Removed Posts

To anyone who has come here via a search engine looking for information about Anastasia Sands: these posts concern a character in a novel written in the 1970s and are in no way involved with the current actress/porn star. To those come looking for information on Janet Hanrahan, she also was the basis for a character in a novel written in the 1970s and has nothing to do with any persons of that name today. Those posts were removed to avoid any confusion. Thanks for your understanding. Good luck with your search. The following piece comes from early notes for the novel, Strange Sins. The title comes from Raymond Chandler: "Her eyes were like strange sins."

Early Notes On Anastasia Sands

Out the back door
carrying her radio, visions of a sober life
up front today. No pills, she promises herself.
She seeks a simpler joy
in her sharp bones, pointed flesh.
She says, "I will make do
with sex today." She knows about adventure
& figuring the odds. She makes it clear
to all her wouldbe boyfriends
I don't want you stoned, again
I want you to care. I have feelings
I don't use you. But she is unsettled.
She is nauseous.
She feels the thrusts of memory, double-tracked,
incompetent to manage the multiple exposures,
she asks for an insurance of some kind.
Her brother snickers, pretends he sees
the future. He tells her
"it just gets worse." What makes
you think you can explain it?
You always were a bitch to me,
but I still love you though.


This piece is one of the earliest attempts to speak about a character, the main character, from the novel, Strange Sins. She is a teenage girl who is being tripped up by her memories of another existence. Ultimately it comes out that she is the reincarnation of another teenage girl who was sexually abused by her father and murdered and buried in a proximate location. Anastasia Sands was the name of a checker at Krogers on 2nd and South Grand, where I shopped at the time. I stole the name and set the book in and around the community of Saugatuck, Michigan, on the Lake. It is an area I was familiar with having traveled to Chris Beckman's family's house on the Lake a couple of times. One of them was my honeymoon with Becky McGovern. We drove up with Chris and Monica Schaeffer in February of 1970, long before this book appeared. There was a real revenge theme, ultimately, in this book and I met someone this had sort of happened to after I had done most of the work on the piece. Kind of spooky, really, but my Sister Diane, who speaks with ghosts on occasions, told me that a relative of our's from the previous century -1800s- had told her in a dream that I had the Sight, just as she does. I wish it were a little more useful, however.

losing another lover, 1981

He was lost again, alone
marking his way through the daily deceits,
keeping track~there will be a bill
in heaven and he will just
put it on account. Perhaps
I am sick, he thinks, knowing this
is no relief. He is lost alone
and again he searches
his hands for womb or mouth
to speak or cough some new
life out in this cryptic
torture chamber. You used to
tell me, "anything", whatever else
you used to do.
He kicks the dog across the room.
My errors equal my fears.
You were the silver in the mirror.


This is a poem stemming from my relationship with Becky Bradway. That summer, 1981, I left Pat and started living with Becky, and it was as if everything about our relationship changed, in an instance.

Working at the Clinic

weird shadows of men you don't know anymore
plastic sequins adorning pictures of my ex
my matchstick past half created
mostly white glue scraped off
a doppelganger of dead skin
if I could keep you from being hurt
prime motive in this libido of pain
so much that won't explain itself
life is a feast of requests
someone telling me what they want
ora pro nobis; a dr. named Small a dr. named Good
life cracks in its bindings, pages lost casually as memory
no free money, no protection
story says get it straight
learn to hold still without dying
who can do these specifics?
my life is edged with pregnant women.

Discovering Your Shape

So the legends recuperate at televised
parties, celestial jokes sprinkling editorials.
So the president pounds on the blackboard
of the world and its canker sores are chalked.
So what, the party asks on the party line,
itself a social act, already arch and feral
in the arch and feral gossip of the pre-war past.

You age ungracefully but with that honest
principia that still chokes me.
I gather up the conversations, hours in the
bedclothes, noting how these muscles
seem enemy tonight~but, but, the moment
asks more. The woman in you cannot
help you anymore than the man in me
can distinguish my confusion.

Some things cannot be changed.
This is the limit of growth~the tree will die
in the garden in the stance it first chose
and the way the world turned it with gravity and wind.
Its wars patient its shapes whatever it has
become~nonetheless, you are beautiful.
I am handsome.

We come to the Tribune over coffee.
Two person telephone
in a world of legendary manice depression,
chalk squealing on a board.
In the background the children hassle
like so many before, just a celebration.

Call me. Tell me what you are doing.

Secondary Selves in Time, 1982

The trash pardoning the flesh
like the boy bowing to his mother
at the dance, "will you know me
when the smoke clears?"
You, broken castanet, rattling diseases
among your bones. Will my death
be just another trump card for you?

The flesh calibrates its meanings
"got a match? a dollar for a sandwich?"
do you have a mouth like a sweet flower?
is my death just an entertainment?
or is it all just another stroke of camera logic,
odds played out for natural rules?
The child in me gestates. Can I question
this reluctance? No telephone in this small room
rings with requests thinly disguised
as questions. No telescope casts shadowed hopes
in polka time on these fishy unborn eyes.
The state enters only on paper.
The priests keep their godly hands out.
No freaking healers from OB
for this cattle. No. This child in me
slips, perhaps, into a warm liquid death.


