Plumped-up and Peppered

You could see them picnicking on Sunday, off-duty city secretaries and airline hostesses naked on blankets airing out their bushes at the nude beach, it was liberating for all, it was the good stuff. 

Watching old westerns on TNN when nothing else was on, predictable, highly moral and self-righteous raw stuff on the plains, every town with hookers, poker games and violence on the streets, same as always.  

Things you were stuck with in life with-out choice, there was plenty of it. For Bukowski it was working at the post office, for some it was the ever-present enforcer and censor, the irrefutably correct.   

Henry writing every-morning in front of the big-screen computer, getting high, drinking coffee, writing what came to mind, anything, bullshit if he wanted, easy writing. 

Saturday morning finishing this story at Wah-Wah coffee shop, Starfucks charging for WiFi, can you imagine that? 

The money-people plumbed-up and peppered the line-up and the repertoire, Henry thought. 

In the end the rich and poor in the same boat, without much freedom of choice in life. 

You wanted to get as far away from it as you could, look at it and poke-fun at it from behind a bush, ready to escape out the back-hatch on a whisper. 

Age teaches you to keep distance Henry thought, and being poor leaves you little choice in the end. 

Hounded by the petty ethos of the preacher, the irrefutable correctness, the old-fashioned stuff they pass down to you whether you want it or not, it was required for every-one. 

The irrefutably correct corpe of the anal, the cock-roaches, rats Henry thought.  

Faerie-World Beyond the Stars

Exalted up on high in  fairie-world  where paper meets stone, beauteous-color sprayed painted every-where as the glitter-machine worked over-time. 

Jail-birds and out-laws out-grow their cages and flee the world,  a roll of the dice in the casino,  a moon-faced x-roulette-star playing with fate. 

Henry pratfall after pratfall, falling on rough cement pavement day after day, getting scraped up, benighted by it. Finding relief plenty, getting the best of it up on high,  getting high some. 

This must be the the cool-life, Henry thought: Hell-bound,  full of whiskey and morphine,  full of country music. The holy-rambler, the junk-champ down-town on rouge-morgue avenue looking for the high-way.  

On clear-days going to observatories, beyond the lustrous stars faeries peering out from behind corners at you.  

Settled  way-way back in your sky-colored cadillac cruising through rows of red and blue indian-corn-fields,  green  rows of rainbows full of halos,  jettisoned.  

Happy holidays baby,  thanksgiving and christmas,  days of the gods.  

On the River Looking at the Moon

Somedays, today maybe,  unable to get the first paragraph off, stuck in traffic or on the three yard line. 

Drinking at a Chinese juke joint on the river:

Black  and Chinese girls everywhere, busy, Henry hot for the vest pocket girl with a green wig on her head. It was about scoring good cocaine and eating, life wrapped around bowls of it on long tables. Tequila to wash down fried Mollies, sticky rice and okra.   

It was always summer at dusk, driving the back-back roads on the side of the river, the empty-roads slow and leisurely, the convertible-car  suspended on nothing much. Henry color-blind,  the alley-ways folding into sepias wind-tunnels, leaking rainbows, majestic.

Henry didn’t want to leave town. There were too many people on the road, when you travel you are just another buffalo he thought. Traveling an effort, why get out of bed unless you have to? 

Henry on the computer writing, drinking coffee and smoking ganja first thing in the morning. That is what a real-man-writer did. It was ritual and celebration, there was work to be done, editing and re-editing. 

Later that morning reading Dylan Thomas, “The Clown in the Moon,” it was awesome and beautiful stuff, the greatest poetry of any century, the best anywhere. 

Thomas the last ballsy poet, 

 ’My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.’ 

Dylan Thomas writing about the planet he occupied, awesome as any moon. 

Was good poetry taken to heart enough to bankrupt the space industry Henry thought? 

'Why the moon-bound-projects could dry up,' 

belching , the out-going-wind just enough to propel a little more,

Oh fuck the economy anyways he thought, banks gave him a head-ache, he didn't worship money, money the controller of the world, people were slaves to it.  

And so on and so forth today and most days. 

Lotto Monday

It was Lotto Monday. Winning the lotto makes a few rich, maybe happy, being rich part lugging a psycho monkey around and part being a show-off, it was good for people's ego, a massage.   

