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Sll!le 1976
.. )
Published by the English OUlCil califomia State tlliversity1 Northri~
.,)
EL' FLIGHT Vol. 1, No. 2 Summer 1976
EDITORIAL STAFF Editor. • . • • Poetry Editor •
.... .....
Donna Beckman • Karen Carlson
Fiction Editor. • • • • • Rachel Sherwood Editorial Staff: Mary Crayen Lou ·.pi Giacomo Kathy Heller Kathy Lorenzen Edward Welsh
. . . Jana
Managing Editor . Production. • • Cove r Design
Di~laggio
Sharon Wheat
......
• David Fischer
We wish to acknowledge the assistance of
***
Dr. Arthur Lane
Angel's Flight The Drill . Wish • • • • • • • Neal Samuels (Who leads the ghosts ) • Lawrence Rramer disturbed child .at the l.a. library . seduction • • • • • Doraine Nathanson The stutterer . • • . • . . Charles Holley Winter Ghosts Spring Shadows The week before the crest saw all that snow • • • • • • • Karen Carlson Persephones Garden Kathleen Shanahan American Indian The Shadow . . • Dixie Browne They Paint the Horses White • • . • . • • Lou Di Giacomo Parrot Feathers • • • . • D. Vincent James The Game I loved him one night Royce Kaplan In Yeat's Skates . Vernon T~ Boes Twistnine II • . Prelude Strange Bathrooms Donna Beckman Trip-Trip Opiate Interregnum or· The Stone ()pe.L-ation • • . .Richard Collins The Lion Dance • • • Laurie O'Connell The ·Liza.r d King • • • • • Edward Welsh Push • • • • • Larry Collette The Necrophiliac or Duchamp's .Revenge • • • craig Danielsen Inspiration • • • • Justin Henderson I wished • • • • • • • Vernon T. Boes
.
* * * *
1
An get 's Flight Strange heights we Angels reach fluttering gossamer wings above earth toying with descent rise descent We 're childlike if you'd care to know St.t·ange earth's so sma ll Y.ou'd think with all the noise we hear these days there'd be more revolutiq~s to it Odd you're talking to me, said Nobody nibbling on a peanut Odd an Angel would take time to sneeze or whatever you Angels do I'm f~ying around the rings of Saturn beyond the mist of Jupiter then I'll pull the Archer's bow if you'd care to know, said the Angel, if you'd care to know I'm stacking books pushing broom stacking books . I'm going crazy, thought Nob94Y going crazy and I can't get outa here Do you think I could go? Angels are select joined by heights ·o f ecstasy and despair air is our world air and the eternal light of imagination Do you have wings? asked the Angel _Wi~gs are not necessary if you'd care to know No I'm said to say popping a peanut in
No hi~
I don;t, said Nobody mouth
I' 11 be seeing Y9U , _ s_ai~ the Angel I'll be seeing . you fluttering away
2
The Drill Night's hydraulis 1rill pounding pile-driver · Air booms and booms Sleep fails I function on exposed nerves purr of thermostat .. I function on my share of sadness anger and abuse I function like giant fist hammering like madman driven and driven I function
- Neal Samuels
3
Wish I was pointing directions to the wind was the wind undressing removing leaves from a table trees was a crow feeling the wind between his beak 'll child running after a crow a young woman with sunlight in her hair an old man nodding at a dying fire I was pointing directions to the wind
- Neal Samuels
•
4
Who leads the ..ghosts Who leads the ghosts home when tired, ah, too formlessly tired to ache as though t heir feet had been kicking and kicking all night on the dance floor? Who leads the diluted spirits, their pearl-toned skin fluttering, their tatter-tongued .voices. · losing breath before the speech was done in what kind of voice did they surrender? Who led them when their eyes failed, some closed, some still reflecting but not admitting light?
