Michael Andrews
6/11/2004
apeiron@beachnet.com
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| Trade Books / The Poet From The City Of The Angels / Poetry / Photography
Michael Andrews 6/11/2004 apeiron@beachnet.com |
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-082262
Copyright © 1990 Michael Andrews
ISBN 0-941017-16-8
6.5x9, perfect bound with color cover.
236 pages set with Goudy and Korinna.
Including 38 color photographs by the author.
$25.00
LOS ANGELES
AND BEFORE THAT
1 2 3 THE DEVIL'S AFTER ME
PAPA
THE TOOTH FAIRY
GULL TRACKS
GNOMES
GUMBALLS
WEEDS
YO-YOS
STRAWS
MARBLES
MOST MEN
LOS ANGELES
WAKING, SUMMER
MADONNA OF THE LAUNDROMAT
AN OLD DRUNK
DISTANT HORIZONS
RAIN RUNNER
99% PACIFIED, SAIGON; 1969 - 1971
BODY COUNTS
BODY BAGS
99% PACIFIED
WAR IS HELL
DRYING OUT
GEOGRAPHY MADE SIMPLE, AROUND THE WORLD; 1971 - 1972
KOWLOON TO HONG KONG
A SMALL GOD
THE CRETAN GOATHERDER
LOS ANGELES
PIER AVENUE
BOX CANYONS
IN THE AUTO PARTS STORE
FOGHORN
THE MULLAH AND PUSHER, TEHRAN, IRAN; 1974
BLACK SUN
STREET SWEEPERS
PAPER PLANES
TEHRAN LOVE POEM
OUT OF PHASE
THE MULLAH AND THE PUSHER
LOS ANGELES
ALL THE TIME
SAVING SOULS
LAO TZU SELLING WATER
TWO PEOPLE ON BIKES
THE PLACE WHERE I WILL DIE
TO GET AWAY
AN EVENT IN AUTUMN
WHERE THE RANGERS HAVE GUNS
MOUNTAIN STORM
FOR THE OLD MAN
IN RETURN
LOS ANGELES
40 TURKEYS SO WHAT
THE SAME OLD POEM
GETTING LUCKY WITH STYLE
SOCKS
MACHU PICCHU, PERU; SPRING 1976
WOMAN SLEEPING ON THE STEPS OF THE CHURCH
HANDS AND PEAS
MACHU PICCHU
IN THE MORNING A WHORE BUYS A BRAND NEW DRESS
CHILDREN, PLAZA DE ARMAS
FOR TWO CENTS
THE POET FROM THE CITY OF THE ANGELS AND THE POLICEMAN FROM THE
CITY OF PEACE
LOS ANGELES
A CALENDAR OF WOMEN
IN THE SUPERMARKET
THE SUNSET AT THE END OF THE FREEWAY
INTERIOR DECORATING
LUCK
RIVERRUN, SAN JUAN RIVER, UTAH; SUMMER 1976
THE WRONG ROAD
RIVERRUN
SHE IS A ROOM
GENERATIONS
DESERT PATTERNS
STEER GULCH
LOS ANGELES
THE TENDER SCENE
AND A GOOD DAY
THE OLD GUY
RAGS
RIDING SOUTH FROM L.A. TO PERU; 1979
FOREWORD by Carlos Fuentes
THE ROAD
EL MUCHO MACHO
PEPPERS
BROOMS
THE MAN IN THE MURAL
L.O.V.E.
