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.)