sutra 1

Sutra 1

Breath flows in to out,
out to in, in to out,
coming in and out, you
feel the air pouring
out and then in
subtle particles of air
sucked into your lungs
exhaled from your lungs
back and forth
in an equilibrium
echoing eternity

In the space of the small moment
before taking a breath
there is a flash of joy.

Breathing in, the world is renewed,
is made new and then steadily ascends to a climax.

Breathing in is like you wake up again.

In the space of the moment
before breathing out
there is an opposite joy.

Breathing out the world is released,
let go of, there is a little sleep,
a small o, death in miniature,
a rest stop.

The eternal dance between in and out
twisted like snakes of time
in the life of the breather,
between breather and life.

star service

Back in the 90’s very young kids were making very big money on underground raves and designer drugs. The raves were off the hook, thousands of people in factory warehouses the size of football fields, with chill rooms, black lights, trippy visuals, go go dancers, and a market driven proliferation of the drug ecstasy, or simply, X. These were the days before “rolling” was a term. “Ex-ing” was still de rigeur term in Seattle. The kids that threw the raves were rich kids who got even richer selling drugs to other rich kids and leveraging the drug money to throw massive underground raves. Because of the questionable nature of these massive events, they were rarely, if barely, legal. All the financials were off the books, for obvious drug related reasons. Therefore there were elaborate systems for getting to these raves, meant to elude any heat. First of all advertising was mostly through hand delivered flyers. The flyers were often ornate masterpieces of design. On the flyer would be a phone number. On the day of the rave you would call the number to find out the “secret” location. Often that number would refer you to another number. In those days this ruse seemed to be enough to deter police intervention. And when the parties were successful these guys would clear $100 grand.

The guys that threw these parties would sometimes come in from out of state, LA or NY. When that happened they would often rent out suites at the Alexis Hotel, the small upscale boutique hotel on the Seattle waterfront where I worked at from 1992 to 93. The entourage would typically roll in around Wednesday and party every night. They would throw their big warehouse party on Saturday night and then stay on at the hotel a few days afterward. After a successful rave they would usually throw massive parties in the suite. We loved giving room service to that clientele. They tipped outrageously and the girls were beautiful (incredible/ not to be believed), not to mention dressed to kill. The free ecstasy was a nice tip too.

After one especially successful party the producers ordered about $10,000 of room service from me, which equated to over $2K in gratuity. This party turned out to be great because they invited me and a few of the bellmen to join them after our shift was over.

One of the bellmen, Steve, was my closest friend at the Alexis. His dad was a local Fire Chief, so during the days Steve would fight fires as a junior firefighter, with his dad, and at night he would work at the Alexis. Steve milked that bellman job even more than I milked my roomservice job. It was a sweet set up.

Steve was mostly an upstanding citizen, even, at times, a brave and heroic one. One time he talked a major 80’s rock star from shooting himself in the head. The rock star was suicidal because he had cheated on his wife with one of the hostesses from our 5 star restaurant, The Painted Table, in the lobby of the hotel.

Steve said he was in the middle of talking the gun away from the rock star when the phone rang. The rocker ran to the phone, ripped it out of its socket and tossed it out the window. It landed on our chef’s car in the lot below. As soon as the phone hit the car below another phone rang. It turned out to be the second phone in the adjoining room. Steve raced the rocker to the phone and held it behind his back so the guy couldn’t throw it. The rest of the band sent him a $1K tip a week later in gratitude.

That’s the kind of guy Steve was. But Steve was also the kind of guy who would do sneaky shit too. For about 3 months of my year at the Alexis we had the cast and crew of The Little Buddha staying at the hotel. Chris Isaacs, Bridget Fonda and best of all, Bernardo Bertolucci. Keanu Reeves, the Buddha, was staying with a friend in town. The producer of the movie, Jeremy Thomas, was staying at the hotel too. Jeremy Thomas is a legend. Check out this pedigree. He’s produced films directed by Nicolas Roeg,  Nicolas Roeg: Bad Timing, Eureka and Insignificance, Julien Temple's The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and The Hit directed by Stephen Frears, Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic, The Last Emperor, Bertolucci's film of Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, David Cronenberg’s films of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, J. G. Ballard’s Crash and Christopher Hampton's A Dangerous Method. Heady stuff

Anyway, Jeremy had a block of the highest caliber weed I had ever seen, up to that point in my life, in his hotel room, kept under a glass cake dome. So Steve, and some of the other bellmen, would sneak into his room and smuggle out small pieces of the “cake” now and then for the staff. And that is what Steve brought to the raver’s party that night and it made me see pastel spirits and plaid faces.

I also dropped some acid that night. I remember taking it with the ecstasy, after I got off work at 2am. We called ex and acid together a “dose equis” back then, or sometimes a “candy flip.” That was the only time I ever tried that combination and it was probably a bit much. I don’t remember much of that night. Copious amounts of Jeremy Thomas’s weed and Veuve Cliquot were on hand too which didn’t help the memory.

I do remember at one point being curled up on a couch with three or four women and maybe one other guy and we were cuddling and slithering around the couch while watching the TV, out of our minds. We were watching a late night rerun of 90210, an episode in season 2 called "U4EA". In this episode Brandon takes another walk on the wild side when his devilish girlfriend, Emily Valentine, slips a hallucinogenic drug in his drink at an underground club.  

Then my memory goes black, until I woke up in the suite at about 5pm the next day, still “tripping balls” and with two minutes to get my uniform in order and go downstairs to work.

The first order I got was for two omelets, croissants and orange juice, strawberries and vanilla bean ice cream. I remember the table presentation was very imaginative. Let’s just say the strawberries were legally married to the emperor of ice cream in a mock ceremony.

I took the tray up the room and to my surprise Brandon, from zip code 90201, opened the door, with bed-head, hangover eyes and stubble. Because of my delirious state I thought for a second that I had fallen into television life.

I stared for a minute until Brandon raised his famous eyebrows as if to say, “dude!”, and I snapped out of it. Suddenly this was not Brandon, but Jason Priestley and he was small and there were bags under his eyes and his breath was off. He also didn’t want me to come in the room because he had a girl in there. I could see her in bed behind Jason just well enough to see that the girl was Christine Elise, aka Emily Valentine!

Much later that same evening, after I had returned to a near state of normal, I got an order from Bernardo Bertolucci himself. Bertolucci was a hero of mine. I had studied his films in school and even written a paper about his film The Conformist for Marxist critic Kaja Silverman. So I was thrilled to be serving him a late night shrimp cocktail.

Bertolucci didn’t disappoint. The great artists are often great even in their most mundane moments.

I rang the bell and heard an Italian voice say, “the door is open.” I opened the door and Bertolucci was sitting at his table in his bathrobe, smoking a joint, undoubtedly from Jeremy Thomas, staring into space. He seemed to be listening to the hauntingly beautiful violin music coming from his stereo. It was as if he were in a dream.

As I set the tray down and handed him the check. I told him I thought the music was beautiful. Without saying a word Bertolucci stood up and walked toward the stereo. He stopped the CD. The sudden loss of music startled me, the silence. He ejected the CD, put it in the case and handed it to me. It was Arvo Part’s Requiem. I took note and then handed the CD back to him. He gestured for me to keep it. That was one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given, even better than the windfall from the night before.   

poem for Dante grown up

Let the rich die a million deaths forever

Let the poor live one truly beautiful moment

Inside you will find a dowager stripped bare and held dear

Inside you will find a body alive and warm and without fear

They will gag you but I will be your mouth

Like Jeff Magnum is Anne Frank

reborn in the Neutral Milk Hotel

Moving the muscles of her mouth

screaming in effervescent meaning

an impossibly beautiful descending melody

Ode to Fortitude

4/29/17

I cleared my mind to write a poem last night to read today at the Long Island City Landing. The first word that came to me when I blanked out was fortitude. For years that's been the first word to appear when I clear my head to write. So I wrote a poem spinning off the sound of the word and read it this afternoon in heavy wind with the City skyline behind me.

Ode to Fortitude

Fortitude for years!

forty years of fortitude.

In Hamlet Fortinbras says,

"Go softly on."

go softly on, dude

what else is there?

Fortitude for forty year old virgins

forty winks followed by

forty days of the flood

40 days of the flood

followed by 40 days in the desert

forty days flew out the window

flowed

It was my first solid

word: Fortitude

whenever I shut my eyes

and let a word come to me

its always "fortitude"

sometimes it comes out as "fortified"

like in a cereal commercial

fortified with essential minerals and vitamins

fortified with the essential

The onomatopoeia of the word

FFFForttttitttudddde

those fricatives

like little sonic word forts

the ramparts of verbal attitude

ffffffortttiffffiediedied

fortified like a 45

put on a 45

like a record baby

right right

round round

or a gun

pull out a 45

A president, #45

unfortified unfortunately

forcing the feds

to forge ahead with

a dirty plan

in Florida

a Florida-fide misfortune

knight to bishop, check

what a night in Florida meant

to Elizabeth Bishop, check mate

Florida like the palm

at the end of Wallace Stevens' mind

Stevens never made it there

but he knew it was the final embellishment

"The thing is, America's heritage

is founded on transcendentalism,

so it makes sense that we cannot reach

what is evermore about to be anyway.

'The final embellishment'

a'saith Wallace Stevens,"

A'saith my friend Emord.

Make a fort in your living room

out of couch cushions

over 40 years ago

put a 45 on the turntable

a rousing, hair-raising rendition

of 16 tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford

Making a fort at the beach

Against the wind

fourteen years ago

drinking a 40 in the hood

confiding in a friend

with nothing left to hide

thinking hard about food

turn flour into bread

bread into roses

Then there's the Ford you drove

four to the floor

a Ford Crown Vic was your ride

over the hills of San Francisco

and back through the back woods

of Joplin MO

in your grandfather's Ford

going all the way back to the first man, Adam

in the first automobile, a Ford

a Ford on either side

like Ford Maddox Ford

There's the fjords fortifying Norway

jutting up from the depths of the sea

into sheer mountain sides

like Karl Ove Knausgaard

jutting up from Norway as a force

in the field of literature

A force field of attitude

A fortitude of solace

like Superman in the fortress of solitude.

the fortitude of solace

inside the fortress of solitude

fortified with solace inside forty years now

of Garcia Marquez's 100 years of solitude

Over forty years old

and you're already an old dude

Forty more and you're worm food

Fortifying the worms

food for the next generation of food

Forty quaaludes and finally

quietude

FIght against the flood

and stand on higher ground

for four or five minutes with gratitude

fighting against the flood

until the flood overtakes the flight

the flood overtakes the floodlights

the fortitude to stand against the tide

until the next generation

can take over the hood

like a blood infusion

the next generation

fortified with my blood

Then, as if on cue

this very morning

the pope appeared

in a Ted Talk and said

Tenderness is not weakness

It is fortitude

Go softly on, dude

A moment

A moment

In between one daughter's

community worker presentation at one school 

and the other daughter's

animal presentation at the next

Sitting at the front window  

Of Cafe at 40th and Queens Blvd

Looking up from the scarlet letter

I was reading on my phone

Thoroughly charmed by the language of Hawthorne

Whom I am in love with

like Melville before me

My fingers tapping an intricate rhythm

to the flamenco on the sound system

The coffee working it's magic

watching the April wind lightly
ruffling the hair of a woman walking by. 

revised review of Can It!

Can It!

Edmund Berrigan

Letter Machine Editions 

In the epigraph of “Can It” Edmund Berrigan quotes his stepfather, also a poet, the late Douglas Oliver: “Emotion staggers forward/ in these distracted councils.” Considering the source, this quote is, itself, emotion staggering forward.

Edmund quotes his parents other times in this book too. In fact the name of the book is a quote of a poem by his father, the poet Ted Berrigan: “'Song For The Unborn Second Baby'/ CAN IT!” The unborn second baby, at the time this was written, was Edmund. One can speculate as to what this phrase might mean as a title of Edmund’s book. One possibility is as metaphor for the collection the book contains; the canning of poems to be preserved for the reader. (Bring a can opener.) Berrigan writes in the book’s introduction about the way “seemingly disparate elements unite in a wonderful, though not particularly intentional, whole.” Another possibility evoked by the title is Warhol’s soup cans, which is reinforced by the beautiful painting on the front of this book by Erica Svec;  a crushed can dreaming (through its straw) of fireworks exploding over the Magic Kingdom. The main thing though, I think, is the doubleness of meaning evinced by the orginal poem. “Shut up!” the Edmund’s father is telling him, before he is even born. It's a funny thing to say to an unborn baby and one wonders at further meanings. The normal meaning of the phrase is juxtaposed against a second possible meaning which occurs when one picks up the phrase and turns it around. The poet is giving a message to his son, a cri de cour of human potential, a slanted way of saying “It Can!” The book itself becomes an example of what can.

Emotion staggers forward. As I write this I’m on my way from Sunnyside New York to Joplin Missouri to see my grandmother before she dies. I know a review isn’t supposed to be about the reviewer, but that’s not realistic, is it? Of course your circumstances are going to affect your reading. I’m full of  thoughts about my grandmother so reading this book in that context creates a pointed reading. And that is, at least in part, what reading poetry is about, right? So that’s what this book was up against for me. My grandmother has decided she is ready to go. Yesterday she told my mother she didn’t know if she could wait for me. I called my grandma to ask what that meant and she said that she didn’t want to rush me but didn’t want to wait for me either. So I got on the next plane out and took Berrigan’s book with me. 

