_______________________________________________________ LIDA’S
WEDDING Bill
Brown 
Coyote’s
Journal
August 2007
http://www.coyotesjournal.com © 1995,
2007
Estate of William Draham (Bill) Brown _______________________________________________________ Contents
___________
Preface
Lida's Wedding
3 May '91
7 May
Bakersfield
10 May
Motel
HOTEL
12 May
This page marked 5/13?
SANTA FE
EL PRADO, 5/15
TUESDAY 5/16
May (?)
Editor's Afterword
_______________________________________________________ Preface
Bill
Brown was born in Seattle in 1918, grew up on Queen Anne’s Hill.
After college and a hitch in the Merchant Marines he served in WWII,
first with the British Army Ambulance Corps in North Africa, then as
a staff
sergeant in the US Army’s 134th Infantry. In late 1944, after
months of fighting his way north through Italy, he and his company
were captured
by Germans on the Moselle River in France and sent to a POW camp
in Poland. He was liberated by Russian troops in early 1945.
Back
in the states, Bill returned to the Seattle area, where he received
an MA in English from the University of Washington. While at the
university he briefly edited and published a Communist student
newspaper, for which
he was cited in the McCarthy era. He returned to Europe, spent
a few years on the GI Bill in Paris. When he next returned to the US
he joined a community
of artists which included Morris Graves in Laconner, Washington.
From Washington, he moved south, to Portland, then settled and
worked in the San Francisco-Berkeley
area of California. He worked as a landscape gardener, a trade
he learned as a young man in Seattle. In the mid 1960s Bill and his
family moved to
Bolinas, where his literary ties grew.
Brown’s literary correspondents
included William Carlos Williams and Malcolm Cowley; his peers included
Jack Spicer, Philip Whalen,
Richard Duerden, Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, Joanne Kyger, Ricard Brautigan,
James
Koller, numerous other writers, and several painters, including Phil
Roeber and Jack Boyce. In 1965 a section of his first novel, The
Way to the Uncle
Sam Hotel, which was based on his experiences as a POW, was published
as In Honeytown by Coyote’s Journal. The entire novel was
published a year later by Coyote Books. In 1986 he published his
second novel,
The Kwan Yin Tango, in a limited edition for friends. The short
story collection,
We Are, Are We?, which he considered his autobiography, was published
by Coyote Books in 1991.
Bill
Brown died in San Rafael, California in 1994, soon after returning from
two years in northern New Mexico,
where most of Lida’s
Wedding was written. He had five children.
_______________________________________________________ Lida’s
Wedding
The Horned Rabbit
& Furry Turtle
Cross Nowhere Mountains
(Hakuin to a far-away monk)
_______________________________________________________
3 May ‘91
Behind you now, already a past. Marguerite would say you’ve grown old
just inside the edge of something called now. Doing it. The other shoe. You
grabbed up the canteen or scratched your nose – not the whole fish, but
something.
My early
oyster eyes squint down at her card again. That’s
good, my oyster eyes, and of course your Palmer-method
scribble, that sound. “Rocks!” trying to read
your note. I never did eat a fox, though did the eye of
a gazelle in Palmyra – plus that long German scrawn
that wouldn’t be stewed with our prison onion – we
bought the cat for a pack of Camels. Why mind the place
by the Oder – that it was prison? I wander.
I cry
it again, “Rocks!” buttoning the coat with
froze-up fingers. Pain in the bum. This old us yatter-yatter,
ain’t it the truth? Just fancy’s what old Grandma’d
say. I remember blood was always needed. Licking hot thick
sugary. Famished ghosts. Passing the shadows of statues,
Bloom’d crack forth, “The Gaiety!” We
had The Society on Friday nights, Lon Chaney to boot. After
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA I ran back up Broadway, streetlight
tostreetlight, what’s done’s done. I don’t
know how I got here, young enough for Catechism class,
Father Durgen asking how we felt about the Host. I raised
my hand. He nodded down. I said I wanted to say Hi! Which
made the old Jebbie smile.
Why
do you say stuff like this?
There’s
more to it than that...
Take
Durgen. Close to my grandpa. There when he died. He’s
who brought me up, the old man with pink hair. The Catechism
thing must’ve been earlier. His black policemen’s
shoes. I liked the old guy. It might be better that I said
it. There. On it goes, this wide place at the end of the
bigger roadway, not a town, like they say. I found the
wad of notes tucked neatly into the bigger wad of roadmaps,
etc.
This’s
some of the etc.
Dreams,
yes. The town’s name was Sugar. Its Sheriff, and
the one in the filthy hat, way into their snowball fight
in front of Sugar’s spiffiest whorehouse, windows
full of titterers, all their pilfering, lipsy eyes up there
watching the flying white balls, me in my incautious strap-boots,
O yes, they’re noisier than monkeys midst so many
lavish flakes, the two big old boys but shadows now in
the silence.
Which
cartoon’s the real article. You well might laugh
explosively. In my case, one of my sneezier laughs. Not
enough to stop Spoon, my white dog – I call him my – who
thought he’d follow me on down to Pod the van, me
and this canvas suitcase thing, it being daylight now.
He’s
begun scratching the new blue door. With black circles
under his eyes, he’s taken to looking like Carole
Lombard if she’d been someboy’s dishwater blonde.
So? The phone’s ringing. Her in El Prado again, north
of Taos, but one way to get to Lida’s Tucson wedding.
They’ll put me up in this big adobe whatever. I’ve
heard it before – from her – she’d do
better as my daughter. I already have two of those. Leave
it be. Or say I’m counting my toes in D-minor, hoping
withall. I see Keaton again in the mirror.
7
May
Back and forth to Pod, with the stuff I forget. Spoon’s tail thumping
on the floor. Must be he thinks he’s coming along. The knee-high Jap
anemone’ve given it up, too much riffling wind in there, withered now.
No glary white flowers come fall. Kids shouting again on the street, same hammer
someplace. Snooze, kicking off a boot, feel Spoon’s eyes – hey
you, one slice cuts the bread in two, hallahloolya! Him chasing to the turn
with the church and its bell. Byebye to you – went farther the night
back’ve the ambulance – old doggie, Pod’s past soccer field,
out to the big valley’s bogless turfs’ I-5...
What
what, Manteca! In wrong place per always, feedlots plus
feedlots under bright long roofs, all Herefords, wide sky
above. We eat you, stockstill brown cows. Alberta on radio’d
mean L.A. Yuh gotta live uhlittle. How come holy cows come
only in white? Ok, us’n the pigs’d quit eating
each other, lilies’d bloom in boiling soup.
I think
so. Missing Spoon. We’re sort of mates. Miles in
the haze since himself’s a pup – he has it
bad like dogs do, we have that in common. Tight-cut plumtrees
now, no rolling grasses. O, two of these roads, this one
south, that north, plus acres of diesel gasoline place’s
asphalt, here next door to white wooden Holy Word church – blinks
pink neon in the pink far-off blue hazes. Less said the
better.
Which
he liked when I hummed, about wailed the ditty itself – THET
LITTLE SOD SHANTY ON MUH CLAIHAIM! He loved it enough to
whimper up at my shut eyes like dogs being sung to do.
Maybe
worse on this one, before, three of us, tiny Ez nodding
in between, raining and raining, New Year’s ballgames
galore. I remember I have to piss bad about over there
above the orchard, pulled over to shoulder, soon understood
will keep one them styrofoam dodads handy, have me this
grand thing to piss into in the middle of town, anywhere
at all, plus never then climb out get all wet, etc.
