Tag Archives: Alice Codrescu

Made In The Shade 4-3

Interview, Letters, Poetry, Poetry Journal, Prose, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

—If you are to be at all serious about poetry, you must realize that it is a continuous unbroken game of tag from the very first poet on.

—There is continuity, a spiritual thread connecting the generations of poets which is why it’s so thrilling to find a great poem because there is that immediate recognition when the connection is made. Poetry is the stream of consciousness never stepped in twice. Reading poetry, great poetry, ancient, classic, contemporary is like having an open line to a vast intellect, and by making that connection, joining in the subtle but harmonious flow of electrons. I consider myself fortunate to be bound by other writers. It saves me a lot of writing that I’m glad someone else is doing or has done. That way I’m free to do my own thing. Nevertheless, every time I write, I am writing the history of writing.

—But what about literary success? Does it even matter?

—When I told myself that poetry would be my calling, all else became a diversion. I realize that although there I am everyday doing what I do with impassioned consistency, it doesn’t automatically guarantee success. I have to decide whether or not I can take time for success. No matter how great I feel after a shower of attention, it’s always so much better to bask in the glow of concentrated continual achievement, the heat of the moment when lightning strikes the highpoint in the landscape of my thoughts.

— Alright, but what other advice, if any, would I offer myself?

— You should always be on the verge of literary suicide.

           I can feel it all slipping away                          
                       the way one side of the double drive
                                      gate sags
                       the inexpressible overwhelming awe
           I feel in the presence of beautiful light now
                         buries me
                    in the shadow of my own gloom
           the heap of possessions somehow symbolic
           covered with the dust of my own making
           as I grind an existence out of thin air
                    my romantic contribution to the century
                    and apology for not dying younger
           I thought I had something to live for
           and it’s exactly that which is so confusing
           distinction has become petty
                    my tiny squeaks
                                   someone else’s braying
           the facts cold hard
                nothing lifts the spirits like a new hairstyle
                (all work done by students)
           yellow light softens everything it touches
           even though it passes through evening’s chill 
           and shadows too soon will turn it all a blue
           I try to assure my future by complicating my present
           if that sounds familiar
                                   it should
 	  the same formula is used in soap operas

As the poet of rain, I avoid the conformity of rain. I have solved the problem of rain, and make my home of rain in the real world of rain where almost anything of rain may happen and where almost nothing of rain repeats itself. As the poet of rain, I’m an anti-authoritarian of rain, an agoraphobic of rain, and an intuitive of rain rather than an intellectual of rain. A long experience of rain with the language of rain is needed before words of rain can fully collaborate of rain with one another of rain under the poetic trance of rain. A poet of rain should be inimitable of rain. I live of rain with my own language of rain, continually instructing myself of rain in the origins of rain, histories of rain, pronunciations of rain, and peculiar usage of rain of words of rain.21

12/2/95
“Give up poetry because I’m an old man? It’s always at the end of the race that you put on a burst of speed” or “Once I thought my art greater (larger) than my life—now my life and its inevitable burden of suffering dwarfs anything I might try.”

thinking of you 
thinking of me
thinking of you
the list goes on
until we’re together
then no more thinking
you do me I do you
adding to the memories
of each other to call on
when we’re apart
thinking of me 
thinking of you
thinking of me

12/5/89
my picture of Walt Whitman still swathed in dried mud from the flood a few years ago

12/7/97
the more you know
the more you know
you know

too long in exile

12/8/89
bare branches reveal
themselves in the docile stream
leaves scud along

(there I wrote something with water in it)

I listened to my tapes till my ears glowed

as parents we have to 
learn to live with fear

the ants have followed me in here
midnight rains forecast

               Atlas may have had it bad
               banished to hold up the vault of sky
               I think I may have inherited
               some of his luck trying to think back to
               a time when I lived in a place where
               the roof didn’t leak or some of the wet
               of outside didn’t somehow get inside
               the mere fact that water can seep in
               and nothing I can do about it right then
               is as heavy as the big ball of heaven
               the colossus had to heave on his back

               ‘tis the season to go crazy
               cabin fever heats the insignificant red hot
               burned by my own impatience
               confined by a state of mind

               “help me keep my feet back on the ground”

               feel manipulated by the very atmosphere warm 
               and with a wind rain let up to a pale gray horizon of
               jagged dark shapes softened by a wreath of mist
               		 no idea one minute to the next

               a unison of child voices
               like the echo of my thoughts
               joy and mischief combined

               “put on your sailing shoes”

               the white synthetic beard
               kept slipping down off my chin
               red and white suit I get in and out of 
               reveals its Byzantine origins
                         a present to myself

HOME MOVIE III

Tufts of snow grace the shoulders of the big stone outdoor fireplace. Cushions of snow form on the bench by the fence, itself topped by a ridge of snow. The black cat steps gingerly across the pristine expanse of snow on the deck leaving a trail of tiny paw indentations. Gail poses with a broom by the stone steps swept of the snow that had fallen overnight. Her cheeks glow from the cold and a few months of pregnancy. Up on the road, a couple trudge through the ruts of snow, large flakes falling on their lightly clad shoulders. Seeing the camera, they stage a snowball fight. On the way to Andrei’s, the sky is white with large lush flakes of snow. The conifers accept the garlands of snow as if it’s their due, the long lanky boughs bending only slightly from the weight of the accumulating white stuff. How long have they been waiting for this day? How many years had it been since it snowed in Monte Rio? No one seems to know, but it has been a while. What doesn’t get on film is the noise. It’s a war zone. What sounds like gunshots are tree limbs cracking, snapping, and breaking. And then the thunderous crash of whole trees toppling over. The deciduous trees are not faring well and taking the power lines down as they fall. Once Andrei sees the camera, a scenario develops. He conjures the Transylvania of his childhood; the snow decked forests of the Carpathians. He has an outfit that he quickly dons, off camera. It’s a long black wool or serge cassock with the symbol of the spiral labyrinth on the chest area. He will play a vampire and flashes his plastic fangs. Alice has prepared large art boards with comments that will be interjected during the filming. Andrei appears at the top of the road against a backdrop of snow topped roofs as Nosferatu. Alice’s sign reads “The arrival.”  A group of kids and a barking dog point at Andrei off camera. Alice’s sign says, “The meeting.” Andrei makes menacing claw hands. The kids respond with snowballs. The sign reads “The aftermath.” Andrei runs, pelted by missiles of snow, in an effort to avoid the onslaught. He slips and falls, hard. Now that’s acting! In the background, the snow falls, too, but slower, gently.