- Lawrence Kramer
5
disturbed child at the I. a. library dumb show the boy the boy-boy dances scrapes the silent room his fork fingers ·that twist the pencil-lined hai.rs his head the grinding going on the brain the creased face scrunched in masquerade cellophane eyes and eyebrows jerk the ·t ail cut from the lizard he moves without muscle and the rest say he 's crazy "the kid's crazy" and he is he is as the rest of us in t his large room where 'file turn pages turn corners down to keep our place
- - Doraine Nathanson
6
Seduction
the old man slides into t he red leather boott already his hands on my back. he orders good wine and calamari, · sends the latter ~ac~, he says: "it's not fresh; they· would kill .. in Italy if you served _such squid;"
he says: "in Italy, the women know how to take pleasure. my friend ' .s son. is twenty and beautiful; his mothe r's friends pass him f rom. bed to bee a charming littl~ toy." he laughs and looks me up and t hrough later, i see him, his talk about his wife and daughters slips him intp a different booth. now, . his hand is on his brow· a gesture of feeling not habit. i lean over to hear his words and smell his skin; he ·smells sweet like a boyl
- Doraine Nathanson
7
The stutterer inst ead of waiting until the last moment to press out a selection he stutters originally c onceived it as a trick and now
aft e~1ard
he has to
p~ime
his dead t hink
- Charles Holley
7
The stutterer inst ead of waiting until the last moment . to press out a selection
he stutters O'riginally conceived i t a s a t r ick and now aft erward he has t o prime his dead t hink
- Charles Holley
'·
8
Winter Ghosts Spring Shad9ws Today we agreed it was spring up Rubio Cany on we l et t he dogs open- mout hed, sawi ng at the air , run f ree. The s t rai ght yucca crammed into sky i t s blooms like bea ds of swe at . Winter, a giant eucalypt us felled and spilt smell ed in dea th of spring.
You pace away t he t rai l a Si erra Cl ub vers ion o f yourself . Suns et chill s the mountains greens a nd br owns t o the rose and gray of a forties carpe t Except f or you, a black dot, where someone let a cigaret te s moulder in the rug . Across the canyon a dog barks at i t s QWn echo. Night we need to stir the fire I ' m tired and you are busy eating chowder from the granite pot. In a corner t he dogs dream the good-by day feet still twitching over c l ouded cha;pparel A season and a day are dead . Your l i ps sli de over mi nd like steamed clams .
- Karen Carlson
9
The week before the crest saw all that snow I hooked lures on my jacket lining Put quarter pound test into my pockets. Jesse oiled his reel his boots Damned if he wasn't Put a plaid shi1:·t on Damned if he wasn't going too. Three days past Mt . Luken Jesse pointed out a dead grayfox Grinning in the jagged broken ice. I said we ought to eat it salt the hide, you knmv How Jesse tired of trout . He touched its ashen armpit Said tomorrow I should pack on out alone He wanted to go higher into snow. I watched the water freeze that ~pli t the rocks I \rtal ever knew.
But the hot pontoons kept afloat And M:lrtin a.P-...er Wittenberg Kept his fine filibuster up Till \~rms dealt his fiasco.
(The sight of Martin on the run toward the hamlet of Wartburg Proved too much for poor Sebastian Who within the week e."q>ired. }
26
IV
Pi oo della Mirandola sent up anda r1te ~ght years later Still had oot reached Flanders.
A word of praise which
(Sare say
Wimpfeling ate it on the way.) · ("Damn
the ratter, "
Gerhard groaned. "I wanted to hear What the youth had to say 1"}
v Paris She stands at the wixXiCM. Outside, coffees and cognac pour in cafes. 'Ihe amber sky blackens. Eyes glisten. The darkness is her nercury. She bites the comers of her lips And ·s hifts to feel her slip crackle. The brush is full of electricity or is it her hair, or the air?
27
VI
California, Again
on
to logical issues 1
But be
it.
~ bA:>
bloody lips
Narr!
'lhe bulbs of 'Which -though your green fO\mtain twitch and spurtRemain rooted in the
grouna.
Hie, Digger, and alas l Yorick's hull is shucked.
