separated at birth

you think you've got your illusions
wrapt up in your carbondale scene
all your breakers charged and
overloaded with alcohol and
your paranoia hat left
hanging at the front of the house
and its really only one room

but I am busy
traversing the gridlines
on this map just as
if I knew what I was doing
when I understood that this was
all shit some time ago
and I can add up your scorn
and reach in and even
if so many years pass
that I don't see your face
with a name anymore,
I will still know just
how much alike
we are

From 1977, imagining the faceless future. Very cynical about the act of writing ("this was all shit"), but at the end a recognizable point that is somehow actually true. Not that the fact that we are very alike was any actual help in carrying on a relationship, or even a friendship over the many years. Addressed to Alison Gaughan, who's photo (since removed) I found on an old hard drive and include in this post, for nostalgia sake and because I've been asked about images from this period in my life. I have almost none. These that I have found were sent to me as color xeroxes by Pat Smith the spring that Piper was born, 2003. I have asked Ross Hulvey for access to his photos from this time, but he ignores my letters. I have also asked John Ranyard for his photos, but I think John has other things on his mind these days. If anybody out there has any photos from the writing groups that you'd like to share, please email me at tosburn@msn.com. Thanks for the good thought.

More Than Style

This is Garamond at 16 point on this computer
Subject to, pursuant to, the hegemony of this time
This is the story thus far
The wind scattering the leaves
In the capitol

Can you see the time in motion?
Born in the usa, completed catholic schooling
Managed to rise out of superstition
But it took forty years and truly I am still a
Man who seeks retribution, a xtian/jewish need

Could I rise above this time?
This is Garamond at 16 points

***

Jaguar Fred you distress me and I see you may have left now.
Your satellite in the Beach Cities there is nothing I can tell you
That you don’t already understand but where does that
Take us, in the nightly depths?

He ports his ancient altered self
Into today’s remembrance.
Are you there with your brother?
Is there alchemy in your life?
Does She come to you in your dreams
as She does in mine?

Because I can't control the typeface here, so I lose the actual image that started this. I have occasionally spoken to my friend on the west coast, trying to clear out the destructive brush in my mind, but I haven't heard from him in awhile. We both celebrate the Lady, in our own ways. Ranyard once wrote a novel in which a Jaguar, the car, defeated a Corvette, in a reprise of the Jan and Dean song "Dead Man's Curve".

The title is a reference to Arthur Lee and his group Love, from their seminal sixties album, Forever Changes. Here is the reference from "The Red Telephone":

This is the time and life that I am living
And I'll face each day with a smile
For the time that I've been given's such a little while
And the things that I must do consist of more than style.

The Seeker

Apologies to John Ranyard

There were many different days between us
Each characterized by innate optimism
I remember the pool table at John’s apartment
In the building that is now torn down on
Cass Street and the people from the museum where
I would later work. He came to live
On Scarritt, another itinerant writer boy,
Known as Root, he wore his knives
On his belt, storied sexing a raccoon
Dead in the water more than a week. Later
The boys, Banjo Gary and Kurt Shoggoth,
Lived in John’s parents house for as long
As they could all afford it, (too many rooms
To heat), the pool table occupying its historic
Space. I remember the ancient foreign cars,
Beautiful and fast John piloting the backroads
Around Lake Springfield. Banjo Gary & Kurt
Deserted Root abruptly that winter.
It happened again, that sudden wheeling
In the heart’s wind: in Tennessee his
Archaeologist-wife’s abandoning note, his
Hours gone with the stereo, the typewriter,
No more target shooting, no more poems
Of this loss. No point. I knew inside his
Water-brother body, toned and sun-painted,
The need to survive and find the truth
But do we grow undifferentiated by
The losses? Oh yes, Bruno the Pissfreak
Mamboed through that living room scene
Ned Riseman flashing his indifference
I might’ve taken that shot, but John just
Found his calm and only imagined the fatal blow
No need to take sad survivor of his
Mother’s holocaust to task. Ned never came
Back; Pat told him he would have to
Write and read. She did this for Our Boy
John. The only time, that anyone
Was sent away. And even to this day
Ned has his mother tied to him and he to her.
The slip knot of the secured child. A
Moment passes. In Hermosa Beach, not
Far from the Lighthouse, I lived a few months
With John and his little brother, Brucie,
Blonde jesus skinny with a broad smile. John
Grew a thick bush of cannabis, distilled
The buds to oil. JR rarely even drank, but
Little brother had to crawl from the wreckage
Of that chemistry, and did so, thank the Lady
Infinite now. (I remember) Lying in the living room loft,
Listening then to the Pacific. A scene of
Random beauty. It started to rain hard and
I left, saddled as I was with the damaged girl
From Rochester.

So many things to have
Left out, this late in this decade: He made
Puppets, marionettes. He started a
Free school. He counted single-celled phonemes
In a Petri dish, channeling all the collected
Wisdom of post-Darwin and the cancer doctors who
Sought funding or at least a path through the amino acids
He walked away from that room, left
The others waiting on the purple couches. I
Called him, some time during the moments
My second wife had tried to kill me. & he was
A counselor, someone with the right words
To say to me. Released, suddenly, by his memory,
His whispered graveled voice on the telephone
Those nights of severe betrayal, his knowledge of this pain
How to turn to this to music. And then, again, 1995
I danced that sad dance with the lawyer’s wife
She abandoned me, after she escaped him.
My lawyer beat me up one Wednesday night. & I called
John in Los Angeles. Once again, someone
To save me from the river, to pull me
Out and help me find the air.
We watched the Richard Pryor show together.
John turned the world into a suggestive metaphor
There was a passion there, the mind an
Intricate puzzle. Swimming in the dark waters.
Still living, imagination his only defense
Root canoes the western waters, writes his papers
Sends his dreaming on the arc that is
The Lady’s doorway. Fibonacci constant, he
Has seen the moment that turns,
Bruno becomes the conduit our chemistry
Rides the waves incoming the great liquid
Pleasure She gives us
−He still seeks the one true sign.