12/9/90
what every man must know: there is no distance separating father from son

clear skies forecast the dark sheen of wet asphalt
the rain comes and goes 

12/10/85
tonight there is only tea
daughter and friend laugh aloud
it’s cold out here

tonight there is only tea
no wine no heat out here
exiled for passing gas

tonight there is only tea
cold seeps through the cracks
turn to another page

tonight there is only tea
beard of rising steam
frost touched temples

12/19/90
Dear Andrei—
It was good seeing you again even if the circumstances were a tad hectic—it’s always good talking with you and renewing our “immigrant” loyalties. It strengthens my resolve to visit you in your “new” home in “New” Orleans — now that “travel” is in my blood, I’ve got a hankering for wider horizons. . .or maybe it’s just to avoid what needs to be done in Monte Rio. . . .  Of course, resolve and the time/money continuum often flow contrary to each other, so says the first law of the “cop-out.” I should have tarried longer with you in SF but my instincts were correct: I woke up the next morning with the flu! You didn’t need that to take home with you. Anyway, congrats on your good fortune in ‘90, may it increase by at least a factor of 10 in ‘91. And of course, whose chutzpa is more deserving?
Hope your meeting with the documentary producers (Simon and Garfunkel) went well—I think what they were missing and the word that we were trying to think of that night in the cab is “audacity.” They did seem like somber young technocrats whose silence is golden (to them, at least)—the technicians of the sacred meet the technicians of the profane.
Thanks for the manuscript offer, and I’ll get it to you as well as the extra Miller books and a copy of Gary Lenhart’s magazine, Transfer, with Dick’s poems as soon as the holiday rush is behind us. I also want you to take a look at another manuscript entitled Made In The Shade which is poems and prose and is more of a “piece” in a poetry journal kind of way. The prose sections are mini narratives about Jeff, Hunce, Sean, you, me, and my take on the scene up here in the late ‘70’s. I’ll be able to send you about half of it in a couple of months.
Again, best wishes in the New Year. And yes, the memory of Hunce you have is probably the one where he was the healthiest (relatively speaking); he went downhill soon after that. One of these days I should relate to you the Book of the Dead/Bardo plane/rebirth number that Gail figured out after Hunce passed away (the guy played all the angles).

           Days weeks months run together
                    hours of light less
           the weather that fills them 
                    more oppressive
           the rock (resolve) of Sisyphus
           wet with rain
                         slips from his grasp
           with it the hopes of another year
           time to start over
           “put another nickel in”
           this dance is done
                         or almost
           the beat goes on
           accomplishments accumulate
           like dust on furniture
           they come out of the air
           and settle on my shoulders           
           I hardly ever notice
           anonymous 
                    even to myself
           in the dark
           lights strung color the season
           more than any other time 
           do I think here I am again
           one step forward two back
           (now we’re getting somewhere!)
           trip pratfall face down
           ahead nonetheless
           and the bump
           suddenly makes it all clear
           sky falling raises
           a fine pale vapor in the atmosphere
           pearls gather and drip
           from the gate’s arch
           sentiment’s overflow washed away

The fall of rain was announced by the horizon of rain. I stepped into the stream of rain in the Monte Rio of rain out of sheer boredom of rain and converted a glimpse of rain into words of rain. The shape of rain traveled among the trees of rain and feathered the shrubs of rain. It was a clumsy attempt of rain but it was also a revelation of rain. I recognized what I had written of rain as a poem of rain. I enjoyed the sleep of rain as the hypnotism of rain played the soft music of rain in my dream of rain.

12/11/91
writing is the progenitor of the technology of self-consciousness

count the days on one hand
time passes as I look at my fingers

brain froth—all that electrical activity like a blue spark shampoo fizzling over pink mush.

at this point not much separates
the disease from the cure

vital aisle


12/12/91
blank misery afflictions 

trees are works of magic
stones possess power

the moment writes me
I am its source and reference

the photos lie 
those are not
the people I am

Virgo: This week that magical, creative, even psychic, side of you comes to the fore. Sometimes it’s enough to know something; you don’t have to prove it. The upcoming year holds special promise.


12/19/92
words describe the psychology of objects

end of a shorter gray day
sun peeks through just as it sets

thinking: air craft


12/20/87
my horoscope keeps telling me how well I’m doing
while real life hands me my head on a platter

as day darkens 
rain lightens up

I used to care who appeared in anthologies

can the universe 
be this untidy
—my desk


12/21/91 
that wildness the primitive in us right there not more than an arm’s length away where it’s kept at bay

rain all shortest day long

the aesthetic of the awkward
how you answer 
a phone call
from someone
you barely knew
a long time ago
whatever you say
unknown one moment
to the next stutter
you were just then
caught off guard


12/22/89
it will rain again soon
ants parade up the wall

What’s coincidence
this very same song was on the radio
last time
	I couldn’t think of a thing to say
was it this very hour of the morning
I guess it could be the very paper
white
	blank
		a kind of self-portrait
just as I sat down
			the door opened
	and a head popped in
	to ask if I was busy
			“not yet”
I re-examine my turmoil
can’t make anything out of it
the medium is the message
			when it comes to
		the hippocampus
	a jolt of ‘lectricty
			relayed in a flash of white 
	light to every last neuron
		the condition also
				known as “zap”
	at which point the imagined becomes real
I’ve been here before
				but forgot
morning always starts this way
			lanky barbed silhouette
			pressed against pale frosted sky
		at this end of the year

12/23/94
groveling before sheer fact

I don’t write everything down it just seems that way

benevolent used car salesman
like a friendly obstetrician
birthed our anxieties into
an offer acceptable to all

or nine miles down the road 
slips it to us like a backdoor bandit

you choose

the severe look of a seminarian or sorcerer’s apprentice
I learn to dream with a broom in my hand


12/26/88
tender tenor solo


12/29/86
against the background 
of a steady pouring rain
someone takes a shower

the ants come from afar


12/31/92
I have not progressed beyond what is normally here

poetry is also very importantly self-documentation

who knows from consciousness22

The rains came and didn’t stop coming. Sorting through the chaos of my papers in a hasty triage in advance of the rising waters. Every scrap contains a gem. I can’t throw any of it away.

