for Harris Schiff
they’re so good to
look at, standing
in the bath tub,
towel around the
hair, powder in
hand, making all
the soft stuff
softer—
there’s only
them & us & the
others, but the others
don’t count, except
when they’re always
getting in the way—
once outside of
Greenville, South Carolina,
in 1962, two black guys
picked me up hitchin
on the highway drunk
at 3AM & after some
jiving & juicehead
boasts & fantasies
they took me to some
old shack—woke up the
grumbling ancient black lady
who sold the “dog bite”
& watched me down a
big kitchen tumbler full
& then smile before I passed out
In Greenville I played
piano at “The Ghana”
—“the South’s largest
colored resort” with
a troupe that did the
Southern Soul circuit
—Baby June & the
Swinging Shepherds—15
performers—musicians &
dancers—June played the
trumpet & sang & was a
tough dude but affectionate
& protective boss—I met
him when he got salty
at my white presence
& I, pretending to ignore it,
asked him what the
name of one of the foxy
dancers was cause I had
to meet her she was so
fine—eventually he
hired me to be the crazy
white boy piano player
running onto the stage with
the rest of them—screaming
in sequined “waiters jackets,”
cummerbunds, crazy colored
show clothes doing a crazy
colored show—with one crazy
white boy pounding
the ivories, standing up,
jumping, dancing while
I comped those chords
and felt the joy of
being my own love
affair with music as
the romance of my air—
the audiences loved it—
I would out sblib the
sblibs & stay in the
background to do it
cause in fact I couldn’t
hold a musical candle to
those wonderful motherfuckers
I wish I had hung on to
that outfit—
Sidney
Bechet was corny to me
then—though like “Pops”
he was great anyway—
now I can fuck to the music of both,
digging how close they
came to turning it all
around with just their
sound—shit—aint
that what the ladies
do to me & you?—
turning us around too?—
Mayday means a lot to me
—processions with a
statue of Our Lady &
the girls in white dresses
scattering flowers all
the way—speeches by
the priests against the
Commies who were
having their own parades—
and theirs all started in
Chicago & the fight for
the 8-hour-day—ours in
the forests of Europe &
the worshipping of May
as the start of the good
times of Spring & Summer
—fucking in the woods
all day—
dreaming—
like
you in the Southwest
where I’d be so scared
& was when the sheriff
& his boys stopped me
outside Needles in my
van looking for the
Manson family &
suspecting us!—my
hippie friends & wife
& baby—
guns drawn—
“everybody out with
your hands up!”
—where’s Alice & her
bigtime Needles father?
nobody here but us
& these hungry looking
special deputies—I’m
so cold I stick my hands
in my bell bottoms
& some nervous kid’s
gun starts shaking
at me!
“get’em
up!”—& I do—
holy shit—they mean
it—I’m the father—
the owner of the van—
the one who sensed the
trouble coming before
the guy driving—I
demand a fucking
explanation—
“we’re
looking for some hippie
murderers—now get
back in this thing &
get the fuck outa
here”—
you fucker
—I’m a taxpayer &
one time I ran
for sheriff myself—
only I’
m
also soft & sensitive
& tired of all the
rough stuff—I’m
going home—
only
that’s been 24
places in the 18 years
since I left my first home
for good—
she’s outa
the tub
& into
my life
again &
this is the
one I want
to stay in—
it’s your book did it
Harris—
so distant
from my life
but—
goddamit I
love the truth
as we see it
unfolding our moments alone
to share
just out of the Air Force
in 1966 walking down
the main street of a
midwest farm & college
town a bunch of local
boys drive up to where
me & my wife are
strolling & start calling
me names I thought
I’d left behind—“What!?”
I yell, half an ice
cream popsicle in my
hand, the wrapper in
my other hand, both
out a few inches from
my sides—unthreatening
alone with my bride
of two years—I’m 24
& glad to be free of
court martials & brown
shoe reactionaries riding
herd—or trying to—on
me—& now these cow
town boys are piling
out of their old Chevie
to my amazement
not believing they really
were cursing at me—
I dont even know them!
