Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork

POSTCARD

I wonder if eighty-four-year-old Colonel Sanders
ever gets tired of traveling all around America
 talking about fried chicken.

LOADING MERCURY WITH A PITCHFORK

Loading mercury with a pitchfork
your truck is almost full. The neighbors
take a certain pride in you. They
 stand around watching.

IT'S TIME TO TRAIN YOURSELF

It's time to train yourself
to sleep alone again
and it's so fucking hard.

THE ACT OF:
DEATH-DEFYING AFFECTION

The act of: death-defying affection
insures the constancy of the stars
and their place at the beginning of
everything.

CROW MAIDEN

 Starring a beautiful young girl and twenty-
three crows. She has blonde hair. The crows are
intelligent. The director is obsessed with the
budget (too low). The photographer has fallen
in love with the girl. She can't stand him. The
crows are patient. The director is a homosexual.
The girl loves him. The photographer
daydreams murder. "One hundred and seventy-
five thousand. I was a fool!" the director says
to himself. The girl has taken to crying a lot at
night. The crows wait for their big scene.

 And you will go where crows go
 and you will know what the crows know.

 After you have learned all their secrets
 and think the way they do and your love
 caresses their feathers like the walls
 of a midnight clock, they will fly away
 and take you with them.

 And you will go where crows go
 and you will know what the crows know.

INFORMATION

Any thought that I have right now
isn't worth a shit because I'm totally
 fucked up.

WE MEET. WE TRY. NOTHING HAPPENS, BUT

We meet. We try. Nothing happens, but
afterwards we are always embarrassed
when we see each other. We look away.

IMPASSE

I talked a good hello
but she talked an even
 better good-bye.

THE NECESSITY OF APPEARING
IN YOUR OWN FACE

There are days when that is the last place
in the world where you want to be but you
have to be there, like a movie, because it
 features you.

FOR FEAR YOU WILL BE ALONE

For fear you will be alone
you do so many things
that aren't you at all

EVERYTHING INCLUDES US

The thought of her hands
 touching his hair
makes me want to vomit.

I'LL AFFECT YOU SLOWLY

I'll affect you slowly
as if you were having
a picnic in a dream.
There will be no ants.
 It won't rain.

AT THE GUESS OF A SIMPLE HELLO

At the guess of a simple hello
 it can all begin
toward crying yourself to sleep,
wondering where the fuck
 she is.

SEXUAL ACCIDENT

The sexual accident
that turned out to be your wife,
the mother of your children
and the end of our life, is home
cooking dinner for all your friends.

FUCK ME LIKE FRIED POTATOES

Fuck me like fried potatoes
on the most beautifully hungry
morning of my God-damn life.

THE CURVE OF FORGOTTEN THINGS

Things slowly curve out of sight
Until they are gone. Afterwards
 Only the curve
 Remains.

THE SHADOW OF
SEVEN YEARS' BAD LUCK

A face concocted from leftovers of other faces
needs a mirror put together from pieces of
 broken mirrors.

DIVE-BOMBING THE LOWER EMOTIONS

I was dive-bombing the lower
emotions on a typical yesterday
 after
I had sworn never to do it again.
I guess never's too long a time to stay
 out of the cockpit
with the wind screaming down the wings
and the target almost praying itself into your
 sights.

  August 30

EARLY SPRING MUD PUDDLE
AT AN OFF ANGLE

That's how I
 feel.

  October 5

NOBODY KNOWS
WHAT THE Portfolio IS WORTH

Nobody knows what the Portfolio is worth
but it's better than sitting on your hands,
 I keep telling myself.

7:25 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

June 30th, June 30th

"1942"

Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
twenty-six years old, dead
and homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka,
his coffin travels
like the fingers
of Beethoven
over a glass
of wine.

Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
a legend of my childhood, dead,
they send him back
to Tacoma.
At night his coffin
travels like the birds
that fly beneath the sea,
never touching the sky.

Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
take his heart
for a lover
and take his death
for a bed,
and send him homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka
to bury him
where I was born.

Japanese Model

Tall, slender
dressed in black
perfect features
Egyptianesque

She is the shadow
of another planet
being photographed
in a totally white room

Her face never changes
her page-boy hair
looks as if it were cut
from black surgical jade

Her lips are so red
they make blood
seem dull, a
useless pastime

            Tokyo
            May ?, 1976

Romance

I just spent fifteen seconds
staring at a Japanese fly:
      my first.

