On the Bus to St. Louis

Dear AG,
Don't know why this, now,
on the st. louis bus—thinking
of you and the letters,
your history etched in its
genetic chains.
It's coming up Samhain again.
Another centenary birth for you.
So now I am keeping careful notes
of your dreams, attempting to reap
the metaphor, the strictly crystal
cut of this frame & that image
of the woman with woven red flame hair
(like Medea who I spoke of last year)
I'm thinking of you, of course
and the strictly personal power.
This all opens like a line shot
gone braille, touched with silvered fingers
pressing at your focal points.

And now I love you like the wanton you are,
expect your story to follow more of the
genetic spiral than the others.
In May, Walpurgisnacht, I'll celebrate
with Gary D., burning your memory
in an iron bowl, calling it out,
fearing your incipient fate
and you—in Ireland—are you
riding a storm on an interdimensional
timeline? are your words only experimental breath
in this personal relational geometry?

In this time
on the St. Louis bus
this pen defeats me.
It will call no souls this evening
on the greyhound, (I am) lapsing
into commmon speech.
I will find no holy cards
in the passing night,
no true dreams, only your
bitter kisses preserved
in these dark hours.

This is a re-write of a poem I posted a couple of years ago. I can't quite pinpoint the year, though I know it was the time Alison Gaughan went to Ireland with her sister, Carolyn, which is thoroughly documented somewhere in the notebooks. I note this poem once again offers the idea of multiple incarnations and relationships that exist beyond a single lifetime. I suppose this must come from too much science fiction and a liberal dose of hindu wheel of life information. Walpurgisnacht is the northern european day more properly termed Beltane, May 1st. Alison did have a recurring dream of a redheaded priestess sacrificing a male victim. Very celtic, actually. He was burned in a tree. There is no doubt that Alison had both celtic genes and viking genes. Later in her life, she reproduced with a latino, so I'm sure her son is an interesting mix.

Sometime in the early seventies I published a long, imagistic piece in a magazine called Kalligraphia that Sandra Martin published via a class at SSU. It was entitled "Understanding Medea" and was an attempt to deal emotionally with the events surrounding the spring of 1973. That was the period of time Becky McGovern threw me out of our house. I was seeing Pat Smith, who was still married and living wih Larry, across the street from John and Sandy Knoll. Pat was also "seeing" John and had been for a couple of years. Ironically, these many years later they are married and living in St. Louis. When Pat and I abandoned Springfield for Chicago, John took up with Alison Gaughan, who was of course linked inextricably to the engineer boy, John L. John Knoll at that time went through quite a list of the locals, but the thing with Alison was primarily to punish me for being with Pat.

I will note that John and Larry both invited me to have threesomes with them and Pat during this period. And Pat and I did eventually have a couple of menage a trois, but not with them boys. I'll never forget John detailing his sexual conquest of Alison, over the phone, while I sat on the floor in the apartment at 1907 South Bissell in Lincoln Park, listening to him. I wasn't exactly jealous, not having been with Alison myself, but I actually knew she was already trying to figure out how to get the fuck rid of him. Something that happened repeatedly to John, usually about two weeks after he started seeing a new woman. Alison eventually told him that she had to give up sex, entirely, for awhile. She lied, of course. She truly was a wanton. Today? I have no idea.