I think—nobody would
take this kind of chance
in a city—I might
be packing a piece!
ready to dust these
dudes off the earth—
only they been watchin
TV too & one big blond
boy punches me right
in the face—only I dont
go down, I just bounce
back a little on my
feet while he looks
surprised & I drop my
popsicle & paper &
go crazy—grab him
by the hair and
start banging his
head on the fender
of a nearby car—
another, older guy
jumps on my back
yelling “Leggo my
brother” & me screaming
back, not letting go,
“Whadda ya mean,
let go? He just hit
me!”—fraternity jocks
& their dates are out of
the local bars to see
the commotion & out
of the Chevie comes
the smallest & oldest
guy—older than me—
maybe as old as I am
now—35—& he coaxes
the boys back into the
car & I see there’s four
of them—goddamn!—
I’m glad it’s the main
street!—they pull
off and as they do
the one who hit me
leans out & curses me
again—just then a
cop walks up—my
wife, almost hysterical
starts screaming at him
to do something about
what just happened—
he listens then looks at
me & says “Well, with
hair like that, whadda ya
expect?”—& walks
away—Lee cursing him
all the way—
—at home I check the
mirror—it looks
worse—much worse—
than it feels—it’s
all swollen & cut
& a black & blue &
yellow eye for sure—
my first one—all
the fights & scuffles
& getting 86’d—proud
of my clean face even
if I’m skinny—now
I’m proud of this—
I was just letting my
hair grow cause I was
so happy to be free of
the A. F. regulations—
still in my pointy-toed
shoes & tight pants—
I didn’t know I was
part of a movement—
but now I got my
badge—the next
meeting I went to
about Viet Nam I gave
a little rap on being
an ex-serviceman
getting beat up by
kids who hadn’t even
voted or paid taxes or
been drafted yet—I
was a big hit—and
it was all true—
I meant it—my
face was fucked up
from it—my fellow
anti-war activists
were impressed—I needed
a way to remember
being fast with your
hands wasn’t always
the answer—any more
I take her picture
with her hair still
wet & tangled &
it’s sexy & different
& all about how we
see things—not in
the magazine ads
or latest fads—punk
or chic or Soho elite—
it’s about how dis-
tracted she is & tense
—her father’s dying
like the rest of us
only he knows when
or about when & is
fighting with nothing—
the words of strangers—
promises—treatments—
operations—only to
delay or maybe
not even that useful—maybe
only to offer the appearance
of stalling the effects of
what we know will get
some of us—the epidemic
of cancer—industrial
civilization’s answer to
our polluting the rest
of life & the world’s
natural forces—I don’t
mean anymore with
that than my own
frustration & anger—
shit—
it’s like
Mayday—
a call for
help—
the Haymarket riot—
all the dead workers
(Mayday 1937 in Colorado
—the film of those
cops arriving at the
strikers picnic to open
fire on unarmed men,
and women, and
children—all that
death—deliberate &
against us—our
kind—
continues—
and us
against each other—
your book again
Harris—
“running for cover”
she covers her frustrations
with the rituals of covering
her body only to uncover
it soon enough to lose
it—or so I hope—
& believe—for a while
with mine—
Ted says his
“bye bye Jack”
telegram
aint the same
as Duchamp’s to Picabia—
he’s right of course—
it’s never the same—
Winch is an orphan—
you’re an orphan now—
me too—& this isn’t
even her “real” father—
it’s her “step-father”—
only the only one she
knows—& she loves
him—& he’s dying—&
taking some time to do it
in—the changes making
him mad, depressed, dis-
tracted, determined, deadly—
shit—does all this “art”
really do anything to help
me outwit my fate?—I
wanna think I’m great—
& sometimes do—& some-
times you & others—
like her & not only for
me—but her father?—
what can he tell me?—
what can I do for
him?—what does it matter
to either of us?—with
her between us & death
so close—I don’t
wanna die for a long
time & when I do I
want it to be gentle—
but I know there aint
shit I can do—my
grandmother would say
“If you’re born to be
shot, you’ll never be hung”
I wish we knew—
only
he knows & it must be
driving him crazy—it’s
getting to her—& that’s
getting to me—&
into this & therefore to
you—who knows what
I’m talking about that’s
why I’m “talking”—not
“walking” like I sometimes
do—I mean in my work—
her work—it moves me like
the books I love—including
yours—never do—her
music especially—is that
enough?—to live with &
love & be loved by a
person who creates music
that few get to hear but
me & it moves me beyond
my greatest expectations
for any art?—is this
the Paradise they sing
about in Saturday Night
Fever or Reznikoff
wrote of in his Adam
& Eve in the contemporary
city—New York in the
’30s?—poem? I read in
the late ’50s & recognized
(so have in me still as
I will yours & all I ex-
perience that shocks me
with its clarity—I love
to see the edges and the
blurs—I’d like to be in
Frank O’Hara’s mind when
he’s drunk & in love & the
city is out of focus but
gorgeous & his—when he
wrote those things—some
of them—I was drunk
too & in love & wandering
the same streets—a kid—
away from Jersey & home—
immersed in my romantic
self-pity & incredibly in-
telligent perceptions about
life & wages of concern &