VIPS
MAYAN GRAFFITI
RED AND YELLOW DOOR
BOY ON CURB
CONFESSIONS
A SOLDIER AND HIS DOG UNDER THE FLAME TREE IN THE DAWN,
IN THE RAIN, IN SAN JUAN DEL SUR, IN NICARAGUA,
IN MAY, IN 1979, IN THE WAR
PINK BOXES
A SHORT TIMER'S BED
QUE RICO
AGE
INTIHAUTANA
LOS ANGELES
HANDS
THE RACE
A WHITE ROSE IN A BLIZZARD
LAUGHING
THE XMAS KID
XMAS IN LOVE
XMAS GOES TO WAR
XMAS ON LOMA DRIVE
LUMPS
DECORATING THE TREE
ONLY 110 SHOPPING DAYS TILL XMAS
LOS ANGELES
THE LAST POEM
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
PHOTOGRAPHS
TABI COOPER
SELF PORTRAIT: SACSAHUAMAN, PERU
GUMBALLS: MELROSE AVENUE
WEEDS: SKID ROW
YO-YOS: OLVERA STREET
STRAWS: OLVERA STREET
MARBLES
VIETNAMESE GIRL ON JUNGLE PATH
THE STAR FERRY: KOWLOON TO HONG KONG
THE ACROPOLIS AT SUNRISE
TEHRAN BAZAAR
GROUND COVER: JACKASS MEADOWS
THE DEVIL'S PINE: MADERO PEAK
WOMAN SLEEPING OF THE STEPS OF THE CURCH: CUSCO, PERU
HANDS AND PEAS: CUSCO MARKET
TEMPLE DOOR: MACHU PICCHU, PERU
INCA GIRL: CHINCHERRO MARKET, PERU
OLD MAN SLEEPING ON THE STEP OF THE CUSCO TRAIN STATION
WOMAN BY WINDOW
GENERATIONS: ANASAZI RUIN ON THE SAN JUAN RIVER
BLOOD RIVER: THE GOOSENECKS OF THE SAN JUAN RIVER
PEPPERS BLUE: OAXACA MARKET, MEXICO
PEPPERS ON A MEXICAN NEWSPAPER: MORELIA MARKET, MEXICO
BROOMS: THE MORELIA MARKET, MEXICO
THE MAN IN THE MURAL: TOLUCA, MEXICO
L.O.V.E: 47 CHEVROLET, BUCARELI PARKING LOT, MEXICO CITY
RED AND YELLOW DOOR: SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, MEXICO
BOY ON CURB: SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, MEXICO
CONFESSIONS: CATHEDRAL OF SAN JOSE, ANTIGUA, GUATEMALA
A SOLDIER AND HIS DOG: SAN JUAN DEL SUR, NICARAGUA
PINK BOXES ON A STAKE BED TRUCK: SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA
A SHORT TIMER'S BED: SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA
AGE: CROSSES IN THE PERUVIAN COASTAL DESERT: GUADALUPE
THE INTIHUATANA: MACHU PICCHU, PERU
MACHU PICCHU, THE MAIN PLAZA
XMAS TREE SANTA
ROAD, BIKE & CROSS: PERU
THE AUTHOR, PACHACAMAC PERU
1 Michael Andrews rides South on his Yamaha XT500 from Los
Angeles to Lima. The East and the West are "Far": Death
Valley of the Far West, where the cameras of Von Stroheim and
Antonioni came to cold halt; Hiroshima, of the Far East, where no
camera could survive the blast of light. You are driving away
from the North; the North is heartless, barren, not far, just
empty and lost. The Aztecs imagined it as a white hell. But the
South is "Deep". You do not go to it, but inside it.
You do not go away to it, you drive into it. The South is a hole:
vagina, anus, mouth, grave, an eye, an ear. The South is a wound
that does not heal, like the red brooms, the red trees, the red
candy apples, the red peppers, the red walls Michael Andrews sees
but burrows into, with his camera, with his Yamaha, in Morelia,
Los Mochis, San Cristobal, San Juan del Sur.
2 The South is uncertain. The Aztecs saw it as the land of the
Four Hundred Rabbits, constantly changing, moving, breeding,
mutating. You go South: you are driven by metamorphosis; the
South re-shapes you. Perhaps there is a Mason-Dixon line in every
Yankee soul: it is the frontier you must cross inside yourselves,
the deep frontier that takes you down to see your soul: the soul
of Faulkner's men and Stryon's women: the scene of nature
illuminated by passion, aye, by madness because no presence on
this earth is innocent once it sees and speaks; no footprint on
the mud is guiltless.
3 The South of the South is Latin America. Here Michael Andrews
drives with his camera and his motorcycle into the very soul of
the soul of his depth. Southerners infiltrated Texas, tore it
from Mexico, launched the mutilating war of the 1840's in order
to add slave states to the Union. The South of the South: what
madness, what hallucinations, what flashes of color and crime, of
pity and anger, red and green as peppers and flags, to redeem the
image of the Latin and the Indian South, the thirst for sin of
the Anglo-Saxon and African South of the United States. Said Bill
Faulkner: "Let me condemn myself, but give me one minute
more." Said Bill Styron: "The wages of sin is not death
but isolation."
