I should be
thinking of feeling,
suspicious of love,
deeper than I am,
a paragon of wealth
unable to find home,
restless, insatiable,
the hare-brained genius.
I should work more,
longer,
be completely unsatisfied,
have no other desire,
give jouissance to the wind,
let rain fall on what it may.
I was found guilty
of all such shoulds,
sentenced to life
without relief
or surcease.
To survive
only in imagination,
I watched others reading
voraciously
dictionaries, encyclopedias,
biblical strictures,
memoirs of rakehells.
No reason to follow
or lead,
the grime in my heart
dirt poor,
my soul a bucket of sweat,
and sun
a memory of snow,
of ice melting.
I looked upon her smile,
smiled to echo hers.
I imagined her body
I could not see.
I fulfilled
the lineaments of desire,
a truth of feeling
because it was feeling.
Nothing stopped me,
nothing but distance,
nothing but poverty,
nothing but loyalty
to the past.
They are with me now
as always,
no matter what sorrows
lace memory,
unforgivingly.
How could I
be more happy
than now?
How could I be
more free to dance?
How could I find words
to show your beauty
inside out?
(25 June, 18 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Tabu
She called herself Tabu, the scent she wore.
He wondered why she smelled so good.
She said that was what they called her.
She said she came to his table
because he looked to her like an Angel–
the beard, the shoulders, the vest, the denims.
He talked about Altamont where they killed that kid.
Meredith Hunter pulled a gun, got stabbed to death.
Bobby kept going back to view Gimme Shelter.
She said the San Diego chapter president
walked on the face of a girl who called him "a queer,
like the rest of your atavistic apes."
They fucked half the night on the pallet on the floor.
He walked her back to The Cave. Henrietta asked
how she was. He said she knew how to solve problems
like his. Late afternoons at The Bathhouse,
Angels arrived in droves–no need for wings,
they rode choppers–Bobby shot pool and won, and lost.
He happened to mention Hunter Thompson.
This wiry guy named Chocolate George sneered:
I hope you’re not one of them damned writers.
(24 June, 17 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
He wondered why she smelled so good.
She said that was what they called her.
She said she came to his table
because he looked to her like an Angel–
the beard, the shoulders, the vest, the denims.
He talked about Altamont where they killed that kid.
Meredith Hunter pulled a gun, got stabbed to death.
Bobby kept going back to view Gimme Shelter.
She said the San Diego chapter president
walked on the face of a girl who called him "a queer,
like the rest of your atavistic apes."
They fucked half the night on the pallet on the floor.
He walked her back to The Cave. Henrietta asked
how she was. He said she knew how to solve problems
like his. Late afternoons at The Bathhouse,
Angels arrived in droves–no need for wings,
they rode choppers–Bobby shot pool and won, and lost.
He happened to mention Hunter Thompson.
This wiry guy named Chocolate George sneered:
I hope you’re not one of them damned writers.
(24 June, 17 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
Sunday, July 15, 2012
The Delicate Ones
"To think that we could have had an ordinary family life with its bickering, broken hearts and divorce suits! There are people in the world so crazy as not to realize that this is normal human existence of the kind everybody should aim at. What wouldn’t we have given for such ordinary heartbreaks!"
–Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope against Hope: A Memoir
(translated from the Russian by Max Hayward, 1970)
Frailty makes you strong with words beyond death.
The State does not know what to do with you.
What you leave behind is fed to the flames
whose words the living carry in their memories.
I would run by the river reciting Mandelstam
now that he’s gone to the unmarked grave
Stalin reserved for him in his humorless rage.
No one I know, however, can English Russian,
his in particular: Osip near Dante’s house in the sky.
So his widow honors the secret history of her heart.
The world that destroyed them always returns.
Assassins are common, they pay their own way
to be paid by the State a much higher wage than poets.
Are there assassins who assassinate assassins?
Do they swagger with their hair parted down
the middle, never missing a look their way, rising
in the smoke of cabarets and clubs, coming over
to your table, a pocketed hand bulging with promises
and pious braggadocio, You wish to fuck with us?
Power is so lucrative, you have to admire its politics.
It is only the delicate victims who are survived
by wildflowers: poppies, daisies, bluebells, buttercups.
Stand in the field and tick off their names. There are names
so human now they are lost to time, but I hate secrecy,
toss petals in the Volga, and currents catch them and carry
their cargo of beauty to the shrouded coves we call history.
(23 June, 15 July 2012)
–Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope against Hope: A Memoir
(translated from the Russian by Max Hayward, 1970)
Frailty makes you strong with words beyond death.
The State does not know what to do with you.
What you leave behind is fed to the flames
whose words the living carry in their memories.
I would run by the river reciting Mandelstam
now that he’s gone to the unmarked grave
Stalin reserved for him in his humorless rage.
No one I know, however, can English Russian,
his in particular: Osip near Dante’s house in the sky.
So his widow honors the secret history of her heart.
The world that destroyed them always returns.
Assassins are common, they pay their own way
to be paid by the State a much higher wage than poets.
Are there assassins who assassinate assassins?
Do they swagger with their hair parted down
the middle, never missing a look their way, rising
in the smoke of cabarets and clubs, coming over
to your table, a pocketed hand bulging with promises
and pious braggadocio, You wish to fuck with us?
Power is so lucrative, you have to admire its politics.
It is only the delicate victims who are survived
by wildflowers: poppies, daisies, bluebells, buttercups.
Stand in the field and tick off their names. There are names
so human now they are lost to time, but I hate secrecy,
toss petals in the Volga, and currents catch them and carry
their cargo of beauty to the shrouded coves we call history.
(23 June, 15 July 2012)
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Quill and Ink
With his dwindling bankroll
he rented a bungalow.
Henrietta objected:
Why waste his money?
He could stay with her for free.
He confessed he must dip his quill
in love’s inkwell. Everywhere I go,
he mumbled, I am greeted
by women’s luscious eyes,
I want to go with a sunborne body
where we can stay alone.
She got a kick out of her own son
talking like some john coming on to her.
So she told him of Mexico City
back when she believed in traveling
rather than stay put . . . A big city then,
but fewer than twenty million, like now.
Yes, honey, I turned tricks in this hotel
one year and one only, saved my money.
Can you believe a whore saving money?
She went back to the piano.
At noon a warm-up for the night ahead.
She played and sang All of Me, Don’t Explain,
Ain’t Nobody’s Business but My Own,
My Mother’s Son-in-Law, God Bless the Child.
Enough Billie . . . He said, You don’t mind me
bringing a woman here after hours?
I’m so horny I may never quit.
It’s no bother, she was used to that,
what did he think she was doing in Mexico
that year? gambling? courting danger?
She reflected over a late lunch
in the place she sang: I gambled
on selling myself and getting away
unscathed. Here I am to show you I did.
After that he went to get his rent back,
and celebrated in a dark dive called The Cave.
A blonde came over to ask him,
Would he buy her a drink? She smelled good,
it had been a while since his quill
had brought him pleasure except on paper.
He loved that swelling feel of strains
seeking the pitch to deliver an end
to sweet agony. She played piano
at Henrietta’ s, and he sang Body and Soul.
Then she offered her ink up to his quill.
(23 June, 15 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
he rented a bungalow.
Henrietta objected:
Why waste his money?
He could stay with her for free.
He confessed he must dip his quill
in love’s inkwell. Everywhere I go,
he mumbled, I am greeted
by women’s luscious eyes,
I want to go with a sunborne body
where we can stay alone.
She got a kick out of her own son
talking like some john coming on to her.
So she told him of Mexico City
back when she believed in traveling
rather than stay put . . . A big city then,
but fewer than twenty million, like now.
Yes, honey, I turned tricks in this hotel
one year and one only, saved my money.
Can you believe a whore saving money?
She went back to the piano.
At noon a warm-up for the night ahead.
She played and sang All of Me, Don’t Explain,
Ain’t Nobody’s Business but My Own,
My Mother’s Son-in-Law, God Bless the Child.
Enough Billie . . . He said, You don’t mind me
bringing a woman here after hours?
I’m so horny I may never quit.
It’s no bother, she was used to that,
what did he think she was doing in Mexico
that year? gambling? courting danger?
She reflected over a late lunch
in the place she sang: I gambled
on selling myself and getting away
unscathed. Here I am to show you I did.
After that he went to get his rent back,
and celebrated in a dark dive called The Cave.
A blonde came over to ask him,
Would he buy her a drink? She smelled good,
it had been a while since his quill
had brought him pleasure except on paper.
He loved that swelling feel of strains
seeking the pitch to deliver an end
to sweet agony. She played piano
at Henrietta’ s, and he sang Body and Soul.