sensitivity—it was the
’50s—you were in the
Bronx maybe?—or on
the same Manhattan
streets—I slept in the
park, walked in the
rain, was afraid of
anyone as graceful &
erudite as O’Hara or
I can be sometimes now—
& she—
she was getting to know
her new dad—jealous of
him & his son—she was
a little kid already
planning her escape—
while we were practicing
ours—
this time three
years ago I came
back—to the
city—for good—
(drove my Toyoto back to
D.C. to my ex-wife’s
house—who hasn’t driven
in 15 years—& gave her
the car keys & title—letting
my license expire—through
with my “ace” driving days—
& I loved driving in the
city—that’s what I’d do
now—if it was then—
drive around for a few
hours, shifting gears hard
& fast, outflanking
traffic, judging tight
spaces like a cat, feeling
the limits with my
shoulders as if I were
the car—I loved driving
—making love to the
street with my body-
machine—but I love
so much else I had to
give it up—I was
coming out the other
end anyway brother
& dig it—we are too
often the ones who die
first or use it up fast
or never get to it—
not me—
I want to do it all
once as fast and intense as I can
& then move on—
but
I’m here now—back
where I started or
started starting—
& 3 moves later in 3 years
it’s Mayday, the
anniversary of my
farewell to D.C. where
I “came out” not only
as a lover of men but
a lover of men who loves
women in all those ways
as well and did so
first and will always—
I dont know what that
means—it confuses me
too—but I know I feel
good about feeling good
about me & loving the
way she smells &
moves & feels & lets me
get close as I can—
I loved it sometimes with the men—
but not as easily—as
gracefully—as romantically
—that’s it—there was too
much cynicism & con-
fusion there—& not just
dope—that’s maybe
the thing I’ve clung to
most—turned on the
first time by a black
dude at the Figaro
Cafe—McDougal &
Bleecker—in 1959—I was
17—always in love—
romantically with
women—brotherly
with men—
Charles Wicks
—“Charlie”—“Cochese”—
the football star of
my youth—Columbia
High—when I was in
grammar school—the
toughest spade in town—
maybe the toughest
period—no white guy
ever tried—he was
beautiful—from a
poor family, with a
wife like a picture &
all the women he
could do—& he did—
& told me how he did
& who & what I should
do & I was already doing
by the time we were
friends in 1957 or 58—
in 1972 I realized how
much I loved that dude—
& saw him again then—
a little paunchy &
pushing 40—me just
30 & newly into my
own beauty—so late—
but in time goddamnit
in time—
Charles was so
sweet—but always noble
& generous & offhand in
his easy masculinity & pride
—I never knew a kinder
man—he helped me see
that kindness could be
more than rules & gestures—
& so did you—& I hardly
know you—& maybe it
isn’t always true—but
it made me think of
all this & you in it—
it’s the first Mayday in
12 years I haven’t done
something to commemorate—
& now I have—thank you
NYC April 28-May 2 1978
assembly line breaks—
the critic combing our cells as though on the
table’s keys, wallet (worn)
coins, comb, did not
imply empty pockets or
empty (clean) ashtray non-
smoker or extra tidy guest—
the bad tasting, worse
smelling water (only
matched by the dogs here)—
empty case for eyeglasses—someone reading or watching
TV—or writing in a note-
book the choices of a career
in self-observational anti-
cipation—life—like that—
making a lamp out of a
milk can in Virginia—
out near the mountains—
kids at the swimming hole
of 1978 using the language
of the beatnik bar of 1958—
a hairbrush—a Christopher Isherwood book (early and
relatively obscure)—the
sudden burst of ’60s “rock”
from outside competing with
the river (“born under a bad
sign”)—dirty socks—crickets in gangs—the nastiness of
flying ants—the “pleasures” of the country life outweighed
by the inconveniences for
those addicted to the “pleasures”
of city life—open doorway
to adjoining bathroom that
serves the teenaged daughter’s room as well—more
aged than teened—not old but
older—her yellow bathing-suit and big boned girlishness—
the remnant’s of a doper’s life—
the single wildflower in the cut
glass vase—the blues base of
most rock—tiresome “black”
derivation—unlike the real country origins of non-
blacks—sun supporting
somehow the haze that defuses its explosive
impact on everything here—
more trees than people in Manhattan—no more horizons
outside the stereo or TV and
those all inside now—the
end of a century before it
has ended—we look up once
before—
ex-wife in semi-coma
daughter moves in for good
joins brother and father
reluctant (she) to accept
her mother no longer able
to be her mother as she
has been, though, whatever
“brain damage” means
her father doesn’t even
try to explain or use
these terms, instead
“won’t get much better”
“why me?” asks son
then spends days making
“sick” jokes about death
and brain damage, though
no one mentioned either
in his presence, and
he’s the younger though
raised in New York City
with father these years
where dreams keep father
going despite despair
and recognition confusion
(is he gay or what? no,
he’s sensitive and at times
super-sensual to the point
of not caring what’s
different or the same—
is he any good or what?