He was standing on a red brick
in the Mitsui Building Plaza,
      enjoying the sun.

He didnt care that I was looking at him.
He was cleaning his face. Perhaps he had
      a date with a beautiful
      lady fly, his bride to be
      or maybe just good friends
      to have lunch a little later
      in Mitsui Plaza
      at noon.

            Tokyo
            May 17 or 18, 1976

Dreams Are like the [the]

Dreams are like the [the]
wind. They blow by. The
small ones are breezes,
but they go by, too.

            Tokyo
            May 20 or 26, 1976

Strawberry Haiku

*****
*******
The twelve red berries

            Tokyo
            May 22, 1976

A Short Study in Gone

When dreams wake
      life ends.
Then dreams are gone.
      Life is gone.

            Tokyo
            May 26, 1976

A Study in Roads

All the possibilities of life,
all roads led here.

I was never going anyplace else,
      41 years of life:

      Tacoma, Washington
      Great Falls, Montana
      Oaxaca, Mexico
      London, England
      Bee Caves, Texas
      Victoria, British Columbia
      Key West, Florida
San Francisco, California
      Boulder, Colorado

      all led here:

Having a drink by myself
in a bar in Tokyo before
      lunch,
wishing there was somebody to talk
      to.

            Tokyo
            May 28, 1976

Floating Chandeliers

Sand is crystal
like the soul.
The wind blows
      it away.

            Tokyo
            May 28, 1976

Japanese Women

If there are any unattractive
      Japanese women
they must drown them at birth

            Tokyo
            May 28, 1976

Sunglasses Worn at Night in Japan

A Japanese woman
      age: 28

lives seeing darkness
      from eyes

that should see light
      at night.

            Tokyo
            May 30, 1976

Japanese Pop Music Concert

Dont ever ever forget
      the flowers
that were rejected, made
      fools of.

A very shy girl gives the
budding boy pop star a bouquet
      of beautiful
      flowers

between songs. What courage
it took for her to walk up to
the stage and hand him the flowers.

He puts them garbage-like down
on the floor. They lie there.
She returns to her seat and watches
      her flowers lying there.
Then she cant take it any longer.

      She flees.
      She is gone
      but the music
      plays on.

      I promise.
      You promise, too

      Tokyo
      May 31, 1976

Chainsaw

A beautiful Japanese woman
      / age 42
the energy that separates
      spring form summer

      (depending on June)
      20 or 21
      -so they say-

Her voice singing sounds
just like an angelic chainsaw
      cutting through
      honey.

      Tokyo
      June 1, 1976

Day for Night

The cab takes me home
through the Tokyo dawn.
I have been awake all night.
I will be asleep before the sun
      rises.
I will sleep all day.
The cab is a pillow,
the streets are blankets,
the dawn is my bed.
The cab rests my head.
Im on my way to dreams.

      Tokyo
      June 1, 1976

The Alps

One word

waiting

leads to an
avalanche
of other words

if you are

waiting

for a woman

      Tokyo
      June 1, 1976

A Young Japanese Woman
Playing a Grand Piano in a
Very Fancy Cocktail Lounge

Everything shines like black jade:

      The piano (invented
      Her long hair (severe
      Her obvious disinterest (in the music
            she is playing.

Her mind, distant from her fingers,
is a million miles away shining

      like black
      jade

            Tokyo
      June 1, 1976

Worms

The distances of loneliness
make the fourth dimension
seem like three hungry crows
looking at a worm in a famine.

      Tokyo
      June 1, 1976

Things to Do on a Boring Tokyo Night in a Hotel

1. Have dinner by yourself.
Thats always a lot of fun.

2. Wander aimlessly around the hotel.
This is a huge hotel, so theres lots of space      
to wander aimlessly around.

3. Go up and down the elevator for no reason
at all.
The people going up are going to their rooms.
            Im not.
Those going down are going out.
            Im not.
4. I seriously think about the house phone
and calling my room 3003 and letting it ring
for a very long time. Then wondering where
Im at and when I will return. Should I leave
a message at the desk saying that when I return
      I should call myself?

      Tokyo
      June 1, 1976

Travelling Toward Osaka on the
Freeway from Tokyo

I look out the car window
at 100 kilometers an hour
      (62 miles)
and see a man peddling
a bicycle very carefully
down a narrow path between
      rice paddies.
Hes gone in a few seconds.
I have only his memory now.
He has been changed into
a 100 kilometer-an-hour
memory ink rubbing.

