "Love ya, dude" On the way out the door, You've got to say Your pain of a different kind Has made you blind Like stealing the coin Out of a blind man's cup There ain't nothing much for you now It's gone from Looking up to looking up Nothing means nothing Anymore A word a handshake there is nothing Standing behind it Anymore It is all empty promises Effective only to The point that you are willing To be deceived. Here take this pill To go up And this pill to go down Dont mind the dizziness Or diarrhea Common symptoms include death. Oh, yeah, I'll take ten of those Babies Who knew that All these imaginary diseases Could be so lucrative If you can just get them to overlook The fine print The side effects To believing In dust.