NEEDLING

Making the big move... that little piece of land, you know the one I’m talking about, that one piece of little plot that I could call my own... by the river bed oh lord, oh lord tell me, tell me what if by the river, I got me a some place I could call my home? What if then? What would I do with all this time down by the river on this place I could call my own?


Here’s a poem by Robinson Jeffers, a poem I seem to keep coming back to from this book I own:

HANDS

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s palms, no more,
No other picture. There’s no one to say
Whether the brown shy quiet people who are dead intended
Religion or magic, or made their tracings
In the idleness of art; but over the division of years these careful
Signs-manual are now like a sealed message
Saying: “Look: we also were humans; we had hands, not paws. All hail
You people with the cleverer hands, our supplanters
In the beautiful country; enjoy her a season, her beauty, and come down
And be supplanted; for you also are human.”

Report from Earth. All is blank and quiet here. Must mean everybody’s turned out the lights. It seems. Or maybe there’s nobody left like all is gone, flown out to another planet friendlier than this one. Though I wouldn’t know where that might be at. I’d like to know. Let me know anybody if somebody knows some information on that subject. Or any other subject related in any such and such ways. LET ME KNOW. Thank you so much. All is good here at the desk. Reporting with the shades down, the doors open but the screens locked. Night has come and we are still working hard. My memory goes only so far. Listening to some music from the soundtrack of a movie I once saw several times over. The music is important to me because it was introduced to me before I ever saw the movie by a friend who is no longer my friend. And this brings back foggy pictures for me to visualize. Pictures I don’t feel like sharing. Mostly all is blank. Except for what’s fuzzy in my head. The rest is dead and inexistent. So I grew an herb garden and am currently making liqueur with herbs from said herb garden. SO THAT THIS HERE EARTH MIGHT LIVE and not be dead in my head. You see, I live for visions, artificially or naturally induced, without them I feel as if the world around me is dead. I’m an easy sucker for wonderment, for flashes and bright lights, for thunderstorms in the tall cloudy skies, for fast lights, electrical allusions of shocks, for answers to questions even if I forget them as quickly as I surprise them frolicking. I’m a secret frolicker. A lonely thunder man. A sucker for tornado clouds and a grand show improvised on the spot without direction. Report from Earth. All is calm and nothing much of nothing is happening down here. In Austin on Bennett avenue.

Couple winters ago when I was in Portland, Maine, doing nothing much of nothing and I had plenty of time on my hands to walk through the ice-full streets from bookstore to bar to bookstore to bar, I ran into, while browsing the poetry section of one of these bookshops, a volume of poetry by Edward Sanders, published by Black Sparrow Press. I knew not the poet but have long enjoyed the small press in question, so I picked up "America, A History In Verse". I read pages here and pages there, set the book back on the shelf, and came back the following days to read more pages, always at random and in disorder often going backwards, my elbow resting onto the nearing bookshelf of said bookstore where I bought nothing though I visited often. I did buy several books that winter, mostly second hand books, or books I thought I wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere, such as a nice book of essays by Robert Graves. I never bought Sander’s book, though I really wanted it. I had to carry all these books back with me to Paris via the plane, on the plane, as well as my medically required liquids – necessary for me to stay sane throughout the flight, or pass-out, whatever comes first – and I voted to a majority against buying said book. A total lack of money might also have been an important factor. Recently, having held on to one job for longer than six months, paying rent on a regular basis – a first for me in ten years – and taking care of all the bills without any kind of help from tier parties and still having a penny here and there to spend on myself, I decided to order said book from one of those evil tycoon web-ring bookstores... since there are no independent book traders left in Austin, what difference does it make? The book came in the mail the first time. The delivery man set it in front of my front door in Brutus's reach, and the book got TOTALLY eaten by my dear friend. I was upset and kicked my fence while cursing nasty things to nobody in particular, and specially not to Brutus who can’t help himself when it comes to eating good literature, so I sent an email to the BIG virtual book-trader, and they – to their credit and I appreciate fully and thank them gracefully – sent me a brand new package (three books all together, one on Scotch whiskies, one wine encyclopedia, and one book of poems). The book came a second time, and I’m now enjoying it and glad to have it in my possession.


(Other than that, I went to the store down the highway which sales big planks of wood – 1x12x6 poplars, to be exact – and brought them back home, set them on cinder blocks and thus created some large attractive bookshelves, which I promptly filled up to the ream... and all ready I’m thinking I need more bookshelves. That’ll have to wait for another paycheck period however. I also paid some bills, started up a Savings account with my banker’s help, and had a few beers. Fuckin’ Rockin’.)