Most think it is better to be rich than poor, they are right, the very rich are happy to be rich and so on and so forth.  

Henry feeling lucky to have what he had, out in the middle somewhere and waiting, waiting it out. 

Here is another one— 

Your health is more precious than diamonds or gold, everybody knows that, for obvious reasons. 

Here to stay Henry thought, the petty edict of man-kind having everything  do to with money and less to do with the poorest people in the world,  it was bigger than him, bigger than anyone, you had to laugh, it was hopeless.  

The inexorable few rebelling against the petty morality part of it, the saviors beaten before they got out of the gate,  there is an endless stream of them coming down the turn-pike right at you at you. 

Henry chuckling to himself some here and...  

Listening to Allen Ginsberg reading on radio Charlotte, WEYJ,  Alvah calling them, 

“Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated—“

There is an explanation out there for everything under the Sun, an explanation for everyone and everybody. The things we do are analyzed.   

Sylvia Plath  reading “ Gold Mouth’s Cry” on the radio.

“ The bronze boy stands knee-deep in centuries,

and never grieves,

remembering a thousand autumns,

with sunlight of a thousand years upon his lips

and his eyes gone blind with leaves.”

Truly beautiful Henry thought. 

The great writers unlike the average, in touch with something out there, something humble, they were sucker punched by it. 

And so on and so forth, today the same as many, never changing much.  

Peeling the Red Orange

Being an artist and doing your art everyday a peerless adventure. 

Henry editing and rewriting like a nut, it seemed important, more than a one shot deal, running through and polishing the stuff, learning the scales.

The  process a windfall for him, he loved everything about it, flow, tone, rhythm, the freedom to break away from it,  using cut-up method,  painting with words, words sprinkled like pepper on the page. 

The last exit on a still afternoon before the invasion. Deep like mud mixed with sand, allot in it, you couldn't plant corn it and if you fell in you may never come out.  

In a hall way sitting at the editor's desk the dictator and the wag do voice overs, a kind of ‘speak-nik,'  It was so loud it knocked you down.

Poetic prose, fire balls, peeling the blood orange, flower peddles floating on a rainbow, flipping over and out, wanting out, no-where, writing to escape the weariness of dullsville. 

Kinked on Bukowski

Henry listening to Thelonious Monk in the afternoon, feeling different and reading Bukowski, how did Buk know so much? The God stuff spot on, for instance;

“the gods seldom

give

but so quickly

take.” 

And,

“the gods play no

favorites.”

He calls them "the gods,"  using “g” in lower case,  disrespecting God with the lower case designation, " the gods" the same as the rest of the clowns for him.  Henry wondered how many of Buk’s “gods” were out there?    

Buk saying,

“The whole world is a sack of shit ripping open. I can´t save it.”

Well now isn’t that lovely Henry thought, and true too. 

Henry feeling much the same as Buk on this,  in a recent story, “ 10 Minutes Today” saying, 

"For Henry it was lazy writing, no more stories, nothing left, writing on nothing, about nothing, there was nothing at all just a 'bag of shit ripping open'. " 

As well as a Tweet @FigaroLucowski,

“John Cusack is a great talent as a writer, very passionate, I wish I could say I gave a shit about the world, like he does.” 

Cusack sees world government as a conspiracy, self-interest enforced using brutality in the face of common sense. The kid passionate, but for Bukowski or Henry just another day in the shit bag, nothing much to think about, all three cynical,  distrustful and cowed by world government. 

Henry's book “ Mescaline Sombrero”  well, maybe it sucked, the stories were great but it needed more editing, nobody bought it, he had enough stuff in the can to put a new and better book out. 

He loved writing, cheaper, more laid back, not physical and messy like painting. Writing a laid back way to look at the world, writing an awesome groove.
    

Van Morrison Knocked up Half the Town

               

Flora and Ted Delmar lived in Bolinas, California population sixteen hundred, a artist community that people from San Francisco visited on weekends, with famous residents Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Van Morrison who owned a ranch outside of town. Bolinas looked like the old run down town in the western "Three Bullets for Ringo". The Delmars lived in a small old wooden house, weathered and sky blue color. They were AWOL, Absent Without Leave from society and the rat race, opting out when Nixon was elected.

