The Official Site of Al Simmons
God Helps Those Who Edit, Published in Punk Monk, November 2023
A couple of months ago I began collecting my Union Pension Retirement Benefits.
Funny thing is I don’t belong to a union.
I’ll tell you what aroma therapy is, sitting on my balcony on a late autumn afternoon next to a Sensemia plant in full bloom. With pipe in hand I think of all the things I could do if I wasn’t so stoned.
So much energy goes into making a poem I’m surprised
sometimes they don’t explode.
***
People Dropping Dead In The Mall Parking Lot, 1st appearing in Abyss & Apex, Nominated for a SFPA 2020 Rhysling Award
I passed three dead bodies in the
mall parking lot, people dropped dead from extreme heat. Seniors were the first to go. Flies don’t drop like old folks do. Damn flies swat old people down when it gets
this hot. Flies thrive and feast in this
regulation free, business friendly environment.
You see I-Fly Storage Bins popping up like gas stations to store all the
meat, cold as tombstones, blending into the landscape by resembling abandoned
cars. Over-weight people were next.
Short people did better because
they require less food and water. They
called themselves Darwin babies. Go
small. Heat doesn’t bother them as
much. Burners danced while the pink bone
types wasted away underground for fear they’d drop dead in the sun or drag a
brown spot back down with them, and do a slow rot dance subsisting on microwave
popcorn by the TV. An opportunity
economy for street cleaners and deep earth drillers. No fear of flooding for the next ten thousand
years, unless it rains. Go
underground.
Day glow skin took fashion back to
the streets. A mall of flames. The fall
of deniers. Fire dancers of light. Spontaneous combustion people. A burning earth demonstration drags birds
from the sky every day around noon, only at Sunshine Chicken.
A few old world survivors can be
found nesting beneath fog patched micro-climates found scattered along northern
coastal strips. Flash floods led to
short term palisades worth defending.
Worldwide drought and the Great Desalination Project. Too bad it failed. The war got crazy when the food ran out. We called it destiny’s holy famine, spa and paradise,
featuring the band, I could fry an egg on your head if you had one. Long name for a band, but I liked their music,
Holopunk, with a suicide Brahms hot brass section.
***
A breathing bed.
No one likes a fearless foe.
Must be legal.
You want to be who you are.
Decimated like most of the world.
Lives to grow.
I won’t feel bad but you might.
Changes with the times,
until they went public.
They call it time control.
Digitalization means you can live forever.
The bed becomes you in the end.
When we were insects
super heroes fell from trees.
What percentage of the universe are you now?
What is your quotient?
The moment marble turns to clay.
When stillness, that moment.
When the trees become me.
When I fall.
You get to be who you are
Half of what is sold today
as packaged food
should be against the law.
I had a taste for guacamole
and whipped some up.
I don’t usually eat corn chips
but I bought some.
The result,
my feet swelled up
from the salt. You are
what you eat.
***
All God’s Terrible Children, Published in The Sum Journal.com
***
The mysterious radio signals recently discovered by The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), with the use of the Aussie Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder Radio Telescope, commonly known as the ASKAP, cites the exact origin of the signal as unknown, but evidence suggests they are coming from within the galaxy core, approximately 3.7 million light years away. The message was decoded and translated into English by scientists at the Space Center Listen Group, an initiative to search for intelligent life in the universe.
They released their translated version of the message as follows, “Greetings live ones, although if you have the technology to receive this message you are probably dead, nearing exhaustion, death and destruction, and doomed to extinction. High tech consumer societies expire once they exhaust resources, as they do. But, who knows, you may be the lucky ones. Here are the numbers, ninety-nine out of a hundred fail. Yes, many try. You are not alone. Evolution is homogenous and life is everywhere. This message is coming from the best of the best, the fortunate few who have survived. Here is our advice. Be frugal and don’t eat so much. Most societies outgrow their ability to feed themselves. Try not to implode. Less greed helps slow self-destruction.
~
There are several more translations of the radio signal picked up by SARAO. Berkeley SETI Research Center, and Principal Investigator on Space Center Listen, offered this translated version as a public service announcement, and warning: “Greetings, fellow fishermen. If you are trawling for delicacies and got a taste for BBQ, or deep fried breaded crab legs, (or did they say man legs), we’re getting reports they found the eastern quadrants are teaming with stock, and easy to net. Might be worth the extra time and distance.”
~
A third wave translation came from volunteer star gazer’s group, Kepler’s Off Planet Home Hunters. They offered this distress signal version, “Greetings, citizens of the universe. Anyone out there? We are from the planet Hoq, twelfth sister to the 10th brother planet Orion, Home of the Gods, Milky Way Galaxy. Records say we crashed here a thousand generations ago and have forgotten the world we came from. Planet Hoq survivors calling home; we fixed the radio. Do you read me? Are you still there? We won the war. We are now good for another thousand generations, if we can just get along. Were we always this way? We are stranded on a planet without fossil memory. How far can an intelligent race born of culture go without a history and solid knowledge from where we came? We advanced from where? What is the basis for our folk music? Can we be the only radio station broadcasting in the universe? I refuse to believe so. I know we’ve got competition and a listening public out there. I can feel you. What are you up to? Descendants of Hoq, or anyone else, say hello. Say something. Let’s talk.”