They rode South and met the baroque hunger of the void, the
thunderous silence of Montezuma's golden chamber and Pizarro's
iron cross, the far-away murmurs of Phillip II in royal penitence
and the Jews of Longorno burnt at the stake. Heap sin on sin,
silence on silence, innocence on innocence, until you see with
your naked eye the encounter of the two Americas, and Black, in
an image or a word that unites the common experience of being man
or woman or child in this Fucked Utopia, the soi-disant New
World.
4 A hole, a cunt, a grave: Michael Andrews sees the secret wounds
of pain and pleasure in Latin America. His photos are a trail of
false gaieties; a shuddering sob, a duel with fear lies waiting
for the Gringo traveler as the North is devoured by the South,
the Detroit-made jalopy is redeemed by the black words LOVE
(remember Robert Mitchum's knuckles?), the blazing peppers of
Morelia soak the review of a made-in-Hollywood movie, a jukebox
takes the place of a guitar in the forlorn cantina in Chihuahua
and the lights go out but the wound does not close. It is forever
open, like a street mural in Toluca where a passing man becomes a
part of the unmoveable wall - or is it the mural that becomes a
part of the pedestrian, is carried away by him and becomes a
moveable icon, fluid, a river of colors in search, again, for its
hole, its sewer, its navel? In this great photograph taken in
Toluca, Michael Andrews permits us to imagine Ucello's battles as
they overflow the space of the mural and spill over into the
Umbrian countryside. A moment frozen in time. A moment, also,
liberated from time (a photograph, a painting) or even liberating
time as it encapsules it?
5 Mexico and Cusco: the names of the two great capital cities of
Ancient America mean the same thing: navel, center of the world.
Michael Andrews rides South but like Columbus sailing West he is
meeting East; like Jules Verne's hardy expeditioners, who, by
entering a volcanic crater in Iceland shall reappear one day in
China. Cathay is always there; it is never there. The Great Khan
is waiting for us but we do not see him. He is a sleepy soldier
with a dog under a blood tree in Nam or Nic; he is a boy waiting
on a pink and blue curb in the Sierra Madre; he is a candy-apple
girl in the thief's market of Lima la Horrible, the city Melville
cried over. The old peoples of the Americas knew that all sense
of direction is unreliable - but another form of metamorphosis,
like the hares of the South, a perpetual mutation of moving
flesh, figures in rapid movement, brought to an imaginary death
by the camera, stilled by the camera and yet granted life by that
same murderous weapon. Where shall the camera choose to alight?
Where shall it proclaim its grace, its navel, its cunt, its eye?
6 The camera moves. It follows an urgent trail, from North to
South, from Far to Deep, from Nothing to All. The camera
describes an epic search for the future, the deed, the glory, the
violence of the human hero who first acts by traveling, by
traveling decides to scratch his nails on the blind wall of
destiny. Displacement is the first great human challenge. The
Gods do not move. They live in Cusco or Olympus. The hero breaks
the equilibrium of the Divine World by an act that sees and
moves: I see Troy, I leave the women and children behind, keeping
the tombs of the forbears, I go to war: shall the Gods follow me?
They do and the human dream of glory, violence and honor we call
history is born. It is a flaming drama, a soldier and a dog under
a burning tree; it creates men and men must pay their rebellion
and their glory. The mask of glory is tainted by violence and
ripped off by history. Under it, says Simone Weil, the name of
our face is death.
7 We walk back. Michael Andrews, who carries his California
strapped on his shoulders, who takes along with him his L.A. as
Achilles his heel, is looking through his photographs for the
other frontier denied to the U.S.A. ever since the continent came
to an end in the "slide area" where everything is
slipping from the shaky canyons to the sea. I look for the
heartbreaking pratfalls of Lloyd and Langdon, the anarchic glee
of Laurel and Hardy as they destroy Jacuzis, the Rolls Royces of
Brentwood mansions, I look for the savage leer of the mad shabby
migrants Groucho, Harpo and Chico as they provide room service at
the Beverly Hilton, I look for the deadpan face of Keaton as he
peers into the shops on Rodeo Drive. Instead, I get the pictures
of Michael Andrews as he rides South from his shaky, barren,
emphysemic Paradise to the dust, color and misery of the Southern
Indian and Spanish frontier. He brings with him the biting
lyricism of the true poets of California, those frontiersmen
without a frontier, those Ulysses of asphalt Odysseys and
neon-lit agoras at noon: Bierce and Hammet and Chandler, the last
warriors. And Didion, the last vestal.
