Surprise: On What is Going On Here

Let's make this clear now. I am what Robert Graves would characterize as a poet of the Theme. All my good poems tend to center around the romantic relationships of this turn on the wheel. This is how it is. These poems attempt to describe and catalogue my real relationship to the phenomenol world. I struggle every single day to ascribe some sense of truth to these words, these captured metaphors. It is, I think, remarkably difficult to be truly honest in language and yet live in humility and love. I think that is why most true aesthetes live as hermits and monks. When you farm the territory of the relationship, particularly with sex involved, the ability to see through the forest becomes very tenuous at best.

Yet I believe I am very good at this. Flawed, but still, a greater resource than I would have thought myself as late as forty. Life is an interesting and fluid spell-making journey. I have embarked on it, as have we all, the spirit in mind, but the flesh is the great engine that drives us. I do not see that there is any actual division between these things. This is the hidden wisdom of the mystery religions. This is the act that makes poetry real.

Suddenly, that which was thought mystical becomes the physical act of love. Surprise!

ghost hope

Mars has gone around the sun
the world pleads for comfort
inside me is the ghost of a yellow man
telling stories
the locusts have returned to us
in our cramped mutilations
what you would have us know
my friend is dead on another world
they call this metaphor
they explain these things
as a well-mapped psyche
I am still at odds out of a job
on this lincoln-earth
twice in transit around our star
the martian ghost gives me
hope but is
dead dead?
or is it a story of the locusts
dreaming?

no communiques

winds of these prayers
paint the flatlands of my father
my words chill me
and no one comforts me
keye luke has returned to mars
and the lunar was explored
last year
there are no angels
in the snow of my front yard
and only a photographic
image of her wings
my hands are pale this season
there are no excuses for drowning
the noise has become interference
it has lost its white purity
there is no wisdom in the static
no messages from the yellow man
on the red planet
the plains spread away from
this door forever
no moon, no stars


More private language. Besides the Keye Luke figure this poem also uses the reference to the Lunar Explored, a manuscript of poems written in the mid 1970s. The lunar in the title referred to the female principle, the moon being the ancients direct icon for the female. For me there was always a sexual, or at least genital reference in the word lunar. The snow angel reference is once again to a poem of Alison Gaughan's about making snow angels ("our angels never touch"). Later Gary Adkins used it as the title for a novel he wrote that took the Maltese Falcon story and retold it in contemporary Springfield, using Bill Lambrecht, the journalist, and his partner, Sandy Martin, as two of the main characters. The reference towards the end to static and wisdom come from my first novel manuscript, It Seems So Long Ago, which is set after a nuclear holocaust in the american southwest. There is a character in this book who watches the static on his tv (no broadcast signal) and imagines he can see things in the snow that give meaning to his existence. You can see the cross reference to the snow angel at work in this. I had a period between the first and second Scarritt groups where I felt completely abandoned by my friends. This piece comes from that period.

byzantium purloined

(Words about Rich Shereikis in the notes)

1.
bones in the alley
the old man's joyce opens
the pages rattle
his cane stands upright next to him
the female vampire wears a gray cloak
chokes on blood & sperm salad
not her usual mix

in the chandeliers of this recognition
glows an image:
burnt splinters of tooth and thigh
unmarked exams dully reflected
in her feral eye;
her mirror voices back:
no image
joyce's old man lies cold,
his desire has gone to smoke

2.
matches & trash & wooden limbs
in carbon's inexorable decay
failures of the testicles
this one won't even enter the alley;
his beard covers the slacking
of his imagination he sleeps
in a den of political snakes, buying
their votes he avoids dying
there are hours of self-punishment
but in his old house doubt is broken
into diamonds of power
he leads the pediatricians' revolt
he blasts holes into wagons
he covers his rear w/sandpaper
his quart of shakespear gives him courage
his toothy fish lives in a mirror

3.
the ardent pony checks his one trick
his fleece blonde stage gray freckled hair
his cover the failure of his courage
he suffers from the Wound caught at da nang
though now he claims it was in the DMZ

it was only a matter of sport of course
to prove he could play baseball
to prove he could still score
this is such a lonely miser's list
afflicted humans, leprous in my mirror
the voices come blank soon enough
the holocaust removed the critic
these sailors drowned on the rocks
just off the island
this is a movie for the mass murderer
he who gave life in order to rip it off
not to be sacrilegious but manson said it best
fear is awareness

I have gotten the fear, Charlie


Something I haven't done that much in my life: this is a poem about an event, or series of events, that happened in the lit department at sangamon state university in 1980-81. I had gotten sucked into the politics of the department. I knew all those people, some for more than a decade. BB and Knoepfle had got me to put in for the second grad asstship they had acquired, so that poor old Victor Pearn wouldn't get it and drive Knoepfle crazy. It is somewhat ironic that nowadays they read on the same bill in Springfield, Victor having become the same kind of lame-ass academic poet as Knoepfle. Pretty funny.

