first disappearance

yeah
(she was) pale blonde witch
with her spread wings
angel strawberry hair
perfect hard breasts
telephone in her purse
capable of the deep cut

she used me
she used all of me
she was deep in the magic
she pulled the flame from the fire
but it consumed her:
folk music, books of psychosis,
kneelength sweaters,
dreams of me as dylan
her legs are still an endless corridor
but she has been stolen
by the ghost of another woman
looking for an ordinary revenge

(she was) dancing in black stockings
wearing nuns' shoes and very blue eye shadow
her lips slick with juice
(she was) dancing these words
sweet odors from her time
hands describing me describing her
her patience was a pregnancy
always something growing in her
ideas never overdrawn
she call the shots
used my mother's phone to call
her new york enigma
I never minded, feeling lucky that time
but I hated some of it too
when the letter came back to me
the air seemed to collapse
there was no way to breath
(she was) stolen now

This poem is about Marcia Jean Froelke, who I dated the last part of my senior year of high school. Marcia was deep into a fantasy that the shade of Alice Liddell was trying to steal her physical being, so as to be able to seduce and destroy the reincarnation of Charles Dodgson, you know now, Lewis Carroll, for having seduced her as a seven year old in victorian england. Did she really believe this? At the time, I was pretty much convinced she did believe it. Did I believe it? Well, it was the sixties and she was a very beautiful girl, so I rode that train. I will say this, twice in the last thirty years I have exchanged letters with Barry Paris, whom Marcia believed to be the second coming of Carroll, and in both instances, after asking me for an explanation of this story and me sending it, Barry has refused to continue the correspondence. No biggie, but it does make you wonder what really happened between them. I do know that Barry's first book, the biography of Louise Brooks (and a remarkable book it is) includes Marcia Froelke Coburn in the list of acknowledgements. Barry has been a film critic and journalist in Pittsburgh lo these many decades.

This poem was written long before cell phones were even a concept, so that phone in her purse line means something very different. In this case phone stands for her sexuality. Keeping it in her purse means having it available and ready to change location. Marcia tended to have two or three men at a time.

I suppose by way of disclosure, I should mention that I wrote a novel based loosely on this story, Stones Out of Time. Often called my "cemetery fuck book" by my charming literati friends.

The Fall of '68

Later it's the fall of '68 and I am walking Katy Wilson down Clayton Boulevard. We are on our way back to her dorm on the south forty where we will not make love. But the trees are dropping leaves, a hundred versions of red & gold. The wind is just mild enough, the odor is that evening perfume from October. The girl is short, darkhaired, catholic girl ready to break away.And I am on my own, cruising St. Louis, looking for what I imagine truth is. One thing truth is: my arm around her shoulders, our words still pregnant with ideas that haven't been knocked down by the wintery intellects of the University, the semi-erect penis in my jeans. Somewhere June Christy is singing that song "I'll Take Romance." So Katy Wilson became a psychiatrist, & I never really was a writer. But I can put myself on the corner of Clayton & Big Bend in the Fall of 1968 any time that I want. There's June, singing in the other room.

A leaf from my memory, falling to earth in this, the Autumn of my years. Katy Wilson went to Washington University, but I knew her well in Wichita where she was the valedictorian for Mount Carmel Academy's class of 1968. Marcia Froelke and I used to go hang out with Katy some. After the Marcia thing went away for me I started seeing Katy. I was at St. Louis University, and she was five miles up the road at Washington University. Her dorm didn't have parietal hours so boys could be there any time and me and my friends from SLU would go over there and hang out until all hours. She was a pretty little girl, one of the few brunettes in my life, and I certainly could have made love to her and almost did. But, not quite. And then she moved on, tired of waitng for me to pull the trigger no doubt. I remember she wore panty girdles. Girls did that in those days. Here's what she was like, though, she bought me a book of Rod McKuen's poetry. That is to say, someone who was more of a pop artist than an actual poet.

I often think about Katy Wilson when I see Hillary Rodham. If you went to a catholic school in the sixties you knew that girl. And I'm not being negative at all here. I appreciated Katy, but I was never going to be good enough, or successful enough, for what she wanted from her life. Good enough, though, for a roll in the hay. The artist thing. It did work for me, occasionally. I gave her a handmade book of my poems for xmas, 1968. I'm sure she threw it out years ago.

approaching winter

You said you'd remember me
ten years ago and I know
I remember you. But it doesn't
make a true difference,
does it? There isn't any refuge
in this enormous room.
Every corner is crammed
with the detritus of a short life
still unused, but already
recorded. Another old friend
wants to know why this is,
but I'm in a permanent closet,
waiting for an extension
of years. Each of these words
is another atom between us.
I'll never see you
again — I'll never know
if you remember me,
as I understand it.
Despite the brevity of days,
this is normal.


I think this poem is addressed to Marcia Jean Froelke (Coburn). She made a point about how she would remember me, when we were dating at the end of high school. I actually talked to her in 1988, when I brought out the first Writers BARBQ, I thought she might help us along in the city. I was wrong. She mostly wanted to know who I knew and whether I was a groovy enough person in the arts for her to bother with. I never heard from her again. Marcia was beautiful in her time. I wish her well. The undertone of the piece seems to be BLF, but because of the timing, it must be Alison Clare. Well, isn't that entirely normal for Tim? Making my way out of the finger trap here.

Cemetery Fuck, part ii

In that German immigrant cemetery in 1969
just before the redefinition of our words
you let me let you come on someone
buried in 1896, with the remains of his
stone prick our protection
from the near complete lunar globe.
What madness ran through us,
exposed to sacrilege and chill early
St. Louis spring? Don't think because I've
forgotten your logic that I've
forgotten your love. Some communications
remain whole in a temporal context—

(This poem is one of a number of pieces written in 1974 that explicate the story that eventually became my novel, Stones Out of Time. It is based on a pair of relationships I had between 1968 and 1970 that were tied together in a strange fashion. I did spend quite a bit of time in that abandoned, decrepit german cemetery in south St. Louis that first year of college. Good place to get stoned. Plenty of empty above ground tombs. Atmosphere.)