Endnotes
[21]A true poem of rain is regarded of rain as already existing of rain before it has been composed of rain—composing of rain being the act of rain deducing of rain its entirety of rain from a single key phrase of rain that swims of rain into the poet’s mind of rain. It is also necessary of rain to have read of rain a great many poems of rain by other writers of rain, good of rain and bad of rain, before a poet of rain can realize his powers of rain and the limitations of rain.

[22]The primordial consciousness, like a landscape of images available for the mind’s eye or to be made into intellectual lumber, surrounds us at every turn. Informed or uninformed, it is a life in the thicket. For this, a miracle a day is needed. That holy glow that encompasses everything, even in the darkest circumstances, is the original idea for the light bulb; that bright orb of star we think we are. The realization of spirituality is one thing, trying to grasp it for keeps is like trying to tune in far off radio stations at the mercy, in this case, of our own frequency shift, at the mercy of an inhibition called boredom, at the mercy of our subtle animal oscillations although we thrill to the ride no matter how brief.

Subtext
“ . . .Orpheus was taught by the triple Muse not only to enchant men and wild beasts with his lyre, but to make rocks and tree move and follow him in dance. . . Eurydice, his wife, assaulted by the pastoral god, Aristaeus, trod on a serpent as she fled, and died of its venomous bite. . . then Orpheus boldly followed her to hell, intent on fetching her back. . .with his lyre, he charmed the three headed dog Cerberus, the ferryman Charon, and the three judges of the dead, temporarily suspended the tortures of the damned, and even persuaded Hades to set Eurydice free. . .Hades agreed, on one condition. . . he must not look behind him until Eurydice was back safely home under the light of the sun. . .following him up through the dark passages guided by the sound of his lyre. . .on reaching the sunlight Orpheus turned to reassure himself of her presence and lost her forever. . .Orpheus is said to have denounced human sacrifice and preached that the Sun was a nobler deity than the Moon (an idea he picked up while travelling in Egypt) for which blasphemy a group of moon-worshipping Maenads tore him to pieces. . .the triple Muse collected his mangled limbs and buried them. . .his head. . . attacked by a jealous serpent. . .continued to sing and was placed in a cave sacred to Dionysus. . .Eurydice (Encompassing Rule) was not Orpheus’ wife, but in fact, the Triple Muse, herself. . .Orpheus recognized and glorified the Muse. . .in gratitude, she lent him her magical powers so that he could make the trees dance. . .he learned a new solar perfectionism in Egypt that she rejected as foreign to her nature. . .how could Orpheus hope to keep her always beside him in the bright upper air of love and truth (abstraction). . .had she not a secret passion for serpents, a delight in murder, a secret craving for corpse flesh, a need to spend several months of the year consorting with the sly, the barren, the damned. . .Eurydice never accidentally trod on the serpent. . .she actually chose to couple with the serpent as her mother, Eurynome (Encompassing Order) herself had coupled with the world snake, Ophion. . . Orpheus’ home was in the North, in Thrace. . .he combined the professions of poet, magician, religious teacher, and oracle giver. . .like certain legendary shamans in Siberia. . . by his music, he could, summon birds and beasts to listen to him. . . he paid a visit to the underworld, like shamans everywhere, and his motive was very common among shamans. . .to recover stolen souls. . .his magical self lived on as a singing head that continued to give oracles for many years after his death. . .this suggests the North also. . . such mantic heads appear in Norse mythology and in Irish tradition. . . Orpheus, therefore, mythical shaman or archetype of shamans. . . .”

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Made In The Shade 2-3

Interview, Letters, Poetry, Poetry Journal, Prose, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

HOME MOVIE I

It’s Gail’s twenty-fifth and there’s a hand-crank 8mm camera loaded with film ready to record the party. Coincidentally, it’s also the longest day of the year. Alice and Andrei arrive first, hand in hand, down the stone steps onto the weathered redwood deck. Their young son Lucian picks his way carefully down, one step at a time. They smile, making their way to the refreshment table. And there’s baby Irene, a bulge of diaper, plastic, around her waist. The record player spins an album. A red flower in a vase has been placed in front of it. Wow, Gail is wearing her well-fitting red halter top! She sips from her glass into the camera. That’s Susan, whose birthday it is also, swaying to the music. From the back, everyone partaking of appetizers. Michael-Sean appears from below as if through a trap door, his hair in a magnificent blonde pompadour. For an exhibitionist, he certainly has an aversion to being filmed. Hunce has joined the party, sitting crossed legged on the deck. He shares one of his cigarettes with Sean. They look sheepish. Sean raises his eyebrows as if surprised. In the background, baby Irene is climbing up a chair and reaching for something on the table. She has ditched her diaper. Her mother hovers nearby. Alice has a card in an envelope in her hand. A group freezes in front of the large outdoor stone fireplace. This is a movie camera, people! There is a lacunae of some length. The operator had not turned the turret lens completely around thus blocking the aperture. A potted plant in a wooden box comes into focus. Lana Michaleczko has arrived and is telling a story at the foot of the steps when she notices she’s being filmed. She is such a ham. She hops on one foot, stumbles, and then laughs. The subject becomes the feet of guests:  the sandals, the sneakers, the boots, the loafers, the slippers, the thongs, the Japanese getas (Lana’s). Baby Irene is being urged to dance, barefooted naked innocence. Everyone is dancing. Alice with Andrei, Steve Lavoie with Lana, Gail with the baby. Andrei bumps hips with Lana, the big show-off! Susan sways alone in the shadows, cool in her shades. Sean is making marks on a piece of paper with a pen. The birthday poem! Hunce looks over his shoulder into the camera. Nothing now but chests. Andrei’s shirt open down to his waist. Lana is wearing a tiny gold chain around her neck. She has the most interesting chest. The camera lingers. Steve’s bright polyester shirt open at the neck. A ball rolls across the deck to the baby. The shadows longer. Alice stretches her legs out into a last patch of warm sun at the end of a long day. Light attends her like a halo. Lucian catches the large beach ball and throws it back to Lana. Steve gives it the James Dean lean against the railing, beer in hand. A mobile of tiny pieces of driftwood catches the failing rays, turns slowly, trembles at the hint of a breeze.

