Notebook/scrapbook for the death of everything
Easter 2003
This is not a good poem, but it was an important one to me. Ten years ago, on a Tuesday, I piled into a rented Impala with two of my best friends to drive from straight through from Louisville out to Tucson with the ostensible purpose of hanging out at the Yaqui Easter ceremonies, primarily the one on Friday at the Yaqui compound in Tucson. It was always an intense ceremony (the one at the Yaqui camp on the outskirts of town Saturday was pastoral by comparison).
After driving through the afternoon and night and ending up in Roswell, New Mexico, by the light of the rising sun, I picked up a paper to find that the US had invaded Iraq. We had, of course, seen this coming, but things are very different when there are “boots on the ground” … i.e., you think that it’s not real until it really happens.
At the same time, I had chosen not to attend the funeral of my cousin Theresa, which was going on the same day. She was from southern Indiana, down by the White River, and she may as well have been from the hills of Kentucky, Tennessee, or West Virginia … the popular media image is the same. Theresa had a rough life, and she was a victim of what many of us from more monied and/or educated backgrounds tend to dismiss as simple ignorance instead of the collateral damage of capitalism that it really is. Anyway, Theresa had gotten pregnant at a very young age, but she was blessed with loving parents who not only refused to turn their backs on her, but agreed to raise Theresa’s son as their own. For her part, Theresa, after several rough years, had started to get her life together and become a “stable” person for the first time.
The job she finally got, the job that she was able to hold onto and to some degree defined her, was as a prison guard. She liked the job, and she held on to it for several years. Unfortunately, old demons reared their heads: at some point, she met an inmate that she fell for. She had reservations about this man; after all, he was in for abusing his girlfriend (actually hurting her quite seriously), and had a long history of assault and abuse, quite a bit of it against women. But she was charmed; and he, for his part, apparently fell for her quite hard.
When he got out, they connected, but Theresa began to have reservations. She was trying to turn around her life and live for her son, and she knew that this guy was bad news, intellectually if not emotionally. So she tried to break it off, and what happened next was all too predictable.
They found her body in her Pontiac Sunbird, which had been lit on fire on a deserted county road in Monroe County. It was completely torched, and her body was burned to the point that dental records were needed to identify her. One of the complications early in the investigation was that they couldn’t charge anyone with murder because they couldn’t determine the cause of death. Eventually, the man confessed, and by all accounts showed real remorse, since he really “loved” Theresa.
About seven years later, I was back around Bedford for the funeral of her son. He was angry, he was always angry … he had been in and out of jail, and he never really got over the death of his mother, in spite of the love of his grandparents. He died of an overdose. The most memorable thing about the funeral was that one of my cousins had to grab me and one of my brothers to clear out the parking lot when some kids decided to act up. It’s taking everything in me not to call them rednecks or white trash … but they were refuse. Capitalism’s refuse. Just like my cousin and her son.
* * * * *
After hitting Roswell at sun up, we took a detour to the Anasazi ruins in New Mexico. My friends, who had been sleeping while I had been driving, walked the ruins and occasionally let out strains of melody on home made flutes they were carrying. I, who had been driving for almost 20 straight hours and was of a somewhat less spiritual bent, found a nice warm rock in the morning sun and stole a short nap. After an hour at the ruins, we grabbed some coffee and were back on the road.
The whole way, it was paranoia and weirdness. It is important to remember just how little opposition there was to the war when it started. Every car had flags, every truck had a “My Country, Right or Wrong” sticker, every traveler in every rest stop and gas station all giddy over war. It was a J.G. Ballard landscape come to life.
I write better now. I will always resist the temptation to rewrite this.
EASTER 2003
morning
7 am Tucson the
sun turns the
tent to an oven the
sun bright over another deathtrip
in another desert
on a gravel road in a Pontiac he
doused her in gasoline & lit her & ran
1.
Chillin’ in a tent in the desert
the sun barely up
biding time with Edward Albee
cowboy stories surrounded
by flags, flags, flags
everyday is flag day everywhere these days
cross our
star spangled land
on a patriotic, god-fearing bender
& the stars -n- stripes
is the geometry of war
somewhere, out there,
some George Washington crosses a Delaware
he doesn’t know, and
the mother of all bombs
won’t douse hate
attracted to the Tikrit triangle
like metal shavings over a magnet
or
the desperation of the already dead
on a gravel lane somewhere outside Bloomington
and, this is it: Theresa’s dead.
She’s blood
whistling past the graveyard …
the distant rumble in the background
the thunderhead on the horizon
always on the horizon
it’s death, man,
among the flying flags
and burning cars.