The wine salesman
he comes in at ten till nine
all the sudden I get a rush of people
coming in
some dude breaks a bottle of wine
and starts picking the pieces up
bare hand
though I tell him over and over again

“it’s all right, man, don’t worry about it, I’m telling you
it’s no big deal... I’ll do it, man, really...”
“Oh Shit... Shit, man, I’m so sorry... dude!
Dude, it’s a forty dollar bottle of wine...
shit man... le'me clean-it up fur ya...”
“Dude, really, don’t worry about it, I’m telling ya...”

And he’s bending over stressing me out
picking broken pieces a glass
and there’s a line of people lining up before I gotta close
and throw them out
and there’s the salesman trying to explain
his wines to me
the ones he wants me to buy from him
and then the salesman
he offers to help sweep up
cause the guy won’t stop bending over picking up
broken glass

“man, it’s a liquor store
we got thousands of bottles in here
it happens, it ain’t no big deal”

then he tries to give me money for the broken bottle
and I refuse his money
I tell him dude just take your whiskey
and don’t you worry none about the spilt wine
and the shards of glass
spread about the floor

Now the salesman is also mopping up for me

"don't worry, I'm used to it
working in the restaurant biz long enough...
the last thing you want
is the customer with some glass sticking out
of his hands
bleeding silly in your store
they don't get it
that's all
been there done that, man"

"Thanks, man
you don't have to do all that
I'll clean up
I was debating wether to mop or not
anyway
the floors look like crap"

"I'm used to it"

while I take care of another customer
all along I’m sneaking looks at the clock counting the minutes
making sure I don’t make a sale past the nine o’clock
deadline

ONE TILL NINE

the last customer walks out
I follow him and lock the front door
putting the CLOSE sign facing the street

The salesman says meet me
later after you close
and we’ll taste some of these wines then

OKAY
I say

Later I end up in this restaurant closing
drinking tasting wine
with said salesman
and the chef
drunk as a nut
telling me his views
which I liked and appreciated
about said wines
the salesman bought me some food
and the chef loved the wine
I didn’t particularly care for
though he was right
with food
the pairing that is
it was more complex and exploded of wild game and galleys of sweat
with a slight first bite of cucumber or possibly green acidic pepper

There’s a lot of pepper on the finish
I said
I don’t know if it comes from the food
or from the wine

Red Curry Pepper, said the chef

It’s the wine as well, said the wine salesman

By itself the wine was no fun
and sour
but with the food it grew and opened
an earthy sweaty game
walking through a vegetable garden

CHILIAN wines

I preferred the Syrah, simple
dry

I’m a simple guy.

I am the snower of grief.

      Preg-A-lig

            stag-A-mig

looking for a line

      the       –       [blank]       –       is out for lunch

and he’s got the dictionary
            in his sister’s paunch
kangaroo style.

      We = Must = Wine.

      Sauvignon Blanc from N.Z.
not so fruity and jam-sweet
            strawberry
as its Californian counter-part

                                          Thank GAAUUD.

Like water it pours from the spout
Like water it pours from the spout
            and from water
it was transformed like Christ

                                          Thank GAAUUD

            did once

on a wedding night which might have been his

                        (though)

not mine       wedding-less.

      Sister, wed thee ME to thee

on the water turned to wine in the pitcher turned to stone.

            (and from water
it was transformed like Christ...

            did once on a wedding night which might have been his
            though
not mine       wedding-less.)

      Sister,             wed thee ME to thee

on the water turned to wine in the pitcher turned to stone.

            I am PIANO
                                                Man

            MERDE

first line of first play of first taste of first onstage presence

                        MERDE

            is the word man the word
which turned it all upside down and back forward up
            tilting west and revolution      -
                                                            ALIZING
east
            and all directions sprinting a      -      gogo.

      MERDE

made it without passport passed the county-line
            into the wet county
and via the liquor store
            bought its life-line of dreams
in a bottle

      DRY ME SILLY TILL I BELT YOU BLIND

(in the bible belt)

preaching the good preach
                                    alone
            with the WORD

            (merde)

                                                                              (      .      )

Three minutes
is but a piano man’s libation
miraculous
and instantaneous
revelation of the goddess
in a single glass
of white.

Sauvignon Blanc
from N.Z.

