Kirjahaku

These poems deal with the road behind the music, specifically the North American psychedelic tour scene of the late '80s and early '90s. This was written for all the Deadicated Phans of the world's most dangerous bands. Hop on board the interdimensional bus and take a weird and wild journey with J. Martin Strangeweather as your time-traveling tour guide."Colorful, insightful, and delightfully unsentimental."--David Gans, co-author of the book Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the Grateful Dead, and the host of the weekly syndicated radio show The Grateful Dead Hour.

Electric Zen for Neon Koans is an experimental tour de force told in eighty-one koans (Zen riddles) rather than traditional chapters. The story involves a married intersex couple (Phil and Ruth) and their attempt to find peace with themselves through the ingestion of a mind-altering substance in the jungles of Mexico, except this is no ordinary hallucinogen. The drug in this novel causes metafictional hallucinations. The story explores the trials of traveling, the complexities of long-term relationships, the bizarreness and wonder of language, how it is that we come to acquire knowledge and understand ourselves, and the experience of sublimity, including a unique account of the moment of enlightenment. It's also about a warrior trying to return to a home that no longer exists. Phil and Ruth become intensely real and alive throughout their journey, while you (the reader) turn into a piece of fiction, finding yourself in the same predicament as the protagonists by the end of the novel.

J. Martin Strangeweather has been described as an alien, a time traveler, and the heir apparent to Edgar Allan Poe. Here are some random thoughts that came to mind while trying to describe this debut collection of his unique poetic strangeness, which was conceived during the pandemic of 2020: The black sheep's black sheep... a swift kick in the sacral chakra... a fifty megaton payload of laughing gas... a swarm of venomous kite-sized butterflies... dystopian love letters written in the language of barbwire... This ain't your grandma's poesy.