Flora had a trust fund from a rich uncle who lived in the East. It wasn't allot, but the Delmars could afford to live simply and past the time painting, writing, drinking, listening to music and smoking pot. Flora painted her art using house paint instead of expensive Rembrandt paint. She would glue old newspapers and sand from the beach on thin cheap canvass to thicken and give it texture. Ted had a old Olympia typewriter he wrote his stories on. The couple was moderately successful and could care less about making it. Flora had a few exhibitions in San Francisco and Ted published a book of short stories entitled ' Mescaline Sombrero' on Black Sparrow Press.

One night Dennis and Lola Weaver went to the Delmar house for a visit. They owned the health food store in Bolinas and were heavy drinkers like the Delmars. After eating some falafel and couscous they began to drink bourbon and spring water, passing a joint of high breed Humboldt County pot around.

Lola Weaver knew that Flora wanted get pregnant, bored and feeling horny, feeling in heat she says, "Oh Flora good Lord what is wrong with Teddy's sperm? Try this dear, put raw oysters, earthworms, seaweed and pumpkin yogurt in a blender then give it to Ted before you make love." Flora says " Oh fuck off Lola we all know that Dennis's sperm isn't any better than Ted's, and that your son Moon-boy was fathered by Van Morrison," Lola countered by saying " Well dear my darling Moon-boy has the DNA of a genius and will be a world famous musician someday,". "Sure" says Flora in reply reminding Lola that, " Van the mans DNA also carries the lousy genes of a sexed out doper, booze hound, rogue cowboy and bald fat man". Roaring out loud spontaneously the pair laughed so hard that their eyes teared.

Meanwhile Dennis and Ted were in the backyard, peering through a telescope at the night sky as they passed a joint back and forth. It was a fresh and crisp night and you could smell the ocean. The sky looked like a dark blue tarp draped over the horizon as though someone had pricked the tarp a zillion times with a needle allowing the light source from beyond to shine through the tiny holes. Ted got serious for a moment saying to Dennis " One night broh, I was looking at the sky, like we are tonight and I saw a tiny star like blue ray of light that was moving up and down, hovering near the moon for fifteen minutes, then bingo the blue ray shoots up into space and vanishes."  Dennis was skeptical and didn't believe in UFOs saying "You're not going to tell me it was a UFO, maybe it was a star that just flickered out." Ted thought for a few seconds and said, " Well it sure as shit wasn't your momma's booty!" The two good friends fell to the ground they laughed so hard.

Later that evening Flora decided she wanted to walk down the hill and go skinny dipping in Bolinas Lagoon. She wanted to bath in moon beams, asking the Weavers to come along. After splashing about and chicken fighting the couples went to their perspective Mexican blankets, exhausted, full of joy, necking a bit and passing out. 

Life was good for the Delmars and Weavers, whom in their different ways had escaped the rat race of the city and found simple joy in country living, living off the grid, opting for a spiritually creative life instead. 

Aware beings, choosing to generate the smallest carbon footprint possible, using green energy to power their houses. Not wanting to leave behind allot of plastic shit that would end up in the rubbish, more carbon based toxins taking a big dump on the precious environment, perpetuating the cycle of sedate planetary suicide.

One Christmas night Flora and Ted got magnificently wasted on Mescal. They finished putting the colored lights on their tree, which was not a pine but a huge home grown cannabis bush in a painted pot. For them Christmas night symbolized the birth of earthly innocence that was eroding, going down to the low lands as the centuries progressed.

Flora got up and changed the channel on the old TV, they only had two channels. It was Christmas at the Nixon White House, they both hated Nixon and his phony "values" and got a sinking feeling watching Pat, Tricky Dick, David Eisenhower, Trica and the rest of family values crew sitting around the huge White House blue pine Christmas tree. The Delmars thought the Nixon family looked soulless, like mannequins or plastic dolls. Ted began sweating and couldn't watch the the travesty any longer, it was taking the joy out of Christmas for him. He picked up a shot gun he kept at hand and fired a few caps into the TV, watching pieces of the glass screen, tubes and circuits fly apart landing on the living room floor. It was a Elvis or a Hunter S. Thompson moment, then saying to Flora, "Damn that felt good baby" thinking to himself that he would never watch TV again. The Nixon family had that affect on allot of people.

Later, a month after the night after having sex with Ted at Bolinas Lagoon, Flora took a home pregnancy test and it was positive. She knew that Lola Weaver would say that Van Morrison was the father. People in town believed that Van the patriarch had a witches brew of magical and formidable whale sperm and had knocked up half the women in Bolinas. But Flora knew that the moon beams shining on her and Ted the night they balled on the lagoon caused Ted's load hit bullseye. She knew the child would be a girl and that she would name her baby Moon-girl.

Months past and Flora was showing her pregnancy. One day she went to Bolinas to get some jasmine tea and have a drink at the No Name Saloon. Van Morrison was sitting with some pals at the bar. He took one look at Flora and started grinning like a proud father. Flora looked at Van and said, "You're not the father of my baby you big fat piece of shit the Moon is." Van got up and walked out the door, went back to the studio on his ranch and wrote "Moon Dance," obviously moved and inspired by his run in with Flora.

The American Indians have a saying " Just because you point your finger at the Moon, it doesn't mean you're the Moon" But sweet Flora knew better.

circus music

cooking popcorn crackling hot

purple powder shot from gun

black clown and the fire eater

juggle razor blades on tongue

purple hair stripper shows tits

painted the color of rainbows

dancing with the scarecrow

broke down beat music of

the sacred heart down not out

transversing the hill like ants

the clouds burst white rice like

confetti on the people for luck

it was worth 3 bucks they thought

Cherry Bombs and Roman Candles

Henry on a cold, cold morning driving on a frozen lake, his 1963 BMW doing figure eights and cluster fuck spins. In the trunk there was a bow with arrows wrapped in sack, soaked in petrol for a some flaming arrow action later. 

The forest a backdrop to the lake, a picture washed in sepia and bronze light, the leafless tree limbs and twigs accentuated the scene, symbols of nature, graphic color like you would see in Jackson Pollack painting. 

He loved the aroma of the forest, burning leaves, melting coconut butter, fresh grass shoots,  deer musk. 

Henry didn’t hunt game,  preferring pyrotechnic stuff that tantalized the senses,  shooting flaming arrows at night, sometimes he would attach Cherry Bombs or flares, creating an outrageous light show with sound.

Later Henry went to town for a drink—  Walden, Maine a small town with a Maple Syrup mill and a L. L. Bean outlet. 

Antler was a bar where Jack Kerouac hung out in the seventies. You could find all types of people there, bikers, priest, poets, bums, business men, all with their heads submerged in their drinks and not one of them wanting to talk about Kerouac. 

Henry at the bar saw a gal with dreads and feathers in her hair, approaching her he asked what here name was. Her name was Sparrow, she was a poet. 

She invited him back to her place,  she lived in a cabin near a cornfield. After a few drinks he lit Cherry Bombs and Roman Candles almost setting her cabin on fire. She told him to get the fuck off her property and never come back.  Henry made a big impression on her

Just another day he thought. 

Review of "Exile on "Mainstreet"

 

"Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final." Hunter S Thompson, circa 1979 —The Great Shark Hunt, 1979

The Rolling Stones looked for studios in Paris and couldn’t find any they liked. They had a truck that was equipped with a studio that could be parked by any theater or empty loft.

Keith Richard's house, Nillcote, seemed to be the best choice, near lawless Marceau and Mafia Italy . Philipe Lymen could make smack runs into the lawless Marceau, or into Mafia controlled Genoa.

Mick and Bianca Jagger (who was pregnant) were living in Paris. The musicians, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Mike Taylor, Bobby Keys the horn section and rhythm section were living scattered around. Mick decided they would move into Nillcote.

The Stones were exiled from the UK for tax abuse, and were shaken up by it. They missed the comfort of the Brit food they were used to and the cloistered utero feeling of the safe worlds they had created in their mansions, but not the 90% UK tax. It was impossible to live at that tax rate, the UK is strange.

They felt like true expats, alone with nothing to lose. They were in a Catch-22 situation, sink or swim.

With the positivity of their leader Mick Jagger, his constant happiness and vision, his easy-going style, his ongoing joy of the whole process, Jagger was the glue that held the creative process together.

Keith on the other-hand was muddling through a junk habit and would sleep long hours. Keith would wake-up with a hang over, have a taste, back in the halo, all the time listening to the guys working on songs in the basement.

The whole band had to be ready when Keith was up and running, witch unnerved Jagger who felt Keith would do better to adhere to some kind of a schedule.

Mick would sit in the basement jamming, fabricating, but truly missing his best friend Keith, who was at the beach.

The band would kibitz about on songs, Keith when in action was a task master, when a song was ready, a sensation or consciousness swept through the musicians, Keith would start staring at Bill Wyman, who would tilt his bass up about 15 degrees towards the heavans , THAT WAS THE SIGN! 20 takes latter towards the final cut ( which would be hashed over in the Sunset Blvd Studio latter in LA) it happened.

The bewitching open party atmosphere is a major part of putting "" Exile"" together. There was no security, cool people would walk in and out . Anita Pallenberg (Keith's wife at the time, like shooting gallery buddies), reminisces, walking into the living room and seeing a guy with a huge baggy full of smack sitting on the sofa. Of course that was a ticket to get in on the endless partying with the family, but things got dark from then on.

Bobby Keys with a southern draw, the bands sax player never mentioned seeing junk, but admitted seeing plenty of booze and ganja, all being used 24 hrs a day. .

Keith had a family whose job it was to score smack for him in Marceau. Tim Lyman would make trips between borders to supply and then use junk with Keith and Anita, Lyman's son, Nicholas could roll joints for the gang, that was his job. At the time Nicholas says the scene felt dark to him at times, but he also felt a charismatic feeling emanating.

They backed the truck/studio up a tiny alley way through untrimmed tree, and ran the wires through the ground floor of Nillcote. It was weird, everyone was so wasted. The horn section might be connected to the studio in a hall way, Bill Wyman was wired right outside of Keith's section. It just seemed like a big cluster-fuck, it was amazing anything was put together.

Keith kept a maid, Matta, who looked like a Voodoo Priestess. Jumbo Jack, the cook, who was as big as Howling Wolf, with triple size hands and wore a Top hat. He doubled as chauffeur. JUMBO COULD MAKE Freid chicken, burritos, hamburgers, fries, veggies, pizza , peel fruit, whatever the family wanted.

Matta was a gambler and loved to play dice, she would organize crap games and got rich winning money from Jagger and Richards. Jagger got the ideal for the song "Tumbling Dice" from the crap games with Matta.

Bianca Jagger was wore a white silk dress . She radiated auras, she was the sun, at the corp of Exile was Micks joy at becoming a father with the beautifully pregnant Bianca.

Aside: I AM GOING TO CUT UP WHAT I'VE WRITTEN SO FAR ON NILLCOTE,  AND DO AS MICK JAGGER DID, CUTTING UP LYRICS ON THE FINAL VERSION ON "CASINO BOOGIE

Started out jamming.

The Stones were always in debt, tax under labor was 83%. It was impossible for them to live in England. And the powers at be were threatened by the Stones.

Keith felt that they were edged out of their own country (UK).

The album was raw and edgy but the reviews were terrible. 2 years latter it was called the best rock n roll album ever. Mick felt the PRESS was very disruptive to his and Bianca's personal life.

Charlie Watts suffered culture shock at first, but remains in France today.

Keith said it was getting cold outside and winter was coming, the tape was in the truck and everyone left quickly. Even the French Government was scared of the Devils at Nillcote, the best place for artist to live in the world, scared of artist? go figure, as they say.

The stones felt like exiles and they knew they had to do this album. But nobody thought it would be as good as it still is.

There was no mention in the documentary were money was coming from and who was the money manager goes unsaid.

The stones were the center of the universe at the time, music was revolution.

The whole gathering, family, players, technicians, cooks were a tribe.

Watts says Richards was a true Bohemian, he lived like a rasta man, from day to day and didn't worry about the small shit.

The best music comes when the band doesn't think they are being recorded.

Bobby Keys was a open minded, loving and a accepting good ol boy, odd guy, so straight, but totally in the Nillcote family groove.

Mick Taylor wasn't making any money, but was digging it all.

It was so hot in the basement at times that Mick wrote a song and sang it while playing piano "Where's our Ventilator?"

French man goes to Nillcote, to visit for a day, he is amazed, he ends up partying with the family for six months.

Ian Stewart, who was was a stride genius, who was often called the 5th Stone was never mentioned because he wasn't at Nillcote.

Keith does a interview after shooting junk. He talks intelligently but is wain.

Charlie and Mick walk into the present location of Nillcote, looking around in 2010 Mick says to Charlie on film, " their was no master plan," and "boring, old recording session, who gives a shit". Mick was the anti-christ of rock n roll those days." Alan Ginsburg crowned Mick the KING of the World Hippiedom.

Keith & Mick, can play like John Hammond in duo and they often do, even now.

The Stones like Ray Charles loved country music too. Keith saw country music and hill people to be like a hallucination in the forest clearing festooned with Tibetan Flags nomads.

Rock is a beautiful navajo blue turquoise stone on gold caldron to mix things up in…..Keith

The basement was the center of the universe, drink-in Jack, smoking ganja, coca, play as loud as they wanted. It was like recording in a sauna.

Pallenberg calls it a labor of love.

When Bianca and Mick were married it was suppose to be a secret, but didn't stay a secret.

Bobby keys could play all reed instruments and and taught charlie about time settings: 2/4 mostly, to count 2 counts to every 4 beats in a measure, 1+2+. 1 and 2 and down on the 1 & 2, up on the ands. Charlie was a quick learner, and always played as though he could crack any second, following Keith. 

Nillcote was never empty, there were few disruptions though.

Like true alcoholics they would only eat one meal a day you could drink Pernod, spring water, Jack Daniel, Fresh juice, great Champagne, Coke-Cola, whatever you wanted.

Charlie Watts says it is hell for everyone, but not for Keith.

Keith would sleep for a whole day, so when group the regular players went to bed, Keith would just work with whoever was there. Usually Jimmy Miller, who adored Keith, would stay up with him and a few others. Jimmy Miller could play drums. Affable good ol boy Bobby Keys would stay, Keys has a big heart even today.

Allot of the Stones music is all from their hearts, played with open hearts and empty minds.

Keith's people were watching TV and they were robbed, 8 guitars, some amps and stuff, there was no security at Nillote except JUMBO JACK who was cooking. It wouldn't be that way today, impossible, but the free flow love seemed to work as security.

Keith's Mum once said that Keith was born with a good ear. A utterly-amazing ear, Mrs. Richards was just being modest. Listen to "All Down the Line" Alternate Take. Keith plucks 1 note into the air and the harmony is slightly off, but it rocks you to the bone. Don Was says " They open up, "All Down The Line" Alternate take as far as you can.

Mick says "there was no control."

They split to LA. And the emotions and love they were giving out through the album drained them emotionally

Casino Boogie, the lyrics, was inspired by Burroughs cut up method, Mick would write 3 to 8 words on type paper and write 3 to 9 word phrases, write them down with a felt tip pen and cut them into pieces while smoking and sing them.

Anita Pallenberg says it was a beautiful world, she and Keith liked to go to a deserted beach, smoke ganja, Keith would jam and sit cross legged on a indian blanket.

Charlie Watts says they mixed the album constantly. Mick and Charlie designed the album cover.

They used the beat photographer Robert Frank's photos. He recommended they film stuff with Super 8.

Mick doesn't like anything you did yesterday he is interested in tomorrow, that keeps him going, CW

Keith did junk to hide from the glare of the press, it was his halo armer. He felt like the junk covered him and protected him, he was the coolest person on earth with it, the shit was like a shield for Keith, he lived in his own universe at Nillcote and still does,  in his own Beduin cushioned library. Today's Keith Richards is more of a book freak with a unreal vocabulary and not a junky. He still enjoys a smoke of ganja and snort of Rebel Yell!

_________________________________

Aside: When the album " Exile on Main Street" was released I was one of the first to buy it. I smoked ganja, drank German Beer and listened to it over and over again, wearing out the grooves. 

REFERENCES: THE FILM WORK OF STEPHEN KIJAK AND THE INTERVIEWS ON THE DOCUMENTARY BY THOSE WHO WERE THERE.

10 Minutes Today

Lyrical, a smile on his face, the fat cat, doing whatever without a care, his soul semiopaque, on display, not hidden.  

At home drinking with people big and small, downing swigs of Jamesons from a gold flaked flask with a red tongue and lips logos on it. 

Henry the dream machine flying with angels parallel to the ground, everybody eating Sunday diner on main, never-the-less, painfully excited, watching everything, wanting to dance with Molly, begging the straw-man. 

Feeling the now,  wind in his face, dancing with the devil, doing a nose dive, losing to the devil. 

Writing flow of consciousness, 10 minutes and out poetic prose, going over-land out West,  busting words, busting broncos,  looking at it, breaking it's  mouth. Quick thrills, jolts to the body, nothing to think about,  there was nothing at all he thought. 

For Henry it was lazy writing, no more stories, nothing left, writing on nothing, about nothing.  

With a monkey and a duck on his back, coming home, cooking cocaine and opium together, loading it up, popping it. Nowhere at all, nowhere, no-place in no time. Standing alone and chanting out loud for 10 minutes today.  

john berryman is dead

john berryman transfixed by henry on the horrid day he shot
himself or took poison 1 or other to  body bronze full of
electric waves and all the whiskey in charlotte WXZT radio 
playing classic music lifting him cashing out of room 8 

yes the summer was hot in chinatown mixed up plenty too 
she bled him and feed him more booze hour by hour as he scripted
poems combing through garbage dumps dark alleys salvaging
looking for wooden ships cat eyes hypno-erotic ancient oaths

forgive-fulness golden and silver, full of gamma-rays as 
dead wallpaper peels the yellow room of the notorious
sideways motel pauperized cockroaches swarming by you
as if magnified a 1000 times in coterie of a dying brain

they stored his cremated ashes in a prince albert 
tobacco can mixed with bougainvillea flowers 
and thorns playing polka as they moved ceremoniously 
thy can of bones to wicker zoo on du-champs birthday 
placing it in gorilla cage and stomped on too

a monument to life seen and unseen thru a halo in a
fur lined cage wildly scattered on the ganges  

Shit Censored and Uncensored

Henry Lucowski living in his head (The end and the beginning of his world). The sensory police picking and choosing, an ongoing process of in and out, in and out. Henry old, bored, alone— all kinds of shit censored and uncensored made it in these days. 

There were a few stories left somewhere, Henry too lazy to dig them up, indifferent, lacking the fervency to keep it going. 

Digging up old stories was like remembering fucks from the past, some stuff slipping through the cracks. Henry unable too rally the passion of bygone fucks and other cheap thrills these days. 

His writing a dusty shadow of, an apology to whoever would listen. 

The idiom “Flow of consciousness,” not unlike the words schizophrenia, whoopee or discothèque, outdated equipment. 

Henry letting it rip, a lazy and selfish writer, out to please himself, seeking pain relief. 

The song “Bob Dylan’s Dream—“ sixties’ stuff, Dylan cracked up and saying allot to many, scribbling the ode and anthem of the malcontent. 

On “Country Pie”  Dylan is singing about his love for pie, the delight he feels eating pie and listening to music in the afternoon. How can the kooks find higher meaning here?

Henry’s work— higher meaning in your face, the kooks wouldn’t bother with it —

Henry laughing his ass off for second here, taking a break and stuffing his opium pipe full of black satin mud. Lighting it,  blowing out and bellowing  smoke through his nostrils, french inhaling like a pig. 

Leaning way back in his chair as he typed, laying and typing, listening to Rolling Stones Unplugged on You Tube. Liking it, liking it all,  junk reaching into and caressing the yawning secret places of his pain. 

His girlfriend Moon Girl brings him a drink and says—

“Henry doll you sure are lovely baby, do you like my Leopard skin coat? It sure has been a long strange trip, how do my tits look honey?”

Henry and Moon Girl alive, living in a cave like room with no windows, dark all the time, keeping everything outside out. 

Dope cut the shackles for the freaks, they could fly on it, it was a groove and a feeling, they loved it. 

Henry inspired by John Berryman’s  “Dream Songs,” surely… confessional poetry, a recantation, junked up, juiced, quick, the Rabbi in the alley under stilted light wanted out,  feeling accused and guilty of something but not knowing what it was. 

So goes life, Henry thought, keep a low profile he thought. 

Somewhere Between Axel's Bar and Vietnam

     Copyright@ November, sometime in 1982

When I was eighteen in 1969 the Army selected me to go by troop transport from Kansas City to Washington D.C. for a meeting of AUSA, the Association of the United States Army, I was in ROTC.