Hoo,
German George taking racetrack piss chomps ham sandwich,
full mouth’d say, “Yagh’s more to racetracks’n
horses!”
Vast
excess, long shots to dissolve raining highway, dark, low
hills.
You
want some H.Q. shit? As of now – Greenwich time! – short
on destinations. Well-well, nothing realer than nothing.
No, snake-necked heron back in the soccer-field puddle,
now 1,000’s of semiswhopping my way, which sign’s
just said DRAIN AND RIFLE RANGE ROAD, which’s clear
of I-5, somewhere called OILDALE, its high dusty fog deadstill
above 30’s L.A. streets nobody’d know.
What’d
I expect? No strings attached – minus that P O M
! obliterative as China’s trillion cherry-bombs’d
make yor hand sting quite good.
Bakersfield
No sweeps
of emerald grass, but acres of a stuff never saw before
after I-5’s mile on mile, stolid leaves keeping mum
like they do, some evening streets, cars go by like it’s
too late for rain to fill the gutters, splash knee-high
off walls. No big cops in slickers that shine like gun-barrels
having fun carrying girls across the bad places.
Why
try to be Raymond Chandler? The wide streets? I dreamed
it’s the Mongolia Hotel, ground floor all to myself.
People around the dinky plastic pool, scrawny kids, fat
people, like it’s the beach. Agh-hagh, cold water!
Highway glued in Pod too long’s all Ireland versus
the rest of Ireland, yawps Joyce again, a lot of money
he spent on’is nose, O tales of circus life, they’re
highly demoralizing. We know these rooms? Ceilings not
high nor their doors tall. The carpet doesn’t look
like the blue snow on my calendar with the wolf, nor do
the windows look out on darkening hills, wherever they
are.
What
I’ll then not do’s sit on the edge of this
deep, soft chair to look at Mrs... if I don’t remember
her name she’s worth a stare – no trouble at
all, with her slippers and her legs in sheerest silk stockings,
visible to the knees, one well beyond.
As she
had no drink, she’d hardly swallow or give me a cool,
lewd look over the rim of her glass.
“ I
didn’t know you really existed,” she’d
not quite say, “except in books or snooping in hotels.”
Then,
as if putting down her glass on the flat arm of the chaise-lounge,
or flashing the emerald, even touching her hair, slowly
she’d say, “Well, yes, then how do you like,
I mean, do they really call them Kentucky Fried chickens?”
Item – no,
BIG SLEEP’ll not work backward, or forward, no part
of the thing. Ok, then drop it, him plus his pewter-mouthed
pals. Now MOZO THE SNOW MONKEY’s amber-red Macaque
face peering through the snowflakes, her bullshit-wrenching
slow old eyes....
10 May
You
pay up, watch their staring eyes, Pod idling after some
coffee. “How do I get out of here?” answered
at the Texaco corner a long block away. Both of them in
there just up from Louisiana, not spelled like he said
it. Real tall girl, him, looking at each other unsmiling.
Not much to say, but do tell me how to get out of the place.
I nod like I hear, which I don’t, two ambulances
yopping at our corner too closeby. I can remember closeup
I knew nothing.
Vermilion
neon Taco Bell spells MOJAVE. To and from Tehachapi’s
wide airstrip highway’s pileups of bare rolling hills,
thousands of electrical have-to-be aluminum windmills whirling
up and down the slopes, leather sky at top of said Pass.
Hardly a car, I said out loud, my hedgerow voice – long
semis up in back of the lavender Mojave hills.
A railroad
place, that Shell where the old station’d been, the
guy gives me gas. “Pick uh pack’ve pickled
peppers,” said I to his long-billed face, “Hoh,
more to it than that!”
He gives
me his “Hunh!” swallowing a passing ghost or
fly, “Whah?”
“Well
now what?” gargled I at his shoe, he who thought
he’d sell me a map. “I got one!”
Then
this kind of flat desert. Fields of big rigs, engines barely
running, cattle-trucks, maybe two pink Grandma’s
Cookies, half a block each before Barstow, which’s
down below high and low bumpy hills, its miles of freight
and oilcars dead still out there. Here there’s longer,
straighter roads than before. Before? O boy, all our late-sixties
words. Saw the needles up back of Needles. Hottest little
dump in the US the wheezy conductor told me. On 66, one
turquoise pickup’d be hauling loose hay, looking
worn down – another long Santa Fe’s murmuring
along its tracks through ancient dust as I kill a fly on
one knee. “On earth,” muttered I, “as
it is in Heaven.” Well now.
Somewhere – of
course, somewhere – the dream not any dream, in or
outside of Barstow’s dowdy cross-streets with Limey
names, me driving a cab again, in CHINATOWN, nose-patched
Nicholson now wants a no-number place, so he asks, “You
know watersnakes?”
“Cottons
yeah,” I maybe answered. “Little fuckers’n
east Texas, we’d keep one in the chamber – G-I
soap’d plug’m up okay.”
“Plug?
What up?”
“Brass
you got in the chamber,” I went on, trying to find
the man’s number.
“Yeah?” All
he said, must’ve been. I hummed cheerfully. He resumed, “You
think this’s goin’ in circles?”
“ Not
a good question...”
Motel
Place’s
railroads, thinking like that, big engine roundhouse at
the foot of this hill. Bowtie behind the counter trying
to stare me down. The end of an afternoon you begin to
see the day changing its colors in flat sunlight. Down
in the parking lot about twenty Koreans far into a baseball
game.
The
old lame one at the top of balcony-stairs peering my way
too. “See yuh had some sleep.” Orphan Annie
eyes, makes his somewhat growlier “Ughh!” as
I step toward his step.
Pretending
I know what the guy’s talking about, louder than
I meant to, “Hey, yeah!”
How
does he manage the stairs on crutches – or has he
stopped here in that he can’t or won’t try
to go down on them? No gesture to using, trying to use
the stair. He’s just there, blank funnypaper eyes,
stepping neither back to let me pass, nor, I won’t
say quite advancing toward me.
“Yuh
cut yuhself?”
His
almost smile twisted his mouth, whole side of the gray
face, my finger now touching the scrap of tissue on my
chin.
“Won’t
say thet toilet-paper’s bad idea,” he’d
begun to frown again as he minced his toothpick lips. “N’any
case ain’t bleedin’.”
Must
have decided to cut it short, be on my way to the corned
beef smells, only the man’s not budged, my one foot
touching the top step, call it an inch, so my second step’s
stopped, perched, caught in my tracks.
“Where
you goin’ to?”
“Stuff
to do.”
“Okay!” He’d
begun to hum now, “N’what’s in the box?”
“Nothin’ much,” all
but barging at the next step, past the two aluminum crutches,
him half flattened at black iron railing, our eyes closeup,
only now he’s nimbly shifted one crutch back to its
yellow wall, so I pass close in front of him, down to wide
asphalt full of red and purple Koreans.
In the
box – two yellow #2 pencils, pen I can’t give
away, two dubious batteries, one blue agate Richard shoved
at me one mysterious laundromat morning, not a good handful
wood clothespins, odd toothpicks like dirty fingernails,
somesuch my clutched unwanted old box...
More
than half true, I wanted to walk around down there, my
legs want to, don’t remember if its still more of
66 beside traintracks. Making a tape of freightcars’ noises
blanging by – call it coddling this cuckoo-clock
bent. O, the straighter the face, more somber my eyes,
etc etc...
So now!
as our hairless rifle-instructor’d say, kitty-corner
to my window up here, two Korean girls in Cincinnati caps
sharing giant Donald Duck grapefruit juice in blue shadows...