so much potential etc.)
38 going on 17, 10 going
on 50 (the son) 12 going
on 6 going on 80 going on,
whoever survives survives,
it doesn’t seem to matter
how, only who, we all
make do, you’ll never
understand who or how
though try, please try,
I got a why that won’t
quit, though my ex-wife
didn’t always like it
and now she’s shit fucking
fighting for some fraction
of a life she used to have
and everything is different
even in my dreams, I
don’t know shit & can’t
compete even with myself
anymore, just let me do
it once the way I meant
to be remembered, she
seems to have, despite
whatever got between us
& I hardly knew, so
fucking scared & hungry.
for Peggy Feury
We are the generation of lost
angels. We rarely feel these
days like we have anything new
to do or say & yet our lives
are totally changed, even from
what they were a year ago, three
months ago, yesterday, trying
to finally be honest about our
feelings about each other’s fame
& glory, while still trying to
get or forget our own, as Billy
Idol sings and the expression
“thrillsville” is recycled in
some teenaged woman’s bed, or
“oh my god” we did that too
the way rocknroll connects us
with the folks we never knew,
maybe spoiling us for joy &
hope & honest bullshit as we
once said to people who were
“naturals” like ourselves before
we disillusioned on the anti-
antis . . . like wanting to be a
movie star forever despite the
rocknroll & dope & beatniks
who still can’t finesse the
necessary kind of classic
heroism we all continue to
love, like the idols of the
silver screen we injected
directly into the limelight
of our brains and hearts for
smarts the schoolrooms dis
possessed and all the rest;
we don’t expect too much, just
freedom from the assholes we
suspect have been enthralled
by their own egos making money
off ours.
We don’t wanna go crazy & die
in some nuthouse with no teeth
like Antonin Artuad, the world’s
first poet movie star and father
of whatever wave obsesses us now
in the New York-L.A.-Berlin-Paris-
Tokyo-Melbourne-London scene that
is the unbraining of Hollywood’s
being influenced by us! (the obvious
vice versa has been feeling our
brains since we mainlined Marilyn
& Marlon) & what about the “blues”
of John Wayne? That’s how we
survived. And now it’s all one,
the sum of our music and movie
influences spread across the
globe for anyone to use as in
“the new technology” which has
been in our cells since “action”
was a label for painting and
not just the order for the start
of our hearts’ flicks . . .
We love being alive
and trying to share the craziness
of what it means to know it! I mean
did we really come too late for true greatness
or just on time? What is this new place
that defines L.A.-New York and all
the rest as just a state of mind?
Energy versus Peace? FUCK THAT SHIT!
The Peace of Energy that makes us
generate a void of minuscule delights
like we once relied on artificial
stimulants for, no more, maybe at last
we can reflect the serious sensuality
of the stars we talk to in our walk
through the sea we have become—
We are the masses who survived
the troubled times that rhymed
our lives the way old Hollywood
serials did, and understand our
laughter matters. Literally.
That’s the secret of creation,
transforming laughter into matter.
We can finally accept and still
hope, like reality is the freedom
of knowing who we are and where
we’re at and the ideal is sharing
that completely, without fear,
then letting go, not hanging on
but knowing anyway, because we’re
smart at last and allow ourselves
to be. What are these humming
motors anyway but mammals of our
fantasies! Sure we talk to cars
and TVs and expect the music to
invade our brains, the motors
of our smarts that drive our
hearts to caring about it all.