VII I.e Jardin due cimetiere
Back hl.--s began gaining nanentlml in the Atoorican rock music s~...ne. Jim M:>rrison, the group •s vocalist., energed as a strangely paqerful and nwsterious you.'lg ~n, responsible for nuch of the group 1 s fame and· infanw. In between Ibrrison 1 s ·Shrei.l(s and scream5 fran subconscious .l ayers lies oonscious art and poetry. There is a great deal of terrifying strength and sheer nervous tension in his music and J:X>etl:y. But I see now after exand.n.ing M:>rrison' s poetl:y and music, that I, . along with everyone else who was drawn towards his IruSic, was dancing at his funeral. HeM Jim MJrrison grew up or when he first started writing music is really not inportant. ~laY that the dancing has stopped, it is :i.np::>rtant to ask who this young man \iaS who sang of sliley snakes and lizards, death and violence. Early re-
viewers of z.t:>rrison' s perfonmnces on stage
and of his music were ·fascinated by his blatantly suggestive, seauingly sexual images and actions. 'lhese people, as many during that time , saw only raw sex in ~brrison through lines like "Iet ma sleep all night in your soul kitchen/wann nw mind near your gentle stove" or "Love ma one tima/Could not soeak/ wve . me ~ ti.Jres/yea ll'\Y' knees gone weak" especially con'Siderirrg that the sexual i.nplications ot the nusic other than M::>rrison' s at the tim:! was usually no stronger t.Jum "She loves you yea, yea, yea", or "Let's go surfin' now,IE\reJ:ybody' s learnin' h.a-111 • But what the revia.rers failed to grasp in M::>rrison' s ' lyric was his subtle but eve.rpresent preoccup:ttion with death and violence. r.t:>rrison does errbrace highly sexual images throughout his work but onl y as a oontrast to death and violence. To r-t>rrison, ~ ,is nothing unless it is used t6 break out of
31 our physical shell and "Break on through to the other side." Sex becc:roos equivalent with death in many of his lyrics like "All I"'OI sleeping/Rugs sil~t, mi.rl::Ors vacant,/DuSt. blind under the beds of lawful couples/\«>~ in sJ;ee~/and da~ters, smug/ __ with sem=n eyes m theJ.r ru:pples;Wal.t/Ibere's been a slaughter here." Another means of escaping this physical \\Orld is by going insane, as r.nrrison tells us in a description of his litt~e ga:rre: nOnce I had a little game/I liked to crawl back into my brain/ I think you ~v- the game I JOOan/I mean the gcure called Go Insane/Just close your eyes, forget your natre/Forget the ~rld, forget the people/ and we' 11 erect a different steeple. " In such lyrics, ·f.brrison is other ~rld conscious. He is r:ainfully diserohanted in this life. Many of his lyrics involve leaving this corporeal ~rld Where "the cars crawl past all stuffed wi. t.h eyes/Streetlights shed their hollow gla•l' 1 where "I see you live on Love Street/there's a store where the creatures neet; I .,;onder what they do in there" , and finally "When you're strange/faces c:ane out of the rain/ when your strange/No one remenbers your nane'' . r-Drrison takes his insane childna"'l to his bizar.ce nvtbic ~rld dcMn dark highways, that frequently without wa.ming mutate into snakes . or rivers. In "The End" , possibly his greatest. lyric achievement, M:>rrison' s insane children 11 ride the king's highway west/Ride the snake/to the lake/he's old and his skin is cold/ The West is the best/Get here and we' 11 do the rest" 1 \IDd then pJX>Ceed to reenact the Oedipus myth by killing their families and seducing their nnthers. It is "The Errl11 of ·t he family as a unit, "the end of everything that stands, the end" • The insane children are driven to another land where they no longer have to emulate or identify with their parents. tl.orrison vows to the insane children "can you pic- · ture \mat will be/SO limitless and free." It is 11 the end of laughter and sort lies/The end of nights we tried to die." By ccmniting acts of violence, f.t>rrison and his children are released fran the bon-
32
dage of life by tranScending its boundaries. To M:>rrison, life ( the indiv-idual' s life) was like a warden that in'prisons us to this \\Orld and we should do anything to break out even "breathe underwater dll the end/Because the river Jm::Ms." In Morrison's nrytb.;.-: land he says .. I am the lizaro kind/I c ar1 do. anything/ I can make t."l.e \rld .stop in its tracts/! made the blue cars go CMay • ., There is an ironic r eversal in M::>rrison •s nythic land where the animals rule and the humans are the beasts and creatm:es. There is no God in this land (except maybe 1-t:>rrison} he sings in a little upbeat tune , unUhll.ally light \vh.en canpared to the rest of his music. He is di ssatisfied in our wor l d and M:>rri son's only salvation is death, which he invites. In "The Wasp" he says "We have constructed pyramids to honour our escap:i.ng/'Ihis is the land in \'lhich the Pharoah died. .. over and over in song after song "'brri son celebrates the idea that true Jife begins aftec "'lhe End11 or 0 At the end of night" or ·~en the music •s over." The characters caught in the everyday \..t>rld are portrayed uSually as sleeping, dreaming o f sexual encounters, and nnst frequently seen driving cars _ down wet city streets. 'lhe adults . are "lost in a Ranan wilderness of pain/ 3nd all the children are insane. " z.t:>rrison•s "children of night" repeatedly becare violent and s laugl'lter scores of the beasts. "'!here's a killer on the road/His brain is squinni.ng like a toad11 or What have they done to the earth;What have they done to our fair sister/Ravaged and plundered, ri~ her and bit her/Stuck her with knives in the side of dawn/and tied her with fences and dragged her down." Lyrics such as these reflect the violent world that M::>rrison saw in the sixties. He saw b lCXJd, violence and insanity, Vietnam, Chicago, riots, Kent State, all seem to be separated fran his ~ic, but only as an event is separated fran
33
a prediction. He is aware of the growing pressure between the generations in songs like "Five to one" \mere "No one here gets out of line/You got the guns but/But we got the nllltlers/Gonna win, yea we're takin' over". or as in "When the music' s over" : ·,~le' re getting tired of hanging a.ro\ll1d;1i'aiti.ng around with our ears to the grE>und/I hear a very gentle sound/Very near yea, Very far/Very c lose yea, very clear/We Want The World/WE WAN!' THE WORID AND WE Wl'-.Nl' IT••••• ~." He warns the Establishment of the late sixties 1that the young will fight soceity's violence with even greater, bloodier ·violence. In "The Unkl'lam SOldier", M:>rrison symbolically tri es and oorrlentlS to death society and all its violence. He uses the sounds of a firing squad and execution and .inmadiately follCY.Ning the execution, a wild orgasmic celebration. To r.t>r rison, this life was disgusting and vile. He did not want any part of it or of the redemption of heaven "cancel my subscription to the r esurrection" and he seem:rl to find little solace in love as "I found an island in your a.rns, a country in your eyes" later beoares uAnns that chain, eyes that lie." To listen to Jim M:>rrison is t..o witness a man dangling in a strange kind of unique and personal pain. In many ways Jim M::>rrison is like a visitor
fran another planet, who attenpts to stab us deeper with his lyrics, in order to nove us to life.
M:>rrison' s highway to freedan is paved with bricks of disorder , chaos, and especially violence. It still seems Odd that alm:>st ten years ago millions of us were dancing to the saxre lyrics I've just examined. We frantically raced to buy the music written by a mm that if he could have acted out his rnusic, \rould probably have killed tis all. But even stranger than that are the facts that M:>rrison 's
34
children, the children who bought his nru.sic, did rise up violently, buming canp.tSeS, draft cards, banks and cities. Jim z.brrison is :t1CM dead, and maybe he has finally reached the end of his night and joumeyed into the land of the bright midnight where. he is the "Ld:zard King".
- S. Edward Welsh
-35
Push The elevator door was aln'ost shut when ao.n ann reached out and hit the black ~. The door flew back ani on walked Harrison. He paused, s~
veyed the snall crowd and looked to see that his floor had already been pushed. Harrison settled back into a vacant space against the rail next to the elevator operator. It \«>Uld be a long ride, he entered at the sixty-thrid floor and was headed for .the main lobby on the first floor. rooking around, he gave a smile toward a young secretal:y :type in the comer. She pretended not to see al".d looked up at the ntlllbers over the door as they flashed by. Quickly he turned around facing for-
waro.
The aluminum panel of nt:lll'bered buttons caught Harrison's eye. All of his attention was noN focused on the panel, eighty-five buttons one for each floor. Nothing else seEmed to matter to him·. tbt again, he thought to hirrself. Harrison Wd.S fascinated by the neat vertical rows of buttons. lie loved but tons, any button that could be pw;hed. There he stood stunned by those black shinY. buttons . . .Mayl;>e it all started when he was younger 1 Harrison oouldn' t be certain. At his father's office as a boy he marveled at the ·way "lri.s dad put people on hold. He knew tbat saneday he too ~d press buttons. Maybe it was a need for, power or -accanplishm:mt.,whate~ Harrison had had enough by nc::M. He longed for a sillple life. In the course of his . twenty-seven years his obsession had been a curse to him. Peop~e always suspicious of those that found great nean.ing and satisfaction in mani.pu. lating a button. He tried to make a gq of it for awhile with a girl who was really into knobs 1 it didn't last long;
Within three feet of him were those beautiful
Hai-rison tried desperately to hide his exciterrent. It was building inside of him, troUnting with each passiD;J floor. Finally losing all control he burst out, "~, Eighty fivel" The
s)dny . buttons.
others on the elevator were startled out of their IOOditations by his Strlden eruption. 'lhe operator jl.Jl~P:!d and was anno:y'71 with Harrison yelling in his ear. He was a Short bald man in a gray wrinkled arrl baSe butt.ons flashed in his mind. He even picked out his favorite ones over and over in his head. 'l'he hum of the elevator reverberat:el in his ears and · seared to fade in and out. Harrison thought it was all too much. He wished the elevator wa.S etpty. He'd press and punch all of them,. maybe three or four ~t a ti.ne. Who k:ncMs maybe even the red one. But why? Harrison could never really be sure what notivated him to such behavior. Evm if all the passengers did leave, the operator certainly would have no xeason to abandon his buttons. I>1aybe he could take the whole thing by force. What was he thinking? Suppose the operator was anned or sarething, no that would never do.
The elevator again jarred to a halt, this tine at On walked a tall man with a satchel. He nDtioned tcMa:rd the operator and called out, t'Twenty-one, please. " Harrison saw an opening, the chance he had been waiting for. He lunged out for the button falling inches short of the t\1e
going?., . he asked.
His question made her realize the presence of the dark night air \mch was rushing and entering her. She rolled down the invis ible w.i.rdow am le1 CXJOl air brush her hair, her mind whipping throug1 the possibilities of his question, nanentarily
forgetting i ts post- dream distress. "Into the sunrise, n she said
brunette-bright!~
Srott turned the car tcMards the purple horizc in the s i lver fogged darkness, caring little WherE they were going, as long as he got the ra'lards he:J voice prani.sed when they got there.
SUSan reached her hand through the, except fo1 the gnash of mechanical sounds silence, and press, a white button on the dash. The resulting fourfour piano pounding beat at once revealed the silrplicity of Scott • s eight-track mind, but trore .inp)rtantly provided Susan with escape.
The rhytbnic pulsations carbined with the win am the shap-shap-shap of r.brse code white lines disappearing under the red ent>raoe of the hood of the car. Susan emersed herself into his 'S elf, . his taste, . tllroug:ht the musi~, feeling i on her face
floating about her, osm:>ting into her mind. She did 110t have to get into her conscious now-present to evade \moonscious proddings, to escape the strangely cleansing darkness or try to leave the deliberate nature of her perversely detached span· taneous awareness. She tried to alleviate her private maze of hate and yearning by allCMing her reference points and sense of direction to slip away. She forced herself to lose 11er Self in the s~licity of Scott' s apprehension.
45
'!he car whi2zed past. Outside of "'!he Palanino" a grey drunk drooled a clear bridge to flannel shirt am slurt'{)E!d to the gray ground, his foot guttering an:1 causing his balance to be irrevocably lost. . -The m:u:oon flashing neon "Michelob" advertisesoont and throbbing souni (Oldies but Goodies, Vol. 2, 1962-1965} made Susan see the event as a series of ~ntinuous 100ehanized silent film afterimages, as he flO\\'Erl into himself, issuing forth a f1.'"0t:hy red beerbloodsnot substance fran facial orifices. An instant Jehovah's Witness, T.V.-like, two di.m:m~ionally frart¥::1d by the car window, stepped lightly over him, setti."l~ his fear as
n.. .
has an ir ught, had missed saieth.i.ng very :irrportant. Her subcxmscious bubbled with whitecaps ensoonsed in a craggy cove. Her left-over dream feelings junped about madly• . _ , nye5 f II She said, "the album is a thematically transm::u:grified descendent of Weasels Ripped~ Flesh11 • SUsan at oroe regretted having shut Scott off so abruptly. Everything she was su00cribed to told her never to oo this. She realized passion must remain Wlreallzed.
47 An electric yellow sun rose into the clear retallic blue sky. SUsan' s gaze stretched through h i -glasses, past the windshield, like a Bell and ~11 and onto t.lle sWiftly escalating streets. · -
susan saw everythlng fran cetrifuge center, or the spindle of a record player. Flickering scenery rushed around fran the vantage of her fixed position, people walking stiffly am. with absurd speed, like nade uncatprehending ocltte insects. The BrOadtBy ,,~ by and she sa,.,, framed by ccysal~ pictu~c wir.das that Scott 'lms operated in 1m.lCh the same way &$ his tapes, rot of COtn"se,
that
~
irrelevant.
"Take
100 ~,
Scr>tt . "
sooc.t wheeled tlJe car s.::ourrl, disaP'flOinted at this tum of events, but. for some reason not altogether surpri sed. , "-~ther one of her IOOOds. " Yet as he looked at her windbl own liait he knew ~ t his was her last. '!!:
***
Awakening, SUsan was a girl who, l ov-i...ng hers elf def initely, nostly and l astly, decided in del tberate f ashion (which was f;"igidly her lrode an:l s tyle} that a sunny nmni.ng walk l\Ulld be nice, ot" to put i t m:>l::c p:;:ecisely, in order. She arose fran her clean, neat l y nu.d~ ~tel bed ani put on. her cold red s l ippers. After cc:m-ll1.li1ing with bright Wusehold .1ppl.iances in order to eat her breakfast pratptly at the correct ti.ne, s he did the dished in a fastidiously mechani cal nanner and mok a long, cleansing, clear slrMer. T'ne pure, light sound of Jani Mitchel filtered f ast · throughout the vast house, the Fugs not longer anywhere to be seen (nor f or that matter, Weasels
RiJ?Pe4 !!OC_ Flesh) •
NCM l:x$lg squeaky clean, Susan f elt especi ally fresh today, so she put on a new pair of :inmaculate, crips pink jeans with polished sequins and matching top • .Stepping out of her oouse and into the bright sunli t synmetry of concrete street, susan was ever
49 so briefly troubled by a passing whisp of a fleeting dream. However 1 wal.k..inJ into ~ Clear 1 Olean, dazzlE; · of the day, even these vague inklings were washed CMaY and dissipated ••• of course, light exists only as a oontrast to dark, but SUsan, having reroved ·the dusty dLrt fran her bro-tone bifocals, looked through the upper half of the large glass and saw oothing but a mirror reflecting oothi.ng but a mirror, which reflected roochanical Wldirected . - selection which was her, Which was, of course, . her randan choice, arbitrarily.
