Tuesday, April 28th, 2009...10:21 am
john dorsey & s.a. griffin | the dead zone trilogy by todd moore
I’ve heard
it said that the body is mainly comprised of water. I’d add to that hopes, dreams, tears, and a masculine and feminine energy so ingrained that it’s what we might refer to as spirit, whisper as a constitution of muted American daydreams, silenced by the light of morning in a corporate reality, all this is what you’ll find in the writing of Todd Moore.
Make no mistake about it, Todd Moore is the real outlaw poet of our day, his pen dipped in gunslinger magic; happy big time Valentine’s baby. First time I ever laid my eyes on Todd’s Dillinger material, it ripped my lid off – still does, that’s why he got his very own section in the Outlaw Bible, his shit killed. I had never experienced anything like it before or since. After reading “Dead Zone” on the heels of several other pieces of this epic, it is apparent that Todd was born under the sign of a smoking gun and has latched on to some streaking star from a yet to be discovered universe.
For readers not familiar with Moore’s work, for years he has received the poem, the novel, the word, through the lips of 1930’s bank robber/desperado John Dillinger. Searching for his face on the silver screen, through sex, love, death, fear, fame, wisdom. . .by becoming your mother, your brother, your sister, and turning all of them into myth, a bloodbath, a tribal love-dance, by parting the Red Sea boiling over inside and out of our culture, inside the collective human mind, bleeding in our dark places unburied by the shadow of experience.
Channeling Dillinger since 1973, Moore’s outlaw opus has generated somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million words. His dreamlike fantasy becomes machine guns in the hands of automatic killer language, a flickering black & white noir shot full of good old American myth. Todd shoots the characters onto the pages with the story, as Dillinger supplies the blood. & just like one of the bank robber’s blondes that sheds her skin and sticks her tits out like six shooters in the darkened movie theatre, Dillinger won’t let the reader go.
Todd has been heralded by some, ignored by too many and yet to be experienced by the rest. His Dillinger fits right into the western canon of poetic legend established by the late, great original master gunslinger of verse, Ed Dorn. Todd Moore’s Homeric outlaw odyssey is that of our present cultural flux and collective nightmare translated from the not so distant Tommy gun G Man past into the phallic explosion of a corporate gangsta pop present, blood & sand baby, are ya with me dawg?
The words inside of “The Dead Zone Trilogy” are blessings, keepsakes, chapters of saga greater than Mario Puzo’s most violent wet dream. Is Moore writing a poem, or simply channeling the oral tradition of a dead language soaked in blood and cum stained love-letters to a greater truth, the pulse of the mind, a nation made internal?
Hell, I can’t tell. I don’t care really. I don’t know what’s real, “or is that johnnie?”, that’s a good question. This book rattled my cage. Lawrence’s flesh became mine, became the other, whispered the meaning of bullets to monsters, in a pre-Dorothy era outlaw America that was never Kansas, that will leave your head spinning, dizzy, afraid to go outside, afraid to be locked inside, afraid of the hitting, silenced by strong words to find the meaning of our song, we all share it. Pick up this book anywhere you can find it, come sing for your dreams, before their motives are flooded in darkness, Todd will take a bullet for you, in fact he’s been taking them for yrs, his name, your name, our name America . . . Dillinger!
John Dorsey & S.A. Griffin
THE DEAD ZONE TRILOGY by Todd Moore, St. Vitus Dance Press, 2005.
Todd Moore books and cds are available here… S.A. Griffin books here…
some related articles are listed below:
- john dorsey & s.a. griffin | virgin erotica
- tony moffeit | a revolution of consciousness: review on dead reckoning by todd moore
- todd moore & john macker
- todd moore | dancing in the fire with s.a. griffin
- todd moore | instructions for reading dead reckoning
- todd moore | dillinger was
- todd moore | how to survive the coming night: the poetry of john yamrus
- todd moore | love & death & teeth in the blood
- todd moore | stealing dillinger, becoming an outlaw
- todd moore | this
- todd moore | the coyote trickster and the wooden gun
- s.a.griffin | john and sarah do d.c.