      Hamamatsu
      June 7, 1976

Eternal Lag

Before flying to Japan
I was worried about jet lag.

"My" airplane would leave
San Francisco at 1 P.M.
      Wednesday
and 10 hours and 45 minutes later
would land in Tokyo at 4 P.M.
      the next day:
      Thursday.

I was worried about that,
forgetting that because I suffer
from severe insomnia I have
      eternal jet lag.

      Tokyo
      June 9, 1976

The Past Cannot Be Returned

The umbilical cord
cannot be refastened
and life flow through it
      again.

Our tears never totally
      dry.

Our first kiss is now a ghost,
haunting our mouths as they
      fade toward
      oblivion.

      Tokyo
      June 19, 1976
      with a few words
      added in Montana
      July 12, 1976

Two Women

      /1

Travelling along
a freeway in Tokyo
I saw a womans face
reflecting back to us
from a small circular mirror
on the passenger side
of the car in front of us.
The car had a regular
rearview mirror in the center
of the front window.

I wonder what the
circular mirror was doing
on the passenger side of the car.
Her face was in it. She was directly
in front of us. She had a beautiful
face, floating in an
unreal mirror on a Tokyo
      freeway.

Her face stayed there for a while
and then floated off
forever in the changing traffic.

/2

She moves like a ghost.
She is not alive any more.
She must be in her late sixties.
She is short and squat
like a Japanese stereotype.

She takes care of the lobby
of the hotel. She empties
the ashtrays. She dusts
and mops things. She moves
like a ghost. She has no human
      expression.

A few days ago I was standing
beside three Japanese businessmen
peeing in the lavatory.
We each had our own urinal.
She walked in like a ghost and started
mopping the toilet floor around us.
She was totally unaware of us,
standing there urinating.
She was truly a ghost
and we were suddenly ghost pee-ers
      as she mopped on
            by.

      Tokyo
      June 21, 1976

Love

The water
in the river
flows over
and under itself.

It knows
what to do,
flowing on.

The bed never
touches bottom

      Tokyo
      June 28, 1976

Land of the Rising Sun

      sayonara

Flying from Japanese night,
we left Haneda Airport in Tokyo
four hours ago at 9:30 P.M.
      June 30th
and now we are flying into the sunrise
over the Pacific that is on its way
      to Japan
where darkness lies upon the land
and the sun is hours away.
I greet the sunrise of July 1st
for my Japanese friends,
wishing them a pleasant day.
The sun is on its
      way.

      Tokyo
      June 30th again
      above the Pacific
      across the international date line
      heading home to America
      with part of my heart
            in Japan

7:23 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Poems (from Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork

SEXUAL ACCIDENT

The sexual accident
that turned out to be your wife,
the mother of your children
and the end of our life, is home
cooking dinner for all your friends.

FUCK ME LIKE FRIED POTATOES

Fuck me like fried potatoes
on the most beautifully hungry
morning of my God-damn life.

CROW MAIDEN

       Starring a beautiful young girl and twenty-
three crows.  She has blonde hair.  The crows are
intelligent. The director is obsessed with the
budget (too low).  The photographer has fallen
in love with the girl.  She can't stand him.  The
crows are patient.  The director is a homosexual.
The girl loves him.  The photographer
daydreams murder.  "One hundred and seventy-
five thousand.  I was a fool!" the director says
to himself.  The girl has taken to crying a lot at
night.  The crows wait for their big scene.

  And you will go where crows go
  and you will know what the crows know.

  After you have learned all their secrets
  and think the way they do and your love
  caresses their feathers like the walls
  of a midnight clock, they will fly away
  and take you with them.

  And you will go where crows go
  and you will know what the crows know.

LOADING MERCURY WITH A PITCHFORK

Loading mercury with a pitchfork
your truck is almost full. The neighbors
take a certain pride in you. They
stand around watching.

IT'S TIME TO TRAIN YOURSELF

It's time to train yourself
to sleep alone again
and it's so fucking hard.

