Salamanders Green part 2B page 22

Self prescribed therapy or life prescribed. Only those willing to learn are able to teach. Only those willing to change can understand change in other, to make allowances so ones self as well as others can change. Freedom, self liberation - work at creating ones own soul - respect your dreams eventually all planes all levels of consciousness must balance.

“A dream two people dream together is a reality." Yoko Ono, Grapefruit. 

Perhaps but one must also learn to depend on oneself for dreams as well as companionship....

One must also learn how to write smaller so as to conserve paper and too, remember how to decipher ones own handwriting. Time to go in. Not much of a day this day, almost sunshine but the sky is still not free from last night’s thunder which woke me from a sound sleep. So loud and long I thought for sure the end of the world had come. Mumbling short breathed heart pounding Sanskrit while waiting for the big flash smashing apart every atom of my being into a bursting match stick made of my own flesh. But all that came was this almost day inevitably leading to this evening humidity thick like a piss soaked cotton diaper wrapped tight around my face. I'm upstairs in my brothers room some cool jazz on the stereo. I first began and did much of my own writing on this desk here (it was my mother's desk before she was married) in this room here (when it was my room). Now the desk cluttered with brother paper and a turn table. I sit on the bed, note book across my knees, fan humming, cigarette smoking.

Been feeling pretty down the last days, slacking off on my therapy, at times it's tuff to beat this loneliness, this physical loneliness combines with lack of freedom and sense of failure... it's tuff and no matter how much one tries to philosophise there's still no cure for loneliness like a lover.

Little things have been getting at me lately, things like it's difficult to write with out a table, or like should I try to contact someone, or should I or shouldn't I get out of bed, being irritated about everything!

Today I drove my mother to Hartford for a Doctors appointment. It's about an hour trip each way, she let me drive her '73 Riviera all eight cylinders of it. But the highways out here are a real drag, a series of frustration. I mean they sell you these monster cars that can fly, give you a wide open three lane interstate and then say but you can only go 55 miles per hour then to top it off they plant a bunch of state cops with nothing better to do than maintain their salary by issuing speeding tickets. Frustration. I mean I just wanted so bad to kick into that sucker and fly, if not for my Mother being with me I'd be going to court now for sure. It's just so damn typical American, give you all the power of freedom and then forbid its use. Some American dream.

 Don't think it's really a good time to write, just too damn tense. I thought writing would help me feel better but is just the opposite. I'm bored and really lonely, can't stop hating my ex- wife, can't stop being angry with myself for letting shit get to me and I just want to smash this fuckin' humidity. I just want to fuck some pretty little girl into being cross eyed for a least a week, I just want to get behind the wheel and punch it, smash it, rip it right up the ass of some fuckin' ass hole cop and smash through those American rip off speed limits. The fuckin' American dream, promise you everything and let you have shit, a fuckin' donkey busting ass for some carrot on a bloody string.

Angry, miserable, smoke too much, eat too little, too horny, too tired, too far from the place I want to be, too fuckin' young for these good ol' days blues - I am an angry young man, I am so mother fuckin' son of a bitchin' 

Tomorrow I'm gonna' paint. I will be up early tomorrow, borrow my mother's car, stop off for a real breakfast and be the first customer in that god damn art shop, come straight home and work I'll get at least two canvasses done. Gonna' check my paints right now, see what I need so tomorrow I'll be ready to go and work in the hopefully sunshine of the day.

salamanders green (part 2A) page 21

I have moved my self out side to the pinc nic table under the patio roof, hoping to be quick enough so as to not interrupt my grandmother thoughts. I've also just put some bread for the birds and a pile of unshelled peanuts for the squirrel. It's still a mellow pace nothing threatening rainy day. A pair of blue jays just flew in for an argument over a rye crust while the other birds just hang out of the rain like little discreet decorations placed in the shrubbery that surrounds my Mother's yard. I’m remembering a dream from last night, a dream about my sister well about her tomato plants as she wasn't really in it but I knew it was her who cut down all her five foot plants, cut them in half and then transplanted them to the other side of the tool shed and I thought to myself that it must be too late in the season to transplant and besides who ever heard of pruning tomato plants? And when I looked at the ground where they had been the grass had already covered where her garden used to be.

I just lit a cigarette and about 25 birds went up with the smoke. The squirrel is still eating his peanuts; his tail laid up over his head umbrellaing him from the rain. He looks ridiculous. The Siamese cat I call Maggot watching from under the table, too lazy to risk the rain for either squirrel or bird. The rain harder now, the last few bits of bread aren't worth it for the birds but the squirrel is strung out on peanuts. As for me it's time for a fresh cup and a piss. Now even the squirrel is gone, maybe his umbrella got a cramp?

"It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning...." May Sarton. Journal of a Solitude

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End Part 2A, Salamanders Green.

salamanders green (part 2A) page 20

Pigeons remind me of my grandmother’s house. Her house was pigeon grey and shared the same flock of pigeons with the church right next door. The white clap board church with the black slate roof - every so often a bit of slate would slip off and smash to pieces on the cobble stone driveway; a friend of mine would gather these pieces and try to make arrow heads, spear points and other projectile weapons. Slate weapons to be used on the rats which inhabited the rubbish heap located in the far corner of our immediate world - where we were never supposed to go. The friend was the son of one of my grandmother's neighbours, the Flaherty’s. His mother had the mustard yellow house closest to the church driveway. I can not now remember his first name but he was my friend and we were true boys together - catching grasshoppers in coffee jars, making weapons and fighting wars, climbing in the branches of the huge forsythia patch in the middle of the back lot, playing with dead rats, being envious of each others toys, discovering that old bones tasted like salt, teasing black dogs chained to iron posts, exploring the abandoned house on the lot, trying to steal grapes from the fruit mans wagon, making fun of the rag man who came shouting "Rags, Rags, Rags" every Tuesday morning.

I'm stuck now. My memory races, there are so many things which haven't surfaced since so many years....

There was a woman down the back who taught dance to children out on her huge sun porch, I absolutely refused, I wouldn't even go "just to watch". There was Mrs. Macrey who lived next door to my grandmother’s house; she shared a wall with my grandmother a wall that if you sat in the kitchen and held a glass to your ear against that wall you could hear Mrs. Macrey talking to herself or to anyone else for that matter. She was my Grandmother's best friend and mine too. Was it her husband or her brother - named Red who lived with her? I used to sit outside with him, sometimes in his lap, he was in a wheel chair and he'd tell me stories and give me candies, hard sour candies sometimes flavours with sharp cinnamon. He was the first person I knew who "went to heaven". He was a good friend and loved him dearly and though I knew he was dead, I also knew that as a child they wanted me to say he went to heaven. I wanted to ask why did Red die? But instead I asked if I could go to heaven and visit Mrs. Macrey's Red.

There was another family who had the house on the corner of the main streets; they had this strange thing called daughters. Daughters were mysterious and odd, this I knew to be true from the way the grown-ups spoke about the matter - always in hushed and serious tones, whispering about the activities of these neighbours daughters as if frightened that some one would hear what they were saying.

These houses faced a main street and were separated from that street by a long bank of weedy grass and many steps of concrete steps railed with black iron pipes, steps that hardly any one ever used, even the post man would drive up the drive way that paned out into a dirt track which semi circled to each back door of the 5 houses. Down one end of Thomaston Ave., still criss crossed by silver trolley tracks were several mills and factories (Anaconda, Scoviles, The Buckle Shop etc.) the other direction lead to a main intersection leading into the centre of town or out to the interstate highways. My Grandmother and I would sometimes sit on the front porch or sometimes in her bedroom looking out the window - to watch the trucks for the mills go by. At my age they were as if some wondrous beasts, strange huge dinosauric animals which at times would screech and bellow as if calling out to each other or else hiss and whine like giant cats and some would belch out thick clouds of black smoke a mighty dragon angry with the traffic on Thomaston Ave. My Grandmother was also of the right age, hers being the age of horse drawn and trolley cars, so that she too could be amazed at the antics of these fabulous beasts. To go along with our ritual there were certain necessities: a box of Mr. Salty pretzel sticks, a few bottles of Hires Root Beer or Diamond Ginger Ale and of course a box of Dog Yummies for Tuffy the copper coloured canine who shared this all with us....