***
My girlfriend, Ansa, lives on Phaedra, Neptune’s moon, and sometimes we go out for a ride, for the fun of it. There’s so much going on in the Kuiper regions, especially if you like racing like we do. Ansa is a daredevil. I’m more the mechanic type who respects stress loads and gravitational pull to avoid road obstacles without destroying my ride. Crunch numbers, not fenders, my motto.
Ansa and I are complete opposites, but also what attracts us, right. We were out last night. Ansa suggested we buzz the sun, so we took off. I should have checked the tank first before we left. Three planets out, I noticed the fuel gauge getting low, so we changed our plans. Ansa had the controls. I was sitting shotgun, reading gas gauges, in charge of loony tunes and enjoying the scenery. Have you ever been to Earth? I don’t care much for atmospheres, for cruising, too much drag. I like to move. But, Ansa had to show me Earth’s hidden colors, she called them, so we went in. I was impressed, too. Earth’s not just blue. I like green.
And then, out of nowhere a couple locals showed up checking us out. Earth has locals, too. Who knew? Scared the heck out of us. Their screaming rides with the wings and fiery jets were so loud I had to wonder how they snuck up on us in the first place, and how they avoid blowing up shaking like they do.
The locals were armed, too. Ansa almost hit one. Pretty nuts.
We got out of there before we got into trouble. But, one of these days, Ansa is gonna get us
both killed.
I ran into the bank thief who robbed the Wells Fargo Bank in the mall today. The fog never burned off this morning, but instead pulled a double shift and became an overcast gray cloudy day. I dragged myself out the door hoping a little sunshine might wake me up, but for what purpose I had yet to decide. Happiness is a low overhead, and never having to be anywhere unless you need to eat.
Winter is the most unnatural season, gray as the day is gray, season of happy grayness and gloom. They called it the Season of Lights because you have to turn on the lights to see, or live in darkness. Turn on the light. I am as busy as a man with nothing to do.
Released from the void of my luxury rooms into the wild, I inhaled fresh air for the first time today. I looked up and smelled the gray clouds overhead, sensed there was a festival in the air, in the sun and fog across the bay, in the rapture.
As I stepped into the great gray beyond I considered winter made more sense to me when sick. Fog rolled into my lungs in like a hostile corporate takeover by mid-level battery powered implants. To the west, gray sand pipers picked away in the gray surf hunting silver fish gone gray.
I pulled the door locked shut behind me, wandered down the front stairs and stepped out into the squalid grayness spilling over onto Dream Street. I rent on Dream Street just so I can say I live on Dream Street, with street signs in shades of bleeding gray and white.
Across the street, occupying the long, single-story, two-toned, gray building is a nursing home for gray people, where I vote. I do more than just live here, I vote. I walked to the corner and crossed the street, and walked up Dream Place to the mall, a block away. I also live here for the convenience. I have a convenience store the size of a mall around the corner from my place on Dream Street.
The shapeshifters loitering in front of the recycling station eyed me suspiciously as I passed their holy temple of waste, a Reinvent the Earth recycling shack painted gunmetal gray, with windows signaling open for business. You toss in spent aluminum soda and beer cans and empty plastic bottles and the window spits back coins.
The shapeshifters stand in line with their Great Recession plastic bags filled with empty bottles and soda cans. One minute the shapeshifters are tall, mulling their futures based on current valuations of recycled returns. Their labors picking garbage in the gig economy was about to pay off.
And, the next minute they were small again, spent of energy, hung over, back living on the street and burnt from over-exposure to the sun. Shapeshifters don’t rise and fall so much as swell and shrink. The streets of America were paved with aluminum cans, cheap beer bottles and plastic trash.
I sniffed the clean ocean air blowing in off the bay a couple blocks to the west, beyond the soured stale beer slop and soda syrup stink emanating from the temple of recycled heart attacks. I heard the tinkle of breaking glass being ground back into sand, the crushed aluminum cans converted into spare change. And beyond, the noise of the roaring sea crashing the surf on the sunless beach a moment’s stride away to the west as the seabird flies luring me with the bay’s melodic gray sounds.
I emerged from my sanctuary to fine nature and industry intermingling at my doorstep, ancient competitors quietly sizing each other up, mulling a no man’s land in gray asphalt and cement poised to whack me in the face like a mythical stretch of empty parking spaces.
I strolled along the pavements binding the palisades of progress, and cast a wayfarer’s practiced eye over ribbons of concrete sidewalks connecting Dress for Less and OfficeMax, the remains of yesterday written in receipts, dead scraps of paper littering the parking spots of future customers with more calls for reusable shopping bags, the fog of destiny in twisted bedlam, joy and Armageddon steeped in retail sales projections and hard numbers.