Then she offered her ink up to his quill.
(23 June, 15 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
Friday, July 13, 2012
La Jolla
Henrietta’s at The Wharf, in La Jolla.
She sings what she wants, her quartet follows.
Bobby languishes in a dark corner,
loving her long red hair dangling in curls,
her tall body full of curves, switchbacks, straightaways,
her low-cut dress, her twenty nails red to lure bulls.
No wonder he can’t stay with one woman,
he smiles inside, he’s hung up on Momma.
No wonder she ran off to take care of herself!
It’s one thing to sing the blues for money,
another to keep living them, time after time
with every man comes along to sap her courage,
put her on his time, feed her whisky,
insist on his nightly need to fuck her.
No wonder . . .
"Remember me?"
She’s sitting at a table alone,
drinking water when he appears.
She reaches across and hugs him as hard as she can,
barely rising from the chair, her arms long
as her legs. She sits gazing at him with a wide smile.
"Bobby," she mumbles. "You sound better than ever,"
he replies. She asks if he’s married.
He says, "Twice now. . . . You?" She chuckles. "No,
I had enough men for one life."
"You need another lifetime," he says under his breath,
"to learn to sing." He means himself. He didn’t know
how much he owed her until he heard her singing scat
on My Funny Valentine. "You sound like Sarah Vaughan."
"They compare me with Anita O’Day now."
"Didn’t they always?"
"Not her, more like Billie Holiday,
the word day somehow struck a cord with the critics."
After her final set they went for a late dinner.
Henrietta nursed a Coke. "I’m off hootch,"
she quipped. Bobby had a shot of bourbon
with water back. "For old times," he toasted,
"and to long life." "Why did you hunt me down, honey?"
"I missed you . . . more than I know words can say,
I sing now, you know."
"No, I didn’t, how could I? I been here too long.
All the same, California’s been good to me.
You still living in Seattle?"
. . . thus did their conversation go.
She lived in a little house up from the beach,
on the other side of La Jolla’s "main street,"
as she put it. Henrietta enjoyed the old words,
they made it easier to remember phrases in songs.
Or so she thought. She never said this to Bobby
or anyone, not even Danny . . .
Not even . . . especially not Danny . . .
Bobby told her of the bungalow in Seattle
he was living in, "courtesy of the man
who taught me clarinet, and his wife
who encouraged me to write. They adopted me
when Daddy died and you were said to be
dead in that train wreck."
She replied, "I never like to think about it,
any of it. They say I’m dead," she smiled,
"and I plan to stay dead
until I am."
Make me a pallet on the floor, she sang,
humming along under her breath,
making him a place on her front room floor.
Going to bed she rendered Dust my broom.
When he woke in the sunlight streaming
through her window he went walking the beach
and found a copy of John Coltrane Live in Seattle,
the double album with Pharoah Sanders,
and bought a paperback, Soledad Brother,
George Jackson’s letters from prison
with a preface by Jean Genet, the thief
Sartre claimed was now a saint.
Bobby knew there were no saints but whores.
So Sartre was right since Genet was a whore.
How else could he make a living
once freed from stir after his neck was spared?
When he returned, she was at the piano,
singing a medley whose titles he wrote down . . .
The rest of the day they walked La Jolla.
That night she went on at nine and sang until one
when The Wharf began to close.
For four hours, easily, maybe five,
he wrote in his small green spiral notebook
carried everywhere in a shirt pocket.
He was writing down all she said
now that he could sit still long enough to listen
watching her red lips curl words under the music always there.
(22 June, 13 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
She sings what she wants, her quartet follows.
Bobby languishes in a dark corner,
loving her long red hair dangling in curls,
her tall body full of curves, switchbacks, straightaways,
her low-cut dress, her twenty nails red to lure bulls.
No wonder he can’t stay with one woman,
he smiles inside, he’s hung up on Momma.
No wonder she ran off to take care of herself!
It’s one thing to sing the blues for money,
another to keep living them, time after time
with every man comes along to sap her courage,
put her on his time, feed her whisky,
insist on his nightly need to fuck her.
No wonder . . .
"Remember me?"
She’s sitting at a table alone,
drinking water when he appears.
She reaches across and hugs him as hard as she can,
barely rising from the chair, her arms long
as her legs. She sits gazing at him with a wide smile.