It has come to my attention that Rich Shereikis died in Evanston at 75 this last week, and people are coming to this blog looking for mention of  the man. I saw plenty of Rich in the 70s and read lots of his reviews in the 80s. What this poem describes did happen, and he certainly had a part in it. A part that I know from speaking to him years later that he had some regrets about. I don't think he was a great writer, or a great reviewer, or even really had much of a handle on literature in general, but, hey what do I know? I do know he was a good guy with a sports buzz and I've tipped many a drink with him, once a year at least, and a few times at Norb Andys. His wife was a nice person too. So, passersby, I don't take any of this back. I know for a fact that Rich got terrible reviews from his students in the 1970s. Maybe later he was a better prof. I don't know. He criticized my writing plenty and sometimes he was right and sometimes he was wrong. I am probably about the same speaking of him. But I didn't take thousands of dollars from students like he did, and Knoepfle did. I guess they gave them degrees. Yeah, that's the rationale. Well. I am sorry to hear Rich has left the building, but he's facing his own faults and doesn't need me or you to yack on about them. He'll be whoever he chooses in the great beyond. But at least he'll be forced to acknowledge the truth. That will help him some. 

As to the poem:
In any case, to tell the tale, the other members of the lit department were completely jealous of Knoepfle and Jackie Jackson because they had followings in the student body and always had full classes. Whereas Rich Shereikis and Mike Lennon and even, and especially, Norman Hinton did not get the students, being utterly boring pedants. But to get even with those who deigned to take creative classes over literature, as they defined it, they changed the rules and rammed in a letter grading system where had been a pass/fail. Well, it was a school founded in the sixties.

In the midst of all this came this really evil cunt named Becky Blair. She was a vampire if ever there was a vampire and she wore a gray cloak all the time. She was beautiful and sexy and she wrapped Norman Hinton around her little finger. And she also conspired with those folks on the this grade change thing.

So they had their way, all of them selling out. I also blame Judy Everson. But, in particular the three men forced the issue and Becky Blair made it possible for Norman to call me a liar in a formal meeting, though it wasn't true. I knew I was out at that point and that I would never get a diploma from SSU while Norman was there.

You see the verses: Norman in the first. I took a Yeats class from him and realized at one point, as he interpreted a Yeats piece, that he didn't understand what the poet was saying. I was smart enough not to tell him and so got an A in the class (the previous semester). He was deeply into Joyce; very academic you know. I remember my sister bought me Ulysses for xmas in 1967 because she couldn't get through it and needed me to read it and explain it to her. She was in grad school in St. Louis at the time. Norman Hinton was later on her phd committee. Birds of a feather.

The second verse is Mike Lennon, a sad little man who did love certain macho writers: Mailer and James Jones. Yawn.

And finally Rich Shereikis in the third stanza. He could of been a contender Mom! Honest, he nearly played semi-pro baseball. I got drunk at Rich's house every spring when they had the party after the Festival of the Verbal Arts, which Knoepfle ran so he could get some bookings for himself by booking his friends. That is pretty much how poetry works in this country. I say these things. Are you surprised I don't get published? It's a snobby little club and they are very jealous of what little funds they can dredge up from the academic world. It was a sad lesson for me to learn, how little art has to do with passing for a poet today. Even a talented man like Kevin Stein ultimately becomes a pedantic little boy, goshing about how great his institution is. And Knoepfle turned out to be a total hypocritical suckup who is terribly frightened by gay men. Wonder why.

falling in love badly

the flames ache me, darling
dreams in this memorization, next to you
the lilac dries to shaded paperbits
the air tastes of river in the evening
turns stale with impermanence
you are the cure
the autumn vision
sandalwood in laces
with the cup tipped in the valley
maybe to hold me
maybe to know yourself
the flames chase your patience
with mine, always in error
so far no fatal coals
watching me from deep in
your eyes

It is truly disconcerting to look at these words and recognize the extent I was in love with someone I am now convinced was never in love with me. Of course I feel like a fool, but that is probably the true raison d'etre for love poems. To point out the way that your emotion manipulates your sense of what is true and real. I thought Becky Bradway loved me, at that time. And I had it bad for her, though I doubted her on and off and though she turned her desire for me on and off, like a spigot. I am trying to learn from these pieces.

the season of grass growing backwards

a crude wind singing
a path uncomfortable w/its insects
the woman on the far side of the bed
my forgetfulness
the odd tube dispensing patience
a toothpaste lubricant for the unused mouth
carefully measuring words
as if being were a recipe
her angers are risable, forgivable;
mine are sins, casting me out
a deadly hunger, patient in this season
a wraith in the grass, backward in this memory
silk desires, ascent in the record
"anything"

the season shifts
days, makes barometric
adjustments —balloon acts like a freak,
handles my cares myself, creating
nothing but a quick release
from this ancient electric genius
which has proven to have no intrinsic value
not to my friends, nor even to my lover
her evaluation of me characterized as
"self pity — this is a dumb game. I don't
want to play."

