resisting martyrdom

i.
killing inside so tired of self this one
you and your stupid prescience you
took your eyes away just when I could
see in don't think I don't feel like hell
so tired of self, dug out of the unnatural whole
werewolves of london on JR's stereo
flashing past going crash what would you know?
why don't you tell me? what's your damn secret?
that I'm out here outside your window
peeping tom got an eye out but no under-
standing what can you tell me? that you could
but you can't so you won't so you
don't know and maybe tomorrow or ten
years or post death or in another lifetime
in the meantime I feel like I'm on the
spit, circling cold fire—you glow and I
go slowly mad—what kind of life is this?

ii.
too much useless coffee
useless beer
just stupid guitar work
you and your malaguena
in shadows
dying killing softcore dope
walking the bare dirt of crucifixion
old saints new sinners
fucked this time

Lots of bad catholic remonstrance here. Nod to Joni Mitchell (cold fire). The turning and turning one tends to do when one is trying to interpret the deliberately obtuse statements of a lover who is involved with various other threads of existence and who is loath to actually "say" anything for fear it will hang in the air, like some sort of dead animal, rotting away. Of course I'm sure she's completely different now. ??? John Ranyard lived at Scarritt for awhile. He had built his stereo and it had excellent sound. Warren Zevon was big at that time. Of course Werewolves is also a reference to the book, Werewolf of Heartbreak that I was writing, essentially about Alison and her recent past.

psuedo phoenix

this is automatic piano
this is automatic writing
the tympany in addagio
my own hands holding the eagle
in the fire feathers trailing
plumes yellow and white
the hide on the talons turned
hard

This is a take off from a poem Alison wrote about the flesh of hands turning hard. I think it was in Light from New Steel. Should go look it up.

the one I remember

recording you
the one I remember
ancient top forty
three minutes slices of
you leaving my hands
across the snow carpet
that December
no hands no hands
on my face no memory
of all that is inside
of you all that you
showed me
you the one I remember
the repetitions in the chorus
my madness chases
your madness down hours
through alleys the division
of this time finds nothing

there is left: the drawn scalpel
trailing the slit
the liquid sweating
out red across the land
my communist affiliation
Death: you drew me
edges painted with
your silver

From Fresh Wounds, 1975.

cottonwood, version one

Tree grows old; gonna die old cottonwood
ancient scenes seem leaves falling
covering up corpses, characters, friends
snow and features just raining now
the seasons changing
the man goes against the wall
drops the pill and the world gets
a double. the patience seems lean,
hungry for breasts uncovered and
the harvest of dying returning him to the womb
Tree gives the man flesh, takes
the humid sheet, shows a skeleton,
watches the sap run in the daughter's mouth,
her corpse exhumed the organs absent like love
and the hollowed shelter of more transient creatures.
In the dying smokes godzilla,
deity of the flickered human time; he'd burn the brittle stems
of cottonwood but his throat is full
of words he doubts. After years the rains destroy
the plastic parts of a a miscellaneous monster god.
the cottonwood spirit sings low baseball
wisdoms in many random songs.
Daughter bears son fights father
loses sight watches child disappear
all seamed shut in a factory
the humans postscript
the life static, the tree
a massive pump worked by the sun.

I have said before that I believe my "relationship" with Alison Gaughan set me up for what happened in 1979. Alison was a very skinny girl who could, at will, make herself into an pretend adolescent girl. She was virtually breastless, but very attractive. She wore her blonde hair nearly to her behind, and it worked for her. Yet at the same time there was really nothing little girl about her. Just a game to play with the boys. She came from a games playing family who did some mighty ouetre things, so it isn't surprising.

Also, I will note that living with Pat I spent a lot of time around her daughter, Keats. Keats was also a beautiful young girl who developed into a woman while I knew her. Somewhere along the line she discovered that she could use her sexuality to get me (and probably her father, Larry, and many other males) to do things for her. I admit that that was true. When she was thirteen, fourteen, she hung around the house, doing her best to get me interested. I never was involved with her, exactly, but it did immediately pre-date 1979. After I figured out what Keats was doing I quit letting myself be manipulated by her and this really pissed her off, so we were ultimately rather like enemies.

The other thing about Keats was that she was desperate to pattern herself after Alison. She saw Alison as the ultimate successful female. And perhaps she was. In any case, there was a strange relationship with the two of them in my life.

And then I met Cheryl's remarkable daughter and ended up making the worst mistake of my life. I will never get over it. This is yet another attempt to try and not excuse myself, yet, once again, I've excused myself, by recounting those aspects of my life that conspired to bring me to that point.

In reality of course, it is my ego, my vision of myself as an artist, capable of "anything" that allowed me to fuck up so bad. Not the only time, either. But surely the one time when I truly hurt someone who was utterly innocent, when it came to my life. I guess I don't really expect it to be over and done with until I have crossed over and accepted the truth of my actions.

I think in my version of the sixties there was often a moral looseness. That is to say, people casually broke the law about smoking pot and taking drugs and it spread to other areas. When I was in high school almost everybody in my class was capable of minor larceny. I shoplifted books when I was fourteen, with my brother. Since that time I have struggled against that looseness. Now I am the kind of person who strives to return the overpayment. I drive the speed limit, stop for stop signs, slow for yellow. Not very American, am I? But, it is all part of trying to make up for the very great mistake I made, nearly thirty years ago.