Hey, what’s L.A. but the
city of Lost Angels where
we all were born, even in
New Jersey cause what’s
left of that is something
close to nothing, as the
categories fade and rede-
fining the specifics is
less thrilling. Like Elvis
isn’t. I wish they’d fish
him over the rainbow of
telescopic infinitude so I
wouldn’t have to bother with
the memory of his collar
turned up and hair that thick
I thought it was hereditary.
The Shirelles, now there’s
some memories that never quit
changing, big women and still
growing. We made ourselves
in the images of images and
then got rid of it before we
came. Coming isn’t the game
it once was. And neither is
going.
***
I only wanted to go far, be a star,
understand the way you all are.
Love, money, friends, family,
a stimulating environment, some good books,
records, art, photographs, furniture,
place to sleep and eat and work,
make love and shower, shit and entertain in,
maybe a good car,
some free time,
your name in the paper now and then,
or in a magazine,
or on TV,
your image too,
or in a movie, on a record, in a book,
or on the cover,
in the titles,
on the lips of strangers,
in the minds of a worldwide audience . . .
So you move to El Lay
to make money and become a star.
So you lived in New York City
to make art and smart sexy friends.
Which wasn’t enough.
So you move to El Lay where
she has almost transparently blue eyes,
so intense they give the impression
that there has never been a person
they haven’t seen through.
She has to be over fifty,
perhaps well over, like in her sixties.
It’s so hard to tell these days;
or was it always?
Her eyes communicate such strength
when you look into her still beautiful face
you feel beyond time.
Her body gives it away a little.
Small, but not delicate,
there’s something obviously
deteriorated about it
that seems in such contrast to her face,
unlike those strenuously physical
geriatric exercisers whose bodies
always seem to be made up of knots
and wires and strings and really ugly
imitations of some impossible youth.
Anyway,
I love her.
I fell in love with her the first time I
looked into her eyes. I can’t resist a
woman who sees right through me and
is beautiful too. She’s the real thing,
a total woman, smart, beautiful, and
old enough to be my lover, I mean mother,
maybe. Maybe not.
I’m not that young myself anymore, just
having walked through the door marked forty.
The best thing about which was
suddenly realizing why old guys can find old gals
sexy. When I was a kid I could never understand
the obvious attraction
my middleaged aunts could still retain for
my middleaged uncles and vice versa.
Now I know. There’s a girlish glow
to most grown women that never disappears,
and if you went through the same or close-by years
with them, you can’t help but see it,
and it makes you feel some kind of sympathy and
understanding for them, and then
on top of it they have this look
of having been through some things,
around the block as many times as you,
and that creates some crazy sexy feelings too.
It’s all so new,
being old,
I mean older than I thought I’d ever live to be
and still be me.
These are some thoughts that moving from New York
to El Lay has provoked. There’s so much space here
to panic in. The idea of “image” was crucified here
for everyone’s sins and then resurrected to be
worshipped for as long as this place lasts
and influences the rest of the world.
Hollywood, one of the greatest sources of power
the world has known, and no real throne, no armies
or obvious superiority except occasionally
in technical, even artistic, ways.
But oh these fucking days of driving from
one crazy studio lot to another and feeling
as much at home as I ever did
in the apartments of my peers through all the years
of poetic ecstasy and self-destruction.
What other homes have we ever had, let’s face it,
then Hollywood, the New York of bebop & jazz
& street scenes & energy highs (& its flip side:
galleries & Frank O’Hara, off & off-off and then
on Broadway again) or “on the road” or on TV
or radio or stereo or juke box.
Let’s face it Charlie,
we coulda been real home lovers
instead of dream chasers which is what we are.
Only worse than the Romantics of old,
we can get real cold
and see right through that bullshit
as we watch the technology unfold
into a future of dreams & nightmares we never
forgot.
And I can’t believe all that’s gone down—
I’m talking to the trees again
and I haven’t done that since
God knows when—because I guess
it’s Him, or Her, or It I’m talking to
when I look up at a tree and say
you got any advice for me today?—
and they always respond the same way
Frank O’Hara did, when he appeared to me
in the back of a checkered cab
on my way back from cheating
on the then woman in my life
a Costa Rican beauty I still miss
as I miss you all, even if I don’t
call you too often—or at all—
I was high—on boo and other stuff—
we’d met at a literary awards event
where John Ashbery, O’Hara’s close friend
had just received the nation’s highest
poetic honor—or close enough—
and then we all piled into this bus
that took us back to the Plaza Hotel,
where Eloise once romped when I was
just her age only now it was me
thinking about this Canadian Jewish
beauty, famous for her literary liaisons
and how it would feel to be inside her
and know her famous beau, who was a rich
kid still at fifty, wouldn’t know,
but I would the next time he looked
down his nose at me and my much
tougher poetry, the way I saw it—
anyway, I was full of guilt by now—
having been inside her and her home
and done the jitterbug of life and
then got up to leave and though I
had never deceived her, had told
her of my life with Ana and my son
from a still undivorced ex-wife—
she got mad and threw books at me
calling me “you bastard you son of
a bitch” as I fled down the stairs
and out into the New York night and
the checker cab that sped downtown
with me mumbling in the back seat
about my guilt although I’d never
cheated on Ana before and wouldn’t
again and she’d never know—and
when we broke up it was because she
couldn’t stay away from some younger
version of myself who gave her the
baby and marriage she wanted and
followed her home to Costa Rica
and some position in her family’s
mini-empire—but this night we
were still alright except for my
feelings of being a rat to everyone
concerned because I never seemed to
learn that the possibility of making
love was not an imperative—I
felt so bad I thought I was dying—
from the dope and loss of hope that
I would ever be the man I thought
I was—when all of a sudden there
beside me in the cab was Frank O’Hara
in white shirt, open at the collar,
sleeves rolled up, and khaki pants
and penny loafers—he put an arm
around my shoulder and in the voice
I’d only heard on tapes and records
told me it was alright, that if I
hadn’t done what I’d done that night
I wouldn’t be me—the Michael
my friends seemed to love and even
admire—and that I wasn’t gonna
die—or even have to lie—because
nobody would know—and I was so
relieved I cried a little—something
I only do when watching TV or a movie
and when I got home Ana didn’t seem
to notice anything, only Miles, my
little five-year-old locked eyes
with mine and asked “What’s wrong?”
and when I told him nothing, he
kept looking to see if I was telling
the truth, so I added “I’m just
glad to be home” which he accepted
as true, because it was—
Wait a minute, that was so many years ago,
what does it have to do with being here
in Southern California with you, writing
about “six years in another town” for
the new friends I have now, who never
knew me when I jitterbugged through
life’s opportunities, cutting a rug,
giving everyone a hug of true affection
because I knew, or thought I knew back
then that every person was a friend
because inside they wanted just what
I did, to be free to really dig what
life has given us, including each other—
Even the woman I moved here with in 1982,
even the files they keep on me and you
to see if we might get in the way of
Bush or J. Danforth Quayle or whoever
else the powers that be get to run the
show up front while they continue to
milk us all for what they need to keep
that power to themselves, and if that
sounds like another decade, well, it’s
almost 1989, time for this one to end
and leave us, my friends, as Dukakis
always calls complete strangers—and
leave us with only memories of what
someone has accurately called “The Mean
Decade”—and enter the time of
saving ourselves and each other again—
it’s the earth and the universe too
now—what an awesome responsibility—
and how we continue to fuck it up—but
hey, we’re only human, doing our best
to muddle through until tomorrow when
somebody else gets the job we thought
we wanted—I remember after Ted Berrigan
died, who also knew Frank when he was
alive, like I didn’t—two Irish-American
poets like me, haunted by Catholic guilt
and dreams of sainthood and sex—or
sexhood and saint—I always think of
O’Hara as Saint Frank—and Ted, the
last time I saw him was in heaven—
I guess it was a dream—but there he
was, newly arrived—looking better than
he ever did when he was alive, trim and
healthy and clean and sharp and totally
quiet—a big surprise for a man who
lived on speed and machine-gunned his
every thought into the faces and minds
of anyone who crossed his path and even
those who didn’t—he didn’t say a
word, and I walked over to him and sat
down beside him to tell him how good
he looked and how happy I was to see
him because I was, he was my friend,
who helped me out when I needed help—
he knew the same codes I did and lived
his life that way so he could say, when
he loaned me a few hundred bucks he didn’t
really have and I promised to pay it back
right away—“Hey, Michael, it would be
an insult for you to give this back man,
it’s a gift, it’s nothing compared to
all the pleasure your poetry has given
me” and I could say, when I did the same
for him when he was down and out like me,
which we both were most of the time back
then, I could tell him “vice versa only
double”—he was my friend—and now
here he was, in heaven, and not saying a
word until he smiled at me, as handsome
as I ever saw him, when I asked how he
was doing (dead and in heaven) and he
said “Michael, you don’t know how great
it is not to have to talk anymore” and
it hit me, that must be heaven to a
guy like him, who never shut up and only
because he was so generous and smart and
had such a huge heart did we all put up
with the din when he let us in when we
went to pay him a visit—
Wait a minute! What has all this
got to do with living in L.A.?
