It has become my lot in life,
as a poet, to travel far and wide, to varying cities, to point
out such facts as this: April, our cruelest month and therefore
the one we ear-mark as National Poetry Month, oftentimes is
marked with nothing short of rioting. I noticed this
phenomenon, first, in Los Angeles, back in 1992. And, most
recently, well....here.
And why not? We are tired of
our books falling out of print before leaving the publisher.
We’ve had enough of seeing our friends the painter and
musician brought down on trumped up charges of disturbing
a peace we all know it’s in our best interest to disturb.
1992 was, incidentally, the
year I earned my stripes as a poet....I was living in Los
Angeles, no job
no
money
nothing
to do
nowhere
to go
no
way to get there
no
problem.
Except I found myself spending the bulk of my days writing
poems. Which was odd, if only because, more often than not,
they bored me. Other people’s, I mean. Mine,
I was noticing, I couldn’t get enough of.
Anyhow, this is one of the ways
I earned my badge: I would go to these open readings, where
other people would bring poems that matched perfectly their
various neuroses. These would be, without fail, disheartening
affairs. I once likened it to blowing one’s nose, opening
the tissue, only to find nothing there....all this while a
crowd looked on. That poem, unsurprisingly, won me neither
friends nor fans.
Still, they were so poor in
general that I was comfortable enough being there. And if
I had any money at all, I probably would have been elsewhere
wearing spandex. But bus fair and coffee was all I had. That,
the poems, and all the time in the world to kill.
Each reading would be worse
than the last. No matter where it took place, or who was there
even. All the same, every Friday the L.A.
Weekly would mention a new venue, and I’d tell
myself, hell, that must be the one for you.
It was on one such day that
my good friend and roommate, Kevin, came home early from work
and asked, “Oh man, have you seen the news?” “No,”
I answered indignantly, “I have a reading to get ready
for!” He turned on the TV just in time for us to see
someone being pulled out of a tractor-trailer and beaten to
a pulp with rocks.
“No, you don’t,”
he said.
He probably laughed his laugh,
and knowing me I must have said something like “the
world needs my poems now more than ever, let me rub my salve
over your wounds!,” or some such shit, as I walked out
the door and into a very strange place. It was early evening,
but L.A. was suddenly a ghost town: no traffic, no people,
just the occasional gunshot off in the distance....
I waited very patiently for
my bus, fretting all the while over whether or not this was
the night to try a cappuccino. Should I open with “It’s
A Good Thing I’m Popular in Madagascar,” or go
straight into “Ultimately Unnecessary Discourse on a
Continued Unveiling?”
I was determined, much more
so than the bus driver of the bus that never arrived. In fact,
I’m under the distinct impression that I still may be
waiting for that very same bus. Walk with me....
....To San Francisco. Where
I took a cesspool of an apartment on the strength of the mice
seemed to be a courteous enough sort. And as I was sifting
through the ugly juxtaposition of dirty diapers and drug needles,
I found a couple of curiosities. One, a spot on the linoleum
where a baby mouse had been trampled on with such force it
actually seemed to be ironed-on. I tell you, I had to scrub
so hard to get this ghost of a mouse out of the floor that
I’ve lost the will to scrub anything else since....The
second find was a tape, one of those small voice recorder
tapes, which intrigued me in the hope that it might give me
some incite into this mess I had inherited.
And what I heard on this tape
simply blew my fragile, little mind. The first side was innocent
enough: two fellows shooting the shit while David Letterman
rattled on in the background. One of them, Shane, was a cocky
prick who exclaimed out of nowhere things such as “Tonight
I’m gonna pa-ar-ty!” He had the amazingly stupid
idiosyncrasy of adding an extra syllable to the last word
of most every sentence.
The other, his voice suggesting
that he was African-American, was in some kind of pain. His
name was Jonesy. And you got the feeling that his cohort was
responsible, if not for the pain itself, then for not helping
alleviate it any. Shane, it seemed, was sitting on a wide
array of drugs, which he doled out only when made to feel
guilty for his friend’s ailment.
Anyway, side two was what made
me question if the whole damn thing wasn’t staged. That
is until I was reminded of my surroundings and thought better
of it. It was the same two fellows taping themselves while
coverage of the riots in Los Angeles played on in the background.
And the tone told tales.
At one point, I shit you not,
there was this exchange:
SHANE
What
is that? I mean, what can that be?
JONESY
What?
SHANE
What
you mean, what? Can’t you hear that?
Sounds
like someone’s banging at the gate!
A pause.
SHANE
You
can’t hear that?
JONESY
Yeah,
I think so. Maybe it was only thunder.
Goddamn gold, that tape, and
me a genius for swimming in cesspools. I transcribed the tape,
the mix was muddy enough at times I could hear what I wanted
to, but mostly I just transcribed. It was a role I was comfortable
with. I did add one touch, however: that mouse. I slapped
a title on the mother, “Maybe It Was Only Thunder, or
Why We Can’t All Just Get Along,” and I had my
first and only play.
It’s decent, too....At
least as verse plays go. And, initially, there was some true
interest. It seemed it might even get premiered in Louisville,
but they begged off in the end on the grounds that they had
already “dealt” with the issue of racism. Sure,
on one hand I was disappointed that I couldn’t add playwright
to my resume, but on the other, it was good to know someone
had it in them to put that issue to bed. I could
sleep now....