Some more of hell’s copious delights. Well and good,
we’re at that overly big cafe they call HEDY’s,
where I’d meant to go for coffee, too many long tables
and yes, shapeless’d be a word, now filled with inhabitants
of the R-V wagontrain tidily drawn up around full heat
Korean ballgame. Said inhabitants’ clockwork elbows
jampacking Hedy’s like real old honeybees.
No,
wait, it’s what first must be this voice, overperceptible
and hoarse, entreatyful as any night street’s commonest
meeow’n next’d come my odd mutter, presently
chewing at some visible unchewables hid on its plate beneath
a colorless gravy or no, these aren’t it either.
It being that gigantical TV that’s all over the one
real wall in here, since various genuine scads of us’ve
found it best to ignore each and every putting face right
there upon Pebble Beach’s greeny links beside its
inky blue waters. Said faces’ve, albeit side-show
shadowed by any golfer’s fruit-hued visors or bills,
evidently dipped their numerous noses into what incredible
varieties of well-mauved zinc oxide. So far I’ve
been unable to detect, no matter where inside our contestants’ visages,
any clue at all that’d half-prove he or she’s
not but another ubiquitous, ice-hearted prick.
Hoo,
take in their tassled Footjoys beneath this sky, the grinny
earnestness atop each one’s breathless putt, those
whirring long drives, like faraway birds, none of it betrayed
by our heartiest broadcasters, who on first taking such
in, seldom if ever appear to be carrying on, urging our
players beside the rocky-ledged sea to be more of whomever
they already are – if obviously desirous of grasping
firmest hold of the entire attention of one or all of these
rabidly munching inhabitants, R-V dwellers I mean, etcetera,
etcetera.
How
do I know what I ate? There it was.
That’s
all there is, mused I as I grasped the red toothbrush I
don’t want. “Suit yourself!” said the
girl in her Thrifty’s-beige smock. I stumble on Free-Books-Box
at the glass door, old yellow hardback Zane Grey, THE LAST
PLAINSMEN...
I
never raised my eyes to the north that I did not draw
in breath and grow chill with awe and bewilderment at
the marvels of the desert...
Unlit
street across from Kingman’s tracks and roundhouse,
handfuls of stars, down a block find tobacco store postcard,
Zapata and pals in Sunday hats’n boots. Quick note
to El Prado – Why not paint guys like in foto, shined
boots, their eyes waiting on camera? (See circa 1912 in
corner.) Hey, Phoenix tomorrow, you on right plane....
Love, B.B.
Her
again, Marguerite, who said you never know a story until
it’s written. This’s not writing, not looked
at that way, us in the act of ourselves, me talking like
this, Hedy TV’s rosy-nosed golfers – but leaving
the place, hallway beside the door, framed photo of Indians
you don’t not look at – Ogallalas? – in
winter cavalry uniforms around Hotchkiss gun – WOUNDED
KNEE 1890 – its careful white scrawling over wheel,
white signature across gun itself. Isn’t there more
to it than remembering inaccurately?
You
mostly know. Sixties, our yellow pickup’d hit 66
from Death Valley by way of Searchlight. Here, by daylight’s
big trains, freights bonging down cold tracks higher than
my ankles, poolhall bar open in next block – Andy
Devine Way – park in front, old injun guy dealt table’s
quarters, the trains rattling bottles, pool-players’d
shut up, etc.
Try
to send Shao other Zapata tonight. Us together here, Whoa!
Thirty years ago? Do he remember 66’s Chinese cooks,
its dried colors, two lanes to Santa Fe? Nah, the guy do
not write like this – need funnypaper bad word, GRARRK!
Type
it later, the way it is. Pencil, ballpoint’ll walk
all over its page. You know, what you write’s only
a picture of itself.
Now,
layers of mountains every whichway. Today 11th? Shell Station
map’s red teepees’re injuns? No. Spikey spindlebrush
in first light, earlier floating Red Tail now overhead,
blinkless buzzards – this’s Ok, narrow, dynamited,
winding road, all sheer underneath spiders, thorns, snakes,
gophers, earlier coyotes and flies, ain’t no place
we’ll dance! – Shellmap shortcut to Phoenix
or she there (Look up arrival-time!) – but beside
narrow gulches, a draw, scrubby gallery more stone again,
open a window for crinkled air, some minutes deadstill,
breathing, desert airbath.
Us?
Like before, me & Pod, who’d make wone mediano
donkey, huh? Us and our little ways plus tell me another
when we get there, OK? Then what? Why not, like always,
we don’t see why we come here...
So say
I’ve snuck old Bonnard along? Him staring at the
light – they have to have like some kind of effrontery,
Cartier-Bresson’s photos prove it, half shaved old
guy by a wall, railed at, sunlight against his old head – himself,
Cézanne bein’ two Frogs drank down trees,
rocks, the apples, which whatnots we live inside of.
Town,
something. No, Wickenburg’s on the road map, three
signs – two gasolines, an eating place. Famous Jailtree
in heart of almost downtown... Outlaws chained to the tree
from 1863 to 1880 for lack of a good hoosegow where escapes
were seldom known...
In GRANDMA’S
FRESH PIES at the counter, in Duck-Heads, old train-cap,
one coffee, his boots because they’re what he’s
in. You’d like him to smile, ask where his suitcase’s
hiding, which must’ve held what else he do or don’t
have on, Pod next to his pickup now going up on nextdoor
rack. We’ve agreed, nothing to say. Who goes on about
Jail Trees or bum black oil in yr block?
Pretty
postcards on Unocal beatup gascap counter – out’ve
which window a crew pouring new curbs to only visible intersection,
genuine yayhoos thereabouts stripped to rivermud hides
trowling away – more postcards galore shrieking bright
desert flowers, do I say doin’ it? Plus Joshuas caught
in the act, also galore, one gigantical tourista Rattler,
always, only by now Pod’n me we’re bouncing
down I do guess straighter roads in the wider valley, this
out-o-tune face properly everyday grim enough for prehistoric
coins, early afternoon at it too long...
It?
Look,
pell-mell, grave faces’d fuck away – gas’s
low down! main drag clouds, hooo!, all of it’s toward,
ticket in teeth, vast cuckoo acres for parking, it and
its whizzing jitney all over the place, etc!
Only
you’ve sure as all shit seen our driver’s chartreuse
neck you’d duly say so again – “WHUUUF!” – which’s
at some kind’ve oncoming vehicular fulltide’n “YAWP!” barked
out the redhead beside me, reeking of Lilac swamps – or
OBREGADO it’ll say up where they say stuff, sure,
me gaping like I know what it means, but thence, even thence,
what strange places to be aren’t, are they, this
close to brightest Egypt?
If we’ll
purr our HMMMNs beneath what numerous glass doors – they’re
next! – doing their ins-and-outs in the walls of
this slinkiest, white building...
White?
Uncontainable
white noises to pin words to that plane’s huge shadow
she
just said
THUNDERS
PROBLEM?
long
bench's lines of
supernaturally sober faces
(which
copybook invariably matters in this queer aseptic light)
“come’n
go breathin’, huh Babydoll? beatsuh sheet outah yur
faraway hurries”
Other
advantages to bein’ a Scarecrow! mused Scarecrow
Kingpin, which’s been at it longer’n what’d
he say? BUM DEEDEE BUM?
then
do one know oneself
why one laughs?
I saw
the door open
my feet come out?
well
most certainly they do too whole bunches of girlies off
to the first dance down at the Taj Mahal like how they
squeal’n titter’n always blush awfully if she’s
the Queen of Lightning
OKAY
skywhite
waitingroom
mouth open asleep
dream I miss you / MISS? she tweets
Ahrr! she’d offer, OHHH-NOHHH!