I passed the mighty Kohl’s Department Store on my right, on my way up the block to Trader Joe’s and the lure of bananas at nineteen cents apiece. A large black service van of extraordinary proportions, and unknown origin, double-parked adjacent to the service area entrance blocking my way as I approached Applebee’s Bar & Grill. The van also blocked traffic and was unmarked except for a five digit serial number printed in large white numbers behind the right rear wheel designating a short-term rental fleet vehicle parked in the mall’s receiving area, and forcing me to detour around it.
I’m heads up looking both ways and
deciding how best to navigate around this enormous van without getting run over
by a passing vehicle, when I noticed the van’s rear hinged door open and expose
it’s lone inhabitant. I watched him
inside standing in the aisle between the built-in racks lining both left and
right interior walls of the long, multi-use, storage van. The sunlight hitting the windshield behind
him made him appear like a silhouette in gray of a man looking my way. His face was awash in gray shadows, featureless
and blending in with the van’s steel shell interior housing.
Either he wasn’t paying attention to me, or was satisfied I appeared no threat, he raised his shirt and pulled a long barreled pistol from his waistband and stashed it in a drawer behind the driver’s seat.
As I drew closer to the service van, walking straight ahead instead of navigating around him into traffic, the man inside came over and appeared at the rear door of the van to check me out. He peered down at me from his perch several feet above the pavement, I assumed wondering if I saw him stash his gun. And, what if I did?
He looked to be in his mid-to-late twenties, mixed blood with almond brown skin, medium height, about my size and slim like myself when I was his age. He wore black jeans, a long-sleeved tee-shirt with a green military camouflage pattern, a yellow striped nylon vest several sizes too large, the kind construction workers wear to avoid getting hit by cars while working in traffic, a baseball cap worn backwards, shades, and black running shoes.
I sensed trouble, and avoided eye contact, and kept walking. Guns make me nervous, and what did we have to talk about, anyway? Rob any banks today? You packing? Was that a gun I saw you hiding there? Can I see it?
A feeling something wasn’t right crept over me, and I thought about calling the cops. If I had a cell phone I might have, too, but I didn’t owned one, and hadn’t in years, so I kept walking. And, where can you find a pay phone when you need one, these days?
I didn’t know it at the time, but moments earlier, the guy in the van stuck up the Wells Fargo Bank across the parking lot from Trader Joe’s. The local paper ran the story and posted a photo of the kid in the van standing before the bank teller with a phone number who to call with information printed below his image. There was no mention of a reward. I called anyway, out of civic duty, because in fish heaven sharks eat fishing boats, and we can’t have these guys coming around brandishing guns and sticking up banks in the neighborhood.
I spoke with Special Agent, Richard Santos, FBI, San Francisco Station, and asked if there was a reward. He laughed, like what planet did I think I was on? And then, he asked, “So, all we have to do is locate whose van that was?”
“That’s what I think,” I said,
adding, “I figured he was hired help on the truck, a trainee learning the route,
perhaps, still wearing street clothes instead of a uniform with company
logos. Maybe he stole the van and worked
alone, but more likely, his boss, the driver, told him to hold the fort while
he did some business inside. And then,
once his superior left he crossed the parking lot, held up the bank, and then
hid out in the van until his boss returned.
And, that’s how he got off the island without getting caught.”
Suddenly, I am surrounded
by four neighbors with new babies,
and its summertime, a perfect day
for showing off your kid.
But, who can remember all the baby
names?
Or, even the parents’ names?
They come and go, these neighbors,
renters of the new millennia,
current crop of family makers
and their first birthing’s, two
boys and two girls.
The babies cry, but what do they
have to
cry about with all the attention
they receive?
Maybe they watch the news all day
and are convinced they want no part
of the world
they’ve been born into.
The parents summon their highest
octaves
to speak to their babies. They
don’t actually speak words, more
like
they trill, coo, make gurgling baby
noises
mimicking whatever baby has to
say,
making baby small talk.
The old gentleman next door takes
care of
his nine month old grandson.
He gets in his grandson’s tiny baby
face
and squeals like a loon, screeches,
blubbers, snorts and giggles,
anything to amuse his grandkid who
he is in charge of. The baby’s mother,
father and grandma all work paying
jobs.
The lady downstairs, also
a grandparent, sings to her daughter’s
baby girl
of sixteen months, and
the baby girl sings right
back.
The prettiest of this new generation,
the blond baby girl next door,
cries and cries, night and
day.
Six months old
and already
nothing can please her.
And, two units over on my left is
the 4th kid, who is
two years old, and not so terrible.
Cute kid, calls out hello
to anyone passing his window.
They are all cute, but together
they make a lot of noise.
