you said to me    after our meeting

were

“write to me just like you wrote to steve”

like letters to new friends and old poets

can be spewed out at whim           or copied into small press form

mass produced with all the       heartfelt emotion and realism

or copied diligently      in the hand of a child…

i read online today

 the words of those waiting to

‘stand in line to piss on your grave’

and i wondered:

 how many cigar smokin’

w-village livin’

moto minister haters

there just might be

standing there with

member in hand someday…

i never felt any emotion

worthy of the effort

it would have taken 

to sit and write to

you, one of the LA old-school

writer boys

but the infusion of hatred

you’ve managed to inspire

across many boards

was riveting

 finally making me feel something

worth writing to you

the 365 days

evaporated hours and minutes

whispered each second to the countdown

that ended a most bizarre year…

today, we awoke          

hopeful   that this new time

might bring clarity and hope

new vision     

through this doorway of

another even year        we pass

with an uneasy remembrance of

these years  past                  the even vs the odd

life in the even

has historically brought

a kinder          balance 

alignment of spirit

a steadier hand

a deeper focus

hmmm..

we’ll see    about this        2012

and we’ll hope

dream    and even

pray

won’t we?

stood at my door, uninvited

taken me away from my art

leaving me to stare stupidly, night after night

at the glaring brightness of this empty page

you, the unwanted houseguest

you who have forced yourself into bed with us

each evening

you, who have sat in my car each morning

invaded my office space at my place of business

have left me preoccupied and unable to focus

on the simplest of tasks

you

who have stolen my art

you who have brought rivers of tears to a family’s gate

you

who have drained us

sucked the lifeblood from our

once-happy days

you

who have left us

already grieving

while we watch the hands of

your insidious clock

ticking away the moments left

you

impending, inevitable

 death

you are not welcome here

yet you

you

are all we are guaranteed at the end

of this,

life

ache

give

care

watch

pray

hope

cry

wonder

                                                    scream, WHY

 today the children awoke from their long deadened sleep…

today they rubbed the dried crumbs of apathy from their eyes…

today they woke up from the paralysis of non-action…

they put down their electronic gadgetry of the age for a moment

slipped out from beneath what has long kept them mesmerized and often blinded

and today, they woke up to a new morning

suddenly paying a new kind of attention

until today, a passive segment of youth has walked though days like sheep

having bought into the lies and decisions made for them by others for their future

until today they have stepped, stupified and stumbling

distracted like robots through the motion

activism was only an unknown social action performed by their parents or grandparents in some decade before they were conceived

until today

until today they believed and swallowed all that had been spoon-fed to them over the years by a never-questioned authority

but today, was a different kind of day

until today, mommy and daddy had written check after check

other starving students have lived on hard-fought grants… some juggling the act of college and part-time job

living in sub-standard housing if they were lucky enough to find it

a whisper away from poverty’s dank streets

a generation forced into recession’s survival mode with the pipe dream that a degree might be the only salvation for their young lives

and today they woke up…. today they finally had enough

today yes! they finally cried enough!

today, i smiled proud of these children of an age

into the streets they screamed fighting for their rights to higher education

fighting for something they believed in!

protesting the rise in fees and costs that would have them the one’s left behind

the very children left behind in this era of lies

spewed from the dank, foul mouth of another bad actor politician, whose smirking grin has all but taken out this,  their once-golden state

today they realized how they’ve been fooled

shunned

realizing suddenly today that they too are these children he promised not to leave behind

and today in the streets

they closed down the halls of higher education

put the entire uc system into operational shut-down mode, and today

i smiled with hope at their fury      a generation finally awake after the long wait

we’ve wondered how much a generation could take

as authority smugly pressed their young, smooth backs up against erudite walls

walls of society’s troubled brick        pushed and pushed simply because they were certain of the apathy

certain no one of this generation would react, and today

they were wrong!

today this generation responded with spark            fire in young eyes                      today they walked through gates to hallowed halls stood in the streets and in quads and said, no more! these children linked arms climbed in windows barracaded themselves in hallways             in emptied classrooms fought campus police and saw with their own innocent eye what we saw forty years ago when we stood where they stand today            battered and bloodied wondering about constitutional rights as batons and tear gas burned our throats and eyes as we too, demanded change              demanded an end to another senseless war watched with the same young eyes while the sixties ‘pigs’ hauled us away beating those rights out of us           pigs with dead hearts and crazed eyes       they,  ’the authorities,’ laughed as they tried to kick the activism out of us too               and today              these children saw that side as their own young fallen comrades wiped pepper spray from burning eyeballs and blood from the faces of their fellow students crying, where is my right to assemble peacefully? where are my freedoms?

today, a new generation demanded fairness and justice            cried out for fairness and recognition for their efforts at higher education and screamed, no more               realizing that this cannot go on                   knowing they want better lives, they demanded affordable education, unable to bear the sight of their already-spent fees swirling red and brown down the drain of a dirty shitter in the movie set of a pretend governor’s undeserved mansion

today i end this day in solidarity with a generation previously unknown

today i am proud of these new children who’ve awakened and are ready

for the fight

for something they believe in…

and today

i am proud and grateful for their efforts

he, reading excerpts from his journal about this day and the night before, when he got the call from the filipino nurse…his memories of you over the years, over time…photographs and quirky tales….your gifts of writings lay boxed up, still resting in his new casa’s garage…

(yes, ben…the nurse really was the only one, “bedside” with steve when he took his last troubled breath and shuffled off this mortal coil..remember now?)

me, turning to the poems written from those days…reading aloud angry and grief filled poetry about death and dying…about waiting and holding on..about missing you by hours that morning…. reading your letters aloud…how it felt to miss saying goodbye…how it feels today with missing you just being …around…. somewhere..

how grateful d and i are to you for connecting us as long-lost siblings…joining us together at the hip with your death…if only we could have thanked you, live and in person for that daily and ongoing gift..

these days, the old beat up metal mailbox at the end of the driveway

barely hangs on beneath that ragged old scrub oak that its fastened to..

sometimes, when i come home in the late, late afternoon, i recall other fall days in the year of our

most prolific and oddly tender correspondence…the leaves have turned the same as they did then

the air smells similar        acrid with woodsmoke

but you…you are still …gone

i remember how the day’s transition to early evening sky looked as it fell behind the old stand of redwoods

how the chilly metal of the rickety box felt to fingertips, prying open its tin mouth, curious of what its old innards might contain in a day…

(hopeful that it contained a ramble or two from you)

how happy i felt to hold an envelope addressed in your spider-scrawl, knowing that it connected us both to memories

of days when we were young…and life   oh that crazy ocean park  and venice life     how it bound us together in a tangle of

memories and shared secrets ….parallel pathways and faces from our younger days..

hey old poet…you haven’t missed much…we’re still here…older and creaking, giggling at the young copycat hopefuls, who are still dying for the chance

to kiss the hem of your ragged garment or to be the next you or the next buk…shaking our old heads at the state of this world and this planet…marveling at just how complicated the day to day business of simply trying to get by has become….

d misses seeing you manuevering the streets near the pavilions, cane in hand, marlboro hanging between your lips…honest and real to the end

and me? that woman up north… i miss the letters…the guts of you splattered on lined notebook paper, with all the smokescreens and bullshit burned away…letters from a friend, containing old art and the meat of you, raw and real….maybe for the first time in your life, you said!  you became my only friend who exchanged a letter a week…simply because someone cared to share some words with you,  you joined in volleying crazy letters back and forth….me, asking for nothing in return….you, grateful that i wasn’t another syncophant, trying to steal or rearrange your memories…glad i wasn’t another ‘fan’ trying to get to another…through you

yep, we miss you steve…

there is a tear in the corner of a pre-nightime sky…the mailbox stands silent and empty of you…

your imprint on old metal stays strong and…you stand, as always alone in the simple, basic friendship that you gave us…and yes

we still miss you..

mostly, we wish you were here to laugh at this nonsense with us during a sunset stroll on the boardwalk…the taste of a cafe breakfast and a strong coffee, fresh on our lips…the one we never got around to having at the end before the cancer arrived, fangs bared..

RIP old poet…

we hope you’re having a grand ol time now, immersed in the wonders of the ‘what’s next’…a gorgeous muse on each arm…crazy cars and fame and fortune..beauty and birdsong and the smell of the pacific…the sound of the waves you loved..

(that’s it—we’re sure of it…)

for steve richmond 1940-2009

i read buk as a touchtone and with gratitude…i read his work and thank him for giving me the ability to immediately spot the bullshit ‘artists‘, the worshippers, the fan-atics, the liars–oh the poet liars!– the buk copiers and the youthful poet fakes a mile away!  i read buk’s work and get pissed off …why?  because he brings me down and puts me in a cranky-bad mood…….

yet, the relentless, angry young writer buk/richmond/beat poet, meat poet wannabees–out there by the thousands, it seems– continue on with worshipping at the cock of buk, who they see as the ultimate, the rock of “hip”…..and all i can imagine are these seedy 20-50 year-old boys, sitting in a folding chair or on top of their filthy sheets, laptops balanced precariously on their bony knees…inside mon’n pop’s house/funky apartments/dorm rooms/tiny little one-step-up-from-student-housing triplexes/teenage bedrooms filled with the stench of smelly socks and old beer, jerking off and imagining that they, someday, can follow in buk’s footsteps by simply laying down that breed of anger and convincing anyone who will listen that its REAL!…fill it in with that style of angst…add a dash of piggy-style in how they treat their imaginary high-heeled, big-breasted girlfriends in order to be COOL, and viola!  you too can self-publish online or with some help from pops and be the next most respected hipster online or on the planet!…..oh, give me a fucking break…

i read buk because i am old enough to remember the columns and the ink-stains that the l.a. free press left on the innocents’ fingertips…the sounds of the first doors lp blaring from the speakers and the smell of the incense coming out of an ocean park bookshop and later, through the haze of a beachside candleshop [he mentions]……i read buk because i can remember the taste of a pastrami and mustard on french from the deli/liquor store next door …i read buk because of steve and the impact that earth books had on literary CHOICES for my life……hell, i even had a face to face with this self-proclaimed dirty old man when i was 11 years old!  11!  and buk leered and stared and creeped me out…..yet bukowski, always bukowski and his ilk, clouds my clear vision and draws me in  at every turn…

oh, don’t get me wrong…i love the raw of his work; i love the fact that his wordsmithing was brilliant, raw, REAL ..every writer is lucky sometimes to turn a phrase, stand it on its head, view the shit of the world with a clear eye and slap it on the page…luck.  luck with how he typed out and mailed out his view of this sicko world with such drunken determination and talent….oh yes, and buk had that capability and more….but to be idolized, copied, adored, set upon literary altars and worshipped as the second-fucking-coming-of-christ, from one continent to the next?  idolized by youthful writer-wannabe college hipsters, from portland to peru and all points around and in-between each corner and crevice on this planet–or by anyone who intentionally or mistakenly or by noted reference [by buk] ever discovered rimbaud or celine or artaud or balzac…or, by those who were given these ‘non-traditionalists’ as assigned reading by some over zealous, first-year UC system english lit teacher somewhere….oh please…for all that buk was, you can line up a full column listing everything about the man and his work that could piss you off in a new york minute: a leering, ‘peepfreak’ misogynist, alcoholic train-wreck; a bitter, sad, fearful, abusive, and angry man who once in a blue moon could let go for brief, brief moments to give a glimpse of his….god forbid…damaged heart, fragility and his aching, aching loneliness…

so tonite, i read three chapters, turned out the bedside lamp and tossed and turned, unable to fall into sleep mode… then had to jump up and pace around another room of the house…  dammit bukowski!  now i’m up here like the rest of them, still talking about you at 12:47 am….pissed off……he’s laughing at us all, i know….cackling and grinning like a fool over the absurdity of what’s become of the words he shat onto the page…i always feel like i want to scream it from the mountaintop:  remember how he felt about all of his writing contemporaries when he was alive?  why on earth do you think he wouldn’t have hated each and every one of you!!!!    and, you all manage to still bow to him, knowing and loving the fact that he would have kicked each and every one of you in the head, given half the chance in the day…..

god bukowski pisses me off….

found chewing away

at my cedar deckposts:

your feasting

will soon displace the flowers

collapse the hummingbird’s

sanctuary, and is

gnawing away

at my peace of mind

to an empty house

wouldn’t be odd

surprise, surprise

what’s odd

is the lack of you here…

II.

i dove with ease into these calm waters

floating without a routine

sensing that there should be

a certain guilt layered into

the joy of temporarily

flying solo…

instead, i was able

to sprawl across this empty bed

sleeping peacefully

through the night…

III.

the sheets were cold at 3am

there was no warmth

of you

to fold myself into…

on your pillows

the scents of you remain

i curled my body against them

inhaling the lonely bouquet

of your absence