HOO! I’ll gargle or some tender somesuch’s
faraway
laughters
(from
notebook torn-off page where the chartreuse joweled driver
guy’s pinned to the purple shirt that says Cesar
McRoarty)
Windy
blackbird bobbing on the three-blossom plum branch, here
now or so went telephone plan to meet Stacia’s plane
and on to the wedding dance, weekago notes in pockets like
old cigarets, sit like this on the green tin chair at a
too-green table facing the door she’d come through,
it saying on the green-lit thing too high on the wall,
she’d do her very such up there at Gate IV.
Funny,
very. Foam on most of our noses, why not we’re in
clown class? Glen Miller CHATANOOGA CHOO-CHOO’n us,
hardly a war to dance to. I mean, Hey you! Blondie there,
in your wear’n tear face’s Oz shades, front
of two greener than black or blue eyes – faces’ll
stay in back of my eyes, Una Merkel’s, not Sally
Rand’s, Lombard herself’s, one or another numerous
30s blonde workaday ladies, only nope, this one’s
hair’s more hers than any showbiz busybees.
I said “Nohoh,
it’s we’re right here!”
She
calls me “Officer Stinkthumb!”
“Naw,” I
said, “what I said’s you’re your own
juicer – equals why not despise that shit? Anyway
you cut it, you’re you.”
Only
she’s telling me I don’t know what, snipping
it off with one fine “CAPEESH?”
Yuh
tellin’ me via yor yippery NUH-CAPEESH! as pertains
to any FUHUCK-OFFS I’d ever hear? Me now taking on
shy, “Yuh gotta be using uh leaky pen, fingers’re
all purply!”
“You
police? Due respects, drunktanks don’t work...”
“Not
for me they don’t,” agreed I, “me nor
anybody.”
Well
now, enter two bikebooted scalawags who’re totin’ that
boom-box or no, exit same pair, across what tedious doors,
out’ve which somebody’d yowl something, shaking
a hand to the taxi that dusk’s always here’s,
not to say his heart’s been traced by an arrow’n
how he’d stretch like some motionless toad lapping
flies off the air – so Blondie vamoosed, I never
saw how. Gate IV’s got no late-arrivals – none – today.
What?
Just
now inquire of the porter guy, how do you get from right
here into Tucson, etc. Ah yagh go awnder thet Ten freeway
ovuhpass’n up ontuh Tain’n bout wone ol’ houah
so, go peek at roadmap’n scratch muh tail or pick
at my nose’n jerking out’ve said cindery place
in nothin’ flat, flat bein’ dusk, like it be’n
what’s out there’s smucky blue gasoline, playin’ at
nightime’s got to be dark as the dark, their daguerrotypes
everyplace, or nah, this all’s dustier than night’s
knives.
Well.
So I do swear by all’ve the flying snakes in Borneo,
herselfs not being here’s bollixed it like which
day’s this? Why go on dreaming this’s nobody’s
cartoon? How come it comes out different any time I tell
it? It’s not in my plans, which we both know there
aren’t any of – of? – and for that, a
day or something later Stacia’ll be telling me her
thing in this, only I don’t know, do I, what’s
out there...
Can’t
hear any shit if I did, which’s not somebody’s
whisperings we let on to, which’s Ok in prayers,
I mean where our ghosts hang out to dry, only please, in
this summer dusk, remember as best you’re able all
yur answers. Oh, for pity’s sake – which’s
Granny’s I guess – she who loved the bird’n
her dominoes, her hands making things, like she rubbed
my head. None of which’s... fuck this scenery anyway.
EEENOUGH! borbled the drowning sailor in Pod down Ten,
as old Keaton’s harried eyes’d come poppin’ from
that coalsack of stars – nagh! I guess an hour of
billions anthracite lights okay, ‘n right here down
under its amber street ones’d be Tucson. O, the Mex
kid in backward A’s cap in gas place damn near underneath
Ten freeway, he told me where.
Yeah?
Huge ol’ neon sign’s CONGRESS HOTEL, right
in my lap.
HOTEL
Open,
window’s creaking night birds. One, two slow passing
cars, the one big unbusy green night thing – locust? – in
wall lamplight to left of left ear. Underwater legs, Peter
Lorre eyes, we did, stared at each other.
Well-well
again and again. Airport. No, her isn’t. Who cares?
Nighty-night.
12 MAY
“Morning!” I
said loud at gray window, street’s dustwhite sky,
roof-fringed to boot. Big signs, old streets. The bed,
yellow linoleum’s rag rug... drippy faucet, in sink
there I want to piss into. Hayoose, who are you kiddin’?
Too many meantimes since Spoon’d like it in here.
Slow street below slow curtains. Big sack, 50 lbs parrot
seed in my skull somewhere? Sort of promised in San Rafael
for parrot, Elan. Two white birdies in other crate, too
twiddly, her birds. Gets it on with horses means understands
them, that inasmuch as am today liable to laugh off-key.
Heard this place’s bad John Dillinger hotel, doesn’t
mean much. Some Santa Fe train ruins back streets.
Are
there any trips you mean? Now a car goes bloomp on street
below, plus – long moment – think I’ll
refer to me as him, so closing Joanne’s little book,
he’d leave the bed to piss into he always felt the
hole in the floor, now even glaring down into its tiniest
bubbles, grunting to pull on the other sock, the blue one
he found under the bed.
“Long
night?” inquired the tall trusty Hindu back of downstairs
desk. Discover this lobby coffee’s fish scale cold.
Find her in Taos, eight o’clock, too sleepy to go
boo!
I persist. “Hey,
like the Santa Fe Plaza day after tomorrow, noon on the
button!?”
Strange,
again strange saying that, on the button, time and again.
No way am calling Lida. Sister Sadie, like on Mama’s
envelopes – South Grande – big adobe place.
Please see old Wyatt Earp snoozing in kitchen. Lot of them
at coffee around the big table, herself, Diana, on the
phone at window hissing zippitty Mex to one of tonight’s
bands – they’ll get $75 more apiece per what
they’d have on. Aka Seenyourah Beezie. Son Seth,
last seen long ago skipping down steep SF hill, asleep
in corner, sumptuous split-hair blonde close-by. He winks.
I can’t wink good, I nod. What nobody’s said,
there’s D’s mama, older sister from NYC, thereby
so many howto’s as regards tonight wedding – like
take I-29 Nogales road to Exit 48 out to Reventone Ranch,
y muchas enfasis, must follow signs to Mullins wedding.
Which’s not exactly what we are. Another family thing,
waiting on the big night tonight, Sadie, Seth – not
hardly, give’m another fifty. So goes the tale we
go on.
There
we were, looking into Pod’s fancy insides...
“You
never did this?” she’d be bound to come up
with.
“Nah!” I’ll
return, “kind’ve a Texas pal, marine carpenter,
told me they always’d have a Lida somewhere in the
family.”
O, silence,
like always the closeby cars, mamasan still giving Pod
stuffings long look, “N’what’ll you do
with it?”
“Why
not little trips like this, maybe Baja somewhere?”
“Yeah’n,
hey, you do know how to get down there, before Five I hope,
we’ll be in front. Come’n sit with us.”
“Do
sound right,” I said, closing the side-doors. Sadie’s
voice from inside the screen-door, another call, she’d
shout back. “Give Lida a hug,” was all I got
off.
“Lida,
why not?” she hollered from inside.