6/4/90
hopeless pedant

you can think about yesterday and tomorrow but . . . it’s forever today

6/10/94
ninety years later:  day blooms ink spilt a wild Irish rose

ah the symmetry of platitudes!
like the simplest of elements
is how they endure
codified scribbles chatter on
long after the scribblers have gone

the age of improvisation has us grasping at straws

6/12/85
it can’t be my night to do the dishes!

what is this string called love

6/14/90
surely in isolation one becomes a god

6/20/90
summer always starts with a sunburn

        Where did I leave off
	last night admiring my newly
	completed gate in the dark
	the moon and its few stars
	told me what the weather
	would be like today

I have successfully predicted the future
(woulda been just as right had I been wrong)
now the rest of it can fall into place
the thousands of dollars in the mail
phone calls of adulation and fanship
book movie TV contracts and demands
for personal appearances and talk shows
bank errors in my favor $200 every time
I pass GO and I don’t have to go 
anywhere to get it (it comes to me)
even though I have a brand new Jaguar
at my disposal and a new chauffeur

I have been asked to leave

I’m off

		again

gap widens between words
what used to be just a leap
now an overnight jaunt
at supersonics speed
			with prices to match

I need the convenience of being there
at any given moment which is always now

—I am, if not one of the more intelligent, certainly one of the more irritating poets around.

—Not following the style of the time bothers people, it’s perceived as politically incorrect, and is viewed as an opposition to what they’re doing, a rivalry, certainly one that doesn’t exist. That rivalry really existed only for the Language school because they figured that they could do something other than what was being done at that point.

—It’s my moral position then which is irritating?

—There again, you have no position. You’ve been a little like Gertrude Stein. To a certain group, you’re considered an original writer with original things.

—I never would have thought of comparing myself with Gertrude Stein.

—Don’t let it go to your head. It’s merely a form of comparison. There are people in every period of literature who aren’t “in.”  No one’s bothered by it. Whether you ever will be “in” or not, it’s all the same. Years later things are discovered that might have bothered some people, but back then you could have cared less. Even among the most extraordinary figures of the time, certain people have incredible qualms, a sort of fear. People like Watten who are nevertheless intelligent find what you have to offer isn’t in line with what they predicted, it’s outside their expectations. They have an absolutely clear dogmatic line on it, foreseeing everything that might happen. You find that naively foolish.

—Have I disturbed a lot of people by my stance?

—No, not at all, because you’ve had anything but a public life. What little public life you’ve had has been with others who were interested in your work. You hardly ever give public readings and when you do, they’re not attended. In fact, you’ve never had a public life.

—I have said that poetry is a basic act of speech, of utterance. Am I implying that self-expression is the poet’s motivation or is there more to be said? Is it my desire to communicate, my interest in possible readers? Impossible readers?

—The writer is the deputy of his own ego, of that self in perpetual flight before what is fixed by writing, the mind in perpetual flight from doctrine “who speaks is not who writes and who writes is not who is” as in Rimbaud’s “I is another.”  You must choose between being a terrorist and being an egoist. Writing is play at which you try to maneuver in the tight place in which you find yourself. Wedged there, you struggle between the hysteria needed to write and the overwhelming corrective influence of your consciousness to produce something that will bring the mob to your door. On the one hand you seek to be desired, and on the other, you’d rather not. You’re hysterical and obsessed at the same time. You delight continually, endlessly, in writing as a perpetual production, an unconditional disposition, an energy of seduction. However, while you write, the writing is at every moment leveled, banalized, made guilty of the end product to which it must eventually contribute. At every moment of the effort, lost, bewildered, driven, you can only say to yourself, keep going. After all, what is literature but something that is read, if it is read at all, for what it is rather than what it is about. As far as imagining the reader of your work, possible or impossible, that aspect never enters into it.

6/23/89
Editor, Russian River News—Mr. Erikson’s letter is unconscionable. It is blatant political opportunism and the nadir of human compassion. To use the tragedy in China as an excuse to point a finger and gloat is the sign of a microscopic mind. Political affiliations aren’t really an issue when human beings slaughter other human beings. What happened in China is a catastrophe. History is full of examples of man’s inhumanity, and this happens to be one of the more recent and more graphic instances. That the world was witness to it perhaps involves us more in the guilt of the action, fuels our sense of frustration, and outrages our sense of morality, but we should also face up to the fact that brutality, cruelty, and callousness toward our fellow homo sapiens is not exclusively a communist predilection. Were the National Guardsmen who shot and killed the students at Kent State communists? Hardly. The point I’m trying to make here is that political affiliations are secondary when it comes to matters such as these. Repression and absolutism comes in all shapes and forms, and yes, even in a democracy there is the same rule by fear or terror of reprisal — just ask a black man in the South. Saying that because you have a communist government that this kind of tragedy is inevitable is nothing more that off-the-shelf jingoism. To do so is to forget the march of human history. In the West we labor under the smug illusion that we are enlightened and above such brutality. The Chinese who hold the record for the longest continuous civilization in recorded history have no such illusion. State sanctioned murder is part of their cultural heritage. In this century alone, they were slaughtered by the Japanese, then after the war, by the Kuomintang (sic) aka the Nationalist Chinese, and Mao’s revolution. If we really want to point a finger, let’s point it at ourselves, the descendants of European stock who committed genocide on the native peoples of this land. Just the words “Wounded Knee” should be enough to shut our self-righteous traps. To use this tragedy as an occasion to spew hackneyed clichés of “us versus them” is cynical. We should instead be reflecting on the fact that sentient beings with all the best intentions in the world have been kicked in the teeth once again by our own latent brutality. The finger pointers are also the ones who would point the guns. The petty, single track minds who only see black or white are also the ones who would be myopic enough to give the order to fire.

6/23/89
get a haircut!