This poem grows from a poem by Hanrahan which speaks of the child growing in a friend. At the time I wrote this piece Bradway was pregnant, a pregnancy terminated that same fall. I think both of us were more affected by this than either of us admitted. It was, for both of us, the second abortion in our lives. I am very much pro-choice, but let no one be anything other than certain that it is always a serious act, with emotional consequences. I should never have been with this woman. It was a very bad thing for me, for my art, for my life. Yet, there is my remarkable daughter, Paige, who reminds me that this existence is not about the self. It is about all of us in some way or another. I would go through anything for my daughter. For both of my daughters. Even suffer those terrible years again. Thank the Lady for Her mercy. It is truly a gift.

bricks, not so anonymous, 1982

there were satellites
before you were born
there were signals from
thin air & presley in black and white
there was me breathing
unfound carapace soft and jello
in the magnetic fields
the things I didn't know
the things I don't know now
still there were chances
for you, redrafted bird
in my air

***

there are a dozen or so stories
in the first quarter moon of her lovers
and her users and the spoons they ate
from the saxophones, both metal and flesh
the worst in small showers
the night moon of schizophrenia, boredom
wordman clever in his utility freud
working on a failure ~ some nameless
honcho that took her cherry, buried
himself in suicides & her sanguine knots
tangling in these woods ~ I could remember
all this, never even seeing it.
Lindell, and John—your Gino, that
round robin of Mike and Neil and Ron and Ric
and back again to John, jazzboy from
Rosiclaire.

***

so/turn her on the fire
one time turn her
again her flesh seared
by memory, embarrassment
dense and deep in the wild
pragmatism so attractive
and deceptive. So/unmarinated
she is inedible~quiet,
hiding juices~she is restrained
when she should/would be free,
and giddy when she should've
come down from the spit
cleansed by the shadow
of hungers she could not sate
the meat beautiful and passing.


Pieces from the notebooks, 1981-83. This is the early period that I lived with Becky Bradway, breaking up with her, over and over again. To be with BB in those days meant forsaking any frame of reference but her's. You simply could not communicate with her unless you granted her her definitions. I fell in love with her, not just with her writing, which she has often accused me of doing. But I did love her and attempted to give her the opportunities to write that I felt Pat had given me, and that I felt guilty about, having left her (Pat). In any case, those years with Becky saw me write less and less and there was never a question as to who's work was valuable and worth the time and money to support. There are a large number of these poems in the notebooks, that I hope to work with in these next weeks/months. Hopefully there is much that I think is valuable here.

Anabel Lee/Disco Version

(in the background
rolling stones & memories w/complaints
devices doing marvin gaye
& behind it all
that high chick chorus coming in
and coming loud)

last month—maybe the month before—
could've seen you/laid out on your silk shroud
for the childbride but now
I don't know no John Donne anymore
didn't care so much before
maybe it was friday night/or saturday
maybe it was a roman or a norse memory:
you kept kissing me
or I kept kissing you

(knew you/voodoo you
this might be revelation/slip on through)

last year, on the lake
north of lost parallels
Gary A. told me there was no truth
in a woman and no sense
in that breathing/we both knew
that was funny/even in a killing rain
we were unconnected. That night
looked like nothing different.

(call it voodoo/make me disappear
clear the heart/slip in to you . . .)

I had a kingdom/or I will
nothing's straight this season
ol man river's got guards and you
you're pale/on imported marble
but there's no good reason
I'm the one dead, fr chrissake.
all you do is bitch about the chances
and the status quo/but I saw
the angel turn

(call it heartfood
my nation is mars/I remember you
from the stars/it's only in you)

only/in you (mick as marvin gaye)
only in/you (marvin gaye as mick)

only in you


Published in the Alchemist Review in the Spring of 1979. I believe it was the issue edited by Ron Deverman. I have always had a specific relationship to Edgar Allen Poe's work. I still read Poe more often than anybody else.

the terrible sea, 1978

so many photographs of you
in the terrible sea . . . . playing pick me up
and set me down . . . . arrows of colorado's
deception your cool base like salvation
in the marrow . . . . fanatic thoughts rise
to the six/three time of these lips
turn me on, darling . . . . like the silver spaces
in your days . . . . these hands are unknown
lightening . . . . forger's hands thiefs of your breath
magicians of . . . . our molecular interface . . . . o yes
skintight . . . . wellknown vaudeville act . . . . . only
for each other's eyes — I allahs say
it matters you allahs say it doesn't,
such a weird percentage in these odds
you've just been . . . . . a jetplane in
seriograph . . . . . I know you're breathing
sad even breaths . . . . timely rememberings
six on the breath . . . . . your divine selves
in the exchange. how to trust me no way
but to do it make me out on such sad
disorganized ohso well known days: let's be
teenagers darling the aching in these thighs
are not for children but glowing cadmium
desire . . . . . enough let's go to drivein movies
make love in the backseat turn each
other sophisticated in a bluelight of memory
see dozens of sad unwatchable tales
on our own celluloid promises another
hundred thousand come to me's secret but
publicized in the perdido of our hearts
I know what you feel . . . . why won't
you open those sweet wings . . . . one more time
just because I am the knife of your true death
this is a last chance and what's more—
colorado, corpus christe, eys & hands & time,
you know it's worth it