8 Walter Benjamin reminds us that the first photographs taken
during the 19th century were treasured by their lucky possessors
and kept in jewel boxes. For the first time, the tradesman and
his wife, the small-town physician, the Balzacian cast, could
claim that they had a face, an identity, and in a way, an
immortality. It was perhaps the greatest revolution of the great
bourgeoisie century, the greatest democratic event: the camera.
More than a vote, every one had a face. "We regard a
portrait as a human being", Andrews quotes Wittgenstein. One
might add, quoting Godard: "To photograph a face is to
photograph a soul." Andrews puts his pictures in the
jewel-box of death: the wooden pajama of our dreams
9 As he rides South, Michael Andrews the Gringo, the man from the
Lost North and the Far West, follows the route away from the gods
of his civilization, defies them to come with him, finds them in
parking lots and cantinas transformed into plumed serpents and
smoking mirrors, drives on, further South, further into the cave,
the cunt, the grave, the eye of the eye, carrying with him the
burning specters of Quetzalcoatl and Cortez and Henry Ford and
Wurlitzer the organ grinder and Thompson the bullet rattler,
deeper and deeper South to the top of the world (remember Sam
Jaffe in
10 The tribes first fled the blazing South - red as a pepper, a
broom, a sofa, a machine gun, a flower - where they had no need
to talk because they could see under the sun. Their language was
their light and they could obey the warning eyes that said run,
hide, we are in danger, or the reassuring hand that said come,
sit, talk, drink, we are now safe. Michael Andrews goes toward
the images fed and described by light, and silenced by light,
yes, away from the shrouded North where men must speak if they
are to be understood and the tribe is to be saved, because the
fog binds them and the movements of the figures are no longer
self-explanatory: they now must be verbalized.
11 But as he rides South through the green and red civilizations
of Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Michael Andrews, unaware that he is
following a route that is not far but deep, a hidden circle drawn
with ironic bitterness rather than with astonished vice, comes to
the Center of the South, the heart of light, and there is no
color there. There is the grey, pearly height of Machu Picchu. We
are in the sacred zone. We see. "What can be shown, cannot
be said," Michael quotes Ludwig, and takes the pictures of
the holy place: the deepest South is its highest summit: the
greatest hole is the very navel of the origin. The great trip has
ended. We have seen. But the colors are no longer there. We need
words to bring them back. The photographer Michael Andrews, who
believed that his camera could speak without words, was right and
wrong. Ludwig W. did not say that there is a region beyond
language, but only beyond a certain language: the language of
proposition and rationalization. Beyond, there is the language of
poetry, riddle and myth. This is the language that speaks beyond
language, the language required to give back its colors to the
naked light of the sacred: "But a permanence of stone and
language: the city upraised as a cup in all our hands, hands of
the living, the dead, the silent, a plenitude of death upholding
the wall, a plenitude of life the petals of stone: the permanent
rose, the abode: this reef of glacial colonies, the Andes."
Carlos Fuentes
Yesterday
old David
ran his fingers
through his long gray beard
and died.
He said--
all I ever did was survive.
The day before that
he was feeding
french fries to the gulls
and said
he was feeling fine.
Ten years before that
he went on a 3 month
camping trip
and when he came back
he talked less.
The day before he left
he buried Helen.
Four days before that
she said
she regretted nothing.
Eight years before that
he closed down
the office supply store
and retired.
Forty years before that
he opened up an art gallery.
They planned to make enough
to retire some place exotic
with beaches and palms
and eternal sun.
Two months before that
he married Helen.
The year before that
he was on his way
to bum around the world.
He could not sleep nights
listening to the calliope
of stars.
The day before that
he graduated
with a degree in law
and told his father
he would never practice.