2.
the highway intersects
a Wednesday morning funeral
deep in the heart of New Mexico
Tony & Matt fluting the ruins
and going back …
become the darkness in Little Rock
shed your skin in the dawn of Roswell
Arkansas, Oklahoma, & Texas a howling tunnel of other
shades & delineations of nothing
Oklahoma City, Erick, Amarillo
Tikrit, Bagdad
Elletsville, Bedford, Bloomington
& how do we explain to the dead
that there was nothing there
how do we explain to the living
that there is never anything there
and that drinking tequila in the desert won’t kill it
and that drinking whiskey in Louisville Kentucky won’t kill it
and that drinking Bud Light in Bedford Indiana won’t kill it
and that bowing to the east won’t kill it
the horror creeping like a virus
exploding into murder fire jihad
& poets digging into the closets
of horrible darkness won’t kill it
&
she was probably dead when he set her on fire
’cause you don’t just douse people in gasoline
& set them on fire
& burn them up in their cars –
he’s charged with arson
’cause he burned her up
but not with murder
’cause she may have been dead already
&
we all die a little more every
hellbent day of this backward millennium …
guns in Baghdad
somewhere east of
the center of chaos
Southern Indiana deathtrip
swooping like a crow
3.
the dead lay where they are
the living lay where they are
the flutes & drums of the Yaqui try to raise them
sacred ash and mariachi trills try to raise them
Easter Saturday on the rez by the casino
choking dust, burning masks,
purification by fire
a Pontiac burning on a Monroe County road
chapayeka drag burning under the Easter cross
a car bomb just outside the green zone,
another minister assassinated
another body for the dust
and, the choking dust of New Pascua
celebrates the resurrection
while the dead lie where they lay
in Iraq
in Bloomington
the funeral
goes on
without me
4.
… and there are flags, flags, everywhere flags
yellow ribbons, red bumperstickers
the highway awash with patriotism
every SUV with a petrol-drunk V-8
every broke-down Ford with Tennessee plates
a crazy fool with delusions grand
again deals the penultimate hand
death reigns in another foreign land
and, in the cactus-scarred slopes of Arizona
and, in the inbred back roads of Indiana
another flag waves
another innocent dies
and, I’m here, another shot of whiskey,
another
5.
morning
7 am Tucson the
sun turns the
tent to an oven the
sun bright over another deathtrip
The Ethics
I can no longer be concerned with god.
If there is a point, it has long since faded
into the nothing of an infinite violation
of boundary logic. So I, unlike Spinoza,
This ethics is a world of vapor,
a world of smoke, of arcane legerdemain
half hidden under a veil,
this ethics is a punch in the head to dark purpose,
a deck of pornographic trading cards,
that thing you forgot, remembered, forgot
again, then forgot you forgot.
I scratch out an ethics in fine point against type,
a frail bulwark against the onrushing words
like waves, words drifting like ashy snow
that never melts, the snow falling
on the living and the dead, burying ciphers
[empty] like acorns forgotten by squirrels,
words torn loose and herded by green capital
into holding pens on vast ranches deep in Texas,
words that accumulate to words
like capital accumulates to capital
with no regard to anything
beyond accumulation and attraction,
with emptiness at the very core.
It is the mission of this ethics to
It is the mission of this ethics
to kick words into forbidden trajectories
to split them like atoms
to create blinding white light.
It is the mission of this ethics
to liberate words from meaning,
but not meanings.
It is the mission of this ethics
to liberate meaning from capital,
from ranches of privilege and tradition.
I am inadequate for the task,
Black as - what they say, ink? -
late. I take a little detour
windows down, top open,
roll up on The Captain’s Locker,
pay too much for booze after two a.m.
I miss the turn the first time;
it’s been awhile.
I’m surprised at all the cars,
then remember I was always surprised
by all the cars,
a parking lot jammed and stretched back
winding along Hillside, a little up and down
for its twist.
I have a bottle beside me on the seat.
A small one. We’re older now.
I caught your porch out of the corner
of my eye
I had to turn around butt first
in the last drive and cruise it again.
You weren’t out there. Of course you weren’t.
You don’t smoke anymore.
Again …
West Lawn is mostly
violence because of the
gangs, robberies, and cliques.
West Lawn is full of
stray alcoholics, drug
dealers, and cocaine
addicts.
West Lawn is a neighborhood
full of stray animals and pets:
dogs, cats, hamsters, raccoons
geese, and crows.
West Lawn is full of 2
parent homes and apartments
but also abandoned buildings.
West Lawn is full of corner
and family stores.
West Lawn is a neighborhood
with wonderful playgrounds
for our beautiful children.
West Lawn has great schools
and magnificent students
at Fairfield.
West Lawn is
the neighborhood people haven’t
really thought of besides
assuming it’s
a horrible one.
Charles Olson - The Songs of Maximus: Song 2
Ed Dorn reading from Gunslinger 1974
Year by year,
the monkey’s mask
reveals the monkey.
— Basho
from a collection tentatively called 75 Short Poems About the Weather