9:19 AM - 7 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

from "The Abortion, an Historical Romance 1966"

The Library


This is a beautiful library, timed perfectly, lush and American. The hour is midnight and the library is deep and carried like a dreaming child into the darkness of these pages. Though the library is "closed" I don't have to go home because this is my home and has been for years, and besides, I have to be here all the time. That's part of my position. I don't want to sound like a petty official, but I am afraid to think what would happen if somebody came and I wasn't here.
I have been sitting at this desk for hours, staring into the darkened shelves of books. I love their presence, the way they honor the wood they rest upon.
I know it's going to rain.
Clouds have been playing with the blue style of the sky all day long, moving their heavy black wardrobes in, but so far nothing rain has happened.
I "closed" the library at nine, but if somebody has a book to bring in, there is a bell they can ring by the door that calls me from whatever I am doing in this place: sleeping, cooking, eating or making love to Vida who will be here shortly.
She gets off work at 11:30.
The bell comes from Fort Worth, Texas. The man who brought us the bell is dead now and no one learned his name. He brought the bell in and put it down on a table. He seemed embarrassed and left, a stranger, many years ago. It is not a large bell, but it travels intimately along a small silver path that knows the map to our hearing.
Often books are brought in during the late evening and the early morning hours. I have to be here to receive them. That's my job.
I "open" the library at nine o'clock in the morning and "close" the library at nine in the evening, but I am here twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to receive the books.
An old woman brought in a book a couple of days ago at three o'clock in the morning. I heard the bell ringing inside my sleep like a small highway being poured from a great distance into my ear.
It woke up Vida, too.
"What is it?" she said.
"It's the bell," I said.
"No, it's a book," she said.
I told her to stay there in bed, to go back to sleep, that I would take care of it. I got up and dressed myself in the proper attitude for welcoming a new book into the library.
My clothes are not expensive but they are friendly and neat and my human presence is welcoming. People feel better when they look at me.
Vida had gone back to sleep. She looked nice with her long black hair spread out like a fan of dark lakes upon the pillow. I could not resist lifting up the covers to stare at her long sleeping form.
A fragrant odor rose like a garden in the air above the incredibly strange thing that was her body, motionless and dramatic lying there.
I went out and turned on the lights in the library. It looked quite cheerful, even though it was three o'clock in the morning.
The old woman waited behind the heavy glass of the front door. Because the library is very old-fashioned, the door has a religious affection to it.
The woman had a look of great excitement. She was very old, eighty I'd say, and wore the type of clothing that associates itself with the poor.
But no matter . . . rich or poor . . . the service is the same and could never be any different.
"I just finished it," she said through the heavy glass before I could open the door. Her voice, though slowed down a great deal by the glass, was bursting with joy, imagination and almost a kind of youth.
"I'm glad," I said back through the door. I hadn't quite gotten it open yet. We were sharing the same excitement through the glass.
"It's done!" she said, coming into the library, accompanied by an eighty-year-old lady.
"Congratulations," I said. "It's so wonderful to write a book."
"I walked all the way here," she said. "I started at midnight. I would have gotten here sooner if I weren't so old."
"Where do you live?" I said.
"The Kit Carson Hotel," she said. "And I've written a book." Then she handed it proudly to me as if it were the most precious thing in the world. And it was.
It was a loose-leaf notebook of the type that you find everywhere in America. There is no place that does not have them.
There was a heavy label pasted on the cover and written in broad green crayon across the label was the title:

GROWING FLOWERS BY CANDLELIGHT
IN HOTEL ROOMS
BY
MRS. CHARLES FINE ADAMS

"What a wonderful title," I said. "I don't think we have a book like this in the entire library. This is a first."
She had a big smile on her face which had turned old about forty years ago, eroded by the gases and exiles of youth.
"It has taken me five years to write this book," she said. "I live at the Kit Carson Hotel and I've raised many flowers there in my room. My room doesn't have any windows, so I have to use candles. They work the best.
"I've also raised flowers by lanternlight and magnifying glass, but they don't seem to do well, especially tulips and lilies of the valley.
"I've even tried raising flowers by flashlight, but that was very disappointing. I used three or four flashlights on some marigolds, but they didn't amount to much.
"Candles work the best. Flowers seem to like the smell of burning wax, if you know what I mean. Just show a flower a candle and it starts growing."
I looked through the book. That's one of the things I get to do here. Actually, I'm the only person who gets to do it. The book was written in longhand with red, green and blue crayons. There were drawings of her hotel room with the flowers growing in the room.
Her room was very small and there were many flowers in it. The flowers were in tin cans and bottles and jars and they were all surrounded by burning candles.
Her room looked like a cathedral.
There was also a drawing of the former manager of the hotel and a drawing of the hotel elevator. The elevator looked like a very depressing place.
In her drawing of the hotel manager, he appeared to be very unhappy, tired and looked as if he needed a vacation. He also seemed to be looking over his shoulder at something that was about to enter his vision. It was a thing he did not want to see and it was just about there. Under the drawing was written this:

MANAGER OF THE KIT CARSON HOTEL
UNTIL HE GOT FIRED
FOR DRINKING IN THE ELEVATOR
AND FOR STEALING SHEETS

The book was about forty pages long. It looked quite interesting and would be a welcomed addition to our collection.
"You're probably very tired," I said. "Why don't you sit down and I'll make you a cup of instant coffee?"
"That would be wonderful," she said. "It took me five years to write this book about flowers. I've worked very hard on it. I love flowers. Too bad my room doesn't have any windows, but I've done the best I can with candles. Tulips do all right."
Vida was sound asleep when I went back to my room. I turned on the light and it woke her up. She was blinking and her face had that soft marble quality to it that beautiful women have when they are suddenly awakened and are not quite ready for it yet.
"What's happening?" she said. "It's another book," she replied, answering her own question.
"Yes," I said.
"What's it about?" she said automatically like a gentle human phonograph.
"It's about growing flowers in hotel rooms."
I put the water on for the coffee and sat down beside Vida who curled over and put her head on my lap, so that my lap was entirely enveloped in her watery black hair.
I could see one of her breasts. It was fantastic!
"Now what's this about growing flowers in hotel rooms?" Vida said. "It couldn't be that easy. What's the real story?"
"By candlelight," I said.
"Uh-huh," Vida said. Even though I couldn't see her face, I knew she was smiling. She has funny ideas about the library.
"It's by an old woman," I said. "She loves flowers but she doesn't have any windows in her hotel room, so she grows them by candlelight."
"Oh, baby," Vida said, in that tone of voice she always uses for the library. She thinks this place is creepy and she doesn't care for it very much.
I didn't answer her. The coffee water was done and I took a spoonful of instant coffee and put it out in a cup.
"Instant coffee?" Vida said.
"Yes," I said. "I'm making it for the woman who just brought the book in. She's very old and she's walked a great distance to get here. I think she needs a cup of instant coffee."
"It sounds like she does. Perhaps even a little amyl nitrate for a chaser. I'm just kidding. Do you need any help? I'll get up."
"No, honey," I said. "I can take care of it. Did we eat all those cookies you baked?"
"No," she said. "The cookies are over there in that sack." She pointed toward the white paper bag on the table. "I think there are a couple of chocolate cookies left."
"What did you put them in the sack for?" I said.
"I don't know," she said. "Why does anyone put cookies in a sack? I just did."
Vida was resting her head on her elbow and watching me. She was unbelievable: her face, her eyes, her . . .
"Strong point," I said.
"Am I right?" she said, sleepily.
"Yup," I said.
I took the cup of coffee and put it on a small wooden tray, along with some canned milk and some sugar and a little plate for the cookies.
Vida had given me the tray as a present. She bought it at Cost Plus Imports and surprised me with it one day. I like surprises.
"See you later," I said. "Go back to sleep."
"OK," and pulled the covers up over her head. Farewell, my lovely.
I took the coffee and cookies out to the old woman. She was sitting at a table with her face resting on her elbow and she was half asleep. There was an expression of dreaming on her face.
I hated to interrupt her. I know how much a dream can be worth, but, alas . . . "Hello," I said.
"Oh, hello," she said, breaking the dream cleanly.
"It's time for some coffee," I said.
"Oh, how nice," she said. "It's just what I need to wake me up. I'm a little tired because I walked so far. I guess I could have waited until tomorrow and taken the bus here, but I wanted to bring the book out right away because I just finished it at midnight and I've been working on it for five years.
"Five Years," she repeated, as if it were the name of a country where she was the President and the flowers growing by candlelight in her hotel room were her cabinet and I was the Secretary of Libraries.
"I think I'll register the book now," I said.
"That sounds wonderful," she said. "These are delicious cookies. Did you bake them yourself?"
I thought that was a rather strange question for her to ask me. I have never been asked that question before. It startled me. It's funny how people can catch you off guard with a question about cookies.
"No," I said. "I didn't bake these cookies. A friend did."
"Well, whoever baked them knows how to bake cookies. The chocolate tastes wonderful. So chocolatey."
"Good," I said.
Now it was time to register the book. We register all the books we receive here in our Library Contents Ledger. It is a record of all the books we get day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. They all go into the Ledger.
We don't use the Dewey decimal classification or any index system to keep track of our books. We record their entrance into the library in the Library Contents Ledger and then we give the book back to its author who is free to place it anywhere he wants in the library, on whatever shelf catches his fancy.
It doesn't make any difference where a book is placed because nobody ever checks them out and nobody ever comes here to read them. This is not that kind of library. This is another kind of library.
"I just love these cookies," the old woman said, finishing the last cookie. "Such a good chocolate flavor. You can't buy these in a store. Did a friend bake them?"
"Yes," I said. "A very good friend."
"Well, good for them. There isn't enough of that thing going on now, if you know what I mean."
"Yes," I said. "Chocolate cookies are good."
Vida baked them.
By now the old woman had finished the last drops of coffee in her cup, but she drank them again, even though they were gone. She wanted to make sure that she did not leave a drop in the cup, even to the point of drinking the last drop of coffee twice.
I could tell that she was preparing to say good-bye because she was trying to rise from her chair. I knew that she would never return again. This would be her only visit to the library.
"It's been so wonderful writing a book," she said. "Now it's done and I can return to my hotel room and my flowers. I'm very tired."
"Your book," I said, handing it to her. "You are free to put it anywhere you want to in the library, on any shelf you want."
"How exciting," she said.
She took her book very slowly over to a section where a lot of children are guided by a subconscious track of some kind to place their books on that shelf.
I don't remember ever seeing anyone over fifty put a book there before, but she went right there as if guided by the hands of the children and placed her book about growing flowers by candlelight in hotel rooms in between a book about Indians (pro) and an illustrated, highly favorable tract on strawberry jam.
She was very happy as she left the library to walk very slowly back to her room in the Kit Carson Hotel and the flowers that waited for her there.
I turned out the lights in the library and took the tray back to my room. I knew the library so well that I could do it in the dark. The returning path to my room was made comfortable by thoughts of flowers, America and Vida sleeping like a photograph here in the library.

