for Ezra Pound & Charles Bukowski
Cosmic jam blues
I write as my bagel
toasts in the toaster
cut side out round side in
as per directions.
Strawberry jam
toe jam
cosmic jam with psychedelia
bleeding to the edge
of the page.
Psychotic last mile
bad daddy,
smug train headlight
blaring
snakes through tunnel
of
green fuzz.
“Conga is not Belgium,”
lady to my right hand says,
“come to dinner at the Ritz.”
Lobster canape
on velvet leash.
Slow Dance
When you stop dancing,
what’s next?
. . . sit down . . . go take a leak
hope no one
noticed
yer hardon.
The dance floor is empty now
the house lights
have been turned on . . .
folding chairs once defined
an arena of lust.
In the bright light
the ballroom
has become
a square-tile
linoleum
cafeteria floor.
What’s next?
Butterfly
I went in love . . .
your eyes
your hands
your hair
the butterfly
of your kiss.
El grito
The eclipse
sighs,
rising . . .
a dark rainbow
in the night.
Therese
Cultivated pain
is flesh . . .
human,
a woman
wanting
words . . .
the moon
in a net of wind.
Sound
The silence . . .
one note
infinite
ripe
naked
riddled
by a wild breeze
across the street.
Verde
Green as wind
the sea.
With shadows
she dreams . . .
green flesh
green moon
green stars.
As the road scrubs the wind
she lingers . . .
with
green hair.
Landscape
The field opens
like a fan
below
a sunken sky
of
morning stars.
At the river . . .
rushes
captive in the mist
shed
a flock of birds.
Let’s start at the beginning . . . rewind . . . Santa Fe NM . . . Cerrillos Road . . . IAIA.
Fritz Scholder was my painting instructor . . .
One day in the studio Fritz told me to go have a look at Phillip Guston’s work cos I was doing similar stuff . . . colors & brushstrokes. I poured through the available art books in the library but didn’t find too much in the way of examples . . . only years later did I stumble across Guston’s figurative work . . . shit . . . I think I might have missed the bus back in 1965.
Hokusai brush flashback . . . One uneventful afternoon I was sitting in my cubicle pondering and Fritz came in the back door . . . paid one of his rare visits . . . this was close to the beginning of my tenure in his studio class.
“I noticed you have a lot of brushes in that can,” he said pointing to my red MJB storage vessel . . . I nodded.
“Pick out 2 . . .” I reached down and selected 2 my most fav brushes . . . “Give me the can . . .”
I handed the sacred red coffee tin to him . . . he turned around walked over to the trash bin opened it and dumped the remaining brushes into the metal receptacle. I was sitting watching the scene as it unfolded across the room from me . . . holding 2 brushes in my hand . . . he returned and gave me the empty can, then said, “Learn to use them,” pointing at the remaining 2 brushes . . . and with that he was gone out the back door.
Oh shit! Deja vu . . . zen master delivers the sudden wake up call across yer unsuspecting shoulders with a bamboo stick . . . got yer attention . . . cleared the mind.
Hokusai was once asked why he used only the one brush . . . in reply he said, “I’m still learning to use it.”
Fritz knew that I knew . . . that I understood the significance of his action . . . it was visual haiku . . . sumi-e reflections on washi in the early afternoon.
Yep . . . I was never going to be an Indian in Santa Fe NM . . . a hard cold fact . . . ain’t never gonna be . . . ever . . . never woulda never coulda been . . . plain and simple . . . not an Indian. . . the end . . . period.
What I took away from the Institute was the realization that I would never be an Indian . . . oh . . . I was an Indian alright but on my own terms . . . no BIA Reservation rubber stamp replicant . . . no pow-wow . . . no drum . . . no rodeo belt buckle.
The IAIA staff had assumed that I was of the BIA Reservation mindset – not so boyo . . . I was from California . . . had an oral tradition . . . storytelling . . . verbal communication . . . no ritual practice . . . no ceremony . . . no mountain spirit gaan . . . . no ghost dance.