My Grandmother and Aunt taught me how to play cards and how to smoke, first corn silk then Pall Malls, they taught me not to play with the gas stove because if you turn it on without lighting it then the smell of the gas would make you throw up and die. From them I also learned to love dill pickles and ginger ale - that special kind of ginger ale - Diamond, the kind that was so sharp and bubbly it brought tears to my eyes and tickled my nose as I drank it. They also taught me how to transfer the grasshopper from the little coffee jars into the large pickle jars which they had set up for me on the back porch - and not let them escape! All these important things for a boy to learn I learned from them - like Superman, Rin Tin Tin, Popeye The Sailor Man, Rice-A-Roni, wagon wheel pasta, and what happens when you put the Silly Putty in your pants pocket rather than back into its little plastic egg like you're supposed to. I received instructions on the protocols for dealing with dogs, how dogs with bones from the butcher are definitely not the same dog that wrestles with you in the back yard - even though they look the same, each needed different handling and no matter what the dog under no circumstances was it considered good to pull its tail. I got my first cat from one of grandmother’s friends and I loved it! My mother as a bit nervous about it but I was very proud of the fact that despite my knee high years I already knew to not make a big fuss over it if the cat should scratch you in the activity of play. And more slate: - deep black slate basins cool black even in the hottest summer, I would just run my hands along them savouring the chill that seemed to tingle all the way down to my toes on those days of wash when my grandmother would remove the white enamelled metal covers preparing to do the laundry. Then there was the large slate black board on which I would "make fires" by rolling the chalk along it creating flames and then smoke until the whole board eventually covered by chalk dust....

The attic of her house that I can never forget, that attic filled with strange things. An attic of two landings and numerous rooms with things from my father’s childhood, and from the grandfather I never knew there were things from him up there too! Rooms, many rooms and shadows and yellow glass windows veined with black strings of dust some of which would break free and move under a power all its own as if waving as if reaching wanting to wrap itself around you.... I remember a slate back wooden chair angled by a gable window, a chipped in the handle pitcher sitting in a matching pale green bowl flecked with old gold paint bits, set there on the chair positioned to catch the drop by drop of roof water long sense over flowed from the pitcher into the bowl from the bowl a brown wormy liquid catching the pale sunlight as if a sleeping copper eel coiled all the way to the floor.

 

In the cellar  was a cask of fuel oil; I would sometimes go down with my grandmother as she took a little can to fill with the oil, oil for the space heater upstairs. I remember the red rail-road lantern which she used to see her way down into a cellar of no electricity and didn't she light that same lantern every night setting it out on the back porch rail and why?

Salamanders Green (part 2A) 19

It's impossible to swallow without pain today. Getting through breakfast required a real effort. I'm just waiting for the coffee to be ready - need a few cups then I'm gonna go and lay out in the sun. I wonder if my tonsils are due?

Screwed up on the coffee - put enough in for 8 but only 6 cups of water! Haven't even dared a taste yet.

Now the bitch has arrived but she has been friendly since yesterday when she got wind of me having some cash.

You: saw you last night in full moon light, walking in the ball field by the reservoir, to talk, to wrestle, to laugh and I still don't know what to do with you Maureen...

Stayed in bed all day so I could listen to the rain - there was no way I was going to walk to work, this non-depressive lacy summer rain was just too good to miss. Made orange juice, coffee, and peanut buttered toast for a mid afternoon breakfast - the toast a little burned, the juice a little warm the coffee a little bitter - just right for this little rainy day.

There's no one here today except my sister, she's watching soap operas and sketching pictures from fashion magazines - drawing during the commercials I guess. Of course I'm here in the kitchen at my favourite table writing and watching the rain through 3 different windows.

A cardinal in the maple, a grey squirrel up and down the fibreglass patio roof, the pearls of rain tipping needles of evergreen, It's a day for dreaming, a fantasy day, a wish away day.

Wishing for someone to dance in the rain with, that Denise won't be fool enough to get married, that I had a publisher, a friend a gallery, a place to live wishing I could reach out and touch you Mary, it always ends up you Mary. I couldn't have you so I broke my heart looking for you in other women until I had my life turned night mare by my "wife", heart numbed by these stone cold women but still I'm wanting, still I'm wanting to find you somewhere Mary.

There are 3 black birds playing in the grass, they play the serious game of feeding while I play the hilarious game of self therapy in hopes of liberation. Is solitude symptom or cure? Must one be alone to learn how to deal with others? Can it be that in seeking solitude one has given up, gone into exile, attempting to create an environment under ones own control?

Poured another cup and threw some seed out for the birds - sparrows, starlings and my favourite blue jays. There was quite a crowd then this pigeon flutters down and scares the rest away. The sparrows are the bravest they are always the first to return.

Salamanders Green (part 2A) page 18

 

I am stifled by this house that once was but now is not my home. I am lonely but not alone which is a very hard way. Alone I am in bliss and can work my ass off but these days with all these people and upheaval I feel lonely and must devote much energy to fending off depression rather than towards creating. To solve the financial problem yet remain true to my self. The fantasy is to have enough money in order to work on my art.

The sun heals, it works it's wonders on me, beating the bar scene and no longer crying myself to sleep, emergence from the dark into the clear starlight of the day - the sun heals me from my own apathy.

I'm thinking about Autumn and winter and how I'd like to hibernate on Cape Cod.

I'm going to meet a girl at the park by the reservoir. She's young and brown her name is Terri and she plays tennis and we are friends. We met because I was trapped by the way she moved on the tennis court and so stood there leaning on the fence watching her and smoking cigarettes for an hour, until she walked up to me and asked me what my name was...

The kid is here this morning and also his mother. She wants to lie in the sun here in the back yard because today she must go to work early and won't have time to travel to the beach! Can you believe this shit? Anyway she can do what she wants, I'll be taking Sean to the park and maybe we'll swim in the reservoir. The day is sunny but I wonder if even the sun can bail me out from the bad feeling I get when I see Suli. She has ruined sunny days before with her sour face and sarcastic bitch tongue - I suppose she's just part of the therapy a lifetime throws at me. There are always things one must overcome in order to liberate oneself and find happiness. I must free myself from the annoyance of seeing her or else miss the opportunity to have a beautiful day with my son. We shall overcome!

My throat is killing me. I can't swallow a thing without extreme pain. Odd because it's only painful on the right side - maybe some glandular thing? Maybe I need some vitamins?

The little boy is playing in the green turtle plastic pool right outside the kitchen window. I look out over my coffee cup watching the beautiful golden hair boy who is my son reminding me every few minutes that he has not forgotten bout going to the park. Yes, yes , after breakfast, after breakfast.

Was quite happy about having written yesterday. I walked down the street so excited I just wanted to tell somebody - "Wrote six pages" "Wrote three poems!

I'd like so much to know someone who would appreciate the way I felt about having written a few things... I thought of you Maureen but you weren't around so I spent another afternoon talking with Terri, Terri of the tennis courts.

Just can’t seem to find the groove today. Yesterday I got a real joy from the act of writing but today... Perhaps it’s the pain in my throat or the pain in my ass Suli or maybe just too long a night before. Anyway am still feeling 100% better emotionally. Still at work on the therapy both prescribed and self induced and they are teaching me well.

Going to try and pass a cigarette past this throat of mine.

Yeah oh yeah breakfast is over and we go away....

Salamanders Green (part 2A) page 17

"I have written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems to find out what I felt about something" - May Sarton, Journal Of A Solitude, Norton 1973.

A quote from my new love. except for Henry Miller and Richard Brautigan, all the writers I love are women: Anais Nin, Colette, Annie Dillard, Edna O'Brien Joyce Carrol Oates, Ursula LeGuin, Nikki Giovani - These I love for their work I do not "study" them, I do not try to "know" them but I love their work. There are others I read and enjoy but these are the ones I love as surely as if I'd given birth to them or made love with them - my literary lovers.

Anais is my saint. She has had the most influence on me. Through her I met Miller and Durrell and others and then through them more. My first lover introduced me to Anais.

Miller, Henry is the only male author whose work aroused in me a love. Not only for the work but for the man, for the courage of the man behind the work.

Picasso - The ultimate creator, the man who knew more about giving birth than any woman. I have tears over Duncan’s photographs of him; I stand in awe and quiet hysteria before his work in New York City. I think to understand him is to understand art. One must not be too serious, too reverent, but rather take fist fulls of flesh and guzzles of wine. Art is like a dog if you approach it with fear you get nothing.

I wonder is it healthy to love people who are dead as if they were living?

The cat wanders around the house whining in his Siamese language. He is restless for the fish in the pan. He is up on the counter and almost into the frying pan before I can catch him. He is rambling incoherently now, but when I ask him if he wants a piece he calms down enough to remind me that it needs rinsing in cold water so that he won't scorch his tongue. After lunch he gets me to open the door for him, he won't be back again until he's lonely or hungry...

I need a home. I need my books around me, my typewriter fixed and a desk to put it on. I need my easel in plain view with a clean blank canvass set up on it - after looking at it long enough it's blankness will annoy me to the point where I must attack it violently with colour. A place to be, to work, to explore myself and my world. A laboratory to experiment freely without people running or phones ringing, door knockings or T.V.ing. A place to be bold with a woman, a place to hide away from those days that make me fall apart. I want my own kitchen table to write on and to be able to breakfast out in the sunshine with my own friend who has come to visit.

Salamanders Green (part 2A) page 16

Made the coffee extra strong today. Deep black hot the simple exotic imagery of fresh coffee. I'm just cleaning out the dreams. Just realised that it's eleven thirty and I didn't go to work. My ex-wife just picked up the kid a little while ago. It seems that she and I got along better when we were still married. I think I'm past the pain and loss but then sometimes I can't help but feel hate towards her. It's not even so much for the things she's done but rather for the things she is doing. I never had to deal with that feeling of hating that steady sturdy kind of hate that only pretence makes seem other wise. I'd like to get rid of that feeling but every time I see her... Maybe it's a negative approach at keeping myself connected with her? I mean even though it's negative it's still an intense emotional involvement or should I say attachment? Maybe it's that I still can't or won't let go and admitting that I still love someone who doesn't want me, must have some effect on the ego. Past the pain? I think if I had someone who was close to me right now I could cry for days but it's too sad to cry alone... and if one can't deal with the pain then it can be buried, avoided - This day is too nice to get into being miserable, all I need is the sun, (those rainy days are the killers) the sun is my meditation, my healer, my direct link. Here I am in the sunlight, with eyes closed, brown skin and my hair wild in the wind ready to enter the breath taking void...

Starting to eat better. Bought some groceries and even ate breakfast this a.m. The simple things eating, swimming, sunning, writing. I'm proud of myself; I am making good recovery - staying out of bars, staying out in the real world, the green wet bright world. It's pleasing to be alive, to just breathe is great! I'm not trying to be what I'm not, I don't spend myself trying to change for a woman who doesn't want me anyway. I may not have much but I have my self, I have the freedom to be that. Finally for the first time in years I'm living up to the responsibility that I have neglected for years, neglected for marriage, child, lovers, parents, bosses, friends - that major responsibility is to live up to myself - To Be My Self. The true responsibility of the individual.

There are 6 packages of birthday cake candles, 3 boxes of Bicycle playing cards, a stack of pot holders, yesterday’s mail, some paper napkins and a dish towel on the kitchen table. The proceeding still life has been brought to you courtesy of my sister cleaning out the kitchen drawer.

From where I sit I can see the flower box on the back porch window, the little things have handled the drought quite well, ( no thanks to us) the big evergreen it's friendly shadow of protection extended to those geraniums and whatevers, saving their lives, killing the grass. I want to paint. I think that will be the next step in my self proscribed therapy. I've got my easel and stuff but I need to go down-town for canvass and with the temperature not being bellow ninety for the past weeks I just haven't been able to work up the ambition to go bus riding. Also I think what to do with the finished paintings? This is not my house I don’t even have a room of my own. In fact the last time I left a painting here someone poked a hole in it. I think that I'm thinking to far ahead. I'm not gonna let anyone talk me out of painting in - especially my self.

Salamanders Green (part 2A) page 15

The day is nice, today is a light cool mist over everything after weeks of ninety degrees. The coffee is good and strong. I'm sprawled out on the kitchen table with pen and paraphernalia. When I was first married my wife always made sure where ever we lived there was a room for my desk. It was great; a room, a desk, a typewriter and all my books. But as time went on and she and I got farther apart the desk seemed to get lost along the way as we moved and the place got smaller and smaller my room became less and less of a priority no longer, like myself, a necessity. However I did find a substitute for my desk, a most convenient and logical solution - a place to sprawl out and be close to the coffee pot a place generally as far as possible from sleeping children and angry women and even today when I have no typewriter, no home, no wife, I still have a little quiet and solitude here at this long inspiration of kitchen table.

It's nice and cool but I would like some sunlight, sunshine like yesterday, the girl dancing and laughing and I rubbed her sore muscles putting her to sleep in the ragged summer grass there by the stream you can still drink from. Maureen, the way your hair shines golden, the way you wore that yellow tied at the waist shirt - I want to buy you a gold medallion of the sun, little girl I want to lay you out in ninety degrees of heat and fuck you till we melt. Maureen in the sun quiet, cynical, tired, your legs are strong I thought you were nervous but you fell asleep as I worked the tight muscles of your legs yielding up the cheeks of you ass, a long sleek back up around sore shoulders the white ivory neck kissed between the space of blonde laying in the grass my hands unable to stop...

Then there is Maureen in evening laughter,

Restless martial arts forms against the stars

Stoned as shit on some hashish she bought

To see her now, happy, care free, no self put downs,

Golden lady I like to be here...

Maureen your skin is magic,

The night has been beautiful for us

The moonless stars are animals I want to travel among

While your desire is to keep both feet on firm earth

Dancing in the dark I hate to leave you –

All night my fingers shake in their sleep as if I had ten penises each dreaming of your cunt all at once.

Now is eleven a.m. someday July 1980 and the sun struggles with the overcast and I'm still being here at the kitchen table. My son will be four in November. I want to teach him to paint, to play the piano, to live...

Daydream: To be a successful artist so I can have a house where my son can come spend summer. A house with gardens of wild flowers, roses, peppers, onions and tomatoes, a house of tall windows and open empty rooms.

Question: Doesn't every artist want to be Picasso and every writer Henry Miller?

Answer: (fill in to the best of your ability. you may use the other side of the page if you need to.)

______________________________________________

Question: Doesn't loving to create...?

Loving to create, to tears, painfully loving to create. To complete, to create, to live off ones work as if it were food, each painting a mouth full, every sentence something to chew. As I write I must stop too full to take another word, as I paint I must stop lay down and digest, until such time as ravenous with hunger I must begin one or the other once again. Lick the canvasses, suck the colour straight from the tube, chew the smudged papers and sip from squeezed ink pens... It gets me horny to think about. Cigarette moth’s geranium spider web sun grey morning bright with afternoon walking.

Salamanders Green (Part2A) page 14

So trying with Suli again. At first we did good but now? The same old shit again. And I know I shouldn't be surprised and should have known better but well what can I say? I was thinking about being with my son and having my wife back, I couldn't have been right with myself if I didn't try once more...

And so Suli wants everything given to her immediately and I just want to be loved. I can't give her a new house and she can't love me til I can. I keep trying to remember - its just a place to eat sleep and see my son. Everything has to be her way and its all I-my-me-mine. It hurts to have trusted in her love again only to find I still don't have a big enough pay check to be considered. If only she were with me instead of against me.

It seems my wanting to be loved in this lifetime is wanting the impossible. I can't really paint here anymore, the atmosphere is too depressing. I know we're just kicking around a dead horse of a marriage. Neither of us can give what the other wants. It's hard to accept, I still feel responsibility to the marriage, to my wife - I was so proud to have her, she loved me and I knew it, we were special to each other - then. But we change and it must be crazy to try and force another person to want me. That's what I tried to do - I should have never come back! Its a dead end here. I've tried my best and there is some satisfaction. Even though it wasn't enough and I know I have to leave soon this time for good... Still wishing, hoping, still wanting my wife to love me - Fuck it! It's just a place to eat and sleep and see my son. Expect nothing more, there is nothing. Got paid today, going out, a few drinks to smooth myself over and I'll try to hustle up some cash on the coke exchange while searching for love among the ruins.

Bermuda Gold; a bottle of liquor brought back to me from the island by my sister.

May is a wispy and green. The month has treated me well. I’ve just been playing with crayons and papers, drawing and writing in crayon.

No car and bored. I want to break away. I'm not alive. Shit, I'm not ready to write today, still too tight, trying too hard, trying to think of something to write, too much like a job - fuck it. I want to write about woman and lovers, about flea markets and Spanish bars, about peeling off rain soaked clothes and the cool curve of your soaked ass. I want to tease your nipples between the sunlight mirage of passing clouds, tickled by your own long blonde hair, to touch, to tell of you the girl, who swings me into dreams ... The guitar player who makes his fingers bleed and this woman sitting out on her third floor porch chain smoking Pall Malls lighting one off the other all day long every day waits for something she doesn't even know, interrupted only by his occasional returns...

But I'm too tight, too stuck and the sun is dipping behind grey and the wind is up and the curtains are falling off the widows and I'm gonna smoke another cigarette have another shot of Bermuda hair tonic.... Now lets see - Nope. Just can't seem to catch that line, guess I should go back to crayons.

Too damn cold and I'm stalling, still scribbling just hoping to latch onto something. I mean so what about the weather? So what about anything? I mean who gives a fuck about what I write? How about those books they sell now, the ones with blank pages all fancy bound, should be a best seller - It's perfect, all those people who don't give a fuck about anything can just look at those pages and read about their favourite subject....

I walk down these city streets of this dead end town that sometimes I love, sometimes I hate. A factory town losing it's factories. A town where urban renewal is held up because somebody wants to make the public piss hall a historical monument - like George Washington sat here.

But I like the shabby brick works and the Diamond Ginger Ale sign painted full length along the tenement house, this town like a private derelict playground, half deserted, uptown junkies down-town dress shops, Italian marble churches, the palace theatre once grand opera now Mr. Atlantic States.... I'm heating up last night’s dinner - shrimp Creole, for lunch. There's a healthy chill in the air and today is Wednesday - the wife is always friendly on Wednesday - that's the day I get paid. She wants to go out with me tonight, for drinking and dancing she says but what she really wants is to make sure I don't blow the cash on canvass, coke or horses. It's kinda funny. Just tried to eat some toast but couldn't get past the margarine, nothing worse than a cheap imitation of something one loves. It's hard getting used to this place. It's weird coming back (again!) to live in the house and with these people I grew up with and not feel at home. Today is the first time I've been almost alone in three months. That's one of the hard parts of coming back, the never getting to be alone. It's difficult to work with people always running around. I have no place of my own again, I sleep on the couch. (Yes again.)

salamanders green part 2A page 13

HELP SAVE A LIFE

homeless artist in need of adoption

great companion

good with children

all shots up to date.

Put together some eggs and stuff for the kid. Used a paper towel to filter the coffee, worked well, a little anisette to sweeten and we have the perfect after dishes after feeding Sean his breakfast treat. Want to go somewhere today, don't care or know where but got some cash, got my son got the old lady's car and she's sleeping so - got the world on a string... everything I need well almost, Seany wants me to go back and get Duchess, our black Doberman. So OK Seany you’re right we have to take her with us so she won't cry. We drive up to the golf course where I work; we cut out off the main road on to a pot holed maintenance road and park along the edge of an abandoned fairway. I leave the car door open so we can hear the radio and me and the kid and the dog run around like mad until the rain gets there and we pack up ourselves into the old Cutlass Supreme head out to A&W burger joint. “Be sure and get extra pickles on the one for Duchess. She really likes them you know Dad.” That big scary black devil Doberman loves my son almost as much as I do. Dear old duchess with her red bandanna collar. Patience of a saint never growled at the kid even when he'd pull her eyelids out and twist them in his tiny little fists. Saint Duchess only whines a bit waiting for me to rescue her from the tyranny of toddlers. And when he was learning to walk? Wasn't it Duchess like some black devil mother hen following just behind as if to make sure no harm would come to her charge and when as he occasionally did, Sean fell? Wasn't it Duchess on the spot licking his face so that any thought of tears vanished into tickled laughter? There was a time when I'd always carry a pen and a wad of note paper where ever I went. I'd be writing poems in the woods, in the churches, the mens rooms, the bar, leaning up in a doorway out of the rain down-town the heavy smoke of damp cigarettes lace the perfume of cheap port wine like a brown paper bag coming up with ink stains from my coat pocket cold bricks against my neck leaning back out of the rain breathing deep the cold air that waits for snow...

It's been a long time since I've done that needless to say it's been a long time since I came up with a line of poetry. Today I was going through some things and found one of those wads of paper with some writing on it and also tucked in was an old Bic pen - still works! So how does one resist? What the fuck, why not write?

I've not been with my wife or son, been staying at my parents. I'm sitting here trying to sort out my feelings listening to my brother's stereo - Dylan, Don't Think Twice It's Alright, Neil Young, Oh Lonesome Me.... There is a large lump where my heart used to be and it's so cold it feels like pain.

Still what I am needing most is a place to live so Money! Money, money everywhere but not a cent for me. I think if I had enough money I could have kept my wife, she loves new cars and big houses and clothes and furniture and somewhere down the line maybe there used to be I'm going to take a walk up by the reservoir. The place where I "grew up", the place of first acid trips and parties, the place of good comrades and the first time I made love. There is a place I go there a place where my first lover and I sat by the little pond hidden by the red pines, a place of still remembering, a happy good remembering, a grateful remembering of you Mary.

Along, along... and here I am 24 years old smoking to many cigarettes, working my ass off for three dollars and fifty cents an hour, living at my parents, sleeping on the sofa in a house full of cat hair, and my wife has told me to leave her alone - to get the fuck out, she wants to go out with other guys to see if she can't be happier and if not well then maybe she'll take me back. My sons got no family. I got no friend to talk to, no woman to love - and they still ain't gonna keep me down 'cause somewhere there is a little bit of luck left and no matter what happens I'm gonna be around. Painful, yes but not fatal! I'll still be here for a while longer, here in this life, here on this planet and I suppose it doesn't really mean a thing. Pain is just another way of seeing how alive you are. So I'm gonna shake these lonesome blues get the fuck out and find someone new....

Sitting here reading through what I've written, it's been months since the last word.... and where does one start? How to get back into the groove? Lesson number one: You can never go back! Which is no solution to my problem - to write. I'm not living any where still the couch at Mom and Dad's. Haven't painted in about six months and its been almost as long since any poetry. It's crazy all the wasted time. Doing the bar scene, a few mid night escapades, girls who make me happy for a while, sell a little coke, make love to Suli once in a while afterwards feeling so achey because you can never really go back. I have dreams of telephone calls from women in big rooms full with blank canvasses and death and terrors. Dreams - these images are common in my dreams.

Looking for love among the ruins. Among the "friends" who fuck my wife, among the spilt stale beer blue fog across the bar room television light. Looking for love among the ruins the shell shocked soldier bleeds red from his eyes, from his heart and from underneath his finger nails. Big titted broads fresh vomit on their breath hungry for kisses, little girl giggles, teasers pleasers, playing card people flipping one game after the other, power plays just getting you to say OK. is enough, she never shows and when you call no one knows just who you are but she might be back tomorrow, and when you call no one knows just who you are but could you not call here anymore. I am some misguided saint, my lamp dull above the darkness - show me an honest person and I’ll call you a liar. A veteran on the battlefield ending up with scars that should but cannot be hidden, wounds that should but cannot be fatal.

salamanders green part 2A, page 12

1979-80

Bought Millers Rosy Crucifixion, spent the evening looking for all the sex part in the first book. I'm horny as hell to start with... My wife wants to leave me, can’t afford to live alone, feeling kinda broken, a discard, nobody can make me work. My own fault too, always left the good ones for the bad. It's going to take a talented woman to save me. The real problem isn't being without a woman or is it blistering myself with masturbation but rather not having a place to live. I just wish I could hole up somewhere and catch my breath. Some time a room to write, paint, just live for a while. I'm at my best when I'm on my own. Unfortunately for me my wife has drained a lot off of me. She's been my daily narcotic and now it kills me to live with her but I am afraid to go it with out her. It's going to happen though. One way or the other it is happening so, got to get my ass in gear. I'm a painter and a writer. I should be overjoyed with my new freedom. Instead I play the self pity gig. It does hurt about my son. I must in honesty say it hurts me that he won't have a family and I did want with all my heart to be with him as he grew.... Now is too late and does it matter whose fault it is? I have to live my life now and all I can give him is as much honesty as I am able, as I know it.

September rolling into Autumn, three o'clock running into tomorrow, cigarette smoke needles the corner of my nose, fuck it I wish I had some coke and fuckin’ Christ I been lonely most of my life and horny the rest of it - I must be due to catch a break. Can't complain about the weather today, so nice that even the wife couldn't get me down - I was happy today I woke up at five a.m. Venus staring me in the eye.... "Another cigarette pal? A little trouble with this writing stuff?" Now not talking to myself but writing to my self! Talk about masturbation I'm doing the literary version. Any way -

"Another cigarette pal?"

"Sure why not."

Damn the waters blocked for months.

So it’s like this, Sex is the Muse. No Sex = no production. If I just had a woman I could be with then writing would be easy. With painting all I need is a space, a room, a table, you know just give me the place to do it and I can always paint. I'm not passing the buck or nothing, I know I can get a piece of ass but what I really want is a true hot blooded romance.

Went to see my sister-in-law last night. Sat and watched a few movies, drank Marie Brizzard and got high. Have to get back with the car so the wife can go to work so I'm driving with a sweet breath and a nose full of cocaine and how nice it was to sit and relax to sink into being soft and comfortable at Terry's house...relax something I cannot do at home. I'm in bed high and feeling like a breath of fresh air, my wife even kisses me good-bye, a real shocker. It's late September and cold as thirty degrees but I'm warm and nice thinking about how falling asleep between the beautiful breasts of my wife's sister would be luxury.

Seven a.m. five hours sleep, a line of coke and a cigarette for breakfast, going to work, got that giddy cocaine hangover - don't give a fuck, don't have no cares, don't matter where I'm going as long as it's somewhere....

Turns out I was supposed to have the day off anyway. So I hang around the garage for a cup of coffee until everyone else starts then I leave before the boss changes his mind and finds something for me to do. Not feeling too bad today even without the coke I'd be feeling OK. Got a check the other day from some scholarship deal from the school, a remission of tuition scholarship. I mean free money in the mail, that's enough to put anyone in good spirits for a while.

Suli is looking for a place to live without me and I wish I could find a place too! Can't stay here even without her I couldn't - simply, can’t afford it. Besides the place is too cold in the winter and too wet in summer - my paintings get mouldy from the lake damp. All I want is a dry place where I can paint and do my poetry, a place where I can be alone, able to be myself. Also what makes it hard is not having a car so I also need to get a car or a place close to work but this little town doesn't have much to offer a starving artist :

WANTED

Good home for starving artist

comes complete with books and paintings

Packed my books yesterday, six large boxes of them. I suppose I should get rid of them but I just like to keep them around, even though I've read them all some even twice, but I get attached to them. Besides when I get settled if I get any literate visitors they can see how well read I am. All possessions are a boost to the ego, even books, which is all right with me, I need to booster myself. I mean I'd love to have someone look at my books and see me - can't you can tell a person from the book they keep? But no one seems to notice. It would be great to get a hold of someone who is interested in art and literature. You know I have all kinds of canvasses all over this little cottage, I mean the walls are covered with some aggressive colours - my friends though ignore them. It's like I have some terrible disease or affliction and they don't want to draw attention to it by talking about it. The only other artist I ever knew was Mary Brown, a dancer, a tragedy, a poet , a pre - Raphaelite - and of the spoken word? Well I never knew anyone whose voice was so hypnotic; I could hardly talk with her I’d be in such a state - the sound of her voice such a profound effect on me. I still find it hard to believe. Mary's voice in that small space between awake and sleep still makes love a timeless narcotic long after being unable to remember her face. I got her to write poetry. She got me to paint. I don't know if she still writes. She never saw me paint.... Christ, with all the madness I wish she was with me again.

Anyway, enough of the past, I'm hot for the future. I'm getting free of Suli, I've a chance to be happy, I'm getting money in the mail from people I don't even know and I can feel it in the air, I can sense it...And there is very definitely a woman on the horizon - I wonder who she is and how the fuck long it will take us to get together? But regardless of the bullshit there is a woman, only a shadow now only the bare essence of female soon though she'll take form. Physical features, personality revealed....

And the morning is young and I'm ecstatic - song sings from every pore, I'm exhausted, I'm energised - a snapped power line on my way. Today might be the day I find my next lover and if not fuck it there will be other days. And no Suli not even you my darling little slut wife, not even you are going to get me down today! This is my life my season my time - The wind and autumn sun strong like a crack along the concrete that my toes tap upon. I cannot care if I live in a tent this winter, I cannot care about anything now except I am free unchecked unleashed wild through the country side so watch out for your daughters and your wives....

Tomorrow might very well find me caged and shackled by my own self doubts but today I ain't gettin caught - Fuck you world go sit on a blind bulls dick cause you ain't gettin me - I'm on the way back to myself - Jail, drugs, knifings, marriage, shit somebody wanted to stamp me out but fuck you here I am! Maybe not exactly standing but I'm making an upward motion and in spite of anything I am happy about having lived and to be alive and there's no bullshit when I say that when it comes down to it I can regret nothing because I do love my life. I want to live somewhere. I can't paint and it's hard to write in this place. The house itself is oppressive to me, it’s just a down place besides it’s been too long since I moved, been here almost two years in the same place - dragsville. But I'm sure I'll live some where right?

salamanders green part 1, page 11

The River Is Low Tonight

The day has been quiet my wife came home about ten, took the baby out to her mothers and another friend named Dave is coming over and we'll go fishing and I guess trout have mothers too and I am the killer of their children and I believe these fish do have feeling, intelligence. I think about the sudden flash of pain searing down their spine as the sudden hook is set. I think about the cruel play upon their instinct to grab, to savagely attack their prey so that their meal is not lost to the current of the river the cruelty of how they must practically hook them selves or starve; I can see my self cruising fast waters striking fast or loose those rare scraps of proteins. In my life there is no such thing as snack food; every scrap necessity. Trout loves the river, the minute he's brought out he’s already half dead from a broken heart. No hook gives more pain. Swift clear water dancing diffused brass sunlight skipping along mossy stones, tinted pools brown, rose, white, stones, certain rapids waiting out the low water heat of a summer day because it's deep there, cool there, always the heart of the river any bug- worm- fly- meal falling in brought over that spot even in low water days it was cool there, swift, no moss on this bed of rose, white and a million brassy shades of light, no moss on this bed of cool stones that shall now no longer know your particular presence.

The river is low. Tonight is the first night I cannot hear the sound of running water as I lay in bed. Spring. Sleep. Darkness. Through only my dreams the echoing rapid river. Tonight is almost silent only one distant cricket. Perhaps it’s because our house is surrounded now by desolation, even the river is wary. The new owners with their hired out state wards have started off their ownership by cutting down every tree on the land all the trees whether oak or lilac, anything that grows destroyed - squirrels we used to see four at a time now I occasionally see but one across the river. Muskrats home in the rocks on the bank right bellow the bedroom window, now buried with dirt debris, torn, twisted limbs of oak maple lilac quince. The tree the squirrels used to get to the roof of the sun porch and drink from the clogged rain gutters, (being too lazy to trek all the way down for river water) is gone. There will be no more acorns and the squirrels have moved across the river. There will be no more muskrat he is either suffocated in his buried home or else he too has moved on. The chipmunks that used to scatter as if wind blown among the sunny boulders on the bank, they are scattered now forever never to return and the early morning splash of ducks upon the water replaced with buzz saws yells cussing and the ill use of good natured fools.

This winter no squirrel may find emergency acorns in the clogged gutters, no one who lives in this upstairs apartment will get photographs of the grey imp posing right profile, left profile, full front, tail end. And of the annual nest of blackbirds there in the rusty drainpipe sticking out of the back wall of the house, what of them while these people renovate? When the aluminium siding is put up or the walls knocked down, or when the bank is filled in and the last tree cut, when all the shit is done, everything clean, everything neat, new, suburbia , what consideration will be given the ugly spiny black bird chicks? The beautifully brown warrior shy wasps that live in the fence pipe surely they must be burnt out so the fence may be safely ripped down and replaced by stockade maybe red wood fence or maybe black iron spikes or western type rails; something a little more in tune with a renovated modern home something more appropriate than a rusted scrap pipe fence. I suppose that's how to improve property value, you don't need rats or squirrels or ducks or trees or wild flowers, wasps or birds cluttering up the place with their annoyances and I'm sure if they could they'd re route the river so there'd be no bugs or dampness that might damage the structure and attract further vermin. Like all the rest we too are being driven out with no place to go not even across the river for us, soon only the brown velvet mice that run through the walls will remain blissfully ignorant of the awaiting poison.

No job, no place to live, the three of us out right peasants. House full of tensions, dreams, uncertainty, the only joy is in the child, his ever groping ever learning life unfolding petal by petal before our eyes - nothing stops him not walls or stairs, fear or love, nothing stops the child, the ever beautiful constant hope, the child.

I'm sitting in the kitchen at the little table we stole from some bar, the place is too small for a full size table but in spite of the crampness it is home and I hate to leave, it was the first place that came close to feeling like a real home, all our drama, comedy, love making, births, deaths, fights, all - no matter what, was surrounded by a familiar warmth, the so familiar warmth of my family, my home.

I'm sitting here drinking some tea, there's some local mellow sounds station on the radio while outside the summer is in full swing, across the river tall full green trees ruffled and savaged by the wind and the sunlight, the sunlight.... A couple of days ago the rain filled the river to bulging but now already back to hot and sunny the subdued river is almost silent.

Haven't been outside for a while at least not just outside doing what I want, last almost week was spent moving my sister in- laws things. She moved out from living downstairs. She is divorced and has a five year old daughter and well anyway besides moving her seven years of collecting stuffs and one piano there were households of things being stored by friends of hers in the cellar that had to be moved - a regular pain in the ass situation. Now here I am trying to find an apartment and a job to pay for it by the end of the month and it's the twenty seventh and there's no time to relax, no time and I know it's my own fault but maybe something will happen sooner or later something has to come together, meanwhile there is my son and yesterday there were two wood ducks male and female on the river and a friend of mine kept me smiling all day when she told me she was pregnant just made me smile all day and just now I saw a chipmunk after thinking they were driven out forever. These things make me happy; these things make me make it. Last night in my dreams I saw two water snakes in the river red copper brown through shaded water and a squirrel came up the stairs into the living room and ate pretzels with me and we were living in a new house and I could fly.

salamanders green part 1, page 10

High School.

We smoked dope into the hallways, fell down the stairways, passed out in the

bathrooms, and didn't feel the fall and no one in charge really knew what the deal was. Like we were on the first wave of: drugs are coming to your school and it was fucking fun! We weren't just kids we were down freaks, acid heads, pot heads, geniuses, painters, poets, musicians, potential addicts, winos, garbage picker divinities. We were reckless with abandon squanderers, fearless too alive to ever die. We were the Class of the whole country it was our magic summers, our hanging out, our exploration and the realisation that we were going to make it any way we could, the hope the dream, the spit, piss, tits, ass, prick, cunt jocks, heads, of a generation. The nobodies who would make more money in 1 year than I would in three, the high class chicks that were turned out to be nothing more than scared shitless of living, the whole fucking thing so typical yet so unique because me and my best friend Dave drink wine in the alley, hang out on the green or Uncle Sam's head shop, write poetry talk about California taking off hitching across the country “hitching a ride to the end of the highway” (Joni Mitchell) ending up going no where married in the same town as our fathers having kid’s bills and work and the whole thing so fucking typical except me and Dave were friends and now we don't see each other very much and we struggle alone with the fact that it’s all irrelevant and can any one really beat the system, the system that just swallows up individualities and makes all things common. Except me and Dave are at heart one with the winos the dope fiends the poets and romantics we are at heart with them, he still plays that guitar an me I still bang away on this typewriter ... and we're still winos at heart and the city now is dead all the winos busted killed rolled in asylums or dried out and living with their son in New Haven. The freaks pretty much the same busted dead or in California or jail there are no head shops pool halls, congregations of stoned undesirables. Instead when I walk through the streets now I feel violence, tension - empty store fronts, gangs, Uzis, sawn off shotgun hard edge of new drugs, designed as if to meet all the scare tactics that we knew was only propaganda in our day. Now they have drugs that do destroy your brain, make you instantly addicted, make you kill.

The school is moved out to the suburbs where maybe it’s not such a bad environment. I walk these streets that were once my own not seeing a familiar face never an invite to get high or share a bottle in fact not even a wino in sight. Dave is working for the phone company but I guess he still plays, I think I saw him once  playing at a bar down the street it was too loud, not the music but the people, too loud and crowded no way to talk so I left.

Baby Seals

The baby seals are clubbed to death in front of their mothers skinned the carcass left to rot. It is common for the mother to stay by the carcass for days trying to rouse it, perhaps trying to make sense of the motionless blob that her offspring has become or maybe she is herself in some state of shock. Now life and death is a common thing, so too is killing but the question is who really needs a fur coat that bad? Even if there is no danger of extinction it still sucks but there is a reasonable doubt as to the survival of the species so what the fuck buddy make a living out of selling dope or refrigerators or something.

salamanders green part 1, page 9

School

My wife is getting ready for the fall semester she's going back after missing a year. All excitement picking courses teachers figuring schedules I am happy to see her this way. Glad to see her excitement, her interest, her hope for something better and my own hope that this will get some of the boredom out of the woman's life. I've never gone to college but I remember my high school days the old decrepit down town building with its own unique strain of cock roach the first evolutionary change in the cock roach in over a million years - survival of the fittest. The hallways were warped the paint was typical urban grey maybe some military surplus form of battleship, the special grey of park buildings, jails, basements, garbage incinerators. A greasy grey and yellow brick building sometimes floors of rickety wood or bulging ancient concrete painted grey, anything not yellow brick was painted grey. And the girls, I remember girls every size shape colour from china, India, South America Africa French Italian and beautiful black hair blue eye shy Mobilia from Portugal - America you know every kind of girl ugly pretty dumb smart holy virgins blessed sluts any description you could give me I would find there a girl to match it and I suppose this isn't unusual I mean probably every city high school is like that but when you take a young boy who has never seen more than the little girls of his suburban little neighbourhood K through 8 school, the one every one could walk to, the one with ten or fifteen in a class, when you take that young boy and put him in close closed contact with these girls, first contacts with exotic juicy sweet women, the perfect situation stuck here in this building for six hours a day and its great because you get to show off in class by either being smart or smart assed depending on what the situation called for and if you be cool you could wise off but at the same time come off as being intelligent and if you didn't come on like the true pervert that is really you well then you could make out pretty good, fish in a bucket baby and if you were me it wasn't all that easy but you had a friend named Dave and most afternoons cut the last class or get early dismissal because we had a "job" and be downtown working on a bottle of wine that we pan handle the money for and had to get one of the winos to buy it for us because we were under age but once the government dropped the age to eighteen so that the boys who were old enough to die in Viet Nam were now old enough to drink legal we were able to buy our own as our long hair and beards allowed us to pass for at least eighteen and if you had this best friend named Dave and you each had a bottle of that cheap new apple wine you hung around the alley ways and on the green checking out chicks checking out drugs which were both just coming into our lives and we'd talk for hours about California and the great adventure of hitching across the country. (Contrary to popular belief drugs were not invented in the sixties it was just when you were introduced at a certain time and its pretty much been proven that drugs invent users not the other way around) - Any way the time of our growing the time of our high school days were the times of head shops and marijuana romance, I think that even though marijuana has been around forever it has never been so romanticised before or since somewhere it lost its magic but in those high times it was in full flower, the times of war and peace demonstrations, expanding consciousness LSD every one I was ever close to was into acid (LSD) a phase perhaps like apple wine like marijuana like high school days, a phase and to this day I'm not sure every one has stopped getting into acid so much as they grew out of it or that after the seventies the quality of acid simply sucked and it wasn't worth really doing any more. Any way it was the time of our lives as is everybody's high school days I guess and my poor mother thinking I was missing out because I didn't play sports or join the glee club, she used to warn me that I'd regret not joining schools activities and well to set the story straight Ma I had the time of my life although I couldn't really explain it to you how much I was involved in certain school activities - everything was moving new exciting possible, the town was full of freaks, at night there were open parties on the green and after school me and Dave were drinking wine and hanging out meeting people of all kinds from all kinds of places, hippies, hobos, artists, musicians people who came in with news of the outer worlds. One of our new best friends was the old wino Charlie Brown I remember one day we read him his obituary from the local paper apparently someone with the same name same birth day same home town just died. The rest of the day was spent showing people the obituary and trying to get them to contribute to the wake. I can still see the little fellow, pushing through the crowd gathered at the Palace Theatre waiting for some concert by the New riders or Quick Messenger Service and there is Charlie Brown getting the crowd to make way as he called his dog to come through, his invisible dog for whom he was trying to raise funds for the re-visabling operation, of course he usually did well with the concert goers in those days most of the freaks would have some coin for him. And when they put a man on the moon and it was all the front pages of all the papers wasn't there some slight bitterness in his remark " so big fuckin deal I been to the moon every night since the end of the fuckin war"

School the time when dress codes were thrown out and we were dungareed flannel shirted stoned little vagabonds safe and secure in the confined controlled environment of school but when you had a best friend named Dave and you hung around down town you were out there baby, living, experiencing flavours, languages, violence, rip offs, sex, smell, of a living city. You were out there with people, travellers, wanderers, explorers, exploiters, beggar men, thieves, people who were human people who were making it anyway they could desperate adventurous, hopeful, wonderful, brave, crazy, evil, frightened, amazing beautifully human .

pd lyons poetry: Happy Easter All

pd lyons poetry: Happy Easter All: Dorothy Sebastian photographed by Clarence Sinclair Bull c. late 1920’s

salamanders green page 8

Blame it on the Weather

Today hot overcast grey humid grey day tinting colours, moist thick heat blanketing all movements. The only hope, that these grey tints might congeal forming deep clouds of rain. Rain is the only hope today. There is nothing to say. Wasting time typing so as to say "I'm not really wasting time, I'm typing.” I can type about the quiet, the napping mother and child. I could write about sweating and hoping for a major thunder storm or how yesterday 90 degrees bright sunshine I caught a drink of pure crystally cold water bubbling straight up out of the ground between two boulders - sitting beside it for many hours loosing myself in the splash of clear talking water. I could write about the boy who every day after school at 4pm comes by the river here trying to teach his stupid black curly mutt dog to chase after sticks rocks anything anyone throws into the river including my fishing line. There are a million things that just happened yesterday or today countless things that happened between nine o'clock this morning and four o'clock this afternoon that I could write about. Perhaps I'm just lazy, blame it on the weather or something but I'm just not latching on to anything right now. Occupying myself with only a finger exercise, an action to accompany day dreams. I am not really here now, I am not typing now, only my mindless fingers move. I am far away on some dream in some place where clean crisp snow trying to keep warm as there are miles to go before I sleep miles to go before I'm warm and my numb fingers crack as I wave them to and 'fro stimulating circulation and cold snow crisp sometimes knee deep ice crusted a supreme effort is moving through sparse lifeless landscapes across open ground, wind savage razors my face. Trying to think warm, trying to not be there, my stiffened body trying to think warm and sweating, in a stuffy room waiting for it to rain because rain is our only hope today.

The New Landlords Are Impossible

Time is coming closer to when we have to move away from here. The new landlords are impossible. More and more I feel anxiety over having to leave the river, our river, river of painting poetry dreams warrior trout, leaving the first home I have ever known. All winter I dreamed about the coming summer when I could take my son and play with him in the river, when I could introduce them to each other - the river and my son. Now summer has finally come bringing with it the fact that we will have to move. Doesn't every artist have their river? Me I'll be leaving mine this month.

I am smoking a butt from the ashtray, the last bit of tobacco in the house and I can’t' hitch hike out to buy a pack because I'm baby sitting. The last smoke-able butt while I try to decide what I would like to draw on the last sheet of drawing paper, interrupted by the burning filter of an old cigarette. Fuck Suli.

I am someone always seeing, constant observer noting all details minutely completely, the watcher of my life unfurling mystery each day I am memory I am still being with my first lover still caressing ceaselessly tasting the summer heat remembering how only once I thought of something else during my first time making love. Juice dripping down her thighs as we stood dressing she told me of her nick name J.C. how it stood for juicy cunt ( me too innocent then to even wonder what that implied ) , the single room bed, yellow tile kitchen, windows draped in honey, having breakfast first, walk by the lake to the middle of the pine woods where we lay a spot of grass by hockey pond - those two things moving on the fallen tree really were turtles, one gossamer wing bug landing in her so fine long sweet hair, the first time cupping her breasts as she slipped off her bathing suit. We came to the reservoir to swim and we never did neither did we make love there in the woods several younger boys on bicycles riding up the trail scaring me into my jeans without putting on my underwear first. Two years after that and maybe another year before seeing her again once even living together for a while but I never met her again, I never really ever met that woman who was my first lover ever again, I know now I never shall, she was never the same person after that . But I still find in me a certain rush, a certain anxiety at the mention of her name at the thought of what we were, the speculation as to what she is doing now. Sometimes when I'm really high or I find myself believing in miracles I somehow see it as possible that we should meet again, taking that joyous walk of strangers meeting again for the first time the way we once did so long ago and of course as you would guess I can remember everything but cannot quite picture her face.

I am seeing the river flow from a cavern of black green trees stuffing thin white water lines through outcropping grey stone. I am alone today my wife and her girlfriend have taken the baby to the sea shore so for me it's afternoon breakfast coffee stereo as loud as it should be for Dylan right now right now right this very minute typing listening to Dylan thinking about the ninety degree and how to describe it thinking about Mary, Suli, Seani, Vicki, feeling stoned just from waking up from this open window, this cup of coffee yet I just can't cut it loose that something I need to write; all tangled up in flesh and blood tripping in the muck of the future and the past . What I want to say is now, what I want to write is here, what I'm going to do is...

What I'm going to do is take this cup of coffee out into the sun, then fish for the warrior trout or maybe dream away the day. Either way out among the treasures of the day maybe return able to write about lovers, children, wife, exposing myself a perversion of confessions smearing the pages stained by my passion, reveal naked masterbational expose of a man. Not simply selfish pleasure but revealing the mirror every person in this human race is, each facet of our existence a mirror to another. Razoring my own wrists the world feels sensation.

8 in the morning

Its eight o’clock in the morning just gave the baby his bottle. We are alone my wife out for breakfast with her friends and then has an appointment in town maybe coming home by noon but its eight o'clock coffee brewing a cool shadow full bloom summer morning glad my son woke me up to share it. I am intensely starving yet all I wait for is coffee before attempting to decide a breakfast. Still feeling dazed, this is the first time I’ve been up earlier than noon for a while now. The new landlord's son was here yesterday complete with a half a dozen task force local loony bin cleaning up around the house and grounds. Really weird vibes watching them do whatever they wanted to the yard.

But any way right now something very sweet just happened an old speckled black bird just landed on the window ledge right in front of my work table at first I though he was going to try and go right through the window visions of manglement death and destruction, but he knew what he was doing - just standing there cocked head peering at me before tap tap tap on the glass he was gone, standing up to catch a glimpse of him as he flew off I watch a brown copper criss cross snake draped along the white bone submerged branches just beside the bridge pylon give a slight turn ease into the current and mid way shoot off like a six foot charge of electricity sparkling down the river out of sight.

This morning cool tingly sitting here being hungry while my son sleeping jazz radio on lazy horn piano summer jazz the in season fruit the basic building block of a breakfast the summer maybe New York, Chicago, New Orleans, anywhere, summer flavoured jazzzz and I'm starving and I know the minuet I get up the baby will wake with his own list of demands and it's beautiful and somehow perfect that he should and it's the earliest summer morning I have had and it's so right that my son woke me up to it, so right this gift of summer from my son.

salamanders green page 7

Veins

Between the veins of butterfly wings translucent glass of rose and green stain. Pale stains upon the wall beyond where red ponies prowl thick heavy blue shadow lake, red ponies move in poor animation really not moving but rather glide, sliding on and off the scene and one has a rider a bare assed heavy set solid strong woman, thick black her hair long and tawny brown with flecks of yellow her skin as she glides on a red pony when butterfly glass splinters clear butterfly blood pulsates from these shattered veins seeping between the wall dream on the verge of nightmare when as the woman draws the blood red out of the pony and up into her own body by her own teeth and the lake ripples orange with serpent scale as countlessly butterfly blood oozes into your arm down from the wall. Cocoon witness loose blood clots into new life. Birth the nightmare experience but crisis avoided cartoon ponies riderless return play slide glide in the heavy blue shadow lake marked orange with serpent sunlight.

As the tensions of the day fade lines between nightmare and dream erased unknown un-interested river golden between shadows overhanging trees delicate spring greens over brown soft silt pools edged slippery with gravel, hidden cold secret corners underwater cave and crevice between rock and mud edges a long refreshing sanctuary blessings of water perfected by cool earth cradling something as beautiful as a trout. Spring green late afternoon exceptionally hot sun illuminating everything so enticingly touchable all alive such earth such life calls out telling; forget of light that’s broke you’re artists heart, this day calls this day calls out to you telling you squat down by the river side dabble your fingers in the mud of life, you can squat down wiggling your toes like new worms in a cool muddy birth place, you can play with a million miniature suns jumping dancing harmless sparks of golden electricity around you. Same sun the first tiny spit of life enjoyed in days so long ago there was no time. That’s where life began in a place outside of time. Life needs timelessness in which to begin, it needs to rest rocking in sly arms of a salty sunlight mother in a time so long ago there was no time but sunlight the same sun, the same muddy muck, the same water mother that calls to you telling you can come out now and play - Who knows what life will begin with you should you take this day to become timeless? It's still same sun, same wind, rock still hard, sky still blue, and it's all Magic and secrets revealed to any who take the time to notice, secrets begging to be found out all just hanging out there right up front, no con games, no shadow play nothing is kept from you - it's still the same sun.

The world is a woman holding out her breasts to you, just lick them and you'll get the fuck of your life, man, woman , child, just lick the breast of the world and she give you an orgasm that will carry you for a million years. It wasn't an apple Eve offered it was her breasts and she wasn't a temptress but rather the ultimate blessing and the garden was a garden of ignorance and what god worth worshipping would have wanted a human race of dummies and no matter how hard we try we can never be as ignorant and maybe it was blissful every thing in nature content, content to grow live die kill be killed but being god is lonely enough and so Eve brought the blessing of knowing, because of woman humans have the ability to know. True we don't have the bliss of ignorance but we have the ecstasy of living life, if we let ourselves be aware.

We are the creature able to appreciate beauty, pain, god, love the wonder that is everything We can never get back to "true" nature we shall never have a home a place among the rest but isn't there something gallant about our vagabond existence, isn't there something which endears us to the universe? We have the ability and therefore obligation to experience. If there ever was a garden then well to be out of it and into the wonderful wilderness adventure of knowledge, and if there is a god then he's glad we took a lick of that breast and if there is a sin there is but one and truly it must be that of refusing the experience of living, not treading that fearfully exciting path of self exploration and refusing to tamper with the secrets, refusing to wiggle our toes in the mud refusing to let our fingers sway with the dancers of the sun. I love women because they got us out of that Eden, without them getting us out we'd be just like trees and though I have great love and am awe struck over the great beauty of trees, I equally value and respect the beauty of our purpose that we, observing beauty also play our own sacred part. The knowledge of beauty is the gift woman / Eve has blessed us with. What if we worshipped that instead of a bloody execution, how different do you think the world would be?

When your dead I'll dance on your grave sing a song drink whiskey dance drink throw up scream spit scratch breaking my nails on the stone lay down playing with the muddy vomit fresh dug grave and all the while singing throw up and blood my blood seeps down through the fresh earth touching your snow white skin making you smile.

eeyeeeyeoeyeyo e y e y o

salamanders green part one/page 6

Bob Dylan

Dylan on the stereo Blonde on Blonde visions of Johanna sad eyed just like a woman knowing sooner or later if you just did what you were supposed to and the songs were Mary’s favourite and the question I would be asking her if she just did what she was supposed to do and Dylan brings it all back home, memories, fantasies and I’m lying on the bed wondering about the women in my life knowing I’ll never hear from them and Mary said goodbye for a while didn’t realise she was saying goodbye for good and a million visions of a million questions and I still want you I want you so fucking bad remembering with Blonde on Blonde all the love that was real and that no matter what lives on. I’m just not understanding how being so close can end up being so far out of touch.

Bob Dylan and sweet Marie the brass wind chimes sunlight breeze baby in his brave new world and cocaine greasing the works humanising the machine, cocaine thoughts of woman and actually the whole thing is about love a million layers surrounding this planet that I am, the stars of woman feed my evolving life forms. Loving .What ever you say it is all your alive for, love no matter what you believe you’re sum total is love that’s the one you take with you when you go.

I am being an afternoon blue of sky blue sky white cotton candy puffs across a limitless possibilities sky. Never was there an afternoon like this, never will there ever be again. I am living a treasure, wild one of a kind jewel, wild free uncut never to be set gem. I live the wondrous miracle sky blue sky white sun green scent lilacs drift up through open windows, fragile soon to be destroyed by time, forgetfulness, unawareness, storm of evening, this fragile afternoon of being tender miracle afternoon. Dylan sweet the lingering memories of woman on a happening afternoon limitless as any other day, night, moment by moment never to be the same never to be repeated never to ever in all the time you wish to imagine another afternoon like the one I am being right now.

Typing: again

No one to talk to don’t think I have a friend in the world, not the talk to kind, not one of the talk to kind. My machine, the only one I can talk to about my dreams, my fears, my fights with my wife, my hopes for my son. We had a bad fight today my wife and I don’t even know if we are still married or not. I don’t feel like I want to be any more. My thoughts are of my son though; if only his mother and I could get along we love him so much. But I’m thinking how beautiful, how perfect he is and she deliberate or not is driving me away from him and if we’re not married anymore? What will my son think of me when he is grown and someone else is his father? What will he think when he needs someone to talk to and I’m not there? What will he be like? If he’s like his mother then all is lost.

I am dreaming. Dreaming that the world isn’t ugly and it is that the world is serene but it’s a nightmare of petty aggravations built up to explosions. The food of insanity, origin of madness those petty insignificant dramas of the world, petty yet accumulating into things that overwhelm. I am dreaming that my son would want someone to talk to and it would be me. But what ever child talks, what child is ever allowed to speak? The whole environment from home to the entire planet is geared for no talking, no expression. It is geared for shutting up; even the most political of power struggles is about the power to shut up. Power is determining what the acceptable, allowable expression is. All rulers rule by shutting up.

I am dreaming someday I’ll have more than a machine to talk to but reality is I’m lucky to at least have that. I am lucky to have a machine to talk to. I never met a human being except maybe once but she turned sour too she turned into one of the petty basket cases that is commonly known as normal – sold out love for security – but she a least got me this machine. This machine that listens better than anyone else. I am dreaming that someday art will be more important than shutting up, that someday cash will not be considered a human attribute, and the definitions for human, love, art, cash, value, success, will be rewritten. That someday someone will discover and bring to light the fact that we have totally fucked the definition of these words, that we don’t even know the meaning of human, that cash isn’t a definition of humanness, that art isn’t cash and that machine is the closest to real human that we have right now. My best friend is a machine, it lets me dream, lets me express, it listens like no person ever does. I’ve told more to this typewriter than to any one. I have shared more with it than with any lover friend or god. I have shared more with it and not strictly by choice or desire but by the fact that everyone else is deaf and I believe my only hope is my son, perhaps there I can find a human connection but my wife is driving me away and I am crazy with fear for loosing what might very well be my only chance. And too I am afraid that I am only dreaming a night mare with my wife into a bearable situation in order to stay with my son and in so doing totally alienate him and simply assist him in becoming just one more cash defined human.

Countless

There are countless words that could be written, countless combinations to express countless thoughts. Countless the one word that can describe it all countless countlessly lost set adrift in the countless worlds adrift there are no directions, there are no homes no families, no lovers, only drifters only lost and like the wind who knows such things I am not happy not sad only looking, seeing everything not ever really knowing anything yet always looking countlessly ever onwards.