- Craig Danielsen
50
lnspi rat Ion Late August. The days stretched long and lazy on tre Malibu. Wa:m wiilds blew out to sea late in the aftel."nnC>li., into the eve.ni.ng. '!he rich, bored re.c-;idents of the l arge houses in the Col ony ap.Feared on the beach l.at::P in th":! -day, to drink, loll about, and catpare tans. '!hose of us who didn't 1ive there walked by, fran the public beach south 6f the COlony tcMards the public beach north, eyeing them with suspicion, eager to f ind t.lri.ngs to critici ze. It was easy. M:>st of then were there because they made bati rrovies, or wrote lousy J?('Pllar books, or their par~1ts had a lot of ooney, or they were the current glarro.c idols, the rock n'rol l stars. 'Ihe last three generations of HollY\\>'eiro success , mixed in a decadent, sunlit. ooze of drink and easy living . Sane were talented; a large nttnber w-ere not , in the cyinion of q>inionated local self-pn:>elaimed artist-revolutionary types like myself, and their success made ne burn with rage, since I just barely scratched along .on ny poetic tightrope , being a s tudent, a musician, and a quiet madnan, none of which paid very well. One aiOOng them particularly irked me, Rod Mckuen. ~tXuen is the 1rost widely read poet in, Anerica today, and yet he has never written a line of verse that isn't total ly sophric, to say the least~ . Fran Stanyan Street and Other sorrows to whatever his current best-seller is, he has concoctEd a pantheon of poetic rubbish unrival · in the twentieth centur:y. He has, nevertheless, influenced more geriatric and miserable all-~can truthseekers of all ages with n;is; pa.rt.i.cUla:ir ~rand of garbage than anyone else around, pouring out volune after volume of rotten, third-rate verse, recardi.ng album after album of spoken and/or sung 'poetry:
51
backed by :the oost cloying possible arrangem:mts the fi.nest graduate of the Lawrence Welk school of arrange~, could ever c~e. ~P. wi t~-r lotkuen has dese- . _ cra~ed an art that barely sw:vives intact in this hot and hustling day, and he has made a million dollars doing it. lmd his name has becane syoony. na.tS with poet in the m::>uth and mind of the Alrerican middlebrcw. I remestber the day I first leamed he lived in the COlony. I was walking up the beach, . belCM the high-tide line to avoid the· wrath of the rich, when a girlfriend nudged ~, pointed at this scrawny, soulless-looking guy lying on the beach, and said, "I.£x.>k1 · 'lbere's Rod ~. "You nean he lives here?" I asked, incredu11
lous. "Yeah. He's really made a lot· of bread you lalclw. He's really a sensitive
man.
II
"Yeah? Personally, I think he's fulla shit. Do you xeally like his poet.cy, La~ie?" "Oh, yes. He really kn.cMs hoW to express his inner feelings. " "I thought I knew you better. Oh well. Rod M::;kuen, eh?" . We walked on, and the incident was forgotten in the hazy afternoon sun. But later that '"-~ I happened to walk by a bookstore on the Santa M::>nica f.hll and I was confronted with a huge display case qontaining nothing but volunes of Rod M::!kuen poems, in their small, elegantly painted hardcovers, at $7.95 a shot. RFAD AMERICA•s FAVORITE PO.FJ!', said the sign, in large letters. '.mERE MUST BE A RFASON JroR MILLICNS ro BUY HIS BOOKS I said the sign in slightly smaller letters, FIND our WHY! BUY am· 'IDDAYI.. I glanced arotmd slyly. No one watched me. I pushed over the display caae, knocking all his books to the floor. "Oh, paxdon me," I said lcully, rising quickly 1 for I had fallen with the books.
52
"I didn't see the case until I'd :run right into it. So sorry.;, The store enployees were very helpful, p i cking up ·and dusting off all the books I'd knocked over, and I left. As the Stlm'ler pushed along into fall, and 1lW w-dl.ks along the Malibu ~ nore frequent, I saw nore of Mr. 1-tkuen. . He was always out on the beach getting his tan, loqking very hard at tr.e young men,
and just lolling about. late in the afternoon he ··invariably brought out a tackle box and fishing poles, set up lines, and surf-fished into the night, lighting a large and very bright Coleman lantern on the beach after sunset to attract the fish. Fish are drawn to bright light after dark. And r, for sore reason, was very drawn to st\Xtying the lifestyle of this all-.Aaoorican poet. I became obsessed with understanding him, as a matter of fact. I read all of his poetl:y, and that told Ire nothing I didn't already know, which was that he had no right to call b.Unself a poet. But my observations did glean a fCM facts; he was gay--different young toon were at his side every. afternoon; he slept late, wrote a little in the late m:>rning, and spent the balanCE'! of the day drinking iri the sun and watching the boys on the beach; he lived alone--I saw a housekeeper there once, on a Wednesday aftenloon, peering out the picture window at Mr. ~ and his yotmg man lazing on the wann br