I had been attending military school in Missouri since the ripe age of 13. There were rules against booze and dope at the school and the ordinance was strictly enforced. Any fellow cadet or instructor could rat on you if they smelt liquor on your breath or ganja on your person. Since I was of draft age at the time getting busted meant immediate induction in the Army and trip to Viet Nam most likely. I was against the war and was scared to death of getting my nuts shot of or worse. As cadets we heard stories how guys in Hueys on their way to combat sat on their helmets to protect their family jewels from stray flack or bullets.

I was slated to go in the Army as a Second Lieutenant in the Infantry upon graduation. I would have made the worst platoon leader in Army history. I hated guns and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with one, having little idea how the sights worked as well as no knowledge of maps or compasses. I would have been what they called 'fracked'or shot by my own soldiers in the back for sure. 

As for any interest in the war on my part, it was limited to how soldiers in combat used a M1 rifle like a bong or hooka to smoke opium and ganja, as well as a fascination with hairless Asian pussy. 

Terms such as, 'honor', 'serving ones country', and the jingoistic grap of the day meant nothing to me. And the Viet Cong where much better versed in the arts of warfare and better soldiers than us. They were true soldiers who had something to fight for. 

Mostly I felt hated and despised by other young people of the time and when on leave I could see the looks of distain on the long hair's faces when they saw our military haircuts. It felt like a outcast, and all I wanted to do was to stop shaving and having to get haircuts. I wanted to  buy a van and go on a spiritual journey out west somewhere, to New Mexico or California maybe. 

Why the Army selected me to go to Washington as a representative of whatever it was they perceived me to be was a enigma. I saw the week long trip to attend military meetings as a booze, dope and fuck holiday. I had no plans to go to any of the meetings because no body really gave a shit back then and I wouldn't be missed. 

The trip on the troop transport plane would be my first and last thank God, because I never made it into the Army anyways. Thanks to the Quakers who helped me get out of the Army all together, not on moral grounds, but by helping me get a Section Eight, in that I was way too crazy to visit a country that wasn't mine and cut off body parts and set a glow it's inhabitants with a flame thrower. Proving I was nuts was no chore because I was and still am mad as piss. 

I bought some acid from a fellow cadet and took a few doses before getting on the plane to D.C. I spent the hours in flight listening to the Grateful Dead and the Doors on a tape player with batteries, tripping my brains out. 

On arrival in DC we where transported by military buses to Myer-Henderson Hall, Fort Myer. I was still tripping my brains out and didn't even know what country I was in. When we reached the barracks I was assigned a bunk. I immediately stripped off my uniform and put on some jeans and a tie-die t-shirt with a Dead Head logos of a skull with dread locks on it, still wearing my military issue combat boots, I hitched a ride to Georgetown. 

I got a ride from a couple of red neck chicks in their 40s, who thought they where hippies, but were only impersonating hippies for the day, wearing moccasins and bell bottoms with funny floppy leather hats. I offered them some acid, but they didn't want any because they were basically boozers not head. They had a ice bucket of beer in the trunk of their old Chevy station wagon and.

They proceeded to give me a tour of such hot spots as the Washington Monument, calling it huge cement phallic symbol. Then going on to the, monument, the monumental ego of
politicians in Washington.

They dropped me off in Georgetown, thank God, after we saw the big cock (Washington Monument). 

I entered the first bar I could find in G-Town, the bar was the type of place that no self respecting frat member would go to drink. It was called 'Axels'. They served up shots of cheap whiskey and beer in mugs. Peanuts, people served peanuts, shelling them, throwing the shells on the floor.

Axel's, filled with bikers, clergymen, professors and poets. The conversation something cracked up and jaded, jaded subject matter, speaking of Nietzsche as though they were in a lunatic asylum, nothing seemed to mean anything, nowhere on acid was where I was at, it fit.

Another lunatic in Axels, lost in a jungle of existential superlatives as time and realty dissapeared "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Astral Week' flowed in color out of the Juke Box in rainbow waves. 

I realized that Axels was beyond anything that I had ever experienced so I made my way back to Fort Meyers somehow, I missed the entire week of U.S. Army seminars. The education I got in Axels was something you couldn't pin down on a military map. I had plenty to take back with me to the academy and it had nothing to do with war or reality really. 

It was one of those intrinsic experiences that cant be explained or translated in words. It took me weeks to get back to earth, and the earth seemed like a new horizon full of potential. 

Years later I realized the experience could be summed up as 'when you are ready for the teacher the teacher will appear and then you will disappear for awhile'.