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 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.)

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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.