The
dry, grating noises in my head since daybreak. Also a cricket
on her red road. You cicadas out of the ground instanter,
ready to go. Looking for one big kind’ve brown insect,
I’d see me in her little-girl’s-gone-byebye
eyes. Forgot to tell her’d slept off the main drag
near Boron in back’ve Pod near big underpass, wake
up first light by boarded-up front of QUEEN WANDA’S
BEAUTEE SHOPPEE, tin-squeaking sign on pole in rubber-tire
geranium-beds.
Now
hear man through the screen, “Yeah’n that Aberdeen
Angus bull we’d call Kink.” Somebody said so,
which, down here, is a thing they do, like Lida’s
pa Drum’s ranch’s on the west corner of New
Mexico, almost into Old Mexico, etc.
Ok,
again’n again, what’s that in Keaton’s
wide eyes?
Never
get too used to this kind of stuff – plus torpor
under this brassy glare, yellow morning of black shawls,
black-lacquered ducks? Pah! go the facts of life, if paddling
her canoe she’s changed, who don’t? Tell her
I might do that, move up to Taos a while, she said the
winters get too cold. Anyway, now look IT up in their lobby
Webster.
The
desk backup’s in blue turban, dyed-in-the-forehead
protruding tangerine eyes, ivory cross hanging ear to ear
below chin.
IT pron
(ME akin to DU HET) it used as subject of impersonal verbs
w/out referring to the person, thing, situation, which
is connected with final, ultimate or perfect (Zero hour,
this is it!) (slang) anemphatic pronouncement referring
to an attractive personal quality such as vigor or sex
appeal, or as one in the game of tag who must try to catch
another. WITH IT (slang) alert, informed, hip...
Enough,
it’s tangled up – peeking for pop-eyed cricket
on her dinky, red not pink roadway, said cricket before
Webster – ‘n driving past Mex grocery abt.
5, 6 blocks from cricket, here-and-there sky’s clouds
all over, scribble this on yellow pad from postcard shop – rows
of Kahlo, a heart she must’ve done, up and down walls,
one to El Prado tonight.
Ok,
always knew shopping-lists, reminders, do not or won’t
trust memory – who the Happy Hell was Santa Fe, Saint
Steel or Faith? Asked long ago, got that look. Near hotel
green-light buzzbuzz traffic caught wit pants-down chariot
racing, then silent but for injun girl on old bike, O boy,
whatever, her brown legs in big chunks of sunlight – then
more cars’ noises behind hotel corner. Hoh-hoh! Green
Man in the Green Hat, those gloves, cries out to the Green
Door, “Bless muh buttons!”
But
for counting their passing cars, two clamorous firetrucks,
which deadass Sunday’d be more itself than some other
Sunday? Old man Bonnard’d go clap on my eyes, yes
the whites on blues on early gold’s White Almond
Tree, the red Cupboard’s lacquered dark reds’d
be but our snoozy afternoon in Sligo, her Oirish good-evenin’ bein’ from
noontime on...
Walk
awhile, empty downtown’s empty – please see
I’m this afternoon Church kid tiptoedly conniving
what pennance he’ll owe a day, real thoughts of Lida,
groom Mullins, us picknicking in tree’s shadow. Getz
at foot of hill we’d wander by, big old Rodins under
the sky. Plus what now’d be Broadway’s Auto
Row – Pod, quick lube, ask guy, whatuhyuh do up here,
tearass town to town?
“Way’ll
yeah,” drawled he, “or yuh’r goin’ up
to Santa Fe, round there? hay no sweat yuh jes take ol’ tain’n
twanty-fahve far’s yuh’r goin...” Reknowned
feeling, old as chores, gotta get muh ass in gear.
“Thinking,” wheeze
I, “am smellin’ some Panhandle by now.”
“Nah,
ol’ Estacado’s full’ve daid wells’n
thet tain’s straighter’n snow piss, movin’ both
ways today.”
"How
long up to Santa Fe?”
“Buh-dark,
yuh leave here early.”
Mice-eyed
words wrong on paper. Forgot, by hotel door asking noon
stroller where’d I get Pod greased, etc. “Mahl’re
so. Sahzahble place yuh sahd this street.”
Lobby’s
other Hindu’s turban now more robin’s-egg blue,
but who, now seated by the glass-topped wicker writing
thing’s surely got himself into what appears to be
the direst funambulistical funk. “Uh, Sahib,” scarcely
grunted I, wagging Frida’s heart at the guy’s
blue turban – which means tulip in Turkey – “I’d
so much really like to write to somebody, right there!”
Himself
confounded, of course, as morbidly so, thus caught disallowably
seated, raising both veined amber eyes at me like I’d
lost his Adam’s apple, ivory cross’s bouncing
away, so now he stands straight as an icicle, clomps his
heels to flee to their white wicker loveseat beneath its
unbidden potted palm.
Sadie’s
pet weasel kept doodling all over her big kitchen-table,
plus lahdeedah! Blue, twitchy, glare’s ANIMAL CRACKERS
again, Benarji now in hot pink Mao tunic, chin in hands
like kid watching window rain as Harpo’d shoot down
two golden statues who shoot right back plus, of course,
Groucho’s camera-conniving brow – please now
see Marse Sahib’s left iris’s autonomic nerve-wreath’s
real prolapsis – the man’s transverse colon – he’d
be giving back to above movie’s opening chorus this
summer evening’s first tripletongued sigh.
So?
You’ve had little enough trouble by now guessing
I’m considerable above average at skidding assbackwards,
this lobby of us not unwarily stuck to our 3 or 4 Marx
boys, not too unlike they’re this new bubblegum stuck
variously to all boots and shoes from inside that box’s
glaucous staring, plus the one in the blue turban’s
hung yet another cross to his ears, which he’s caught
us all gawking at.
“Twoo
T H I E V E S !” so screaked the avid fellow, no
word more as our Marxian clowns get themselves caught up
into more nets of their brotherly shitfits, like why not
high-tail it up those stairs to hallway’s abrupt
turn into 214 to Joanne’s little Yucatan book, plus
one Granny Smith on dresser’d do fine for tonight
supper, etc... Wait, jackeasy trick to pilfer anything
from somebody’s book. Two Bonnard pages sent up to
next state. Or no, good looksee how the old guy put it
together. Old evening road out past South Grande house,
blazing white – no magenta ancient Xavier del Bac
Mission (Cathedral?) in Pod’s pink dust.
Reventone
Ranch by Amado’s one donkey – this side of
Cairo, always one! – braying hiccups. Cars, mostly
vans everywhere, ditto needless flashlights. Exit 48 like
she said, over traintracks, uh-huh Mercedes in terracotta
dusk, hundreds of chairs, bingo! Wedding in almost last
of light.
Dim
recollections in late sun. Lida and friends in ranch room
getting ready. Yard after yard of long, white gown, Diana
saying, “Hurry up, the guests are all waiting! The
sun’s going down!” Bouquets, full white lace
veil.
Guests
around altar on the desert, rows of folding chairs, sand
and prickly pear, cholla, mesquite trees, Drum in formal
western wear. D’s relatives, bridesmaids (from Lida’s
pals to Thea!) all in white, turquoise, salmon-flowers
accompanied by Atty’s friends waiting in saffron
robes.
Lida,
Atty kneel in front of altar. Philip bows many times, reads
what follows – all guests have copies to read along...
MAHA
PRAJNAPARAMITA HRIDAYA SUTRA
Avalokitashvara
Bodhisattva when practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita perceived
that all the five skadhas in their own being are empty
and was saved from all suffering. O Shariputra, form does
not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from
form. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. The same is
true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness.
O Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness: nor
they do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted nor pure,
do not increase or decrease.
Therefore
in emptiness no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no impulses,
no consciousness, no eyes, no sound, no smell, no taste,
no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes until no
mind-consciousness; no ignorance and also no attainment.
With nothing to attain, the Bodhisattva depends on Prajnaparamita
and his mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance no
fear exists, far apart from every perverted view he dwells
in Nirvana.
In the
three worlds all Buddhas depend on Prajnaparamita and attain
unsurpassed complete perfect enlightenment.
Therefore,
know the Prajnaparamita is the great transcendent mantra,
is the great bright mantra, is the utmost mantra which
is able to relieve all suffering and is true not false.
So proclaim the Prajnaparamita mantra, proclaim the mantra
that says:
G A
T E G A T E
P A R A G A T E
P A R A S A M G A T E
B O D H I S V A H A
*
Tend? To watch over? (Also transitive as tendency to, etc.)
Watch,
stare, gawk at no gap – time between here and there
on yellow paper – evening desert or 214, this room’s
oxide pink book on lap’s Joanne’s little jungle
trip, PHENOMENOLOGY to right off see her head’s at
work through her voice telling it, plus scrawled postcard
inside’s THE ROYAL PURPLE BROKEN-ANKLE PILLOWBOOK,
has to be from winier afternoons in yonder Bolinas shack.
No way, but Yucatan’s here – pyramids, white
monkeys, the old temples every whichway, Laurel & Hardy
taxis midst masses of creepers, vines.
DZIBILCHALTRUN
means where there is writ – writing on rocks.
2 PM
IN FROM OF THE TEMPLE OF THE DOLLS
Etcetera,
won’t (?) can’t sleep. Some stamps downstairs,
Hotel bar crammed nose-to-nose with burlies, like now they’re
off work from steelmill, my hastily disposed-of Sabbath
obligations upon empty stool equals quick shot of Irish.
Not far on that street what’s gotta be brand new
bus depot’s hifalutin terracotta mud-colored plaster,
on down Broadway to pik neon LOS ROMPOPOS minus the R.
Ompopos – not bad, swinging little door’d let
loose unceasing voices, cuckoo-clock bursts of same. All
here, its little barroom of us. Include our quiet, or noises
which seem to crisscross our potations, not only for laughs,
no, in that the flies are the flies upon two doorscreens,
that dog yownking smittenly down the block, cars always
passing in the desert night rain. Plus, nah, funny’s
not the right word.
But
the then part of then too. Who’d know why this then
of us likes it outside better? Better? No, this in here’s
for truck-drivers, leastways tonight. They seem to go on
with it, like their little radios, soft and mean. Not quite
just them, no, I mean that tall lady and her elegant green
butterflies, the innkeeper’s sporty toothpick he
cuts up lemonrinds. Two more too – her black smock
or knitted thing, plus the nineteen watches – what
I’d so far counted – up and down her long fingers
and wrists, tiny ones like rings, tittering now into the
ring-fancied ear of her coal-eyed stud. Me another Bushmill’s.
So you
tell piece of yellow paper, big wedding dance’s bouncing
along by now. Today? It’s just here. Fuck it, all
these odd and even pieces of us united by littlest glances.
The tall one in green boots’s put on her mirror-shades,
I see me in them. Somebody speed plunking CHOPSTICKS on
wang wang jukebox guitar, me I squeeze last whiskey from
nasty glass. Well yeah, we drink, sip, nip, gulp, silent
as silence.
Said
coal-eyed Valentino the stud, exhaltations, mumblings,
bad examples of what’s going on. I’ll know
more tomorrow. More what? Whatever, Coppertop Duracell,
innkeeper, shuffles on. “Art’n entertainment!” says
he at sinkfull of glasses, ashtrays, whatnots at good arm’s
length. Me, one adíos shot to Broadway’s wet
warmth, pissy half-mists to taxi’s tail lights going
by. Wet, empty street’s like where I come from. Grab
hold! the pickup’s tires did ask. Little breezes,
they’re off dead streets, lit-up bus bumbled by – Johnny
Ace’s TELL IT LIKE IT IS equals two marine gunner
boys, under the log’s out of the rain, O this Korean
song dear old Bob’d sing downtown – under big
yellow aspen leaves, to Taos, earlying rains a while, the
song on their faces, they’re blank, stone eyes, Buddha’s
great eyes – one of the marines laughs at his cards,
all broody’n fixed in space, silvered to streetlit
halos.
Where
Have All The Soldiers Gone?
Ok,
sidewalk red neon my side of the street – hotel neon
redder tonight – big part of a road’s all kinds
of signs.
BOUILLON
MTNS CRAZY ED’S ICE WEEDPATCH HWY YUCCA PROVING GROUNDS
POWERPOLE RD CHRIST THE KING (near Shiprock) CATHOLIC CHURCH
CALICO MTNS YELLOW ROSE NEW & USED
Beyond
Needles, the Colorado shrunk down, mud-gray, thirsty.
HOLY MOSES WASH
Rotting
pickup truck hung over the edge of RATTLESNAKE WASH.
Bad
Texas rainstorm near Seligman, white sheet Carmen Basilio
lightning.
BUTTERCUP
CABALITO DONALEEN
SUMMIT
Spare-tire
cover’s big letters over tophatted skull BLACK DEATH
VODKA.
*
Lobby
Lights, Theatre Itself, nobody here, Kassam bent at crossword
thing on desk, on boob Bing’s I WISHED ON THE MOON.
Can’t get around this version of us, and you Lida
on phone, our comical silences.
You’re
too busy by now to get half-pissed we haven’t danced?
Hey,
Love!
5/12/91
*
So upstairs, dandered along to room, she’d have on her ma’s best
voice, “You ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yoorself!” Surely
me letting door close slowly enough to not exclaim.
Forgot’d
put little book (Joanne’s) on pillow where I’d
left it. So out’ve pocket yellow scrap, Valentino’s
names from bar. Rodolpho Alphonso Raffaele etc Valentino,
which, snicker’d, put into his ear what sounds like
the end of the war, had to’ve been the Clock Lady...
“GAWD-DAYAM!
! !” voice just cawed from another window.
From
her little jungle book:
THE
GUARDIAN OF THE TEMPLE IS A BUTTERFLY WE CALL THE AMBASSADOR
THE AMBASSADOR GREETS US SITS ON MY HAND EATS A GRAIN OF
SUGAR FROM SWEET BUN GETS ITS PROBOSCUS STUCK I GUESS SUGAR
STONED A WHILE...
Sunlight
dream, I stand there behind who I think I am on her pink
roadway as Horny the Crow flaps into room so quick he snaps
off light in the dark room, made darker by streetlights.
Sometimes
I yawn out loud in more than one note – Short’n
sweet, old Granny’d always remind me about good food
and ear-aches. End this with this, it’s
only something itself?
& T
E X A S C A N Y O N E
T C
Pissdream
of one in bar I call the Clock Lady, we’re far away
on the white desert under snortling surveillance eyelids,
vast Dromedary herd, as white sky’s basso voice echos, “May
you be on loan to my lowliest Dervish for keeps. My Dervishes
have but one knee! As for your fingers’ clocks, may
they be less than the Nile’s reekingest muck!”
“Uhh-hughh!” mumbled
their dreamer into hotel’s curtains, cold water at
face, teeth to some salt, catch me humming all wrong whatever
it’d be of the MAGIC FLUTE’s prancing ribcage,
another that-settles-that in mirror face’s
incommoding eyes...
This page marked 5/13?