I didn’t have any subliminal data sets to draw from . . . i.e. shields tipi paintings ledger drawings . . . only the petroglyphs . . . all other understandings came later . . . like 30 years later.
I move cloaked in the reflections
of my surroundings
in plain sight . . . invisible to the naked eye.
Old school . . . NEW world . . . that says it all.
Sunday . . . suns a-shining . . . blue sky for a change . . . no smoke and it’s cool outside . . . feels like fall.
When you start pushing that century mark one has a tendency to breathe hard on old embers . . . an attempt to rekindle flames of past interests . . . I’m no different.
I was discarding . . . deleting photos in my phone’s library last evening and I got that twinge . . . you know . . . like when a flash of lightning lights up yer room in the middle of the night n you think it’s part one of some paranormal encounter about to occur . . . indication of a wormhole opening or portal to the dark side beckoning . . . you know the feeling . . .
Yeh . . . well it was just my shutter release finger twitching . . . subliminal memory synapses firing . . . in the subconscious . . . knee jerk.
I recently bought a new camera . . . DSLR . . . kinda similar to my long gone Leica CL . . . old school analog 35mm film cam . . . a-a-ah . . . those were the days my friends . . . those were the days . . . well anyway I got this Panasonic LUMIX LX-10 . . . wifi capabilities . . . SD card (no film) . . . feels like a “real” camera . . . no cheap Diana plastic retro bullshit . . . hecho en China land of sexy cyborgs . . .
It’s got a Leica vario-summilux lens (zoom) which is what sold me . . . Leica glass . . . and the option of manual manipulation of the zoomer . . . can’t get away from manually manipulating stuff . . . override the fucking A-eye . . . ain’t no algorithm telling me what to do . . . or what I like . . . HAL 9 0-0-0.
What’s missing is the viewfinder . . . it’s got this magnifico touch screen display instead . . . spread all over its backside . . . flips up does not rotate . . . and all I want is to feel its cool back against my cheek when I snug up to peek thru the hole n frame my shot . . . know what I mean?
Speaking of a “flash” it’s got one built-in . . . hidden inside that sleek little body . . . pops out when summoned . . . I mean . . . u-u-uh . . . they . . . some people I met eons ago . . . called a flash a “blitz” . . . over in Yugoslavia . . . maybe they still do.
08:30 . . . time for some fruit . . . a SPAM sandwich . . . it’s Fryday! . . . I love the SPAM commercials . . . and yes . . . I do watch t.v.
Post time . . . 15:30 hours.
Sanity
How’s your mental health?
Doctor asked that while I was sitting secluded in the examination cubicle . . . regarding my stroke 3 years previous . . . I said, “Good, I’ve learned to live with fact I’ll never be like I was 5 years ago. My right hand has a slight tremor and the right leg has to be monitored . . . see if it’s gonna clear the step . . . other than that . . . life’s good.”
How does one keep a tight grip on reality . . . sanity.
Reality is just how we perceive things. . . the world around us . . . and if you are suddenly deprived of outside stimulus then what?
Get yer AK-47 snap it on full-auto and go ape-shit wasting brothers & sisters friends & related people?
Nah . . . life’s too good.
Keep in mind the AK cycles slower than an M-16 or an UZI . . . that split-second could cost you if opposing team is saavy.
“Open the pod door HAL . . .”
. . . nothing . . .
“Open the pod door HAL.”
Still nothing. . .
“OPEN THE FUCKING POD DOOR HAL!!
“Say ‘Please . . .”
Yeh, a whole NEW world . . . “Say please . . .”
“Your iPod doesn’t have a door.”
WTF?!
“Your iPod requires a password . . . a 4 digit code.”
Silence . . .
“Have you forgotten your password?”
If HAL was a person, there would be a smug smile on its face as the AI sensed my growing frustration.