11:12 AM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

A Confederate General from Big Sur

A Confederate General from Big Su
When I first heard about Big Sur I didn't know that it was a member of the Confederate States of America. I had always thought that Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Texas were the Confederacy, and let it go at that. I had no idea that Big Sur was also a member.
Big Sur the twelfth member of the Confederate States of America? Frankly, it's hard to believe that those lonely stark mountains and clifflike beaches of California were rebels, that the redwood trees and the ticks and the cormorants waved a rebel flag along that narrow hundred miles of land that lies between Monterey and San Luis Obispo.
The Santa Lucia Mountains, that thousand-year-old flophouse for mountain lions and lilacs, a hotbed of Secession? The Pacific Ocean along there, that million-year-old skid row for abalone and kelp, sending representatives back to the Confederate Congress in Richmond, Virginia?
I've heard that the population of Big Sur in those Civil War days was mostly just some Digger Indians. I've heard that the Digger Indians down there didn't wear any clothes. They didn't have any fire or shelter or culture. They didn't grow anything. They didn't hunt and they didn't fish. They didn't bury their dead or give birth to their children. They lived on roots and limpets and sat pleasantly out in the rain.
I can imagine the expression on General Robert E. Lee's face when this gang showed up, bearing strange gifts from the Pacific Ocean.
It was during the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness. A. P. Hill's brave but exhausted confederate troops had been hit at daybreak by Union General Hancock's II Corps of 30,000 men. A. P. Hill's troops were shattered by the attack and fell back in defeat and confusion along the Orange Plank Road.
Twenty-eight-year-old Colonel William Poague, the South's fine artillery man, waited with sixteen guns in one of the few clearings in the Wilderness, Widow Tapp's farm. Colonel Poague had his guns loaded with antipersonnel ammunition and opened fire as soon as A. P. Hill's men had barely fled the Orange Plank Road.
The Union assault funneled itself right into a vision of sculptured artillery fire, and the Union troops suddenly found pieces of flying marble breaking their centers and breaking their edges. At the instant of contact, history transformed their bodies into statues. They didn't like it, and the assault began to back up along the Orange Plank Road. What a nice name for a road.
Colonel Poague and his men held their ground alone without any infantry support, and no way out, caring not for the name of the road. They were there forever and General Lee was right behind them in the drifting marble dust of their guns. He was waiting for General Longstreet's arrival with reinforcements. Longstreet's men were hours late.
Then the first of them arrived. Hood's old Texas Brigade led by John Gregg came on through the shattered forces of A. P. Hill, and these Texans were surprised because A. P. Hill's men were shock troops of the Confederate Army, and here they were in full rout.
"What troops are you, my boys?" Lee said.
"The Texans!" the men yelled and quickly formed into battle lines. There were less than a thousand of them and they started forward toward that abyss of Federal troops.
Lee was in motion with them, riding his beautiful gray horse, Traveller, a part of the wave. But they stopped him and shouted, "Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!"
They turned him around and sent him back to spend the last years of his life quietly as the president of Washington College, later to be called Washington and Lee.
Then they went forward possessed only by animal fury, without any regard now for their human shadows. It was a little late for things like that.
The Texans suffered 50 per cent casualties in less than ten minutes, but they conatained the Union. It was like putting your finger in the ocean and having it stop, but only briefly because Appomattox Courthouse waited less than a year away, resting now in its gentle anonymity.