- todd moore | the volcanic death song of baby face nelson
- todd moore | the name is dillinger
- todd moore | i don’t want
- todd moore | american metaphors, visions, and nightmares
- s.a. griffin | for todd moore’s 70th
- todd moore | rd armstrong | reads
- todd moore | I work the shattered line
- todd moore | that terrible shaking in the blood
- todd moore | the dark country
- todd moore | outlaw poetry, psychic damage, the survival of wounds
- todd moore | the second
- todd moore | reading the dark
- s.a.griffin | the way of the pen
- todd moore | when…
- todd moore | the great american poem
- todd moore | dillinger, outlaws, writing, and murder
- todd moore | danger beyond danger, where the outlaw lives
- todd moore | everything changes when dillinger arrives
- todd moore | walking around in the blood
- todd moore | the shattered hemingway sentence
- wolfgang carstens | blood, energy and darkness: a review of dead reckoning
- todd moore | leaving a little blood on the floor
- todd moore | burning the…
- todd moore | the sentences are burning
- todd moore | i want it all and i want it now
- todd moore | the blood of america
- s.a. griffin |venus in the badlands
- todd moore | falling in love with danger
- todd moore | blood and fate under mad stars
- todd moore | the dillinger convergence: three ways of dreaming the outlaw
- todd moore | the fever of writing
- todd moore | working on my duende
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- todd moore | the machine gun blood of the poem
- todd moore | outlaw bonfires and dillinger’s blood
- todd moore | living at the movies with dillinger and depp
- todd moore | dying with dillinger in the corpse is dreaming
- todd moore | dillinger, the coyote, and the wolf
- todd moore | writing dillinger in the eye of the hurricane
- todd moore | dillinger stood…
- todd moore | how come
- todd moore | dillinger, death, and the high mountain air
- todd moore | the nightmare talking
- todd moore | mythic blood, psychic movies, outlaw dreams
- bill nevin | todd moore, cinematic poet on the outlaw’s trail
- todd moore | dreaming the dream, paying the price
- todd moore | billy the kid in the theater of blood
- todd moore | cold fire, molten ice
- todd moore | the exalted scar and the annointed cure
- todd moore | i’ll play dillinger
- todd moore | damage, genius, courage
- todd moore | reading the movies, watching the poems
- tony moffeit | shaking the bones
- todd moore | scorched trinity: dillinger, billie, and machine gun love
- todd moore | writing poetry, burning the house
- todd moore | blood calls to blood
- todd moore | the treehouse reading
- tony moffeit | a man on fire
- todd moore | dillinger posed
- todd moore | blind whiskey and the straight razor blues
- todd moore | what I want to know
- todd moore | shadow of the outlaw
- todd moore | the last good reading from the outlaw dark
- todd moore | dillinger and the riddle of the wooden gun
- todd moore | gimme danger
- john yamrus | dear john…
- todd moore | machine guns, guernica, and the outlaw poem
- todd moore | what are the stakes in american poetry?
- todd moore | night blood, red hands
- todd moore | working the outlaw wind
- todd moore | machine guns, movies, culture, dreams
- todd moore | i write in the blood
- todd moore | the nightmare of poetry is war
- todd moore | the nightmare of reading
- todd moore | nightmare frenzy
- todd moore | the long way home and the blood on the floor
- todd moore | going to meet the outlaw
- todd moore | all the dark talking to the angel of death
- todd moore | death rides the blood
- todd moore | just
- todd moore | black rain
- todd moore | the question
- todd moore | burning
- todd moore | what’s
- tony moffeit | scorching the darkness: the channeling of dillinger
- todd moore | fucking
- todd moore | I don’t
- todd moore | dynamite
- todd moore | the outlaw poet and those killer eyes
- todd moore | the murder and the ecstasy of the everlasting dream
- todd moore | taking on bukowski
- todd moore | stealing the fire, stealing the shadow
- todd moore | the perfect
- todd moore | hemingway
- todd moore | play it & judy christopher
- todd moore | falling asleep in outlaw country
- todd moore | the fevers and sweats of the nightmare poem
- todd moore | coming out of…
- todd moore | jerry’s old
- todd moore | outlaw poetry
- todd moore | the central avenue rundown jazz radio show
- todd moore | gary goude | blood on blood
- todd moore | road testing the kid
- todd moore | all the way to the fame
- todd moore | tasting the blood
- todd moore | tyler’s
- todd moore | love, longing, dillinger, disaster
- todd moore | the last good movie I made was a poem
- todd moore | we cut
- todd moore | the blood of the poet
- todd moore | and the gunfight at dodge city
- todd moore
- todd moore | geeshie wiley
- todd moore | inventing the nightmare
- todd moore | hustling for drinks, praying for lines
- todd moore | nightmare splender
- todd moore | parker shot
- todd moore | pure blood primal: the poetry of kell robertson
- todd moore | the dark side of america
- todd moore | outlaw
- todd moore | lucky
- todd moore | stories, ashes, and fire
- todd moore | fighting death for the poem
- s.a.griffin | rules of the road
- todd moore | largo slapped
- todd moore | saturday night desperate, don winter, and the black mitten of poetry
- s.a.griffin | at the world stage
- todd moore | scratching it out street level for the poem
- todd moore | gary goude and that crushed rotting dawg
- bone | poetry by todd moore & rd armstrong
- todd moore | the rat’s blood had glued my hand shut
- tony moffeit | american blues outlaw poetry anarchic dream
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- todd moore | i love
- todd moore | dillinger stepped
- todd moore | writing with your wounds: a reading of the broken and the damned by jason hardung
- todd moore | las montanas de santa fe: visions of the spirit country
- s.a. griffin | confessions of a door to door autographed outlaw bible salesman
- tony moffeit | the outlaw revolution
- todd moore | crudely mistaken for life: the books of wounds
- todd moore | shotgun blues
- todd moore | a conversation with raindog
- todd moore | just before
- todd moore | the old man’s waiting
- lawrence welsh | todd moore’s riddle: obscurity, redemption and fame
- todd moore | when dillinger
- todd moore | washed in the blood of the outlaw moon
- todd moore | devouring the shadow
- mera wolf & todd moore | read
- todd moore | dave roskos, the editor’s editor
- todd moore | the gold cane, van gogh’s ear, and the gun in the casket: wandering down this crooked road
- todd moore | the sign of the outlaw
- s.a. griffin | of mad affairs, tall blondes & drunken poets
- todd moore | the house
- john yamrus | she said
- todd moore | patrick mckinnon and the drunken shamanic
- todd moore | jack wilson
- ken greenley | dead cans o’dad beer
- todd moore | 45 auto
- s.a. griffin | the poetry bomb
- todd moore | the kid
- todd moore | glistening with blood | a bellyfull of anarchy by rob plath
- todd moore | into the open madness: the poetry of kell robertson
- todd moore | chasing jack micheline’s shadow
- john yamrus | reads
- todd moore | frito stopped…
- todd moore | what haunted
- john yamrus | after work
- todd moore | the bank…
- lost? & found!
- todd moore | the mystery
- todd moore | right after…
- wolfgang carstens | for todd moore
- todd moore | donny shot…
- todd moore | cindy was
- todd moore | coleman is
- todd moore | doing shots with ben smith in air à boire
- s.a. griffin | simply put
- todd moore | they’re coming
- todd moore | the bottle
- s.a. griffin | I choose not to believe in war holy or not
- s.a. griffin | poet’s drink
- s.a. griffin | January 20, 2009
- todd moore | peckinpah took…
- todd moore | gimme a shotgun
- todd moore | billie licked…
- john macker | january 20, 2009
- john yamrus | i just now
- john macker | stuart z. perkoff
- tony moffeit | spirits
- alex gildzen | looking for the blood of elizabeth short
- mark weber | for todd moore’s birthday party
- tony moffeit | it is the first day of 2010
- the outlaw bible of american poetry
- john macker | diablo canyon
- todd moore | the sea, the poem, and the house of all possible myths: the poetry of milner place
- gary goude | sad lives
- john macker | tres castillos
- todd moore & dennis gulling | shotgun weather
- todd moore | i was
- todd moore | red
- wolfgang carstens | lost in america: a review of the broken and the damned
- todd moore | reading
- todd moore | lisa was…
- todd moore | burning
- john yamrus | they’re winning, you know
- todd moore & Lawrence welsh | poetry reading
- tony moffeit | I’ll never get out of this night alive
- kell robertson | the goofy goddess on the wall












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