song of the stoned gambler, revised

would-be Vallejo
first goattee I knew well
zapata must've had hair like your's
black, shiny, full, hanging down
below your neck
a revolutionary understanding
for a middle class boy
from upstate Illinois (Dixon/Mt. Sterling)
would-be Vallejo
polishing rocks in time's stream
carving moments on your lover's thigh
disappearing from the poker game
eliciting oral sex from my ex-wife
rehearsing hard-edged ambitions borrowed
from your greek twin
who's own fate staggered through
a series of deaths
would-be Vallejo
your Goddess came and changed your definitions
of goats and soups the scrabbled
games of accusation and meaning
you couldn't understand her daughter
your culture cut you off at the knees
down under it there was always
some smoke the words like beetles
crawling through the Aztec mosaic
you made of your brain
what isssssss /it a............llll
about? strange middle class king
of ancient aboriginal cultures
lurking now a thousand years
along the trail of dissonance
some spaniards brought Jesus for the
Virgin of Guadalupe to give birth to...
paranoid, commented, chained
to the bottom of a dinette set seat
every meal casting off dark gases
in the shroud of living and dying
would-be Vallejo you were never
in prison for the love of a beautiful
girl or for revolutionary times
surely you have awakened by now
given up the old story
admitted the rapes of your youth
the failures of your would-be poems
nothing will solve the crossword
except truth, something to choke
on. Her words exist still as mist
in a country of light.

Ric Amezquita turned me onto the peruvian poet, Cesar Vallejo and his great masterwork, Trilce. That book had a profound effect on me, though not the same way it did on Ricardo. Amezquita had a good friend, Tony Kallas, dark, greek, smart, who wrote like Charlie Bukowski. And Ric had first an affair with Becky Bradway, while his longterm girlfriend, Rosie Richmond was trying to make a new life in California. He did like to smoke a lot of pot and play poker. He wasn't very good at it, but like all those Hemingway-esque writers at that time he pretended he knew what was going on. This piece posits Rosie as the Goddess in Ric's life. She was, yet he could never quite accept that and they never successfully lived together for very long. Ah well. I do think this version is much better than the original version, published in this blog in 2005. Tell me what you think, anyone?

for gary d.

old friend you do not write me
you do not show me your books, anymore
Jim is not here to share my stroh's
Ricardo has gone to Sterling for two weeks
but he did not tell me last Thursday when we talked.
Gary went to Chicago today; he made his apologies
for the retreat. He is lying to himself
about Anita. But it is an old lie that
we all survive.
My child has gone to Oregon with my ex-wife,
the marxist, and I have not heard from him
in the last month.
I do not write Janne, for reasons she refuses
to admit; and of course, she does not write me.
Ross suffers in his understanding
but has made a place and will live nowhere else.
That it cannot include us is only normal.
This list goes on, as you know. But it has no actual
point. It is only to say how dark this room
has become. No one answers my letters, but
I will not threaten suicide to evoke a response.
Instead I spend the days questioning myself,
wondering what are the errors.
Knowing this is only a normal human concern.
Old friend, you do not write me.
But this is not asking you to.
I am no longer surprised by the world, just confused.
These words are splits of wood on the fire,
creating light and heat, just as if you were
actually here.


A poem from the late 70s, speaking to my friend Gary Davidson, after the disillusion of the first Scarritt group. I needed response in those days and sought it, extravagantly. It's a good thing I got over that because there is less and less response to my words as I age. Of course, I'm not as much fun, nor as sexy as I was in those days (I'm sorry Paige, but it is the truth.)

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.

Failed Suicide, 1993

Her moans from the sunroom on south
grand first tracks of betrayal those cabins at
Allerton she looked on the young father
from west of the illinois and found
someone new to replace me she had
that list of boys/men―the farmer-poet
the chicano-liar, the jazz-drummer
―methedrine in his blood stream, the
saxophoner from food & money
singing about Argentina/“land of meat”
she sent him mash notes. Her spirals
composed of bitter, innocent stories,
her passions avoiding the real issue:
her father's religious requirement
to void the dark lust that lived like
a dead snake deep in his armor
a ghost snake a snake of hatred;
& my catholic pre-occupation with
her pain primed me to take her path
too many times (my) mind overlain
with an extra-terrestrial reality

She fucked me over boys.
The truth is she got tired of me.
Tired of the same old stories,
too much like her sick grandfather.
And then the bad chance
didn't come through for her.
Left her living in a garret
with my five year old daughter in
a sad neighborhood in Bloomington.
Is this history or just a long-awaited panic?
I let the pain take me to the hardware store.
I bought the plastic and
walled myself in the kitchen,
turned on the gas.
She almost killed me.
I am certain that was the plan.
Fuck her. And her minor art.
She could have been the real thing.
If only she could have gambled honestly.
If only she could look in the mirror
And open her eyes.

