Cemetery Fuck, part ii

In that German immigrant cemetery in 1969
just before the redefinition of our words
you let me let you come on someone
buried in 1896, with the remains of his
stone prick our protection
from the near complete lunar globe.
What madness ran through us,
exposed to sacrilege and chill early
St. Louis spring? Don't think because I've
forgotten your logic that I've
forgotten your love. Some communications
remain whole in a temporal context—

(This poem is one of a number of pieces written in 1974 that explicate the story that eventually became my novel, Stones Out of Time. It is based on a pair of relationships I had between 1968 and 1970 that were tied together in a strange fashion. I did spend quite a bit of time in that abandoned, decrepit german cemetery in south St. Louis that first year of college. Good place to get stoned. Plenty of empty above ground tombs. Atmosphere.)

nothing

the cards say disappointment
crowley grins ~ flower vanishing in flame
temper rises like the day these hands
control at least this brief life ~
this instant, but the cards turn over
this love w/its abandonment
shadowy silvered wraith of memory
do you sleep in the darkness of your
husband's bed? He switches to bizet
the refrigerator fails; fahrenheit
becomes obstacle. Remember,
remember. Shocked january day
stilled by presence imbedded in
windowglass ~ terrible snow
murderers of anger
the cards are the angel's breath
air to fill the empty silks
of sunday's destructive love

always you who cannnot speak
this same street is the road in the valley
the equation has broken down
my dreams are the enduring photographs
of this grief

it won't work. there is no life
on the red couch for me. your arms
or nothing.


(This poem and the two previous all come from the same dark period in the mid 1970s. These particular pieces were all written sometime during late 1976. Reviewing them and re-working them has been good for me. I can see the magnitude of errors that I made in my twenties. Chief among these was living with Pat Smith, who paid for everything. Also, the desperate need I had for people, which no one could reasonably satisfy. Finally, the warped desire to love someone who, though well meaning, was probably incapable of loving anyone but herself at that point in time. Plus all the drugs, booze, and the need to write important shit that took up all my time and consciousness. In retrospect, I wish I had moved to Oregon to be with my son, and that I had met different people and become a different kind of writer. I believe my initial style of writing was much more workable for me, and certainly felt a great deal more natural to me, than the style imposed on me by my relationship with John Knoepfle. He probably meant well; or at least he meant no harm. I know quite a few people who despise him, though, so I sometimes wonder. In any case, it was myself that chose to try and do what he thought a writer should write and be and it was my mistake.

The cards referred to in this piece are the tarot cards from the deck designed by the great magical thinker, Aleister Crowley. In his evaluation of what happens when you use the Tarot there is an invocation of an Angel, the Hru Angel. The red couch was a significant presence in the living room at 223 East Scarritt. It was a salvation army purchase and was worn to the point of disposal in the four and a half years that I lived at Scarritt. I made love to Alison Gaughan numerous times on that couch.)

apostasy

tired of your frightening illness
and its mortal implications
tired of being reminded it doesn't matter
because we are all death anyway
tired of your excuses—being avoided
in favor of the smooth flight plan

my nerves are arabian horses
the day is dirty—gray clouds,
no rain or snow. on the mantle
your polaroids, instantly lost,
just another image of your face,
a ghost, deception of light & self.

tired of suffering for your
interpretation and its mistakes
tired of having trusted you
and tired of your constant betrayal
tired unto dying—anymore of you
shows only negative in the wrists.

(AG, for whom this piece was originally composed, was a serious photographer the first five or six years I knew her. The chapbook Sangamon Poets published of AG's work, Light from New Steel, featured several photographs taken and developed by her. This accounts for the numerous references to light and image that shadow this and other poems from this era. She was pretty good, too. Although she was a better poet than photographer.)

no point

strip little susie to the waist
no point to the occupation
once it was ecstasy
now it is only proof
little susie just pretends
hasn't ever been able
to crawl outside her dance
puts her clothes back on