I should not complain. We all
have to live. But still,
I put my book down, get up
from my lounge chair overlooking
the garden
where these neighbors have gathered
to talk
and exchange greetings, step inside
my living room, turn
up the stereo tuned to straight
ahead jazz,
and listen to my jubilant neighbors
go silent,
and flutter away like birds
and the scattering of leaves
in the wind.
I was sitting at my desk in my studio late in the evening when the phone rang. A robocall from The City. An 85 year-old Mandarin man with dementia was reported lost. Didn't speak a word of English, wearing an orange jacket and walking with a cane.
I thought a second and recalled I walked right past him earlier in the day on Shoreline and Willow Street by the beach around 4 pm this afternoon. He smiled as I walked by. I remembered thinking at the time he looked like he was waiting for someone… to find him, no doubt. I phoned 911. The woman who picked up sounded concerned, worried, and thrilled to hear my lead. Their robocall alert got blocked on half the island, and they feared the old guy might have gone up Park Street and crossed the bridge into Oakland’s Chinatown. And then what? I thought. I waited, but she didn’t say.
An hour later, I heard the sirens down by the beach where I told them the old guy might be. And after midnight, at 12:20 am, I got another call from The City. A delicate, sweet woman’s voice delivered the message, also Mandarin from the sound of her. They found him. She thanked me for my assistance in English so broken I could barely make her out. “Mr. Ho Fun found,” she said.
I leaned back in my black leather high back chair
and took up my pipe like Sherlock Holmes, and considered The Mystery of the
Missing Mandarin Man closed. I lit my
pipe and took a deep draw and reflected upon the achievement. Mr. Ho Fun found, a minor matter in the
greater scheme of things, but not so, I’ll wager, for the Ho Fun family. And, I resolved the case without having to
leave my desk.
Ash and Stone
I will miss fruit smoothies when I’m dead.
Be the spirit your descendants pray
to years from now.
A soul ascends, not milky white,
more like dry ice.
What are souls made out of,
anyway? Atoms? Some
kind of spirit energy, dark energy,
or, something else?
Adams, perhaps? Matter or anti-matter?
Or, does it matter? Sure, it does. Everything matters.
Do souls get colds and flu, cloud
up like glue and
ghost their way back home to heaven
hung over
after a difficult passing and
troubled departure?
What did we see, and what rose like
a misty sea
engulfing us graveside,
shovels in hand, beneath a late
morning sun?
Spirit semen, dream ash, fog of
silk, smoke of life,
milk of death, longing regret never
satisfied and
passed down from generation to
generation
like a gold watch turned smoky
white?
Energy, matter, or anti-matter?
Human souls who have walked this
Earth now
number seventy billion. No one survived,
and yet we all want to go where
they went, only better.
Heaven must be a crowded
place.
The human brain resembles the
universe,
on a scale of one synapse per
galaxy, floating
in the closed empty space inside my
head, and
dreaming about merging with other
galaxies.
Would my brain capacity double
then?
Would such a merger enlighten us,
at long last?
Is that what happened last time?
They never leave.
Dress rehearsal in an hour.
The stage is the cage where dreams
battle
to become more ludicrous than you.
We received our daily lines
backstage.
The band sat up awaiting direction.
Tickets sold. The lights came down.
The curtains rose.
Makeup people, costume people,
stage craft technicians, directors,
management, all took bows.
Where were the actors?
What happened to the play?
Security let us in the backdoor.
She played the recluse in
Shakespeare’s
The Recluse.
Behind closed doors the curtain
came down.
The band played their hearts out.
The dancers? Where were the dancers?
In times like these we stand
together
and sing as one.
In the old days, no one left the
theater.
No one got stuck in traffic.
Today, all the world is a freeway,
and the actors commute.
Artists, actors, singers, poets,
musicians, dancers
need to declare
once and for all, recluse yourself,
never leave.
The day I fell out of a tree,
the day I hit the ground stumbling,
the day I made it home broken,
damaged but alive, was
unlike any other day.
I climbed that tree many times,
a huge weeping willow tree meant
for climbing,
I passed everyday on my way home
from school
taking a shortcut thru a field.
I built a tree house in that
weeping willow tree
without a nail, using only my
pocket knife to cut
long willow whips I weaved
thru branches to create a wicker
floor.
The day I found my tree house
destroyed.
For what reason? And then, couldn’t
figure out again how I built what
had been destroyed.
I fell right handed.
I came down on my right side hitting
a heavy bough
that broke my fall.
I had the whole summer to recover
from
internal bleeding, and a pain in my
side.
I couldn’t believe how fast I hit
the ground.
Falling occurs boom just that quick.
The day I curled up
on my mother’s long blue sofa in
the living room
until my mother asked me what
happened,
and turned and left without a word
when I told her.
I was alright.
I fell out of a tree.
I was 8 years old, barely taller
than a
chimpanzee
when I learned why mankind
came down from the trees.
He got tired of falling.