song for the stoned gambler

would-be vallejo
first goattee I knew well
zapata must've had hair like your's
black, shiny, full, hanging down below
your neck a revolutionary understanding
for a middle class boy from upstate Illinois
would-be vallejo
polishing rocks in time's stream
carving moments on lover's thigh
disappearing from the poker game
eliciting oral sex from my ex-wife
telling hard-edged ambitions borrowed
from your greek twin who's own
fate staggered thru a series of deaths
would-be vallejo the Goddess
came and changed your definitions
of goats and soups the scrabbled
games of accusation and meaning
you couldn't see her daughter
your culture cut you off at the knees
down under it there was always
some smoke the words like beetles
crawling through the aztec mosaic
you made of your brain
what isssssss /it a............llll
about? strange middle class king
of ancient aboriginal cultures lurking
now a thousand years along the
trail of dissonance some spaniards
brought Jesus for the Virgin of
Guadalupe to give birth to...
paranoid, commented, chained
to the bottom of a dinette set seat
every meal casting off dark gases
in a shroud of living and dying
would-be vallejo you were never
in prison for the love of a beautiful
girl or for revolutionary times
surely you have awakened by now
given up the old story admitted
the rapes of your youth and the
failures of your would-be poems
nothing will solve the crossword
except truth, something to choke
on. Her words still as mist
in a country of light.

Duffy Jo

she was a bronco buster dead now her camera
level smile genuine in an endless loop of careful
scary optimism what ifs piled up in the dreams
of a new york city life she didn't think she could
actually inhabit her brown mexican boyfriend a tragedy
himself delimited in dekalb married now to her
old friend a desire to hold the past into infinity

her words leaked out in a widening river she
held out hope for her women friends even as
she hid them from the sharp waves of
asshole boys like craig mcgrath, or me, or even
poetry-fraud from cincinatti

a long way away now I hear you Rosie
what did you want to know
how could you learn to leave
where is fidel not in those arms now I tried to find
you at the cemetery where the angel turns
you were a true friend when peggy betrayed me
you knew forgiveness for so many and for yourself
you walked the fond strange walk,
the dance of the unabashed
and carol and polly hid you from the street and
took your hand and named a building after you
all confused by the sudden departure

And I don't think of you as gone, myself. There's your
face in my mind, laughing. Pretty much always laughing.
You definitely know what's funny; its all funny, isn't it?

Rosemary Richmond was a stalwart of the lit scene in Springfield, Illinois from the mid-1970s through her death in 1994 at the age of 49. Rosie and I did not always get famously along but we did get along, and we did respect each other and come to love each other over the years. She had a weird feminism that seemed fairly realistic except every once in awhile when she went over the top. She wrote a pretty great story about a group of women taking a vigilante approach to a man they all knew who date-raped women. What made it a Rosie story was that on the one hand the protaganist really wanted to kill the sob, but she also was totally against the idea. Someone said that a true genius could hold completely different concepts in the mind and believe in them equally and this was certainly true of Rosie.

For many years, and in an off and on again fashion, Rosie had a love affair with a man named Ricardo Mario Amezquita. Ric was a long time member of the Scarritt scene. He was in Knoepf's second poetry class. He played a lot of poker with us and we all smoked a lot of pot that Ric acquired. His best friend was a handsome greek man, Tony Kallas, who fancied himself the next Charlie Bukowski. Both Ric and Tony were very talented writers, but neither of them produced enough to get past the fact that they were not academics. Tony published a number of poems, and a chapbook in the sangamon poets series, Rock River Suite. Ric also published a chap, Eating Stones. He sold it door to door in his hometown of Sterling, Illlinois.

Rosie gave BB her first job in the land of the hardcore feminists. Rosie hired her at the Coalition Against Domestic Violence, ICADV. They were located on South Fourth Street in those days, in an old yellow victorian. Rosie worked for Barb the Shaw until Barb let her go. A weird experience for all concerned. By then Rosie was living in Cheryl Frank's old house on Washington. Rosie had originally moved into the house Pat and I had shared with Gary Adkins and Gael Cox until my relationship screwed things up and I had volunteered us to move, so the other people wouldn't have to. Later on Cheryl and her kids moved into the apartment next door to their house, and Rosie moved into Cheryl's old house, and Barb Shaw moved into the house I used to live in. So many aspects of my Springfield life worked like that. What was it Pat used to say?? The Lobster Quadrille, change partners and dance.