6/24/89
go to a music festival where everyone has long hair!

now when I dance
it feels like I’m
carrying an added
appendage around
my middle section
no longer light
on anyone’s feet
fluid and lithe 
hardly the word
wobbly waddle
all I can manage
of what once was 


6/25/82
time is merely a cartoon that helps us understand the span of our existence, a pattern of arbitrary divisions and decimals and exponents which schematize the pulmonary cycle; when breathing stops so does time—then the cosmos take over.

the choice is between being everything and (consequently) nothing or just being one thing at all.

after a late season rain
ignorant of grammar
the weeds reach higher

6/28/91
dead start awakened by 
the thud of rain drops
this drizzle
	making a nuisance of itself
the season takes a step back
 

The dogs of summer come out
				on the new moon
	they leering trot at the gutters
hoping to find a few heels to snap
		their shit yellow eyes light
				the fear of centuries
	fanged with the drool of intimidation
they know best our destiny
	desperate as theirs

“this is genocide”

fog cover lulls the deadly impulse
	only bees bite
			in gray light
a lethargy that extends to the joints
and pulls the chain
			on bright activity
pulls on the skin
				of the face
	and makes it long

“putting pain in a stranger”

rearrange the matters at hand
syntax’s dull surprise thuds
like Darrel Gray’s hip bone
on the marble floor
		of the burnt out
hotel where poets danced
				milled
and dropped of their own accord
to a low point
	in the history of literature
        “she ain’t gonna do right”
 

6/29/93
remember posture
the way the spine
holds the head high
forces the chest out
hope that the stomach
will gravitate toward
the backbone belongs
to another faculty
memory of the way
things used to be
little consolation
for the aches the pains
twinges tics tremors
sit straight chin up
take it as it comes

6/30/85
I ain’t no hermit Buddhist poet yet. I am too often enlisted in the aid of my vanity, yearn to get in the swim of the microbic self-devouring scene and lucky I’m not because I’d be among the first to be consumed so I keep my distance, try to work within my limits. I might have more in common with the village idiot.12 

Virgo:  Your magnetism proves irresistible to an attractive member of the opposite sex. You have definite ideas and are not very interested in other people’s suggestions. Be prepared for slow but steady progress.

heads of grass in full flower catch a fading light
a whole field of silver-wigged aristocrats

beyond the valley of exhaustion
the peak of headache pain
fatigue and eye blear

where was I
(pain can be so distracting)


“You treat me badly” the song goes
but when I
		sing it
				sounds like
I’m talking to myself

	brief interruption sponsored by
	a totally lack of confidence
		available everywhere

program discontinued due to allergy attack

back to square one
			where it seems
there’s always a crowd
	of familiar faces

	“fancy meeting you here”

the joke’s on me
it’s just taken this long
	for me to get around
				to laughing

		(ha ha)

	meat hat on backwards

piano guitar intro familiar
	as memory looms up
		from the back of the head
	where the speakers are

“a change in the weather is a change in me”

PINK ASS

These were the days of food stamps and belt tightening around the end of the month. I had just enough in stamps and change for a half gallon of milk so I was shagging it into town one dewy summer Sunday morning, my rubber sandal soles scuffing the asphalt. It was early and only Noonan’s, Monte Rio’s other grocery, was open. Kelly, the Pink Elephant’s bartender stretched out of his old Lincoln as I passed the bar. He nodded a greeting, keys in hand to open the place up. I padded past him to the other block of businesses. I paid at the counter with a wadded one dollar stamp and a pile of pennies and dimes. The cashier grimaced at my unkempt barely awake appearance. I had just rolled out of bed, the kids screaming for milk for their cereal, after all. As she rang up the purchase, the lights flickered and the old wood floor shook. “Did you feel that?”  Earthquake? “I don’t think it was an earthquake,” the customer in line behind me said as we both headed for the door. Outside, people were gathering on the sidewalk across the street from the Pink Elephant. I sauntered down with my bag of milk. One man pointed at the Pink. “It’s ass fell off!”  It seemed that Kelly, having opened the doors, turned on the lights and the jukebox, unlocked the safe, had his usual morning urge and had retired with the sports page. A quick review of the previous day’s box scores and the first paragraph of that irritating sports column and he was done. The Pink’s bathroom, as the Pink itself, was a cobbled together structure on pilings fifteen feet above Dutch Bill Creek. Built in installments long before any established construction codes, the bathrooms at the back with “Dolls” on one door and “Guys” on the other were actually on a small outdoors deck attachment. Kelly flushed, folded the paper under his arm, and strolled into the bar feeling a lot lighter. He was just getting ready to change out a beer keg when he felt the building sway and then the crash as the entire deck fell to splinters into the bushes below, broken pipes spewing fountains of water. It was the flush that broke the elephant’s ass.

The camera shows the poet at play
	other 
		more fearful moments
		remain invisible
				unspeakable
	just yet
a fear as obsessive as painting the floor
	in a New York City
		rent controlled ghetto flat
		black and trying to find
				some order
	in chaos
a return to a more primitive state not
	unlike Utah
		where the bare bones of the psyche
		peek out from around the sagebrush
				of terror
	phantom-like
and the imagined remains in its place
	while the death grip
		on a particular state of mind
		that predates the mammalian
				take-over
	tightens
so speak my strangled thoughts in half
	sentences
		mistaken in appearance
		distraught in thinking
				I am
	what I appear to be
the practice for violence begins young
	to that effect
		I am still a child
		caught in the crunch
				I can do nothing
	but play

—Who would be my ideal reader, just the same?

—Your ideal reader would be someone of average curiosity and open mind who could read one of your poems and react by saying “That’s poetry? I can do that!”  At that point they have accepted a template, a grid through which to apprehend their reality. They will have or have had a recognition that they can compare. If they understand that, then they are beginning to understand what you’re doing and so have begun to understand what it is about poetry.

—In general, am I writing about what is personally most important to me?

—Only if what’s important to you is a continuous state of flux. You can’t otherwise put your finger on it. You’d be surprised by how insignificant things can seem important, and vice versa. If anything is important it’s this transitoriness. Most of the time you are blinded by the mundane and oppressed by the critical. Then one day, an hour, a minute, an instant opens out into a vast meadow, the Elysian fields, and with this nameless joy comes timeless song which is then translated into the particular language convention of the time base you are alive in. And how that translates for you is in the daily apprehension of your circumstances where the insignificant is exalted through song or words and makes a kind of spiral ladder at whose conclusion is the spark of life.

