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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 2003)
PAGE 7 NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E, MARCH 2003 NOTES: ALLEN GINSBERG RED BREWSTER Raw sugar video-smoke/blue in the face — the center of the world in search of Cormac McCarthy, it is not ridiculous — a clock with Charles Bukowski wearing a jacket backward and the day the night indistinguishable really from the clear or colored push pins of life. On the death of Allen Ginsberg, poet to beat them all 3 or so years late. Ginsberg dead? Who really cares? Red Brewster’s Chrysler commanded the curb in front of Mabel’s tavern Paint splattered aluminum ladders and electric blue tarps were lashed to the roof rack with a salvaged orange extension cord Teal green latex bled from black five-gallon buckets adrift in the battlewagon’s paint locker Mabel muddled behind the bar in waterfront neon She squinted over a lipsticked L&M that grew an ash longer than a drag queen’s fingernail Remember him naked, boys all around, and he used to do the Johnny Carson show, not many poets did. Big beard flapping chanting “OM” to an unsuspecting public, and Johnny chatting the big guru up — he banged a bad tambourine with Bob Dylan and his Band. Diane de Prima watched him bang some young boy he slept with and Kerouac smiled and rolled over. Wondered in his final sleep where the Howl went. And it was simple, it was easy, it was crazy, it was New Orleans, it was Key West, it was Tennessee Williams. It went into young boys the howl went into his and our bowels, and then came out clean and pure, howl some more, howl for mercy and mercy and mercy. I remember in college I had a philosophy prof, looked just like A.G. and just because I asked a question, which was the only question worth asking — Why do you get up in the morning? He said — Holbowski, you know too much (the greatest compliment I was ever paid). What are you doing here at this college? He had me there, but I said, I’m just like you trying to get laid — by young blue-green eyed coeds. I knew we had the same one in mind and I looked at G. his big beard flecked with spit, his eyes somewhat scared, he howled, used short sentences, short paragraphs, used vigorous English, he banged hard on his tambourine. I’m a freak show, he said, drink wine and ride with Kesey and stop when you are going good, if the talk shows call — go. It’s 3 a m. and I’m gone, the floor my friend. The lava rocks sent back to the island gods, the last record running down. Stop. When you’re going good, and listen to the scratch of night, no woman, no man, just the sheets of AMERIKA left to drape over you at last, at last, good night, goodnight. -CHARLES HOLBOKE “I’m nobody! Who are you?” "-EMILY DICKINSON These consuming men leave with their pronounced staggers swagger through the halls of the buildings they own stumble into their chosen battles Henry you said that you love what flows and these men too have fallen so madly in love one might say with the blackness that pumps through the ground through their hearts the stones that spill from their mouths the redness that lights the sky and falls to the ground pouring over the ocean in the tidal wave of the future bringing stained bones for the new wolves to chew -TERESA BARNES The year before Mabel hit the road with a tight-jeaned pipefitter in a brontosaurus motor home She returned when her saw-offed pitbull husband aneurysmed over a busted bootlace His ashes were scattered over a trailer park drainfield FRANZ MASEREEL POETRY LOST PARAPISE ONE HORNEP Pl LEMMA Burning desire’s in my heart, but I dismiss her. Alas, she’s not mine. -ARTHUR HONEYMAN Whatever one’s personal belief about the Garden of Eden, there is no doubt about the ongoing Power and Influence and Toxicity of this account in the Collective Mind. It stands for Guilt, Blame, Sin and expulsion from Paradise.. The Garden of Eden is to the Mind as Radioactive Nuclear Waste is To the body. -VALERIE LINDHOUT PESERT PEATH 2 We here percolate our angst in small ways up the downscale of rebellious reactionary rebellion against reactionary reactionaries who squander compromise and co-opt what we think is the truth of history. The truth of history is perpetual mobilization impacted rivers of soldiers sailors and airheads — Excuse me! Airpeople! who fly state-of-the-art darts and devastate virtually everything and everybody within range of CNN and MTV — a remarkable and chilling fusion of flesh and heavy metal to lightning Al* poised in the biblical deserts odyssey of an old testament forging ecclesiastical DNA The Cross eternally clenched in Armageddocide with Star & Crescent desperate to shatter the Sword of Allah in traditional biblical manner of ravage and death to the last child salt spread on the sand to obliterate generations of avengers EASY TARGET She hasn't much left thin in the lips, crouched in black, wasting v through the years since the last war She lost her husband and a son to Saddam’s ambition and bore it, maybe it was for Allah, and half of another’s son’s leg is gone, and all but scraps of food to scrounge, and eventually she lost a daughter to what was in the water in the ditches, and no cure, and another she lost dreadfully one night to someone’s anger and pain Now the American with a bellyful of power to use, and again Saddam with whatever is in a man who would scorch and poison to be a god and allow such domestic deaths, they’re yelling venomous epithets, and their fingers are punching the air, we’re coming to get you, so come and get us, and we don’t back down But they don’t mean we or us, not themselves or anyone dear, that isn’t how it works What they mean is the fresh kids who stand up and do the fighting and the weak who have to run, and coming to get, and offering up, what’s barely left of her A waft of river crept in the door salt seasoned creosote nectar bonded with beer spillage urinal cakes and a cigarette slash bum Red Brewster sat on a splintered bar stool held together by a coat hanger Spanish windlass With a West Texas squint he looked over his shoulder to a Black Label Beer clock and introduced 'The Lord Knows I’m Drinkin’ Red naseled lyrics and coerced an old Gibson that had witnessed more misery than a Greyhound toilet As a kid back in Pecos Red dreamed of taking burnt orange hair blue bonnet eyes and Cherokee cheekbones to Nashville Red made the spotlight but it was aimed by hog headed cops in black and white squad cars He drifted down to the Gulf Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange hung tin for a siding hustler slapped and dashed latex Played pedal steel for Leroy Mobbs and dodged flying beer bottles on the chicken wire circuit Red pulled a swan song armed robbery in Port La Vaca and drank his way north Mabel mopped a Heidelburg spill with a bleached bar rag and prayed for an insurance fire Drunk drag fishermen rubber booted cannery stiffs and a pile buck crew in creosote scarred hard hats bellied up to the bar Shot deer, elk and ducks blued the air with big tits, big dicks Camels, Kents and Kools pounded long-necked Buds and Blitz strained schooners through Copenhagen and ignored Red Brewster like a street preacher -GENO LEECH -FLORENCE SAGE -MICHAEL McCUSKER To * Artificial Intelligence accept happiness is to resign oneself to defeat." *W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