Well, I’m not gonna just sit here . . . I’ll go round to the emergency hatch . . . snug up against the snap fit bumper tape some plastique on the skin n blow an opening in the exterior shell . . . gotta remember to cover the wad with something to keep the explosive focused inward . . . let the AI worry about whether to grant me access or not . . .
Vent the pod . . . that’ll suck it up nice n tight to the main hull . . . no commo on the back door . . . no visual since this is an exit and visual is established only when the bolts are blown.
HAL will sense the contact . . . gotta be like a whisper when I dock . . . don’t wanta wake the sleeping dog
So I’m getting ready to close the book on Santa Fe (1964/65) . . . about who started what . . . students or instructor . . . ndn or not ndn.
Disagreement: lack of consensus or approval.
“there was some disagreement about the details” . . . and in this situation who started the new ndn “art” movement.
All I know is I’m currently awaiting mo intel from the hinterlands . . . coming via Amazon Prime. Like I’ve said before, I’ve seen things . . . like the dirty laundry flapping in the breeze . . . I put 2 and 2 together . . . been there . . . done this n that in someone’s backyard.
Did I . . . maybe I dint . . . I reiterate . . . gonna tell you what I told you . . . I’m a product of public schools . . . as an indige I spent most all my life functioning within the dominant Euro-American society, however, I was also immersed in the material culture and cultural practices of the Big Pine Band of the Owens Valley Paiute through my father, paternal grandparents and older sanguine relatives.
Bicultural as one fella said . . . knowing the rules n regs of both parties . . . the boundaries . . . comfortable on either side . . . but I knew my place.
I knew my ethnicity. . . the color of my skin . . . and I worked around it.
Looking over my shoulder . . . September 1964 . . . I was definitely across two state borders . . . on the other side of the fence in the wild Southwest . . . surrounded by Indians . . . Indians I knew very little about . . . they built fires gathered around banging drums feathers bells hey-yah hey-yah smoke sparks swirling into the night sky . . . wrapped in Pendleton blankets solemn as shit one arm draped over the shoulders of some lucky girl two-stepping into the distant past.
I came from a car culture . . . parked on some dirt road Ed Kienholz Dodge ‘38 style . . . radio playing Fats Domino Little Richard setting the mood . . . no drums no rattles just the backseat cushion creak and complaint like distant oil rigs thru an open window out on Signal Hill . . . whirr creak clank whirr . . . over and over . . . in out in out . . . electric glow above the city drowning out the stars.
Navajo moccasins Tony Lama boots rodeo belt buckle pearl cowboy snap shirt buttons silver and turquoise Cerrillos Road territorial state prison ruins . . . let’s get the cabbie make a booze run . . . warm up the chilly night.
Maybe that’s why I got kicked out . . . wait a minute! What about Kerouac and Jackson Pollock?
Prolly jus’ dint like drunk Indians on govmint property . . . bad for the pinkie finger BIA cognoscenti image . . . still tryin’ to turn me round on myself . . . make me bite my own tail . . . dog policy.
I didn’t have a connection to the BIA Indian School mentality my umbilical was buried somewhere out behind the “camp” in Owens Valley . . . they wanted me to be just like them . . . them other rezervayshun induns.
So I’m trying to figger out why there’s controversy disagreement over who started the new ndn paint-by-numbers school over in Santa Fe . . . like who influenced who . . . who cares? Ne signifie rien n’est pas? Sort of like the dada people sitting around waiting for Marcel Duchamp to make some profound utterances while he being too busy playing chess with some naked woman.
The jury is still deliberating . . . maybe gonna declare a mistrial cos the plaintiffs don’t really have a case and it really don’t matter anyways cos the defendant is dead and all the people trying to make a case simply ain’t doing nothing new or groundbreaking now and forever.
I’ll revisit the subject when I have eyes on the new info . . . until then I just say don’t take any wooden nickels . . .