"what can I do?"
"anything. anything you want."

From 1982-83, describing the early arc of my relationship with Becky Bradway. If I had been paying attention, it would always have been clear that she would keep me only as long as I had something she could use. When she began to see my talent as unmarketable, ever the realist, she made plans to move on to someone more successful. The poet laureate, as he would rather I didn't say.

discarded suicide note (1975)

don't offer me pretend existence
don't bare your breasts to me unless
you mean this love
don't offer consolation prizes
like crisp kisses misunderstood
don't tell me of my murder
unless it's today's murder
the shots whistling if I don't come
I'll die in this car you'll only
weep at the funeral
it does me no good
to be told I am not dying

rather/lock me in the closet and deny
me everything tell me/be strong baby
or give up for there is no hope
take my picture and burn it
write me a postcard and forget to send it
remember me and remember rooms
remember dreams that once were true
cut me open take my liver from me
and throw it out
make me understand what lies
behind your clear eyes

don't promise me reincarnation
when my time has passed
give me back my dust


(Another dark poem that grows from my long weird relationship with Alison Gaughan. Some of these things she did do; take my picture and burn it. That is a kind of sympathetic magic I have worked and perhaps may work again. Alison Gaughan had those kind of egyptian eyes, like the amulet, the eye of Horus. She wrote at least two pieces in which her persona is that of the serpent. Raised catholic we both interpreted that as the demon, but I think, in retrospect, it was racial memory harking back to a pre-xtian meaning. Alison had numerous dreams in which she participated in human sacrifice under the aegis of a redheaded priestess. We assumed these were racial memories.)

You Again

Everybody else left a long time ago.
Keye Luke owns a mexican restaurant.
His toothpick thin ivory bones
lie on the sand of Lowell's sea.
His disembodied voice
barks of tortillas, frijoles.
He knows enough to feed the living.

The Wind Blows in at Wrigley Field

Keye Luke,
you once led an army
defending the heart
of me.
Why are you gone now?
You have left Wrigley Field
to return to the plains
of the Martian western continent
where no rivers run.
Oh Yellow Man of Love,
there are no homers
in today's steady wind.
My heart is an anxious muscle.
I cannot sleep.
The ghosts of last year's exploration
haunt me. And I think of your
sure smile and steady hands,
sifting the red dust
in the spring wind,
a gauze of memory,
remarkable these days.


When the wind blows in at Wrigley Field it is bad for the hitters and good for the pitchers. It means a long, intense game where one team will win by a run or two. When the wind blows out the scoring is legendary. In my life I watched entirely too many cubs baseball games and back in the old days when they were mostly in the afternoon as Wrigley didn't have lights. This poem appeared in the Lindsay centenary Village Magazine, the was organized and published by Sangamon Poets in the fall of 1979.

Coke and Sympathy

"You will kill yourself over these thoughts,"
Keye Luke told me this morning.

He is right,
but the taste of the Martian soil
is in me and will not let me
see anything else.

It is not dishonor
that worries me.
My fear is my own.
I hope to awaken some day
and you will be standing
in the door and you will
understand me you will let me
hold your hands and have you.

Keye Luke will only smile
at this vision.
"Damn it," I tell him,
"this will all be true
or I will have to die,
you know this."

He is usually a good friend.
He reassures me.

Caption on a Photograph

Keye Luke
reminds me about you
when I see him
on Sundays
during Charlie Chan
when I force myself
to watch

He reminds me
of our maps
He traces West Lake Drive
across the Martian Sea
He points to the
Grand Canal
and says
You are there

West Lake Drive is the road around Lake Springfield. It was the road to Alison Gaughan's family home on Greencastle Drive. Also one of Alison's poems, Going 40 Over the Bridge, is set on this road. We drove it together many times. The Grand Canal references Lowell's theory that there were canals on Mars that had been built by another civilization. Part of the metaphor, here.

No Exit Strategy

Keye Luke—
Does it ever ease up?
I think these are true questions,
not like zen commercials.
We can't afford to be
alone, anymore
yellow friend.
I know you would rescue me
from the sands in lower plains,
but what can you do
about the human losses?
So much has spoiled
in my vision—
The failure now seems inherent.
At least I am a cartographer
of this heart.
These maps are as accurate
as I can make them.
I will hang one on the wall
beside your picture.
I will write you these notes.
I miss you my friend.

