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.