Leave,
street still spidery-dewed, Pod near doorway. In there,
note from daughter Maggie
at desk, she dreaming
we’re on her birthday drive to find us tall Mex
paper-flower the color of three-alarm smoky sun. Lida’s
lastnight note not mailed – feels like it wants
to stay in pocket. What Jack called “my special
nothingness in the common night.” Now facing
old Santa Fe Station, I guess tracks back of hotel.
Alongside
in Utah car, I mean one contented dead-still German
policedog, red tennisball in bright teeth, front-seat
woman squinting
into kookie finder Hitachi Camcorder, taking rear seat
dog’s picture via overhead rearview mirror, on
radio Marty Robbins braying tenor wails at sky’s
perfect silence.
Begin
to see the blue lines of all of it on I-10 East, archipelagos
everywhere – Sonora?
Chihuahua? – every
bird up, summer hot day already, hills, mountains’ brown
sand, 16-wheeled Granny Goose, a vibrating shingle, blue
on the purple as last night’s streetlamp – equals
Tucson’s scrubby dust, shale’s – two
one-way freeways could easy be West Texas, once upon
your old sea bottom. Always stick-cross paper hearts
in between
roads – Hiydeehoh Babydoll, we’re in pairs,
paperwired two-colored bright, faded crosses – see
you outside my specs, end of my nose like Mex toys, los
pileups memorialized in windy dust, your deadgay plots
below faraway mountains’ blue distances, like the
sky, which it is, stockstill – plus Distance, good
name for whole territory – whirly dust and stones,
some more mountains down there plus one black tree beside
the road. Willy Blake’s been by. Only what’s
not growing from the sand’s the pink, smooth, giant
rocks I’d know pisselegant zero of – likely
sandstone’s about all, if they’re that, or
big glaciers’ sediments, all over the place this
far up off’ve runty Canyon poppies, trillions New
Mex dandelion-shaped sunflowers, no etcs but near and
far sides’ glaring grit’s one bum place to
be between on a horse...
*
All
set to say try out the roads like women
try hats. High, wide plains’ vast crumpled pancake,
on and on...
Never’d know it had a name... TEXAS
CANYON, Elev 4,975 went the roadsign. Light glinting
at light in washblue
sky, only can’t see what am trying to say, silent
windshield faces inside of out there, a girl her raised
can of Bud, eyes shut, maybe singing real loud at void’s
birded sky. If this is it it’s no canyon – wider
than a canyon, more like saddles it’d be up north,
and west where 66 has to be, blue or brown flatland more
than – or right now I must’ve blopped out
my solitary “FRUITLESS!” at more than round,
oblong or something, big pieces of pink stone against
early sky.
A
quick laugh’s not much as noises go.
Who’n
fuck cares? Hoping for old pal Monk Philip. Later, if
I’m
lucky – you miss the ones you want to eat with.
Has to’ve been a dream, him telling Diana, after
I asked him to come down in Pod, that I’d make
it too slow, etc. MINGUS AT ANTIBES tape’s on now,
Dolphe blowing it at warm air-waves on hills – guess
we love whom we love, miss ourselves in airports, I blurt “on
purpose!” at hands on the wheel. So you can’t,
won’t cut a deal with yourself at edge of dearest
Lida’s wedding? Fuck the continuous broken line
of whomever I fucking well might be. Not a sound, slow
wind
at bright rocks, sands, Dolphe quitting right here at
crest, silent everywhere.
Noises?...
Pod’s all,
flattened black prairie rattler beside the road, canyon
wider on east slope, another semi
glinting maybe five miles down, big guy nodding – had
to be at straight-up sun, then the glare, its colorless
booming wind – he’s gone on by, hear him
shifting down. Z W O O O S H two noiseless dogs’ snooty
sideglances, fuck you, to boot! Plus you, Chapita, you
quirky bitch
nudging my ribs like, “Heh asshole, go on say something
funny, huh!”
“Okay, this’s the first chocolate cookie out
on the great plains!” said I, not quite brandishing
said cookie at two crows on a pink rock.
So
Lida, once I got in your room had to tell you, “This
here’s the Green Toad, your Valentine!” Always
more to it than you know. I knew. Maverick Mountains,
Chihuahua down there, 6,000 feet in the air’s the
Cochise Stronghold Recreation area on Shell Map as loud
as can be – whole
effing country turning into Areas... Plus big BLT back
down in Lordsburg, state-highway guy across busy counter
from me – greener shades than mine, I do guess
squinting at rest of us in place on old street, grim
old women
everywhere.
O,
parked beside goose-neck cowtrailer, shit’n
all, big, orange BORN AGAIN on rear bumper plus CHRIST
STAYS
ALL WEEK, do think so, another coffee to piss on the
road before Santa Fe, or something, big warm piece of apple
pie too, for sure, like it says on the wall – HEY!
WE’RE THE WORLD’S RED CHILI BELLY BUTTONS!
This’s the famous double-bind now, an hour later – what’s
the name of where I ate their apple pie? Ma Quirk’s?
Bed of Nails Cafe? Nope, I swear it, Ed Sanders’,
his grin why try to say what evidently I can’t
know? Questions abound – too many questions – maybe
how to win over too many ETCS...
Stack
of old tires on poles ten feet high at corner, two snoozing
dogs, chins
on shut-off gas pumps. RABBITS
4 SALE
in street’s empty shop windows, real tall old man
watching, two big hands hanging down, behind him old
gray-blue buildings in noontime sun, three horizons,
lavender as
Chinese limestone mountains – but in stone buildings
smells like rain, only no dead worms or puddles. One
old fart, funny hat and dark shades in wood wheelchair,
basalt
blue doorway, red hands plunk banjo like nobody knows
he’s
here. JOLLY BEAN FLOWERS sound in yr head tastes itself,
traveling. In hemmed’n cloudy Ireland on bike – tied
slicker for rains I’d never guess at – one
long tea afternoon at Willy Yeats’ biographer’s,
wife filling saddlebag with lavender for when I’d
be back in Dublin to be biking elsewhere...
No,
cartoons, fuck your backdrops as if anywhere’s
not all of it. Was the Canyon place Apache Pass? No name
on map. Chiricahuas, Butterfield Stage Line’s one-way
station, popping along across Distance, another coffee
in Benson or Dragoon. Up past Leviton, Polvadera. The
Truth & Consquences
sign, San Acacia gas place’s closed Sundays. Lichened
words’ names on pockmarked gravestones in last
year’s
grasses, weeds. None, no, one date I can see. The word
VILLAR... Stop there, stretching to stretch, touch, want
to, but some I can’t read.
In
this forgotten cemetery on the hill below the road – you
must know this’s late afternoon – days like
these never do go right, clockwise they don’t,
I must’ve expected it different – its stone
grayer and whiter than the grass, all its clumps of something
taller than sagebrush below on the wide hill – chamisa? – think
you’d see the river from up here.
Cottonwoods
in arroyos by creeks, rivers – Lincoln
County out there someplace, O you Texas cows! Like in
some other country, nothing looks too close. Big robin,
almost
gray, jumped close enough on a stone can see it’s
not chomping its dinner. Another bird, startling black
and white magpie’d begun to clack. Kicked old beer
bottle long kick, rattling at wagonwheel-rim, see all
at once be dark soon enough, wind off river wagging dead
grasses,
maybe chamisa, sunflower stalks. Lights up on I-25 going
by. Once somebody told me I must’ve been born before
first light’s Hour of The Ox. Could be – I
mean today’s just enough of itself.
Birds
quitting too. Owl guy said owls hunt together at night.