***
Goethe said, “Life is the infancy of eternity.” And, Pope Francis recently suggested that hell doesn’t exist, only heaven and earth exist, and when you die you either go to heaven or you disappear forever. In other words, you are not born with an immortal soul. Immortality comes later, to be determined by a personal god for your good work. You are born with a soul but immortality is a gift, not a birthright, a reward for a lifetime of service to God, the church, prayer and righteous behavior to your fellow man. No gimmies or outliers allowed, saints not included. You get one chance to get it right, so get serious about your future, if you want one, and fast, or prepare to beg Almighty God to forgive you for your mistakes come judgement day. Best to prepare to beg either way. Don’t stop praying until you get to heaven. Though, not much is said once passed, having received your immortality.
If the Buddhists are right about the nature of life and reincarnation, in particular, and we die only to be reborn again, over and over until we get it right, then the world is basically a half-way house for failures who keep trying without success, working the revolving door of evolution, the carousel for lost souls in a world over-populated by those who keep trying, quit, or no longer cared? Can all souls be old souls? Sure, why not? But, old compared to what?
I, for one, am open to the Pope’s recent revelation, there is no hell. Why not? You can find all the misery and hell you want on earth without having to go somewhere else. Life is not so static, and perhaps the pope and the Buddhists are both right when it comes to religion and all things dogmatic. You design heaven and hell to suit yourself. In my heart I believe the purpose of life is to evolve. What are you doing? Evolving. And when you die your soul goes to heaven to reflect on your achievements while alive on Earth, under God’s glorious light. You take your poems with you, as Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, once wrote in his autobiography.
But, first you must evolve, and in order to evolve you must live, therefore we are born to live and evolve. From the moment of conception until the day we die, we live and grow in every way; bigger and stronger, weaker and wiser, lesser and more capable than before. We are given to grow and evolve into better, more complex creatures, than who we were.
Heaven may be divine, but if heaven
truly satisfied, one would think we’d choose to stay there, given the choice
was ours to make. But instead, we are
reborn and pray to God for mercy we survive, despite having an immortal soul
from last time, or the time before.
Reborn blind and helpless, dumb and hungry. The opposite of hunger is creation. When not creating I go mad from hunger. We are born to create and recreate the
landscape, to make a better world than we are given, to improve our lives and strive
for perfection. Fear of failure and
preachers of fear create the obstacles. And yet, fear is real, and caution is advised,
for what to fear in life multiplies.
***
On the 8th day,
God returned to Earth
because He decided
to cover man with hair.
So, what did man do?
He shaved it off.
On the 9th day,
God checked into a psycho ward
because the way He saw it,
if He could see it
then it must be true.
By the time He
let himself out
He forgot
what He was in for.
What happened to those days?
Not even God knows
so don’t feel bad.
She would have been 38.
“All of my friends are suicides,”
she argued,
as if that made her’s more
legitimate, gain value, an
asset she could bank on, like an
annuity,
a hand-me-down insurance policy
acquired for free,
a tangible commodity she could
count on.
She always used the future possessive
tense, as in “my suicide.”
At least she said goodbye.
She’d rather die than quit drinking
and smoking tobacco,
and did. A year later, they found a cure for what
ailed her.
“See you next time?” “When is that?” I asked. She never replied.
And then, there was that other
thing, her,
not me, in love, driven crazy
because he wouldn’t give it up for
her
like she wanted him to.
She couldn’t trust the poet lawyer from
Louisville
she left her husband for, back in
Cleveland Heights,
without alerting him first she was
coming.
“I’m sorry? What?”
Kentucky southern charm, old money,
and how he got his job, and she
was living on creativity, and
SSD.
He wanted to be wanted
from a distance.
She was an artist, totally
committed, and
could write like he only wished he
could.
And, because he was physically a
large man,
three times her size, and
bigger than she could wrap her two
hands around,
he inspired her.
Spring came early this year, or
I’m an April fool in January.
Spring normally arrives in February
in the bay.
All my neighbors are about today,
the titmice
in the fir pine right of my
balcony,
disappear in the excellent
camouflage
like fur balls on a fur pine.
The mourning doves in the branches below
feast on an endless stream of
breakfast ants.
The doves have relocated around the
corner,
in the secure confines of a dense towering
cedar tree
left of my bedroom window.
The loud crow family live in the
top branches
of the king cypress facing west
towards the bay,
across the yard, and have been
there
long before I moved in fifteen
years ago, no doubt.
But, no birds nest in the magnolia
tree
fronting my balcony,
where twice I’ve seen red-tailed
hawks
take doves. I’ve seen the same hawk
feed on house sparrows nesting
above the cat line in the mulberry
bushes
that borders this 95 unit, two
story square city block
apartment complex, but not today.
Today, the hawks sleep, the monarch
butterflies dance in the warm ocean
breezes
that smell like summer,
and signals what I’ve grown to
expect of
spring arriving in February.
***
I don’t need them,
but what am I supposed to do,
turn myself down?