I’ll leave you with this:
SANTA FE MOONLIGHT
The moon slipped the grasp
of the mountains
quicksilver light
splashing over adobe walls.
A crude prayer
spiraled
into the sky
altar bells chime
my soul
stretched out
across the stillness
searching for her smile
in the cathedral
of night.
From the Paisley Book, Mojave desert, circa1967.
The other day Charlie Watts died and everyone was getting all weepy . . . mourning the loss of a great drummer . . . he was 80 . . . and I got to thinking . . . I’m 77 . . . that’s almost 80 isn’t it?
Shit . . . then I thought about Bukowski . . . and Bob Dylan . . . like how they were both funnier than the Marx brothers . . . wrote about things they imagined or saw . . . or did.
Did you ever just listen to Dylan’s lyrics . . . surrealistic fucking humor . . . the early stuff before he wrecked his Triumph motorcycle and got religion . . . front brake locked-up or something like that I heard . . . dint he know . . . don’t grab a hand full of brake . . . just back off the throttle . . . a punk folk singer from Minnesota . . . whadyu expect.
Bukowski was a stream of unconscious acidic violence when fencing with hecklers . . . left them bloody . . . whimpering . . . missing arms n shit . . . drunk he cut them down to size . . . he made 2 dollar bets on the horses . . .
Never take yer GF to the track . . . they’re a distraction . . . the reason why you went there in the first place.
Charlie Watts John Bonham (bonzo) and the cane weilding terrorist Mr. Baker . . . three great drummers . . . three great bands . . . Rolling Stones Led Zeppelin Cream . . . not necessarily in that order . . . all the others are just mediocre.
Bukowski? . . . you gotta remember the influence. . . Celine John Fante L.A.
Terminal Annex post office . . . Hollywood . . . Paris . . . poke a stick through mama cow asshole to appetite (L.A. to Paris) an you got the axis of culture . . . poetry/writing . . .
Whatchu mean “What about New York?!” . . . you ever poke a skewer thru an apple NY to Paris? Wobbles like hell and then goes gyrating off into deep space scattering the Pacific Ocean all across the fucking Milky Way . . . never to be seen or heard from again . . . the apple.
Dylan was still alive last I heard . . . he must be like 80 years old now . . . Yeh . . . . just checked . . . he’s 80 . . . can’t sing for shit anymore.
Not too many bugs around this summer . . . frogs weren’t singing in the little water ditch either . . . the fox came by several times . . . paid its respects . . . I saw the turd piles on the gravel driveway.
At the old place I watched as a gray fox climbed on this large granitic boulder and took a dump right on the summit . . . signed the register then hopped down and walked away leaving a dark fudge topping . . . single scoop of paleolithic ice cream.
So what’s next?
Influencers . . . not the fucking YouTube TikTok Facebook sewage that social media addicts put in the viral “spotlight “ but real influencers . . . not necessarily in order of importance or significance:
Henry Miller Celine Vivaldi (Four Seasons) Nigel Kennedy
Jan Cremer (Jane Mansfield) Sofia Loren Bob Dylan
Robert Rauschenberg (Gemini G.E.L.) Basho
Kim Bong Tae – mentor (Otis-Parsons)
Georgia O’Keefe Alfred Stieglitz Brassai
Randy Sprout – mentor (UCLA)
Fritz Scholder – sempai mentor (IAIA).
Michael Martin Murphy (Buffalo Bill “Wildfire” cowboy) Leadbelly Yusef Lateef Miles Davis
MMOG (muse) Marilyn Monroe Ezra Pound
David Zack (SFAI & L.A.) Johnathon Spaulding (L.A.) Ansel Adams
Brigitte Bardot Jimmie Rodgers Gene Autry Dale Evens
D.H. Lawrence (the Plumed Serpent) Malcom Lowery (Under the Volcano)
Ken Marcus Barbara Pearlman-Ross – mentor/muse (UCLA – photography)
Jerry Burchfield (Laguna Beach)
Russell Kaldenberg Helen Wells Federico Garcia Lorca y Lucientes
Therese – the unfaithful Banker’s. Wife (1st muse)
Anita Ekberg Pablo Picasso Salvador Dali Juan Miro
Robert Motherwell (the Spanish Elegy series) Larry Poons Andy Warhol
Charles Bukowski P. Maldonado (muse GF)
Jan Peevy Cindy W. (GFs)
Un Chien d’Andalou Man Ray (solarization-photography)
Kurt Schwitters (merz – collage) James Joyce (Ulysses)
I Ching – The Book of Changes
Miyamoto Musashi (Book of 5 Rings) Katsushika Hokusai
Edward Weston (the daybooks) Tina Modotti
Julian H. Steward (Owens Valley Paiute Ethnography) Claude Levi-Strauss (briqolage/briqoleur) – archeologists.
Lawrence Durrell (The Black Book)
Mark Rothko Minor White (photographer) Rembrandt
Fellini (8 &1/2 La Dolce Vita)
Rashomon Gojira (Godzilla) Seven Samurai
Spain Rodrigues – Trashman
R. Crumb Rick Griffin Ukiyoe (woodblock prints)
dada (Tristan Tzara Hugo Ball)
Francisco Goya (Los Caprichos)
William S . Burroughs (Naked Lunch the Exploding Ticket) Brion Gysin
Willem de Kooning (women paintings) Roy Lichtenstein
Glenn Miller (Big Band).
Thelonius Monk
John Handy – Spanish Lady
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lightly) Gregory Nunzio Corso (mafioso)
Moscoso (underground comix) Lina Wertmuller (Seven Beauties Swept Away)
Woman in the Dunes In the Realm of the Senses
Robert Heinlein Pol Andersen Frank Herbert (sci-fi)
William Conrad(Heart of Darkness)
Frank Lloyd Wright – Falling Waters (Oak Park)
Kenneth Patchen e.e. cummings
Claes Oldenburg – Gemini G.E.L.
Ed Keinholz – Backseat Dodge ‘38.
Aaron Copeland
Morton Gould (Gould Ballet Music) Anna Andrade Hector Villa-Lobos
Toshiro Mifune Akira Kurosawa
Dirty Harry
Juanita Slusher/Candy Barr
Marilyn Chambers (Ivory Snow Green Door SF porn queen)
Hugh Hefner – Pepsi naked bunnies Chicago L.A. nuff said.
Sonny Rollins
Hunter S. Thompson (the Curse of Lono) suicidal in Colorado.
Lenny Bruce (How Talk Dirty and Influence People)
Toyo Miytake (photographer – Manzanar) Bill Michael Billy Clewlow
Linda Lovelace
Blaise Cendrars – la prose du transsiberien
Sharona and the girls from Cleveland.
Mostly artistas poeta/writers composer/musicians . . . some I knew personally and some known only as having heard or read their stuff . . . crap! I almost forgot to mention Traci Lords . . . 1000 Fires.
Watcha thinks . . . anyone you recognized? Yes/no . . . maybe?
Looks a TOC fer an autobiographical mem-wah don’t it . . . OMFG!!
2021/09/15
The Terror
JI was provoked into doing a critique of “The Terror: Infamy” a made fer t.v. movie . . . thank you Blaise Cendrars . . . here goes nothing . . . All aboard the transsiberien express.
So what the fuck’s up with this Colinas de Oro bullshit? Golden Hills . . . Hills of Gold . . . like the fabled el Dorado neh?. . . LMFAO! . . . sounds like some geezer retirement community. Who thought that name up? No! . . . don’t tell me coz they prolly got Emmy nominated . . . OMFG!
Shades of Frankenstein/Josef Mengele (paper doll scene – skin stitching Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs – holocaust injections) . . . the walking dead (Yuko’s face minus skin) . . . shape shifters (?) . . . cutting the belly (hira kiri) . . . Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal biting off the face of the guard) . . . the smiling otafuku noh mask of Yuka . . . matsuri . . . oban?
High context shit . . . I mean unless one is familiar with Japanese cultural stuff, all the innuendo . . . the allusion . . . useless . . . wasted space on Netflix Hulu HBO viewership.
Oh shit . . . I could do a term paper on allusion . . . no rotten tomatoes just overripe peaches splattered on the sidewalk under the peach tree.
What’s a sidewalk doing under my peach tree? Some stupid ass settler didn’t know better . . . lack of common sense.
Guadalcanal? . . . who knows what the fuck is that . . . or was or WHERE for that matter?
New York Chinese screenwriter writing about U.S. Japanese internment under the guidance of an enterprising Starship pilot and a slew of cooks milling about in the kitsch-en . . . en in Japanese means “garden” . . . kitsch . . . y’all know what that is . . . bad art for the masses.
Actually, “Infamy” is/was a 9 writer collaboration . . . count ‘em . . . 9 writers . . . none of whom strike me (based on their surnames) as having any real connection to what they were writing about.
I don’t care if yer great-granpa was there . . . you weren’t so you don’t know . . . besides, he prolly dint tell you everything.
Like . . . one morning at Manzanar I found 3 swastikas scratched in the dirt next to where I parked my vehicle. This was in 1997 . . . after I’d been told I would make a good target by some local fascisti . . . after my boss was asked how a Jap gotta American last name.
Hmmm . . . well back to the story.
Gotta confess . . . I gave it up . . . threw my hands up, surrendered . . . couldn’t take it no mo’ sweetheart . . . what I’m saying is that that I been there done that . . . and I fast forwarded thru to the end amid the bone cracking monotony . . . the predictably.
J-horror . . . I hate horror movies . . . Chuckie . . . Freddie Kruger etc etc etc . . . if yer gonna do a horror movie do a goddamn horror movie . . . don’t try to make some big ass statement about discrimination social injustice race creed religion . . . not to forget Miley’s ugly tongue.
Infamy was too cinematic. . . too clean . . . needed more . . . noire . . . duende . . . you know, like . . . sepia . . . black & white grainy shit . . . duotone . . . most people won’t get it . . . won’t know ‘bout that stuff anyway . . . their loss.
It (Infamy) was too YouTube-y . . . 10 episodes steadily losing content consistency ‘til it began to sputter after 5 installments . . . I was skipping across the water like a flat rock, then eventually I reached a point where my momentum failed and I succumbed to inertia . . . I sank.
Shoulda had Woo, Sulu, the kids . . . all come out to Manzanar for some ground truth-ing . . . walk some miles . . . get some sand in their “birkies”. . . get a “glow” on in the summer high desert heat . . . feel the sweat and dust in yer eyes.
Oh crap! That’s what was missing . . . that goddamned wind . . . authenticity . . . the winds of authenticity.
Toyo Miyatake was a photographer at Manzanar . . .
Oh . . . I know . . . they shoulda rigged up one of those catcher mask contraptions like Hannibal had . . . for that yurei . . . keep her from going ‘round chewing on noses.
And the movie was shot in Canada . . . trees spoiled everything . . . cheaper to film in Canadia (sic) I guess.
BTW . . . all but two of the 10 camps were located in open semi-arid or desert landscapes . . . the better to see you my dear . . . but fuck authenticity . . . Netflix don’t give a rats ass about reality just like the History Channel . . . Skinwalker Ranch . . . what a fucking joke . . . shape shifters.
Ain’t no reality any mor ‘less its on social media.
“I want a paper doll to call my own . . .”
End of story.
Back story: I served 8 years as a member of the Manzanar Advisory Commission (my name’s on a plaque by the front entry) . . . providing comment on the development and interpretation of Manzanar National Historic Site (MNHS).
Additionally, I developed and implemented the first interpretive walking tours of MNHS, 1997 – 2000 . . . 21 fucking years ago this July.