Fifteen years earlier
he told his grandfather
he was going to be
a mountain climber
when he grew up.
Three years before that
he said he would never
grow up.
The day before that
his mother told him
the truth
about Santa Claus
and the Easter Bunny.
Four years before that
his aunt Bessie
cast his horoscope
and said
he would be a success
in life,
marry three times,
become a famous painter
and die rich
in a foreign land.
The day before that
Dr. Anderson
pulled him from the womb,
slapped him on the ass
and he screamed.
I remember
when I was 6
and I was just finding out
that life was a
fizzless Alka-Seltzer
and was very horny
and didn't know what to do about it.
They drove me nuts
ladies on TV
teachers
little girls
at the swimming pool
pushed me over the edge
and I'd pinch
their flat little asses
just to see
how they felt.
And it wasn't fair
the way I wanted them
the way I couldn't have them
and I was losing teeth
on a regular basis
like paying some kind of tax
but I was grateful
that I hadn't gone blind
from all that self abuse.
And one night
I put a tooth
under the pillow
and waited to fuck
the Tooth Fairy
but I woke up
in the morning
with a hard on
toothless
and 25 cents
richer.
It takes a long time
to get 4 pennies.
It takes most of a summer
and it takes
sacrifice and patience
and now and then, a scam.
"Red," I say,
"I've got to have a red one."
The first one out is green
and I give it to Grubby.
Grubby will eat
any color he can get.
Blue is not so bad,
so I put it in my pocket.
I know I'm in trouble
when I get the orange one,
but Grubby doesn't mind a bit.
My last penny
falls into the slot,
I twist the knob around
and it clatters
through the gears.
The gumballs rumble
and I hear one
rattle down the chute.
"White," I yell. "I hate white."
White is no color at all.
White has got no taste.
It follows the other two
into Grubby's puffing cheeks.
My kid brother
drops in his only penny,
twists the crank,
pulls out a red gumball
and pops it in his mouth
and that's the way life is.
Blue--is not so bad.
To live a moment
is to live forever,
except that few men
live at all,
and though no one
lives longer
than a dead child
most men
die infants.
for the 5th Cavalry to the tune of Camptown Ladies Sing
This Song
The 5th Cavalry had a hell of a good time
with the new guys who got shipped in by the planeload
walking on their own two boots, the green grunts,
the boys with the clear eyes, clear skin, clear consciencenesses.
They would have a barbecue, part of the on-the-job-training,
learning to laugh at death like real men;
six-by loads of PX beer and roasted hot-dogs
and they would all get drunk together
and they would laugh and chuckle and swig the suds,
and they would wear these silly cowboy hats
so they all looked just like Custer riding to his last stand,
and they would put their arms around one another
and they would sway back and forth, back and forth, singing
you're going home in a body bag
do-dah
do-dah.
And they would.
They would chopper out to the boonies
and three weeks later they would come back,
and they would come back only two ways;
in a body bag
or out.
And the ones that were 'out' weren't green anymore,
and they didn't wear the silly cowboy hats, and they never
laughed,
or they laughed too loud or at the wrong things,
and they never sang and they still drank the PX beer,
but their eyes looked to infinity or they jerked all over the
place,
and their skins turned into roadmaps of hell,
all lines and roads and intersections and stop signs,
and their hair sometimes turned white,
and they got old, not wise,
and not real men,
just old.
And the ones that were 'in' the body bags were just dead.
They never even got old; just dead,
and they died in ones and twos
and by the baker's dozen, by the gross, and by the ton.
And they put them in the bags and rushed them to the freezers
before they turned black and rotten and the bags would fill up
with stinking gas like balloons that someone forgot to color.
And they didn't sing anymore,
and they didn't get the PX beer either,
but they got their wish
you're going home in a body bag
do-dah
do-dah.
Every night I sweat in bed
whether or not Flo lets me have the air-conditioner on.
Flo hates the air-conditioner, but I sweat.
It's always hot and hotter and everything rots;
books and shoes and food and bodies, and the pillow that I sweat
into.
Even when the air-conditioner is freezing I rot in my sleep
and Flo says that I grind my teeth so hard that the noise wakes
her up
even above the conditioner and the B-52s and the bombs,
and I say, "It's the stink, the pillows are rotting."