When Lee got to the rear of the lines, there were the 8th Big Sur Volunteer Heavy Root Eaters reporting for duty. The air around them was filled with the smell of roots and limpets. The 8th Big Sur Volunteer Heavy Root Eaters reported like autumn to the Army of Northern Virginia.
They all gathered around Lee's horse and stared in amazement, for it was the first time that they had ever seen a horse. One of the Digger Indians offered Traveller a limpet to eat.
When I first heard about Big Sur I didn't know that it was part of the defunct Confederate States of America, a country that went out of style like an idea or a lampshade or some kind of food that people don't cook any more, once the favorite dish in thousands of homes.
It was only through a Lee-of-another-color, Lee Mellon, that I found out the truth about Big Sur. Lee Mellon who is the battle flags and the drums of this book. Lee Mellon: a

11:08 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

In Watermelon Sugar

IN WATERMELON SUGAR the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I'll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.
Wherever you are, we must do the best we can. It is so far to travel, and we have nothing here to travel, except watermelon sugar. I hope this works out.
I live in a shack near iDEATH. I can see iDEATH out the window. It is beautiful. I can also see it with my eyes closed and touch it. Right now it is cold and turns like something in the hand of a child. I do not know what that thing could be.
There is a delicate balance in iDEATH. It suits us.
The shack is small but pleasing and comfortable as my life and made from pine, watermelon sugar and stones as just about everything here is.
Our lives we have carefully constructed from watermelon sugar and then travelled to the length of our dreams, along roads lined with pines and stones.
I have a bed, a chair, a table and a large chest that I keep my things in. I have a lantern that burns watermelontrout oil at night.
That is something else. I'll tell you about it later. I have a gentle life.
I go to the window and look out again. The sun is shining at the long edge of a cloud. It is Tuesday and the sun is golden.
I can see piney woods and the rivers that flow from those piney woods. The rivers are cold and clear and there are trout in the rivers.
Some of the rivers are only a few inches wide.
I know a river that is half-an-inch wide. I know because I measured it and sat beside it for a whole day. It started raining in the middle of the afternoon. We call everything a river here. We're that kind of people.
I can see fields of watermelons and the rivers that flow through them. There are many bridges in the piney woods and in the fields of watermelons. There is a bridge in front of this shack.
Some of the bridges are made of wood, old and stained silver like rain, and some of the bridges are made of stone gathered from a great distance and built in the order of that distance, and some of the bridges are made of watermelon sugar. I like those bridges best.
We make a great many things out of watermelon sugar here -- I'll tell you about it -- including this book being written near iDEATH.
All this will be gone into, travelled in watermelon sugar.

11:07 AM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

I've Never Had It Done So Gently Before

The sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
I've never had it done so gently before.
You have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.

8:14 AM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammels and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

8:14 AM - 3 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

The beautiful Poem

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
about you.

Pissing a few moments ago
I looked down at my penis
affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside
you twice today makes me
feel beautiful.

3 A.M.
January 15, 1967

8:12 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Love Poem

It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.

8:09 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment