Henry Awake and Asleep Part Two

  

There’s  rythmn n the air tonight ~  

Henry Lee (Hooker) Lucowski, born  between a rock and a palm tree, a living doll, argent eyes and long hair. Earnest to the bone,  too big for his shoes, born a misfit, ornery and waspish. 

Listening to the Rolling Stones on W0MS, Mississippi radio, moon beams and an anthem coming out of the radio. Drinking Jasmine Tea, smoking tea, drinking mint juleps out of a green coconut, snorting thimbles of cocaine. 

These are the glory days….

Henry, thinking aloud and talking to himself, shrugging, hunched over, scratching his head, beatific, delighted, burnt opiates,  rocking n rolling with little queenie, dancing with Etta James, rubies and Black Beauty. 

Henry, scratching all over,  watching Taxi and Ernie Kovacs reruns on TV, happy as a pig in shit, feeling organic,  reading High Times, head knelt down before his typewriter, coming down.

There’s  rythmn n the air tonight ~  

Glow-bugs and Butterflies

Henry Lucowski on the outside floating through a red canyon out west somewhere, flying with glow-bugs and butterflies, connected somehow, aloft and adrift. 

Sucking the nectar of life from a fresh coconut through a straw, Henry in good form reading a review on a new biography of William Burroughs,  nothing new here — the story of  William had been told already—

Henry met William  in Milwaukee at an after reading reception in the late eighties. Most people knew that William was a cold fish and no one should hug him. 

Henry said hello to William over a tray of cold cuts, at that moment  feeling a chill, a contingent of radical lesbians, butched-out  and after Burroughs the misogynist. Lucowski got William out through the alley, William butch himself could understand. 

Henry's Harley— William climbed on the bitch seat and the duo was off in a flash. William had never been on a Harley and enjoyed the feeling of the wind blowing in his  face on the open road,  feeling like he was flying through empty space.

William says "Let's get high," dope could be  had in Chinatown, scar-thing up a grocery-bag full of goodies, junk, hash, cocaine, Zanex from the Chinamen, Lenny Ho,  Ho’s Laundry.

Later under the  gazebo in Henry’s backyard sitting on a dirty Moroccan carpet William  emptied and spread the stash out on a plate. The old junky says — “ Henry,  let’s shoot some speedballs pal and chase them with cool Jasmine Tea,”— 

Between Axel's Bar and Viet Nam

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 Ifantry 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 general 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 somehwere, 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, it was all bullshit anyways. 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 Momument, calling it huge cement phallic symbol. Then going on to explain that it was a metaphor for the monumental ego of all the male politcians in Washington.

They dropped me off in Georgetown thank God because after I saw the big cock (Washington Monument) and got my cock sucked I wanted to ditch the dogs ASAP. 

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. Patrons where served peanuts, shelling them and throwing the shells on the floor.

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

I was just another lunatic in Axels, lost in a jungle of existential superlatives as time seemed to disappear while "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Astral Week' flowed in color out of the Juke Box in rainbow waves. 

Axels in Georgetown was a far cry from Missouri, it was as though I 

was in Dorthy's house swirling in a tornado cloud as it landed on the planet OZ. I could hardly speak a word amongst the nothingness wizards, I felt as though I had eaten a bucket of Thorazine and could only stutter, spit and babble. 

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 sumed up as 'when you are ready for the teacher the teacher will appear and then you will disappear for awhile'.

Henry, Awake and Alseep

Henry the louse, a slab of dead meat eaten from the inside by maggots. A parasitical failure in life who never could hold down a job. Living on a small income in a foreign country, Cambodia, drunk every night with a different whore on his arm at bed time.

When he was young he had some ambition but mostly railed against the establishment, selling dope and turning over slum dwellings for pennies here and there, small-time stuff. 

He had tattoos from a stay in the joint, sent up for a couple of years--- entrapped by a 16 year old Lolita, traveling with her over state lines not knowing she was so young. His tattoos where rough, jail-house.

A full blown alcoholic and drug addict Henry never stayed in one place for long, always... maybe he sucked too, it was easy to blame the world and never take a good look at yourself.

Waking in a modern building, a Chinese opium den, just an empty room with tobacco-stained dirty rags covering the windows, blowing in the breeze. Henry in and out of a haze, soft sunlight orange colored glow, in a dream walking and wrapped in forest leaves, feeling safe, stoping by a still pond, fish splashing water about, Henry wondering what their world was like? 

Adrift, lost, afloat, he enjoyed living in his dreams, waking to face reality from sunrise to sunset. Dreams were junk for him, a source of inspiration and self knowledge and best of all, escape.

He had a book of short stories out there somewhere? “Mescaline Sombrero," With another in the can, awesome stories, deep and surreal, moving slowly… he continued to write even though nobody bought his book, believing that was what writing was, just something a waste land for idiots.

Henry the Messiah--- psychotic some , most poets or writers felt like Jesus or Marx on a mission to save the world. Later, he merely wanted to entertain his readers and to find himself through writing, peeling off of the onion and all, wondering what was inside and later realizing--- nothing was inside.

Using booze and dope as a muse he could pound out stories, ratta tat, ratta tat, all night sessions. The writing process was hard work sober and easier when Henry was drunk.

Henry Lucowski at the end somewhere in Venice. Stumbling late at night out of a shooting gallery like Chet Baker, chasing the dragon and ending up dead--- floating in a canal, his life was worth something, but not a hell of allot. 

Johnny Believer ( Justin Bieber )

               

He was a young man who shouldn't have been normal... well?

Well, in his late teens, he was not a big fellow and he rode high in the saddle. You would see him on the boulevard jived on reefer and booze driving his paisley Ferrari in a gold speckled jump suit and orange painted Engineer Boots. The boys sweet face and smile was enough to make young girls everywhere cry. 

At times you would see him with his guitar slung on his back and you knew showtime was near. Johnny Believer  (Justin Bieber)  packed stadiums with teenage girls all over the world, he had allot of talent, the kid was a raw musician with something to say, frustrated with the feeling nobody was listening. 

The kid lived a charmed life doin the stuff any billionaire hip hoper would do... tagging, fucking girls in arena toilette stalls, drinkin, skate boarding, eating junk food, food fights, getting physical and playing grab ass. 

You wondered what was in the cards for Johnny Believer ? It seemed as though the kid was dealt nothin but aces early on, but down the line might get some deuces as his alter ego surfaces --- a grumpy cobweb covered cryptic black and white photo, covered in scar tissue, with a heart that hardly beat, tick tick doc, tick tick doc-- 

So you gotta get it on…. so fuck it throw it away… smoke da reefer say good bye… your’e free I hope darling….??? 

That morning oooo well now.. the Believer got up and got his dick sucked… the little thing wasn’t very big but he sure as hell didn’t need viagra ….. I mean the little shit could stay hard for hours and all the dope in the universe didn’t mean a hoot.

You know  Figaro Lucowski the author was quite a boy in his time who who later got of the subject and lapsed into a hedonistic coma…. where where we… Johnny Believer ok..

Of course the author doesn’t know a friggin thing about him but he will give voice here as best as he can… Believer came into to this life with his eyes wide open like a Dolphin or a baby Seal… maybe the boy was a angel who tumbled to earth… part Lucifer and a part Gabriela but who the fug would-a thought that God meant for him to make so many lady cherubs bust their sacred and sweet little cherries…

You could hardly call what I do “”Art””, Really I just want you to love me some and buy my book… I started this story on the Believer consciously and then lapsed into unconscious comatose of sorts … It's just a exercise Godamn It.

Comparing Johnny Believer to any historic phenomenon…maybe Elvis, Jesus and you know who… Billy Budd… well they were fresh and virginal you know…tired of normal ladies, normal fucking and looking for a goddesses to drop in their lap from the Heavens. Or, maybe like Capote, Tennessee Williams  or Burroughs heroes in the money hole~

But that wasn't Lucowski or the Believer… they were straight until bored…. 

And that is it people… after so many orgasms the hip start looking for another way out and out... oooo we just wanna score some.