So one day I got some body bags
and put them on the pillows to keep them dry.
Flo said, "Oh, where did you get the plastic bags."
I said, "They're body bags" and she tore it off
and said that she couldn't sleep on it.
"Jesus," I said, "they're just big goddamn plastic
baggies."
But after a few nights the sweat would just lay in puddles,
and the bags made noise when the bombs would plow up the night,
and I tossed and turned, grinding my teeth,
and the body bags would crinkle and pop
like they were singing some song I've heard before.
But the worst part is that they would sigh, whooosh,
like gas leaking from a balloon,
like they were trying to breath for someone
who couldn't catch their breath
from too much laughing or too much singing.
And no one is singing anymore
because we are all in some kind of body bag.
And that's the difference I guess:
outside the bag you can still hear the bombs
and the crinkle and the breathing and the singing,
and inside the bag
you never hear
a goddamn thing.
do-dah
do-dah.
Cusco Market
Hands and peas
potatoes and carrots
soles and fingers
this for that
everyone is trading
pork chops for bananas
and everyone's
a cheater.
This for that
a shirt for a hammer
a hammer for potatoes
potatoes for a knife
a knife for a trout
a trout for a backrub
a backrub for a washing machine
a washing machine
will get you laid
and getting laid is like a potato.
1. You chip the stone
no steel
just bronze and more stone.
You lift 12 tons
no wheels
no levers.
When your stomach hurts
you chew the coca
and go on.
The Inca died.
The Spaniard
never found his city,
raped the rest
stole the gold
and died of embracing
diseased sheep.
500 years later
the city died
of cultural syphilis.
The Indian
still chews
the coca.
2. Civilization is a wonderful thing.
The Incas had it.
Like all the rest
it was based on
the penis and the spear.
Either way
it all comes down
to thrust.
Some guy named Pachacutec
in 1420
flogged a zillion Indians
into building
the largest whorehouse
in America.
Chip that stone.
Tote that rock.
3. The christians will tell you
that all the women
that the Inca kept here
were virgins.
But it's not likely
that the Incas
were as stupid
as christians.
They were pornographic
as the Chinese
and the east Indians,
all those temple prostitutes
specializing in stone fellatio.
It pleases me to think
it was the virgins
they sacrificed
on the huge stone altars.
You had to be crazy
to kill a good lay.
The Incas made a ceramic pipe
in the form of a man
with an erection.
On the wedding night
they smoked cocaine
and blew the smoke
through the clay penis
into the bride's vagina
until the hymen
was anaesthetized
so she would feel
no pain
in the first
act of love.
Now that
was civilization.
Cusco
The sun rolls over the mountain.
The park bench turns to ice.
It's Sunday.
I am the only one left
except for Jesus up on the hill.
The flies are gone.
The beggars are gone.
Even the shoeshine boys have left me alone.
Tomorrow I am going to Machu Picchu
looking for the same old answers.
But they're the wrong questions and it's the wrong place
and what do stones and mountains know anyway.
A bunch of children come into the plaza.
I am the only toy in sight.
They stand in a circle and watch me write
until they can't stand it anymore--
Senor, in Ingles, que dice?
In English this is a pen
this is paper
this is a watch
and what you have just tugged on is a beard.
They are laughing like the sun never sets
like there are no dead civilizations
like there is no cement Jesus.
Children don't ask the wrong questions.
This is a jacket.
This is my ear.
This is a love poem.
I am giving it to you.
San Juan River, Utah
for my brother Rick
The river is up 4 inches.
It curls and spirals
eddies between the rocks
and shoots over the rapid.
All day the clouds
make the same pattern
swirl around one another
with long white fingers
then die in a gust of wind.
For hours I stare
at the sandstone cliff
faces and horses
wars and generals and poets
march by,
petroglyphs scratched
into the stone.
They are all dead.
We cross the river
naked
carry our clothes
high above our heads.
The sun drops anvils
on our backs.
We walk upriver
climb the cliff
into a water canyon
an alkaline pool
a little mud
a mound of crystal
desert salt and sulphur
deadly
dripping from the stone.
We sit 200 feet above the river.
It's 120 degrees.