"Bobby," she mumbles. "You sound better than ever,"
he replies. She asks if he’s married.
He says, "Twice now. . . . You?" She chuckles. "No,
I had enough men for one life."
"You need another lifetime," he says under his breath,
"to learn to sing." He means himself. He didn’t know
how much he owed her until he heard her singing scat
on My Funny Valentine. "You sound like Sarah Vaughan."
"They compare me with Anita O’Day now."
"Didn’t they always?"
"Not her, more like Billie Holiday,
the word day somehow struck a cord with the critics."
After her final set they went for a late dinner.
Henrietta nursed a Coke. "I’m off hootch,"
she quipped. Bobby had a shot of bourbon
with water back. "For old times," he toasted,
"and to long life." "Why did you hunt me down, honey?"
"I missed you . . . more than I know words can say,
I sing now, you know."
"No, I didn’t, how could I? I been here too long.
All the same, California’s been good to me.
You still living in Seattle?"
. . . thus did their conversation go.
She lived in a little house up from the beach,
on the other side of La Jolla’s "main street,"
as she put it. Henrietta enjoyed the old words,
they made it easier to remember phrases in songs.
Or so she thought. She never said this to Bobby
or anyone, not even Danny . . .
Not even . . . especially not Danny . . .
Bobby told her of the bungalow in Seattle
he was living in, "courtesy of the man
who taught me clarinet, and his wife
who encouraged me to write. They adopted me
when Daddy died and you were said to be
dead in that train wreck."
She replied, "I never like to think about it,
any of it. They say I’m dead," she smiled,
"and I plan to stay dead
until I am."
Make me a pallet on the floor, she sang,
humming along under her breath,
making him a place on her front room floor.
Going to bed she rendered Dust my broom.
When he woke in the sunlight streaming
through her window he went walking the beach
and found a copy of John Coltrane Live in Seattle,
the double album with Pharoah Sanders,
and bought a paperback, Soledad Brother,
George Jackson’s letters from prison
with a preface by Jean Genet, the thief
Sartre claimed was now a saint.
Bobby knew there were no saints but whores.
So Sartre was right since Genet was a whore.
How else could he make a living
once freed from stir after his neck was spared?
When he returned, she was at the piano,
singing a medley whose titles he wrote down . . .
The rest of the day they walked La Jolla.
That night she went on at nine and sang until one
when The Wharf began to close.
For four hours, easily, maybe five,
he wrote in his small green spiral notebook
carried everywhere in a shirt pocket.
He was writing down all she said
now that he could sit still long enough to listen
watching her red lips curl words under the music always there.
(22 June, 13 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Bobby Goes Looking for Henrietta
Tony’s in Berkeley, an out of town heart attack.
His mentor, Andrew Sarris, died in Manhattan
yesterday while Tony was passing out.
He wrote for Sarris a screenplay Spike Lee
knew nothing about when he made Malcolm X.
Once I woke from a dream that John Lennon had died.
Six years later he was dead. The gap between dream
and event narrows. I no longer drink,
Neither does Tony. Laurie helped.
When he was living with Suky
we filled Mason jars on green summer grass
in San Francisco and drained them
listening to Jim Robinson’s
New Orleans Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
In Lagunitas our friend Madge
and her lesbian lover Ann
swore I stole Robert Johnson’s complete works
on one LP. They had given me a daybed,
put me to sleep somewhere between
"Come on in My Kitchen"and "Love in Vain."
I’m in Marin missing my only love,
Paula. Cathleen had paid my plane ticket
to bring me to her, we drink and we fight.
We quarrel over love and our mistakes
trying to be a man and a woman
not only in love but tender and kind.
I leave when I fear not only
for my own but for her life should she kill
with a butcher’s knife, the one I once fled.
Who can say a human heart is not a tissue
of webbing about to tear loose when wind comes up?
I rent a car and drive south after the first call
answers, Henrietta Murphy?
She’s in San Diego, I don’t know where,
but I hear all the time about her voice.
A man named Lafayette Young . . . He might know,
runs a bookstore downtown, was once Henry Miller’s
good friend, him and his painter pal
John Dudley, back in the day. Read "Letter
to Lafayette" in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.
I stop in Santa Cruz, stroll the boardwalk,
and later wake when a cop taps on the window.