There is a remarkable push and pull between poetry and prose in this book. The prose is as crystal clear as the poems are shadowy and slippery. It’s a rare double feat. The only other book I can think of that pulls it off this well is Basho’s travel journals.

I’m thinking about those thousands of books my grandmother read over the course of her 87 years. She read a book a week in her prime. All that memory, all those stories. Is any of that transferable? Or does it all just blow away like smoke? Maybe it leaves a trace of sorts, distilled down through the generations. I think I’ll read a poem from this book to my Grandmother when I get there. Here’s one called “Metal Coil Assembly Shrub” where Berrigan writes, “You read this book and it helps you live. Alive! Alive!” 

Another great thing about this book is just how ornately the transitions are stitched into the seams between the seemingly disparate poems. For example a pair of vaudevillian philosopher roaches yuck it up in the opening bit and then, in the next piece, roaches are crawling out of the memory of Eddie’s laundry (sometime in the eighties) and leading the family out of the house. The roaches lead the poems forward in these first two pieces just as they lead the family in Ed’s memory. 

I found another line in the book that encapsulates everything for me right now. “It’s about sleeping, looking at me, That’s her!” Sleeping here, for me, now, is synonymous with dying, but also with that opiate sleep before dying, and also with dreaming, also with falling in love. Looking at me in your dreams, it says, "That’s her." I mean, take it how you will. How I am taking it is the one dreaming of you is the one you are dreaming of.

Sometimes in the more densely thicketed passages of this book I trip over sense and meaning and find myself in the hands of music. And while that’s enough, I still search for the sense that’s there because I want to know. What if it speaks to me? The tension between what can be known and not known in the words builds mystery. Following this mystery to its point more often than not leads to beauty. “Where are you for Adam coal duck one leaf feather/ earlier title big beat like beige lemme/ seethe anthem planet set structure naught/ better than go for days so noise/  you beam sorry out of sight tremble.” Right, I’m going to have to think about that, but it's wonderful to read out loud. Because it's so wonderful to read out load I want to think about it.

I’m on the ground now at O’hare, on a layover in Chicago. In the background I can hear Eartha Kitt singing “My Heart Belongs To Daddy.” So subjective is my reading of Berrigan’s book that even hearing this song plays into my reading of these poems. I just called my mom to see how grandma is doing. My mom was giddy and I could hear my grandmother laughing in the background. What’s going on? They are giddy? My grandma must be on the upswing. Maybe visitors are lifting her spirit. 

There’s a transcription of a tape recorded conversation between EB and JC (the poet John Coletti) in the middle of this book that is one of the most entertaining things I’ve read in a long time. I laughed as I read through it and then, seriously, something just killed me and for a moment I couldn’t stop laughing. Here’s a piece of it…

EB: Do you think it’s possible to give credence to definitions of good and bad.

 JC: No, but it helps everybody keep from, uh, killing each other…and it helps everybody stop loving each other too…if everybody didn’t define their own sense of good and bad, we could move probably…like go to capacity…but to make essential the idea of good and bad…that’s the ultimate height of seriousness within a large group of people…Some people are darker, coked up, like Miami on dialysis and they like to get fucked up…that’s what happened with religion right?”

EB: Giggles. Maybe…wow…

JC: I guess that was a Mormon complaint.

EB: Have you ever waltzed.

JC: Yep.

It's funny. My grandmother, who is full of her own ideas about what is good and bad, taught me how to waltz. I read this book as I think of her. And it helps. That's the point.

Sir Sushi and Big Hair

Sir Sushi and Big Hair

Lucia points out the sushi's still left out from last night.

"Well, hello Sir Sushi, how did you sleep?"

Sofia says, "there's a Shopkin called Sir Sushi!"

I say "That reminds me of Sans Souci

which is latin for 'without worries.'

Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead

(who you used to call the Grateful Dad)

had "Sans Souci" written above his doorway.

We should listen to 'American Beauty' right now."

We turn on Spotify and start "Box of Rain."

"Can you read the writing on the album cover?"

"No, It's too small." So we look up the album cover

on Google Images, enlarge and trace the letters.

Sofia "swips" the screen to the next image:

a photo of the Dead on the back side of the album.

Who's the guy with the big hair and beard she asks?

"That's Jerry Garcia, the guy with 'Sans Souci.'"

She says, "from now on I'm gong to call him Big Hair."