Cheap prayers
for the un-being.

What is bed-time?
But a nuanced way to let you know
you’re as good as dead?

Wine-drinking fools listening to melodramatic music repetitive and exploitive. Through the persistent pushing of an idea, a phrase, maybe simply a loose general concept, might it make an imprint on your brains. Probably not. But at least there’s the minute possibility of a chance.

Passed the midnight hour not even knowing it. Hourly seconds gone by the clock around hands shaking fat fingers and fat gold rings with fat diamonds on short stubby fingers. The greasy kinds, the kinds which own you and say one thing shaking on it, and then do something totally different knowing it doesn’t matter one bit cause they’ve got the dough and in the end they decide. Something usually slimy and oily. You’re not pleased and it doesn’t matter. Makes not even an iota of a difference in the whole scheme of things what you think. You’re the hourly wage under-paid bill-owing needing over-time but ain’t allowed to take it Joe. You’re the life-line of the company scared cause it don’t take two brain cells to do your job and you gotta pay rent and you owe loads on your credit card. You’re the life-line of the company without you they don’t make a dime. You’re the one who plows the fields short-sighted, blinders on. They own you. But without you they’re nothing, that’s what you can’t get into your brain. You’re the mass. Together you own THEM, if only you weren’t so scared. Passed midnight hour not even knowing what to do with myself. Gotta pull a double shift tomorrow.

The dog was so happy to see me
when I came home.

Is that why I got a dog?
So that he’d be so happy to see me
when I came home?

He tore out the screen from one of my windows
and tried to break in
through another window
while I was at work
destroying the all ready torn up shades
and getting mud inside the house.

There’s a big fucking storm came speeding
through town
thunderous explosions and massive blinding raging rain
for ten minutes
with a little sleeking ice joining in
lightning show outside still going on
without the wet rain
is one electric frenzy of clouds lit up
fireworks almighty
Jupiter-like show
towering on to high heavens
and sparking down bellow to our gardens
and earth.

The dog must’a gotten scared
I sure was
driving home with my head-lights half working
and all the windows fogging up
and half crazed drivers
passing me crazy
and the police lights flashing
onto some blind accident scene
firemen and bumper stoppers
flashing.

Poor little fellows.

When I came home
he’d never been so joyous to see me
since he’s lived here with me
which has been
most of his six and a half month
of life
since he’s been weaned.

Now he sleeps safely
with his head on my foot
as I write this.

I think I might take him out for a walk
around the neighborhood
now.

   PREG   -   A   -   NANT

Is what the doctor says to thee

                        peg-wed

RRRRRRR - rrrrrrUU...

      (crisp breeze at night)

Beetles flirting in the backyard
      spring is nearing us still
flowering from pots freshly dug
      ground dirt tasting mulch
all moved up and down tilled the earth
      with a small rake
looks like a plastic comb
      the cheap black kind
which goes fine with greased back slickers
      looking slick in tight jeans
behind green bulky shades...

Small potted plants
            we’re in for the sun
and a little rain
               before some righteous thunder.

      ... is what the doctor ordered...

PANGS of pain through

         the hole of
                                                                          Earth

pushing       breathing

            skull                            slime appearing.

...

One bottle of wine down
none left to go
but memories of bottles downed
in times now gone.

The man
husband of the woman
wife of the man
who killed her
his wife
the woman
wife of the man.

He strangled her
with a simple kitchen wire
you know the kind
simple chicken
tie’em up after you've stuffed’em
wire.

He strangled her
his wife
strangled by her man
her husband.

The police came
she was dead
circle around her neck
where her skin fought
the wire
simple chicken wire
you know the kind
to strangle your wife with
in the kitchen.

Domestic violence
they call it
the police in their report
late as usual
or the night before
when a nosy neighbor called
“potential domestic violence”
they’d whispered
to the late ever so late police
in the telephone
from behind the curtains
watching the man
and the woman
beat each other up
screaming things like murder.

The police came
too early and then too late
and were asked kindly
to mind their own business and leave
the man
husband of the woman
said to them
and she
“It’s okay... no... really... go away...
yes, Mr. Policeman”
said the woman
wife of the man.

The police came back
the next day
with camera crews
and bright television lights
fifteen minutes of fame
red circle circling around your neck
the woman
wife of the man
the husband
her man
gone
and her
nothing to add
Mr. Policeman
red circle circling her neck
the police
circling the body
with chalk.