My friend John lives on Wilshire Boulevard,
painting hard edge under the spell of Jack Youngerman
with an occasional Ellsworth Kelly
urge to flower the edges until they blossom
like Venus flytraps. We go down the street
to MacArthur Park, and dole out cigarettes to derelicts
and smoke in an hour the pack that we share,
unfiltered Camels, with a jug of Thunderbird.
Trouble is there’s no music. We drive out
to Venice and pick up girls who say they like men
who are rowdy but gentle, we say we have a yearning
for women whose soft skin holds the sunrays
so God’s blessing protects them from all grief,
gives them the means to enjoy life.
I go too far, they look at me strangely,
they walk off, I declare, It’s the damned wine.
John says he needs to see this guy out here
who says he can get him a one-man show
(lest suicide become John’s remedy
for money to pay rent and buy some food
so he may make art yet one more season).
Billy will bring him back. I go without
having dipped into my bag full of manuscripts
laced with ersatz blues and browns around their edges.
Downtown San Diego, then. Young says, Call me Lafe,
I do and he tells where Henrietta may be.
(21 June, 13 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
His mentor, Andrew Sarris, died in Manhattan
yesterday while Tony was passing out.
He wrote for Sarris a screenplay Spike Lee
knew nothing about when he made Malcolm X.
Once I woke from a dream that John Lennon had died.
Six years later he was dead. The gap between dream
and event narrows. I no longer drink,
Neither does Tony. Laurie helped.
When he was living with Suky
we filled Mason jars on green summer grass
in San Francisco and drained them
listening to Jim Robinson’s
New Orleans Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
In Lagunitas our friend Madge
and her lesbian lover Ann
swore I stole Robert Johnson’s complete works
on one LP. They had given me a daybed,
put me to sleep somewhere between
"Come on in My Kitchen"and "Love in Vain."
I’m in Marin missing my only love,
Paula. Cathleen had paid my plane ticket
to bring me to her, we drink and we fight.
We quarrel over love and our mistakes
trying to be a man and a woman
not only in love but tender and kind.
I leave when I fear not only
for my own but for her life should she kill
with a butcher’s knife, the one I once fled.
Who can say a human heart is not a tissue
of webbing about to tear loose when wind comes up?
I rent a car and drive south after the first call
answers, Henrietta Murphy?
She’s in San Diego, I don’t know where,
but I hear all the time about her voice.
A man named Lafayette Young . . . He might know,
runs a bookstore downtown, was once Henry Miller’s
good friend, him and his painter pal
John Dudley, back in the day. Read "Letter
to Lafayette" in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.
I stop in Santa Cruz, stroll the boardwalk,
and later wake when a cop taps on the window.
My friend John lives on Wilshire Boulevard,
painting hard edge under the spell of Jack Youngerman
with an occasional Ellsworth Kelly
urge to flower the edges until they blossom
like Venus flytraps. We go down the street
to MacArthur Park, and dole out cigarettes to derelicts
and smoke in an hour the pack that we share,
unfiltered Camels, with a jug of Thunderbird.
Trouble is there’s no music. We drive out
to Venice and pick up girls who say they like men
who are rowdy but gentle, we say we have a yearning
for women whose soft skin holds the sunrays
so God’s blessing protects them from all grief,
gives them the means to enjoy life.
I go too far, they look at me strangely,
they walk off, I declare, It’s the damned wine.
John says he needs to see this guy out here
who says he can get him a one-man show
(lest suicide become John’s remedy
for money to pay rent and buy some food
so he may make art yet one more season).
Billy will bring him back. I go without
having dipped into my bag full of manuscripts
laced with ersatz blues and browns around their edges.
Downtown San Diego, then. Young says, Call me Lafe,
I do and he tells where Henrietta may be.
(21 June, 13 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Aftermath
(I return to Cathleen’s.)
Where were you?
Got looped, didn’t want to drive drunk, stayed the night, slept all day, stayed to sober up, eat and take a little hair of the dog . . . to make me fit to be with.
What kept you from calling?
This black woman with Afro instead of her usual dreadlocks, or so she claims.
Are you fucking serious?
I’m through with fucking . . . that is, with anyone but you.
I don’t know why you lie except to keep going to bed with me.
You are the best I ever knew.
What about Paula?
I don’t need to make myself any sicker than I am now,
do I?
(Wait a little, have a few drinks,
be well oiled when the fight starts.)
(21 June, 11 July 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
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