....Cut to the week before
my big reading at the Contemporary Arts Center. I wanted to
do something different, more elaborate, if only because my
friends would have to pay to see me. Not sucking completely
is the only way I know to be polite. It’s the second
day of curfew, eight-thirty, a half-hour past lights out,
and I have to walk a measly two blocks to, where else but
my good friend Kevin’s, for rehearsal. He plays the
bass.
I head out. Turn north and am
immediately faced with a platoon of
Police officers with rifles at the ready. I clutch my contraband,
breathe deep, and proceed....“GET BACK IN YOUR HOUSE,”
one of them yells at me. I stop: “But it’s work
related,” I volley back. “WHERE DO YOU WORK?”
the same cop asks me in the same voice. I resume walking towards
them. “Well,” I explain, “it’s actually
my second job as a poet/performance artist”—and
here I realize we are not alone, that there are people lining
the street on balconies and fire escapes, and at this they
laugh heartily (“POET! PERFORMANCE ARTIST! Ha, Ha!”)—Then,
for punctuation the cop adds, “GET BACK IN YOUR HOUSE!”
I think to argue that I am indeed getting paid, my occupation
has been validated by someone, but instead I shove my tail
that much further up my ass and do as I’m told....
That is, until it started raining.
At that point I ran giggling triumphantly through
the puddles. Without my drugs, to be sure, but breaking through
all the same....
So, you see, little has changed:
blacks are still oppressed, and I’m still waiting for
a bus that has yet to come. Or, trying to get off the one
I boarded in error. Bus driver, you tell me....
The circus, like a cancer, pulls
tent and moves down river, a ghost-trail of slaves once sold.
And it seems to me that the only difference between a good
cop and a bad cop is that one actually exists. The
other is pure oxymoron, in the same way as the phrase “good
babysitter” is. Good for the parents, or good for the
kids? The parents at ease with their nightcaps while the children
are being handed down to maidenhood and perversion.
We are fighting racism, yes.
We are fighting fear. But above all we are running from the
long arm of boredom, and the even longer shadow of forced
captivity. It’s a race everyone would do well to join.
The rules are well known: cops beat robbers, robbers take
cowboys, everyone’s got over it over on the Indians,
but who wins?
The fat cat holding the pie,
that’s who. He’s your man....And the same person
responsible for making Cincinnati less a Paris and more a
Porkopolis. This so his pie can grow exponentially with each
child born under the sign that states, “A great place
to bring up kids.” On the outskirts, at least. In the
meantime, be sure to run out the artists, those that can recognize
a dead-end sign under any disguise. And don’t dare answer
the poet crazed enough to ask what good is taking the kids
to Disney if all the parents are inspired to suicide?
The bottom line is that each
and every one of us is starving. Starving for companionship.
Starving for compassion. Starving for passion. Starving for
cock, starving for cunt. Starving for freedom, starving for
justice. Starving to be heard, starving for the delivery of
words that simply cannot be delivered by the state. Starving
to have the itch we cannot reach itched. Starving to have
our individual thirsts quenched. Housewives are starving for
opiates. Priests are starving for Jesus. The poets, I know,
are merely starving. The cops, they’re down here with
us as well, and our young wait their turn in line. We are
at war with ourselves and yet have pretenses to peace? Say
it with me: starving starving starving....
This is a city. One that chose
long ago to outgrow itself. Do not let its smallness hem you
in. They will deny that it is full of arteries, entrails,
cocks and cunts and all sorts of plumbing, rivers and viaducts
ad infinitum....To deny it would serve no purpose, has served
no purpose, except when related to the value of real estate....(God,
I pity the prostitutes of this city more than those of any
other in America, and I pray for their continued constitution
in the face of all that surely must be unleashed upon them....MEMO
TO LUKEN: Consider for them a raise.)
....A city, its sad face turned
on its side, gasping. Fair and vulnerable, awaiting the forced
lung to kick in.
I am here. You are here. We
don’t trust each other, not as lungs go, but someone
was god-like and left us no choice. Let us burn the whole
barn down once and for all, or shall we just breathe? And
if we breathe, will we stoke the fire, or blow it out?
There’s a rattling at
the gate, I tell you! Can’t you hear it? Someone wants
in, but who? You mustn't find out, but you will. This column,
all columns, have led to one door. This door. Your
door. What has become of your welcome mat? And would you be
disappointed to discover you left yourself outside all that
time? In the rain, in all that no heat? All that time waiting,
outside and inside. On both ends. You would have
seen it coming if only you knew it in advance. Come in, come
in, try on this skin, hold it up to the light and see its
dazzling transparency....
And some sunny day, you will
step outside onto Main Street and feel that your footing has
gone soft and ashen. You will declare every month to be cruller
than the last, and that there seems to be less and less poetry.
The people walking calmly down the thoroughfare with their
hair on fire will be replaced by the maddened shriek of colorless
skulls darting left and right, left and right, in quick search
for a face they don’t recognize, only to move on....And
on.....And on. You will have joined them before you even decided
to.
Or, who knows? Maybe it was only thunder?
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