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