Maybe I should call them
birthday gifts. A new denim
shirt, (pre-faded),
to replace an old one I
never liked much,
and never faded.
A new Sail Rigger jacket from
Land’s End, like my favorite
jacket I bought for $30,
is on sale again,
so I bought two more,
one in true navy, and the other
in raincoat yellow.
I saw the yellow jacket
advertised under a private label
for $300.
A gray baseball style jacket
sweatshirt,
instead of a hoodie.
I could be dead
before I wear any of them.
Burial clothes.
I am surrounded by stuff.
Too much stuff.
OK, I’ll make myself a deal.
I’ll accept gifts I don’t need from
myself
if I agree to throw some things
away.
Cool. No problem.
Those gifts
from last year, and
seasons past, never worn,
will now have renewed purpose.
I was in the kitchen washing dishes
when I noticed a dove fly onto my
balcony.
Their nest is in the rafters
on the other side of the dining
room window
and makes me wonder if she crashed
into the patio door screen
and bounced off. Either way, she ended up
on a potted plant and seemed OK,
except
she wasn’t moving, so I walked over
and took
a closer look.
My presence at the glass patio door
didn’t alarm her
so I slid open the door and gave
her a soft whistle hello.
She stood there looking at me.
I slid open the screen door and
still she didn’t fly off,
rather she stood shifting her feet
trying to focus her eyes on me.
She appeared to be molting.
She had light gray feathers with
round black and white markings on
her wings,
typical mourning dove.
Then, she gave me a low, quiet,
inquisitive whistle back, a
“You-who?”
I whistled her a “You-who?” back.
She seemed so amazed and got
excited,
and spun around in the dirt. I waited
for her to whistle again, and then gave
her a low,
soft call,
and this time she rustled her
feathers,
pulled up her skirt,
danced a jig in the dirt spinning
around,
and called to me again.
This went on, back and forth, for
some time,
until we both got tired and ran out
of things to say.
And then, we bid farewell, let’s
talk again someday,
good-bye, and off she flew,
and I went back to washing
dishes.
A few seconds later, she landed on
my windowsill
above my kitchen sink where I
worked, tapped
on the screen, and whistled,
“You-who?”
I whistled back. She bobbed her head, yes,
she recognized me through the
window,
and made us both smile.
And then, she said farewell again,
goodnight,
and flew off.
I have a very cool neighbor.
My writing community
has broken down.
So many have died,
grown old, gone mad,
lame, stupid, lazy, tired,
and stopped showing up.
Someone else died.
They found his body
on a BART train
heading to Pleasanton.
Why he was on that train
nobody knows.
Perhaps, he had no place
to sleep and
Pleasanton seemed like
a nice place to die.
We used to meet at my place,
drink beer, wine and whiskey,
share drugs, weed, hashish,
cigarettes, everyone talking
and laughing at the same time
wildly into the night.
Today, I sit here alone
on the coast,
and the rains continue
without end.
My writing community
has broken down,
vanished, disappeared.
Yet, I still sit here
scribbling works
to the beat
of the rain falling
on my windowpane.
I miss the thunder.
The baby, Mia, is crying on the
balcony
next door across from mine.
I can imagine how she feels.
Today is the first warm day of her
life.
She pulls at her stiff, thick new
baby clothes
trying to get comfortable
while strapped into a plastic
highchair
like a mental patient.
The washing machines in the laundry
room
below her balcony, stopped
churning,
and silence graced the air. My nerves
also eased with the quieting, and I
leaned back
and relaxed on my redwood lounge
chair on my balcony
surrounded by potted plants, neighbors
and trees.
And then, one by one, I hear the
birds call out,
the hummingbirds clicking,
hovering before me, picking fruit
flies out of sun shafts in mid-air,
the
ducks quacking in the pool,
the mourning doves cooed, gulls
screeched, blackbirds cawed,
passing geese honked, a
woodpecker working the magnolia
tree
pecked his life away, and the red
headed male
house sparrows gathering twigs to nest
with
their brides to be, while their impatient
mates
stood aside inspecting the
construction, singing,
and egging them on.
A red-tailed hawk sprang up
from the stone pond planted
in the far corner of the yard surprising
me,
slipped beneath cover of the
magnolia
tree and settled on a low branch
of the fir pine, shook
water from its outstretched
wing.
The mallards in the pool were discussing
the hawk.
Baby Mia stopped crying to
listen.
A passenger jet flew overhead
leaving its trail of bile and
industrial soot in its wake. Once passed,
the kids playing in the schoolyard
blocks away
could be heard again.
Mia’s mother spoke. Something smelled good
baking in her oven.
Another tenant, dressed in her
Sunday best,
and pretty as a new tattoo,
came bearing her dirty laundry
in a wicker basket shaped like a
shoe,
and stood feeding tribute quarters
to the washing machines below.
The noise returned.
Baby Mia began crying again.
Poor kid. I got up
walked back inside, and slid closed
the balcony’s sliding glass door.