Endnotes
[12] Life shouldn’t be disappointing. If nothing else it is consistent in its suffering and that in the face of it all we are helpless. There’s suffering because nothing stays the same which plays havoc with our desire to hold on to what works even if only for an instant which in turn causes the anxiety that makes us suffer. Nothing lasts forever and even that is gone in an instant. Life isn’t anything unique by itself. It is what comes after what went before and what goes on before what’s to come. Conditioned by the past, it affects the future. It is merely a chain of instances linked by memory, desire’s intelligence. It matters not one way or the other, it’s all the same. All we can hope for is a kind of direct intuitive knowledge of these facts which surpass reason and rule out any further discussion. All things being impermanent have no separate and independent identity. The absolute is inherent in all phenomena. Ultimate reality cannot be explained in terms of existence and nonexistence. Everything is real. Each thing is identical with all things.

Subtext
“ . . . the Cinzano umbrellas articulate the slate sky of Paris in the springtime. This cafe is the haunt of literary pretenders, and where you wouldn’t find Orpheus dead, but today of all days, he has stopped in for a glass of white wine with one of his old editors. Of course he is recognized by everyone. The whispering starts. Why is he here, first of all, and it’s been said that the great poet has gone dry. Maybe he’s after some fresh blood, it’s suggested, but even that mere suggestion of literary vampirism is received coldly. The young writers who frequent this establishment are well aware of the real vampires who prey on the creative talents of the young and innocent, those who collect poets the way a headhunter collects skulls. Orpheus is not one of them, his problems have more of a personal nature. Eurydice wants a sacrifice . . . .”

Made In The Shade 1-1

Interview, Letters, Poetry, Poetry Journal, Prose, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 
All the lost pens
			suddenly
all show up
		and I can’t think
	besides I’m using the computer

this rainy weather makes me lose my mind
a line not original with me
		nor the rain
DJ managed to find yet another
song about rain
I had lost interest in the idea
	quite a few cuts ago

it’s just me
		the rain
				and the radio

(night wears on)

the script of ego to be drafted
naked id exposed
		(shown off at least)

better yet

			lost in thought
			I have to unthink myself
			to get to the point

wind up dizzy instead
					where am I
	(at the end of my rope?)

I awoke to the drone of rain. I’d been having a dream of rain that was a real nightmare. I was attending the theater of rain and had joined in the ovation of rain as the curtain of rain came down on the final act of rain. That was enough of rain for me. I noticed the sharp decline as I stood on the precipice of rain. A hiss of rain preceded the rush of rain. I was feeling hemmed in by the stitch of rain. All of a sudden, there was a flood of rain and the thunder of rain hit the roof. The wash of rain swept the horizon away. In the mist of rain, the pines disappeared.

1/6/92
then everything stopped

pellets of light fall from the pale sky

weather transforms vision (illusion)

I know
what
I know
all
else
I guess

1/7/89
a pair of shoes 
exploded by the bomb squad

plume of ash shoots into
the upper atmosphere

“go ahead
	slap him”

flying apart like a mannequin
with rubber bands for joints

I picked up the radio
as the cymbal hissed
 
1/8/82
today’s a birthday for someone I know
and love
		a day to remember
				and then forget
heart-shaped sunrise at the breast of the ridge
radiates my sentiment
life is just one clever saying after another

1/9/95
time to stack everything up above the water line

1/13/90
The classicist believes he is passing on the flame of knowledge and learning while using a little to light his own candle. The romantic sees himself as the original and only bearer of the torch.1  


1/16/84
days unravel as spiral strands of DNA
more than enough information rides the airwaves
the chances to throw away money are legion
especially in Washington D.C. where skies are clear
a face made up like it’s trying to think

the sylphs are visiting again

1/18/90
the ice line creeps toward sea level

“the world will always welcome lovers”
talk about a phrase turning on its assumption
we’ll go down in history as
			The Irony Age


there’s no zone
like home

—Who am I? *
–You are a famous unknown poet, or as Tom Clark once said, “an absolutely unknown unheard-of jack-off.”  You should have been a painter, a house painter. Your history is a joke, one pratfall after another. That you have achieved any success at all is a fluke and a vindication of your belief in the purely arbitrary, beyond what is laughingly called logic. If there is a reason, you are not privy to it. The mythology of self puts you at the pinnacle of poetry. On the other hand, you don’t see yourself as someone who will gain fame by writing poetry. Again, you aren’t deterred by this fact. You hold, after all, to the principle that as long as you make claim to this oh too human form of existence, you must preserve the poetic in your life, and all your convoluted thinking and plotting must never disturb for you its magic, but rather enhance and beautify it.

—What’s my middle name?
–Ulysses.

—Why do I write?
–You write to reveal someone you wouldn’t suspect just from looking in the mirror. You certainly don’t have the air that anyone assumes when they think of who might be a poet. You’re from the Johnny Cash generation! You walk the line.

*After waiting almost a lifetime for the representative from The Paris Review to show up for the interview, he decided that he might as well interview himself. Even if he didn’t know all the questions, he certainly had all the answers.

LITERARY MANNERS

Michael-Sean Lazarchuk was passed out on the couch and Gail and I were going to the movies so we pinned a note to his shirt telling him that we had. Next to Sean on the couch, his only companion, a jug of red wine, which was fine with him because, aside from writing poetry, his favorite pastime was sipping from the jug and then falling into a stupor and finally into a deep unshakable sleep. He never got violent, though maybe a little boisterous. “Chesty” he liked to say, especially when talking about poets he didn’t like or about unfair treatment meted out to people with long hair or those who looked plain weird especially out in the boonies like the Russian River. No argument there. And when Sean visited, things just fell into a methodical routine. First there was the ritual purchase of a gallon of burgundy, then there was what was called “drinking what’s in the neck” or more succinctly “drinking the neck” and since gallon jugs are not particularly known for their long necks, it was no time at all before we had progressed to “the old boy’s belly.”  No music other than Bob Dylan was allowed to be played and to whose songs Sean would howl appropriate lines. One of his favorites was “it sits on your head like a mattress sits on a bottle of wine.”  He also liked to croon “doo yoou Miss-terr Jo-nzzz.”  By this time we were taking turns on the typewriter writing collaborations, a pile of the latest poetry magazines and books at hand from which to steal lines or riff off of.2  And then later in the evening, half a jug by his side, he would recline on the couch like a visiting dignitary and recite lines from his favorite poets and we had to guess whose line it was. Once you got to know Sean and his preferences, if you guessed Ted Berrigan (known as “Ted”) or Frank O’Hara (known as “Frank”) you would usually be right. That is unless he slipped one in by John Ashbery to throw you off.