Well, Ted passed away after I moved
here, and it pissed me off so much
I got in touch with my own need to
pass up speed and all the rest and
try to be the best I could be for
whatever time I had left—including
letting go of sex as the answer to
my disappointments in life—but
hey, it isn’t always used that way—
sometimes it’s just the most exciting
and convenient and fastest way to say
we’re still alive today and glad of it—
Hey, you all say, wait a minute, he
calls this stuff poetry? I can do
that—which makes me feel real good
because the code of this boy’s art
is the normal heart no matter how
surreal the circumstances—what
I mean is, the scene I dug the most,
came up through, and once was host to,
made it clear that if you’re smart
you don’t have to keep on proving it
in the work so that the person on
the receiving end goes: wow, I could
never do that, it’s so difficult
and clever and precious and like a
machine I wasn’t trained to run—
but we say, fuck that look-at-me-
I’m-educated-up-the-ass bullshit—
we say the work has got to be fun
even while it’s taking on the Huns
of our existence, the bad guys in
the house of lies who disguise it
all as in our best interest—
these guys hypnotize with banality
as mean as genocide—while they
hide their true intent behind the
sense of expertise and techniques
we can only compromise—forget it—
art that makes you go, hey, I can
do that too is what moves me to see
life through to the end and still
be friends with myself—forget
the “off the shelf” operations that
the experts think we’re better off
not knowing about—NO WAY! we
gotta shout our way back into history
because it’s ours, just like these
six years here were mine—a time
when I got clean and sober unlike
any film by that name, but not so
different I couldn’t recognize the
games we all play with denial in
those phony smiles Keaton threw around
playing the clown for death instead
of life where we all live whether we
like it or not—hey, wait a minute!
I wanted to tell you about my first
Oscar party at Spago—where I
threw some tuxedoed guy against
the wall when he tried to tell me I
couldn’t cut in front of him on the line
to the mens room—I thought I blew
my whole career as a star when I’d
realized what I’d done—but later
he told my then wife that it was
the most exciting thing that had
happened to him all year—
I thought, wow, I’m glad I’m here
where coked up craziness gets
rewarded—only really I was full
of fear when I moved here a few
weeks later in ’82 and met a lot of you,
fear I’d never be able to expose
myself as honestly as I had to friends
that went back so much further—
fear that I wasn’t good enough
because I didn’t have the money—
was like the honey the health nuts
pretend is better for you than all
that sugar we consumed when we were
kids—wait, I really want to stay
on track and get back to the art
I came out here to practice—and
did—that’s what’s gone down
in these six years too—I did get
to see myself on TV in a way I used
to dream I would—and even when it
wasn’t very good—or I wasn’t—
hey—goddamnit it was fun!—after
all it isn’t like the war on AIDS or
the creeps who think this government
the creeps who think this government
is theirs to run is gonna be lost or
won by what I do as a bad guy on a
nighttime soap—no, what it’s gonna
do is give hope to the people I came
up with who think, or thought, that
guys like us didn’t get this far and
if we did we were stars then and forgot
what it was like to not take any of it
too seriously—oh six years in another
town without the renown I thought would
be mine has left me so much more humble
which is something I guess I need
to be—but it has also left me
with all of you—and the chance to
make a new dance beyond the jitterbug
I flew through the bedrooms and back
seats and closets of my past with—
I mean hey, in ’86 the dirty tricks
of Nixon were dismissed and suddenly
he’s an “elder statesman” and if that
doesn’t make us wake up and laugh
out loud at all those who would make
us proud of our worst qualities what
will? We still got some time left—
for some of us to get tough with the
stuff of life that turns us on and hold
a light to it for the rest of us to get some—
I mean I gave a reading where I read
for the first time only work written
here in this town, and it not only
went okay, an old old friend did
say—“Now that’s a real poetry
reading”—and I thought they all
were—and they were—only now—
it’s not to stir your juices only
and have you remember me as the star
of poetry that sounds the way we
sometimes think and talk and share
what we’re afraid others might find
trite or at least not as mighty as
the real art stuff—no—I meant
to share a vision that has driven me
since my first memory—of a world
where love is not just an advertiser’s
cliché but a way of life that isn’t
serious like lying, but hopeful and
funny and important and honest and
significant and something that effects
all of us, the entire community, the
community of the universe, like dying
does—okay, that’s not heavy, just
take a second look, what I’m saying is
there is no book of love without death
and there is no death without love—
unless it’s a death that is lying—
and I know that truth is something
so illusive we can never really reach
it, but hey, we can approach it if
we try, and there’s nothing saying we
can’t dance as we do, and even dance
til we die, even if our dance is only
in the eye of those who love us—
that’s what’s really gone down these
six years, my heart, to the depths of
despair and fear and regret and sorrow
only to rise again for the miracle of
today that was only yesterday’s tomorrow.