“For Me There Will Always Be An Underground.” Green Panda Press Interviews Al Simmons,
(first viewed on effitsundy.blogspot.com). Check out a new poem at https://leastbitternbooks.wordpress.com/
Bree: u’ve met and mingled with so many respected poets—got any good remnants?
Al: I just remembered how I met Jack Michelin. It was 1982. I was new in SF and staying with friends. One day I was hanging out and ducked into a gallery opening for a free glass of wine and a piece of cheese and ended up buying a small stone sculpture from Jack Michelin. It was the face of a woman cut out of soapstone. I recognized Jack from a reading. I told him I liked his work but the last thing I needed at the moment was another rock to weigh me down. I didn't have a place to stay let alone hang his art. But he talked me into it. I wrapped it in a towel and hid it in the back seat of my car until I found a place to settle into. I used to hang it on a big weeping willow tree in the backyard. Now it's in a box. I just remembered where I got it. I wonder if it's worth any money?
B: take it out of that box! any j-hole will buy that from u—i think they’d buy his old dirty socks! but u still got a tree, i’d bet. well, so is there a particular contemporary poem or collection that u revere/left its mark on u?
Al: Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger is still the best poem of the 20th century. Something a lot of people don’t know, Ed Dorn wrote books 3 & 4 of Gunslinger in Chicago. I was studying with him during those two years. Ed published each book separately as he wrote them. Book Three, The Cycle broke the 5 x 7 format of books one and two by publishing book three in 10 x 12 inch size pages in bold print and full color. There was a character introduced in book three called Al, who looked a lot like me then. He had a belt buckle with the name AL printed on it. From Gunslinger: The Cycle, The I.D. Runs the Actual Furnishings, verse 19:
Below his right ear is the brand
The cuneiform form of Man and God
And these were the signs of his predicament.
I told Ed I thought that mark was a birthmark. But the truth is it was a hickey I was given by Rhea Hoffman who was 13 years old. I was 12. And it never went away, so maybe I was kissed by a goddess? She looked like a goddess at the time.
Studying with Ed Dorn was quite an initiation. I asked Ed why he made the print of the Cycle (first edition) so large? He said, so I could read it. He was a funny guy. He told me this in his kitchen, at the old 911 Club, the original 911 Club, 911 Diversey Avenue in Chicago, where Ed and Jenny lived while Ed presided over the writing program at Northeastern Illinois University on the northwest side of Chicago, where I was enrolled as an undergrad.
Being a named character in the greatest poem of the 20th Century is a nice credit. There were only four characters in Gunslinger who were introduced under cloak of their own names; Howard Hughes, Rupert Murdoch, Tonto Pronto, and me. Book Four of Gunslinger, The Winter Book was originally titled The Slaukowski Sausage Factory. In retrospect those years turned out to be Ed Dorn’s most productive.
B: i'd like to emphasize that you catalyzed the poetry bouts and poetry fights--you told me the story when we were in Berkeley, and its kind of in yr NYT letter---by the by the poem you sent me in the mail is so killer. it is so wholly your voice--i think that is what makes a poem good; if it is totally the voice of the poet, it cld be on microwaving frozen french fries, or crossing the Rubicon, whatever. it is the voice that matters most. voice carries pov, and this is what we find useful in each other.
Al: Thank you. There was an intellectual framework surrounding the fights. Let me tell you what the world of poetics looked like back in the early 1970's. When Ed Dorn left NEI for a job at Kent State, he replaced himself as poet-in-residence with Ted Berrigan, who at the time was head of the New York School of Poetry. So, I got to be student aide and faculty assistant for Ted Berrigan.
I’ll tell you a story. Ted didn’t know I was on the university payroll for being both his student aid and faculty assistant, and I didn’t tell him until one day after class several months into the semester Ted and I were sitting at the corner bar having a shot and a beer and I confessed. I applied to be Ted’s assistants because I knew he didn’t need any. He gave no assignments, did no research. That was pretty smart, Ted decided, and added, you can buy the next round. And then Ted borrowed $5. Ted always paid you back on payday when he cashed his check.
I guess you can say I was lucky, first to study with Ed Dorn and then Ted Berrigan, two of the top three poets of the second half of the 20th Century. You can say I had my share of rarified air. Ted Berrigan was 36 years old when Dorn brought him in to Chicago. Ted died young, at age 47. But, during the ten years that I knew Ted we became good friends, and I got to watch Ted develop from the head of the NY School of Poetry into a Master Poet. Ted grew larger than the scene. Hanging out with Ted was like seeing your best friend turn into Socrates. I was a man of great fortune and witness.
There were basically four schools of poetry being practiced in the 50s thru the turn of the century, and beyond. There were the academics, The Black Mountain School, The New York School and The Beats. I wasn’t interested in 15th century Italian sonnets so I passed on the academics. The Black Mountain School was Charles Olson, who invented Projective Verse and open field poetry as a meter into free verse. He gathered the teachings of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and brought them a step further. Teaching at Black Mountain with Olson was Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan. Ed Dorn was Olson’s student, favorite son, and 20 years later I studied with Dorn.