1/19/90
“le lit est fait par la main de demain”

time is entirely man made

I lived a multitude of lives
in the last few seconds

The pulse of rain was strong. It affirmed the life of rain on this morning of rain. According to the theory of rain, there should be about a week of rain. I watched for the leak of rain. Outside, a wave of rain charged through the shrubs. I had my nose pressed to the window of rain. I was beginning to bore of rain but there was more of rain. The refrain of rain overflowed into the afternoon of rain. I felt the slap of rain on my hand and saw the splash of rain on my glasses. Immersed in the sorrow of rain, I heaved a sigh of rain. The shadow of rain filled the sky of rain. I searched the references of rain for the origin of rain late into the evening of rain.

1/20/80
seriousness of purpose, humorous intent
little miracles of insight
“well, if I’m not the original hypocrite, at least a direct descendant.”

it came off in my hand

VIRGO:  During an enlightening discussion, you express yourself very well. Do not be disturbed if someone disagrees with your conclusions. Time will prove you right. Donate to charity.


Energy flags
at the mere mention of the legion
					of others
how can there be so many 
			and yet still original
	amazing
			isn’t it

long meditation shuts out
these annoyances
		a short cigarette
	and who could care less

I won’t break my teeth on shadows

pearls of rain
		strung on
bare branches
effective white mist
			hides all but
the familiar

days played away in a back room
	little by little
like a paper tape
		unrolled slowly 
				out a window

radio provides sidewalk sounds
I could be with friends in Paris

THE WRITERS CONFERENCE

One weekend when Michael-Sean was visiting, Keith and Lani Abbott, and Opal and Ellen Nations paid a visit, too. This had been planned ahead of time. Steve Kahn who was a park ranger, a writer, and friend of Keith’s from college had a big house in Monte Rio so the plan was to hold a “writers conference” and have a good time. Sean wasn’t too sure he wanted to participate but when the prospect of more wine was held out, he agreed. Soon the hours of talking, gesticulating, drinking, and carrying on began to wear on all of us and we were suddenly ravenously hungry; all except for Sean of course who had been drinking his sustenance all afternoon. Steve and I broke our brains trying to think of a local restaurant that would suit all of our tastes. Steve mentioned that someone had given him a couple of pounds of wild boar sausage but what could we make with them? “Bangers and mash,” as Opal suggested, just didn’t seem right so Gail said, “how about enchilada?”  Everyone liked that idea though Opal was a little apprehensive that it might be too spicy for his palate. “Oh don’t worry we won’t make it hot.”  Steve and I winked at each other. Gail said she had all the fixings at home so she drove off to fetch them. While the sausage was being browned, Steve suggested a game of cards to take our minds off our stomachs. “How about we play a couple hands of poker.”  Steve opened a bottle of a private stock scotch that someone had given him (being a park ranger had some advantages) and the game began. Soon Opal and Steve had most of the chips in front of them and it looked like dinner would never come. But it wasn’t long before Gail returned with the brown paper bag of ingredients and more beer and wine. “Guess who I found!” she shouted cryptically as she rushed into the kitchen. Behind her at the door were Andrei and Alice Codrescu. Gail reemerged to explain. “When I got home I saw this yellow car parked out front and when I went in the house there they were! Andrei was reading your mail.”  It was Andrei’s turn to explain. “We were just out for a ride in the country because we had to get out of the city quick and somebody told us about nude beaches on the Russian River and we wanted to check it out, you know, but we couldn’t find them and when we came to Guerneville I remembered you lived up here so we dropped by to visit but this is the amazing part because I didn’t have my address book with me so I didn’t know where you lived but we were in a gas station asking if anybody knew where the nude beach was when out of the blue like a flash of memory I remembered your address but you weren’t home and the radio was on so we thought you’d be coming back soon nice letter from Lewis Warsh by the way.”  Andrei was introduced around and invited to try a sip of scotch and join in a hand or two. Everyone knew Andrei had just been awarded an NEA grant so here was a pigeon ripe for the plucking. “Ah yes poker” he said as he straddled a chair, “Ah used to play this game back in the bunkhouse on the ranch in south Transylvania.”  “What kind of ranch was that, Andrei?” Keith asked as innocently as he could manage. “A cabbage ranch.”  After the guffaws had subsided, Andrei explained that cabbage ranching is practically the oldest form of agriculture there is, and it’s the world’s oldest profession next to prostitution and the priesthood, and that cabbage ranching was a well-respected occupation in Romania where the men who worked in the cabbage fields wore an outfit similar to the gauchos in Argentina though in actual point of fact the gauchos got their style of dress from an immigrant Romanian who had at one time worked on a cabbage ranch but finding no such opportunities in South America was forced to take up herding cattle, a lowlier form of work, so to remind himself of his dignified heritage he wore his cabbage ranch outfit which soon was adopted by the other herders and even the American word “cowboy” had its etymological roots in the name for the men who worked on the cabbage ranch which was “cabboy” short for cabbage boy and even today you will find in parts of the Southwest people who still pronounce it that way!  Andrei certainly brought the level of entertainment up a notch but he wasn’t a very good poker player and soon all the chips were in front of me. Enchiladas were served and true to the aroma, they were delicious though we weren’t able to keep our promise to Opal. Sean even nibbled some. Later on that night with a few exceptions drunk and barely sensible we stumbled over large boulders to a beach on the Pacific to watch the carpets of phosphorescence roll out at our feet.