I spent four hours and more
on a strip of the Pacific Coast Highway
traveling between Rambla Vista and Sunset Boulevard
which would normally take ten to fifteen minutes.
It had been the brightest, clearest day
of my eleven years so far living on the Santa Monica Bay.
But it grew dark from clouds of smoke
billowing up from the ridges lining the road
and blowing over the backed up panicked
and yet patient traffic and on out over the Pacific.
We—my girlfriend and roommate Kristal and me—
had driven to Malibu when we walked out of
the laundromat on Montana Avenue and saw the
piercing blue sky encroached upon by a thick and
sinewy cloud of smoke that seemed to be coming
from Santa Monica Canyon. But once there,
where we drove, on Kristal’s instigation, we saw
it was further up the coast and without any
hesitation kept driving until we reached my
daughter Caitlin’s street, which winds up from
the coast and bends back down, and with
her boyfriend Nels Brown she lived until that
day on which the house, the apartment they
shared was in, burnt down to the ground
of the hillside from which she had been
admiring the clarity of that day’s view in
which the ocean met the sky in the kind
of sharply drawn line we thought would
always be there when I was a boy a continent
and ocean away. I mean it was a perfectly
clear day, the kind that once was normal
and expected before smog and haze and all
kinds of pollution and distortions of God’s
beauty was accepted. My daughter didn’t want
to leave at first. It was still early in
the fire’s growth and no warnings had
preceded ours. We talked about it for an hour.
We even discussed what she might take were
a disaster truly imminent, and joked about
her dragging a foot locker full of things
from her baby years and childhood I kept for her
until she grew and moved away. But
not that day. She didn’t want to make
a fuss. Every item we’d discuss and I’d
suggest might be best to take she’d get
upset and insist it would be too difficult
to try and differentiate. “It would be like
moving,” she said, and instead just finally
took a couple of things, some photo albums,
address and check books, a change of clothes
for her and her boyfriend. She, and even
Kristal, had made fun of my persistent
insistence that we should go before we got
stuck up there and PCH got closed down.
But when we finally got her cat and
few possessions that she took into her car
and mine and drove down to the highway
it was already a parking lot. And the
wind had grown so strong and hot it
seemed the fire was already in the air
if not yet visible in flame and smoke
where we were. But it soon was and
thank God by then we had been creeping
forward inch by inch, it seemed, enough
to just stay forward of the smoke and
rushing flames. At one point Kristal got
out and took a walk and Caitlin opened
her door and I did mine and she said:
“Thanks—you’re a pain sometimes but
thank you.” And I wanted to cry and
go back and get that foot locker and
her paintings and her boyfriend’s keyboards
and music and all the rest. And I wish
I had the power to make it all right.
But I don’t—and never will. The rightness
is in knowing that and going on with it
still as though I didn’t know. I do.
When I was 10,
I thought I was “Irish,”
even though I was
born in the USA.
When I was 20,
I thought I was “Black,”
even though my skin
is pink & freckled,
my hair is straight,
and I have no
African ancestry.
When I was 30,
I thought I was “queer,”
even though I was
married and had
two children, and
all my fantasies
& obsessions & com-
pulsions & attractions
were and had always
been about women.
When I was 40,
I thought I was a
“movie star,” even
though the movies
were terrible, and
I was terrible in
them, and almost
no one knew them,
or who I might
have been in them.
When I was 50,
I thought I was
“enlightened,” even
though I wasn’t.
But of course I was
and am—enlightened,
as I was and still am
—an Irish-Black-
Queer-Movie-Star.