Keye Luke on Mars

It was me
helped Keye Luke
map Dawes Continent
in 1975.

We were in the northern hemisphere.
Keye Luke told the worst jokes.
It was us who charted the afternoon's
progress among the psychotropics.
I remember the sand ate at our eyes.

The last day
I told him,
"There can't be any theories left,"
"Match you for the tab,"
He joked.

I turned the page
for that day's chart
and it read
"Next five exits
Lincoln shrines".


Beginning of the series of poems that marked the second half of the 1970s for me. Keye Luke was the asian-american actor who played Lee Chan in the the Warner Oland/Sidney Toler Charlie Chan movies. The conceit of these poems is that Lee Chan and myself are somehow in a 1940s Hollywood movie, where we are exploring Mars, as if it were a desert sand planet. The metaphor, not to get too obvious, comes from David Bowie's song, Life on Mars, where daily life is understood to be as alien as life on another planet. The idea that poetry is cartographic in nature has been with me fairly constantly since my teen years. I like the idea that metaphors are functionally equivalent to the symbological representations of reality that appear on maps. There are quite a number of these poems. Read in order, or in the group, they can amount to a fairly good look at my emotional being in those years, so long ago now. Keye Luke died a few years ago (1991).

tuesday's just another day on the map

art is this fairy I fuck
when I'm man enough
love is art's sneaky sister
I fuck her occasionally too
but triumph is the whore
that would finish the job
really though,
death is just aspirin
no point in humping the lord

circé's hands

toyota girl gleams white/circé hands wander hairless slit like a chinese puzzle/you need binding/all virgo & precision/you massacre my nights/white thigh top stockings & shiny black patent leather high heels/stretch a highway right up inside the pink & grey tissue/abruptly ending at a firm cervical cap/like another closed mouth/near the heat of you, centre, en pointe/all of that these many years down the pike/& you'll be home at long last/but not where I am/& you have changed/the space & time of us disappeared like yr green cotton underwear/jettisoned like childhood the shell falling into someone else's re-entry.//So daddy died/with the soft poke of confession just on his lips/my turn will come, I realize./But what portents blow/thru that fine blonde brain of your's these days?/I hear you're in school again./ Good for you/Some of you needs that shackling/you'll be happier/and you've a guy too/redressing some of the many grievances, huh? your dionysian body should appreciate that.//Me, I'm still tense in the midnight/playing house & love with another girl/who is not you. You come in the shadow play of sleep/and so I cannot sleep. I admit it/I underestimated how bad I was gonna catch you./And I pay/every night with my sadness/miscellaneous stuff: the movie rewound and whipped through/over and over again/misconstrued/minstrel show reality sliding into fantasy/admittedly sexual/our bodies were the part that agreed the most/other than that we mainly watched each other/amazed by what we saw/but pleased you know/pleased & pleasured/will I ever have that again?

From 1983, but referring to the mistaken love affair from 1979. Call it a letter to someone with whom I no longer talked. Interestingly enough we played a lot of bridge in those years in the early 1980s. We just didn't talk.

celebrating the disaster

now that I am out of bed/scotch & cigarette'd
at one thirty/the disaster is standard
the pain a normal ace in a short low straight
how can I talk/of the steely sordid
hallucinations/the odd lusts
metered treasures of the mind's eye
scattered pornographic slapshots
of lolitas twisted into painful pretzels
so that I am damn close to going too far.

I slurp the urine in this cartoon
I suck the coffin nail in this wintered wood
the robe is garnish at my feast of self
I understand all this is only power and refuge
and I am frightened because it doesn't help
to understand but I won't burn this lifetime
up in lust ~ I will celebrate it.

Version of a piece from 1980. I admit I have cleaned it up quite a bit. In those days I smoked Benson and Hedges menthol cigarettes incessantly, and drank quantities of scotch whiskey. A drink Hanrahan shared with me, and Sandra Riseman too. These words come after the fiasco in 1979.

unmarked grave

the things we don't talk about
that are "none of your business"
the unmarked graves in the dark wind
of that bedroom or this
the short sax player in his shower
the trip to chicago with the only boy
the loaded stares at the bar
sitting there with you
everytime the door opened, you checked
the guy you said hurt to fuck
but your notebook said your body
craved him. because he was handsome?
because his cock was big?
sometimes you liked being hurt
but you don't know how to give
so you don't give you don't
know how to lose. How many of the
others did you suck off~hating to
take my prick in your mouth. sitting
naked on the motel bed with Neil
and getting hurt writing him letters
even if you were seeing me. then that mexican
s.o.b., true friend to me the bastard
fucking you in the bed at lennon's
while I was in Wichita, dreaming about
you constantly. I don't know if I
can handle it. It sure isn't even close.
All I can say is
my instincts not to trust you
were right.