1/21/79
smoked a dead bug
(by accident)

my habits are getting old

1/22/88
no one really knows the questions to these answers3

1/24/90
there are things deeply felt
deeply cared about that find 
no voice but through artifice

Comes another day of rain with its accumulation of rain. The measure of rain has nothing to do with the beauty of rain. From the sky comes a spurt of rain. It’s not the fault of rain. I just have no use for the rite of rain. There is no remedy for the carelessness of rain. The umbrella in the corner awaits the return of rain.

1/29/90
Dear Joyce–
Thanks for taking the review, glad you liked it. Interestingly enough I wanted to add a note with the review that said, “No Artificially Quoted Material Was Used In This Review.”  And I almost got away with it. For one, I’m lazy, and I hate running down those passages that elicited a particular superlative because invariably (if I like the poet) I’ll get sidetracked. Other times I don’t like to read the book until after I’ve written the review. . . .  And I dislike quoting parts of poems because even if they do “support some of (my) conclusions” (something I hope I will never be accused of doing), they undermine the integrity of the work for the sake of some frivolous impression, and I particularly dislike it when line breaks are denoted with a slash and made to serve the paragraph to save space—when you review an artist’s work you don’t only show a corner of the painting. Even so, I have gone through and noted the poems and where I would place them in the review were I to use them. And I’ve quoted passages from poems that would seem to serve the point . . . whatever that might be. Also fixed that sentence, and thanks for catching that because, believe it or not, it was haunting me—I happened to look through that review after I sent it off and thought “that has to be changed.”  At any rate, use what you can of what I’ve indicated where quoted in full. Maybe you could add a note at the end:  “Contains Artificially Inserted Quoted Material From The Work Under Review.”

1/29/91
blinded --
	peppering rage of desert storm
where are we going

radio tuned all
the time to the news


I’m about as prepared
as mustard
		to start the day

trying to sort through
the mud slide of dreams

sedentary
		ancient unconscious mass
	undermined by
			the ceaseless sleet of sleep

light winds forecast

the weight of hair
pulls on the skin of my face
the jowls of perception’s dog
	whose bark is fatal

I have to endure the growls of reality

everybody out
			of the gene pool
I guess that means me too

enough infinite variety
I’m hungry

I felt the hunger of rain. I was brought down by the gravity of rain. It seemed as though I lived in a world of rain. I made my way through the jungle of rain. The history of rain begins with the vision of rain. I fear the revenge of rain and the destruction of rain. I curse the invention of rain as the machine of rain sputters to life. I watch the play of rain on the windshield. The work of rain digs furrows in the ground. I read the book of rain in the solitude of rain. I pick through the anthology of rain for a poem of rain. I see through the transparence of rain. A sprinkle of rain waters the new flowers. The shower of rain bathes the bare branches. The edge of rain falls from the eaves. I find a picture of rain that gives a good idea of rain. I leaf through the dictionary of rain for the definition of rain. The dog of rain barks at the god of rain. At this time last year we had received only a fraction of rain. In the arithmetic of rain, every little drop counts.

1/30/83
absorbed by the page
	night and day detour around
a weary man at work

failing to get the point
	confused by headache fever
the flu takes over

temperature above normal
	sore throat headache eye pain
I can’t even see what I see

old and faithful tom
	his own tanning salon
a square patch of sunlight

overfed the robins
	bend the bare limbs
dropping before flight

pink neon --
	pale knot of light behind
the barred store window

End notes
[1]The poem is not created in isolation even though the poet much of the time accomplishes the task under these circumstances. Surrounding its shape on the page is a mass of inference, reference, deference, etc., which creates the atmosphere of its understanding. The poem today is the bride stripped bare of her bachelors, a cunning statement by Duchamp, and, as he himself discovered, a node on the organic nervous system of creativity. A creation has to be touched by the artist to live, it cannot be made or expressed by remote control. Art’s built-in imperfections are its signature. Consequently, does the poem stand alone out of necessity or literary convention? Also, why must it stand alone, out of context, i.e., prose, without environment (subsequently “environmentalism” becomes a new literary label)? Poets have been reconciling poetry and prose forever. The poems, the songs, are usually what the story is woven around. Every poet has a story, even if short, that surrounds the creation of his song. Sometimes up, sometimes down, the lives of poets accomplish a cycle.

[2]”Salting the mine”:  There are a few respected poets you steal from respectfully, everyone else is grist for the mill.

[3]Poetry has no context except for the page — a sad state of affairs. Removed and isolated by its wide blank margins, it acts as a relic of what once was a living tradition, a word of mouth.

Subtext
“. . . in woman is the female principle, the muses represent aspects of that principle, one of which is creativity and identified as Calliope, the mother of Orpheus. From her, Orpheus derives his creative power. Eurydice, his wife/mother/female principle is bitten by a snake and taken to the underground — writer’s block, winter of the intellect? i.e., Orpheus loses it/her and is audacious enough to go down to the dead after her. He regains the promise of Eurydice on condition of self-control. Pride of course foils him. Is it out of revenge then or simply sorrow that he personifies nature in his song or is he, male-like, tampering with the source? Then along comes a goon squad of wood nymphs (alarmed at his power over their realm) (driven to passion by his song) (following their wild instincts) (none of the above) and rip him to shreds and eat his flesh. Of course in this instance everyone knows that Orpheus is the sacred mushroom indulged in by a prehistoric goddess cult. His decapitated head, thrown into the river, floats downstream (through time?) where ape-like inhabitants fish it out. Orpheus’s head still speaks and the natives use it as an oracle that for the most part just pops, hisses, sputters in languages yet unknown, but once in a while there’s a clear and distinct message like ‘render to reality that which is real, and to fantasy, that which is fantastic.’  Fortunately no one was listening when the head spoke those words. The oracular brazen head of the Knights Templars is derived from this tradition . . . Dead, he becomes the hollow skull and then the bronze head, the bell, and the oracle, the entrance to the unconscious in the guise of an instrument, and eventually in the twentieth century, he is a saxophone . . . on the other hand, the Orpheus syndrome is when you allow yourself to be taken down by the feminine side and are consequently torn asunder (apart) by a cross current of opinion and indecision (i.e.:  the prerogatives of survival gone awry). . .”