come to me



It is truly a wonder I survived my twenties. I needed a lot of sex in those days and I still probably am more sexual than most men my age. The biological drive, combined with my understanding of myself and my idea of romance, caused me to make mistake after mistake, to become driven by a kind of personal darkness. Not entirely free of the darkness to this day, I am at least free of the relationships from that time. I loved Pat, but she really never liked my work and that made it impossible to be with her after all those years where she supported me while I wrote. I loved AG and sometimes she loved me, but mostly she dissembled and spent her life in various different realities, keeping them resolutely separate. I believe that relationship led me into the situation where I fell in love with BLF. Beyond that, her relationship with her father seemed to ratify for Becky Bradway my ability to deal with someone who was an incest survivor. A fact I wasn't to find out about BB for twelve years. So, it is true for me that one thing apparently led to another, all through this course of years. Ultimately, by appealing to the Lady's grace, I came to meet Kimberly, who is simply not like any of my other romantic attachments. Perhaps I have gotten to a place of security here, in the sense that I am primarily concerned with her well being and with the well being of my children. This does not let me off the hook for the enormous errors of the flesh and of the heart that I have made these many years. For that, I must go to the Lady and seek Her mercy. But I am pretty confident that the universe is merciful to those who struggle to be honest. If I am wrong, there will be other penance to be paid. I accept that possibility, also. This poem is specifically about Alison Gaughan, though it was written somewhere in the time after I was forced to break up with BLF and when Pat Smith and I were living on South Grand. This was pretty much the last time I was at all intimate with AG and she was already well involved with Tony Kallas at this point.

pink in the syringe

you're my junk—
that's the way life should be.
these words, they're junk too
but they don't make time stand still,
the way you do.
and they may be dangerous
but you mean murder
and that's a high wind blowing.
I know. you maybe don't
understand it's the blood that
runs w/the seed ... it's fourteen percent
pure darling—it's a river
of grace pouring silver
through the internal cinema
you're the junk, heartfood,
five years of rushes
running in the blood.
o hell. maybe you do know—
maybe you just holding
to be holding, or maybe
the murder scares you
howling through the abandoned houses
with the slick needles of the one
clear death—you're always
going to be my junk, baby
the movie runs again

Poem from late spring, 1978. The sadness is remarkable now. I read these passages and recognize how the tragedy I was creating became the root and trunk of the tree that I chopped down in the 1980s. The addiction metaphor is apt. And the use of murder as a term denoting sexual communication is perhaps an inside joke kind of metaphor. Nonetheless, this piece rings true in every respect. I am actually kind of proud of it, though I suppose the human to which it is directed would be unhappy to see it in the light of day. Who knows? And, truly, who cares?

old friend

will you rescue me from the red room?
is there a document lost on the server?
three sessions mark my short term memory
1) your transition into empire
2) your discovery of the recent past
3) your cellphone's same number

all these words flicking their letters at me
in this dream that is not a dream, my current
family, these friends, this woman, walking
out of a life, my existence, my memory, my listed
sins, the corpse of my ancient imagined sex life
vanquished by poor health and the serendipitous
effects of catholic theology...in so many
of these rooms the noise, though carnal, still
fills my lobes like grease in a saute pan
the tender tea oil disappeared the crude saudi
extra virgin olive shattering the cells their music
tinny now, removed from space and time

you could've said
you did say
I wanted what
I didn't know
at least you still talk to me
sometimes the room is full of furniture
sometimes it is bare with
just your note
propped against the typewriter/
keyboard, another
disappearance
though I am pretty sure
you'll be back
some day

unsolved murder mystery

I am surrounded by the four lights and I
can see now, you'll never come to me
needing release from this candid air & time
the fake mr. moto tells me
you don't know this as betrayal
& I agree, but the bullets fly anyway
silver in solution & in the steady light
they speak murder; they tell me, honest now,
that your death is pre-ordained
& though I'll see you in crowded halls
the only way you'll ever welcome me
is in death.
but I won't give you that satisfaction.

insomnia

it's a bad night for holiness
the bad sleeps got me turned on the coals
no rain & the train's gone now
cat's passed out with the people upstairs
me & the cancer sticks & the bic pen
& the miles of lined white paper striped
w/mobilities & mild forays into an
unknown self history and all of it
just betrayal, dreams, & mistakes
full of quotients & factors
all of it unaccountable
now in seventy-seven—and I hear the gallop
in those syllables don't think I don't know
can see in, might even see passed this weekend
—all the news is bad
all the solutions standard bullshit

I have been awake
writing head letters
very saul bellow
Roy Earl would understand this one
the world is full of status quo
pushing up four a.m.
maybe there will be sleep
in the sweet bye & bye