The ochre cliffs
bleeding from the sky.
The patterns of rock
laid open by the surgical cut
of the river.
Oceans have passed
and glaciers.
They drew canyons
on the desert floor.
They tell a story
about a guy they found
last year in Cataract Canyon.
He had fallen from a cliff
broke both legs
and when it came too hard
he crawled to the jimson weed
and ate it all
knowing it was a quicker way to die.
But that plant is a bitch killer.
It sucks the hope
like breath out your lungs
until your heart
has the good sense
to stop.
It was a chickenshit way to die
slumped over a log
with that huge terror
stamped into his face
until the sun and ants
picked it clean.
It's all the beauty
we leave behind.
A configuration of bones
cast for an augury.
It's a scorpion
dead and dry
still clutching
the underside of a boulder,
an arrangement
like words on a page
or words in your ear--
I will leave them for you.
A hundred million years ago
this was an ocean.
A billion sea beasts
owned this canyon.
They left their shells
stamped in the stone.
It's the pure, white geometry
of a horse's bones
bleaching on a plate
of desert sand.
They almost spell
some last word.
We spend a lifetime
drawing patterns in that sand
deadly
beautiful
it's a little token
of our appreciation.
We walk down to the river
jump in, cool all over,
swim in that pattern of swirls
get out on the hot stone
drying in the last light
watching the sun
fingerpaint clouds
going down past the rim.
When we fart
it echoes off the far canyon wall
and we laugh
just like that river
green and swirling.
Shit.
I'm lucky to be alive.
I'm 31.
Rick is 27.
We are lean and strong
and our bodies are as naked
as the cliffs
brick-red and gold
and right now
this canyon
is ours.
From midnight till 3 we kill mosquitoes.
I twirl the pillowcase that says Hotel Panuco like Bruce Lee
stamping out evil.
We turn off the lights and wait to hear the buzz, then wham, slap
and cuss.
In three hours we kill 8 of them and they get 72 bites
so we pitch the tent on top of the double mattress on the floor.
18 unmuffled buses and 3000 horns blast me out a dream
where beautiful women lie awake killing any mosquito
that dares disturb my rest--
and it's 7 a.m.
No doubt about it, the sun is up and the traffic is out.
By some miracle we get dressed and roll down the stairs and into
the street
just alive enough to join the other beetles and roaches
crawling along the sidewalk.
It is a matter of life and death, to survive the traffic
long enough for my first injection of vitamin C--caffeine.
No poet worth his salt can write without coffee.
We crawl through the door of VIPS,
the Mexican version of Denny's, on all fours,
it's no easy thing--morning
and there is not an empty table in sight.
I begin to moan and whimper and growl.
"Let's sit at the counter," says Brad.
I am not full of chuckles before I get my first caffeine fix
so I hiss through clenched teeth,
"No poet worth his salt can write at the counter."
I lean over a booth and stare at some business types, snarling
and muttering
until they fidget, stub out their butts and leave their breakfast
half-chewed.
It's a little table for two.
"No poet worth his salt can write at this pissy little
table," I growl
shaking my fists at anyone who dares to look my way.
The waitress is cute, but slow,
the coffee takes her 15 minutes and when it comes
I have to take it in the vein while I tell Brad that
"No poet worth his salt can write in this madhouse."
I leer viciously at the man filling my life with stinking
cigarette smoke.
"You are," I tell him, "a rotten,
smelly, dirty, stinking, steamy, slimy, raunchy, shitty
asshole."
"No more VIPS," I scream
as a woman walks by in black and blond as lovely as coffee and
cream,
steaming and swirling in a cup by the bed when you first wake up.
She smiles, like all the salt in the Dead Sea.
She walks the way you put a spoon in a cup of coffee
and stir around, around, around, and she moves her mouth softly
into a little pout, like a kiss, and she says, "Hi"--
and I wake up
eyes wide and rolling with the sway of things and I manage to
croak out a Hi
and I tell Brad, "My love for her
makes your love for Kathy and Pam and Martha and Leslie
look like a cheap 2 dollar blow-job in Pig Alley in Saigon in 19
and 69.
Any poet worth his salt needs a woman to write to," I say
all smiles and kindly as a May Co. Santa Claus.