Owls plus
barflies. White-handed the darker it
gets, scribbling like kid’s. Also am not sure – whatever
sure means – why I’m right here. Big bunch
of cars doing it up on the road, seem quicker than in
daylight. Talking to myself’s got to sound like
that. Sage smelling Ok, grasses too in their dry air.
Its silence.
Throw a stone at something you won’t hit, cough
a cough, some lights – have to be across river,
looks like a town. Dusk, I tell me, one of light’s
tricks. Cough again, look down at a place’s gone
wood crosses.
After Five now, tearassing up 25 in bum
lights oncoming glare, faraway red blinkers everywhere
on limousine-blue
sky. No idea the name of motel on Cerrillos, hung out
here years back, helping her put in strawberries up on
Delgado,
getting busted on a street one noisy night.
“I
get one?”
“The
one night?”
“Why
not?”
Me
versus too heavy canvas suitcase, leaning like this,
twist key in the lobby. I call it a
lobby – one
old guy open-mouth snoozing in huge red chair.
Must
do, watch the original TARZAN – the Weismuller,
not the Elmo Lincoln original. Used to know a lot
of these things, all over L.A.’s satin skatable sidewalks.
Thus in the room’s boob, himself, awake but
not awake, Tarzan grunting to Jane, her ten fingers
by now straight
before her grasped teeth, wailing “TARZAN!” but
don’t get her wrong, not our Coleened maiden,
what bubbling gasps, her staring Little-Nell entreaties,
himself
in his somewhere’d treetops Y E E A A A Y – yeeaaying
down from treetops, almost pierce each of our movie-house
ears, while across windbent prairies somewhere do
come the trooping Zebras, the great close- and far-shots
of
muttering Baboons, if by now our man’s battling
the Lion herself – O, I forgot the guy’s
loin-knife – stabbing,
stabbing some more if again noh! ohh nohh! he’ll
stagger, reel, rolls his eyes skyward as he rolls
backwards in the weeds all or any of which, I must
add, almost
magically erases itself...
But
deep within some L.A. movieplace’s matinee-seats
am I not mad for this Jane, tearing on my skates,
across that town’s colored sidewalks, or me
swimming, Weismuller or not, into her Maureening
eyes, or can it matter at all,
this searching still across old Africa’s vast
treetops etc?
*
Midnight,
almost. The moon somewhere in Dog’s
Eyes, trying to stick lost stuff into notes, like
on Fly-Catching Pigs, the spider roots of the Turkey
Cucumber – plus
telling him his likeness to Dismas, Patron Saint
of Thieves. Vivid complaints he left in his path – her
wedding’s
his too, now, still in saffron gown, if that’s
saffron, who knows? But both hands full of goodies
to munch, “Santa
Fe, huh? I should tell you about that place. There’s
no good Chinese food any more.” Here now either,
to get back to proper pissing’n moaning, one
complaint, that and “all the old houses are
covered in Dolls’ skins...”
___________________
Above line’s said Daikon Monk’s delineation
between here and there, he who’s now trying
to eat a tangerine, if only he’d told or warned
me such’d
not be too easy. Also, nothing divulged above of
his reading his own stuff, thinking of DIAMOND NOODLE,
etc. That good
Dr. Gwaark’s what I always wanted to call him,
if I could but I cannot, he who monked in this town
long since,
O happy, why remember what I can’t know?
Again?
Or what? Nah, this here’s gumshoeing what’s
out there, the stuff I like to tell the dashboard,
Uncle Philip’s names of his stuff too – OFF
THE WALL, MEMOIRS OF AN INTERGLACIAL AGE, ON BEAR’S
HEAD, others and others, let alone partake of any
properly coffee’d
meditational afterthought – now merely out
of this silent, clanking monk as he bends to his
marmaladed croissant,
if that’s what he’s grasping...?
*
Now,
today was there any of it? The poached hills or crumbled,
higher
away? Mountains, you must stay like that, going up
and down too much.
ADDENDA?
To
do with old Watt’s Davus Complex, his
morbid fear of Sphynxes
THE SUM ASSESS
OF THE WORLD’S WOES
NOTHINGNESS
IN WORDS ENCLOSE
HE WATCHES HIS LEGS
AS UNDER HIM THEY MOVED,
IN AND OUT
SANTA FE
Ours, or lots of cars, great rents in mountain overcast
clouds out’ve windshield where’ve never been
before – O, adobe on half-shell, no her on Plaza,
no hairpin nor blue-booted toe. Place’s new white-painted
benches, walkway bricks, piles of Stetsons in windows plus
one solemn FREE TIBET – I think Navajo – pumps
slow bike up brick street. The Virgin of Dead Texas
Oilfields, her junked shrine. Forgot her name but hear
it in the glinty
wind. Huge Buick too close, smutching curb, like half
my toes, guy combing his hair gives me the finger.
Cloudy freeze-foto black and white, La Fonda bartender
tries to smile under over-gunked hair.
Ohh-hohh,
don’t
see her – fixing flat on new
Taos Rd? – again hoh-hoh, taking in some more
dead still shop-windows’ acres polished Turquoise,
Roadrunner tee-shirts plus awesome ring Japanese gentlemen
clutch
cameras all round big robin also clutching bigger worm
inside grass... ON EST MIEUX ICI QU’EN’ Non!
non! he’d go into canopied café en face
de big gate, to Pére Lachaise what wit ol’ Proust’n
all’ve its beeg wones, old one’s paper
opened says FREDERICKS OF HOLLYWOOD but tiny injun
girl’d
do cartwheels on same blue grass, street radio SCHUR’S
THE MAN I LOVE...
Herself,
she’d find her happy
last-week note on her way right here – WATERFALL
ON WAY – THIS CANYON’S
RED ROCKS, BIG PIG NEXTDOOR – ALMOST FORGOT BLACK
HEN KEEPS COMING INTO KITCHEN LIKE IN MEXICO, NO?
Her
face’s grinning, big blue boots do click at bricks,
lavender eyes’ straw hat’s black lines – back
to bar for a beer, her out-of-breath talking, she do
know where we gotta eat – it just happens! – that
balcony place other end of Plaza.
Fast-fluttered words, O, our nervous hands, etc! Film
colors’d
be dim tints except match-lit reds, fieldstone wall
beiges, grays for grainy lights – keep trying!
play at Da Vinci! Or no, here, barroom’s part-lit
rattling stools, our two beers, she talking helter-skelter
re: being late.
Me munching green-bowl peanuts – close up – winking
phone, the works, chuckling’n all. Man in white
Stetson lights small cigar, admires blue ash. Next
block’s
neon BOOKS discreetest background color. These towns’re
all villas now, etc etc... include please loud-voiced
noontime cafes above yonder Plaza’s almost not
noises.
This
place – wall of red-chilis end of
the balcony, the stiff-tailed cat on its rail. Clinking.
Salads, Margaritas,
real glum tall waiter. Next table, pretty loud woman’s
opening line, “Anybody in here make me good pickle?”
“On this dream train in the Chinese mountains,” said
I, “the guy’s in blue pants, carving a
turnip into a rose. He’s an acrobat with this
big urn he throws in the air to catch on his head,
only two Chinese
singers in three-cornered hats keep going up’n
down the scale in Eyetie. The Magic Flute! Big red
poppy on
each hat!”
Stacia
mimes Gloria Swanson when she says, “So clear
down to Albuquerque it’s all pitchdark’n
they grabbed up some Jack Daniels, they’re hitting
on it nice’n hard!”
I cough.
“Hey you, that’s your first good one since you got
here. Your nose must like it, I |