The Beats were mostly criminals, drug addicts, thieves, sexual predators and perverts. William Burroughs was a junky, a pedophile, and a murderer. He killed his wife. He shot her between the eyes with a rifle attempting to shoot an apple off the top of her head. Gregory Corso spent the better half of his youth incarcerated. Neal Cassidy was a car thief and a speed freak. Ginsburg was a pervert and Jack Kerouac was a bum, the Dharma Bum, who loved speed, beer, and chasing women and good times. Jack Kerouac was the writer. As Gregory Corso put it, “Kerouac made us all.” The Beats were bohemians and cultural revolutionists and are credited for a lot of bad poetry and starting the sexual revolution.
The New York School was somewhere in between. They were constructionists, though some called them de-constructivists. Ted’s favorite topic for lecturing was how he wrote poetry. I spent years listening to how Ted “made” poems. The NYS were better dressed than the Beats. They had Masters degrees, came from middle class families. But, to me they were all Beats. They all experimented with the same American idiom. Dorn ran with Kerouac. Berrigan introduced me to Anselm Hollo, Alice Notley, of course, Ted's wife, Allen Ginsburg, Phil Whalen. Everyone knew and supported everyone else...for the most part. Writers are and have always been competitive. Each had their own distinctive voice and style and that was the key, being your own person and having your own presence and style.
If you wanted to hang out with the giants you had to have your own voice. That was the rule. If you read a poem that sounded like someone else you either dedicated that poem or you would be called out and hauled off the stage. Maybe the hauling off the stage part was an early Chicago thing. What I was interested in back then was a Chicago sound, a Chicago School. Performance Art was a product of those early experiments in Chicago and we sometimes referred to Performance Art as Chicago School. By developing the poetry fights I captured a competitive spirit of the time and gave it a presence in literary form. I built the stage and wrote the rules. I was the Commissioner of the World Poetry Association and the World Poetry Bout Association, WPA/WPBA. Steve Rose, the world’s greatest ring announcer, introduced me as the intellectual godfather of the Taos Poetry Circus, in Taos, New Mexico, where we held the Main Event World Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bouts every summer for 20 years, from 1982-2002. I began the show. Now they call it The Spoken Word Movement. I’m a footnote in history.
As Ed Dorn once wrote:
“Once I lost my keys
and couldn’t get in
Once I lost my knees
and couldn’t get down
Once I lost my face
and couldn’t frown
But I’ve never lost my place
and that’s why dig it
I’m still around.”
The Main Event, a ten round heavyweight championship poetry bout, was invitational, based on a traditional reading, two poets, an opening act and a featured poet, each reads for thirty minutes. The slam is a competitive literary event based on an open reading, whoever shows up. Somehow the slam morphed into more of a community event rather than an individual’s art, drifting away from rule #1, having one’s own voice. That’s the rap on the slam since the beginning, actually. I have no problem with the slam. It’s an open reading. As far as I’m concerned I’m happy the slam is held to any standard. And look at how the slam has proliferated? I understand slams are now being held in 80 cities across the country. On the other hand The Main Event features the best of the best, always had and always will. Anyone can write a poem, but how many people can write ten?
B: How many poems have you written this past year?
Al: About 300.
B: That’s a lot of poems.
Al: I had a good year.
B: Are your poems available?
Al: Yes. Memoirs Of The Man Who Slept His Life Away, new poems, Special Edition, Books I - V, 150 poems, 271 pages, 43K words, $35.00, (includes tax and shipping). Send cash, money order or check to: Al Simmons, Simmonsink, 420 Whitehall Road, Unit F, Alameda, CA 94501. I can be emailed at alsimmons@sbcglobal.net.
B: hey, way to get a plug in! i’ll wrap us up with that goodie you mailed, and here’s hoping this one makes it in that collection.
***
Almost Never
I get lazier every day.
Doing nothing is the best.
OK, there’s the ocean. I’ve
Seen it. Now what?
You tell me, cuz. Now
Nothing.
Lazy is good company.
Sunshine and enough
To eat helps.
Living off the land means
Fleecing those who graze.
Fleece or be fleeced.
Land of the fleeced,
Home of the flossed.
Other than my health
I’m fine.
I don’t know where I get
This stuff, but
For some reason I think
All I have to do
Is write a poem or two a day
And I’m good, I’m
A happy guy.
End of story.
“Try to make one word at a time, one word with perfect posture. No show boater words or perfumed words. No meek hovelling words. I mean fuck all these sentences. One. One. One, (not three).” --Bree, Green Panda Press
KING BLUE, Boogie Till The Roof Caves In, Stories of Chicago's Kingston Mines, the largest showcase blues club in the world, with photographs by D. Shigley. 129 pages, $20, includes tax and shipping.
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