She leaves.
I have four more cups of coffee
and in the end I write this poem.
I lean across our lovely little table and say good-naturedly
"It's nice, I think I'll eat here tomorrow.
It's such a nice place to write."
Brad says, "I thought you said no more VIPS."
"You weren't listening," I say, "I said no more
VIPS today."
"Shit," he says, "you change your mind every 10
minutes."
"Yes," I say,
"that's what I have one for."
I was born laughing in Los Angeles, 15 Dec 1944, but I became
a fast learner. I was crippled from age 4 to 14: crutches,
wheelchairs, braces and they sent the homework home. I sat in bed
and figured out the math and English workbooks while I watched
the other kids out the window splashing in the plastic pool. I
still can't spell, but I learned how to learn.
My father had bad eyes and excellent teeth. My mother had bad
teeth and excellent eyes. I inherited bad eyes, poor teeth and a
strong back.
Bad legs kept me out of the army when it counted, and made me a
guerrilla athlete. I learned to run so I could walk. I learned to
tell time when I was 5 by watching the hands and counting
seconds, minutes and hours. I never caught up with time, but I
liked to figure things out.
Around 9 or 10, I was surprised to learn about death. I was
deeply offended. I never figured death out. I learned the
pleasures of reading, and I began writing and taking photographs.
I left school when I realized that it wasn't there to teach me. I
don't like any kind of boot-camp and since the Cub Scouts
wouldn't have me because I was a crip, I never liked any kind of
uniform. I was never anyone's assistant, and I never studied with
any great guru, so instead I've read about 6000 books.
I have come close to 4 wars; 3 years in Saigon, 1 in Iran, and I
sat in the monsoons in Calcutta when the bodies poured across
from Bangladesh. In Nicaragua I came the closest to dying. I
never figured out war either.
I have worked as an usher, paperboy, meat packer, librarian,
courier, door-to-door salesman, boat builder, post office clerk,
jewelry maker, wire sculptor, carpenter, day laborer in Standard
Oil, furniture builder, book designer, computer operator,
programmer and analyst.
In 1964 I built, lived on, and sailed a trimaran. In 1965 I had
plans to become a Vedanta monk. I was saved by sex. In 1967 I
tangled with Flo DiRe. It looks like it's going to last. From
1969 to 1971 I programmed computers for MACV in Saigon, Vietnam,
then traveled around the world for a year after that. I spent
1974 in Tehran, programming for the Shah's helicopter fleet. In
the spring of 1976, I went to Machu Picchu, Peru and La Paz,
Bolivia. That summer, with my brother Rick, I spent 30 days
running the San Juan River in southern Utah. In 1979, I rode a
motorcycle from Los Angeles to Peru.
I work often as a computer programmer/analyst. Along with Jack
Grapes, I am the founder, publisher, editor and printer of
Bombshelter Press (small press books and fine print editions and
portfolios). From 1975 to 1983, I was self-subsistent as an art
photographer: gallery exhibitions, portfolios, posters,
magazines, etc. When Reagan destroyed the economy, I became
occupied as an entrepreneur; a half owner of a small software
company.
At one time or another I have been affiliated with MENSA, Friends
of Photography, Society for Photographic Education, Friends of
the Arts, a Los Angeles Times subscriber, and the Hopalong
Cassidy Fan Club. By religious preference I am an
Anarchosolipsist.
In 1983 I nearly died from stress and bad food. The same year
brought us Flo's cancer. In July 1987, when Mr. White destroyed
my leg and degraded the last forty years of my life in a traffic
accident, I began to explore ways to rebuild my life.
I have paid the usual dues of being a publisher, editor, and
printer. I have been published in the usual number of the usual
magazines. I have published a few books that were received in the
usual manner, and produced three unusual portfolios of
photographic prints and letterpress poetry. I have never sat at
the feet of a Great Poet. Nor am I able to teach anyone else how
to write poetry. I have never received a single grant, award or
prize. No one has ever published a work of mine. I am thirty
grand in the hole. I am not a professor of anything -- and yet, I
persist.
I went around the world twice. I got old. I got cycnical. I get
sad sometimes when I read the newspaper. But life still surprises
me -- and death. I still laugh, though I never figured anything
out.
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