Animal husbandry situation selective syncopation action-powered group met last night in a strange hotel, no one resembling other, no lights interrupted the drill and dull gaze of the madman postcards hanging crosswise from the ceiling, neglect for each others respective suppers fell apparent because no one seemed to hear anyone else’s answers, though there were none to be truthful, only so many more questions, each masquerading to be an expert in “communal passion”, vending warped records and the like experienced in nursing any simple “twists of fate” in the mailbox beer carryout liquorstores of Santa Clara County, multidirectional female woman on target postponing her illustrious passions for ice cream and real estate homosexuals, pretending to be squaw to all, maximizing everyone else’s murder, cant remember how to act on the throne botched suicide, respect regard mouth movements foretelling experience in merely breathing
So we happened to overhear something unintelligible suddenly, someone signaling underneath the floorboard mumbling something about survival, something about gold-red flies buzzing around his eyes but helping him to feel better, something about a familiar destiny rising around and breaking into destiny chorus ceremony, the man crazy, stonefaced calling to his skull to acknowledge his singular existence, to cease beating drums inside his broken pillow at 2:00 am, to postpone the ritual of evacuation in anticipation of another lost cause, instead to break out and merely let one’s winds escape, write letters, spell letters, smoke letters feeling the violence forming within each syllable, feel the hopelessness of the invading armies of solitude, mention priorities of night before thoughts of anarchy, mention brief flirtations with political glory not sold out or compromised or set aside because of bourbon drinking orgies past, failures to identify nightmares, respect syndromes, up and down saturations of duality existence saying: “you are incorrect to presume you are only a child in this slow motion game of running for mayor”
This nation beckons to the artist to jail himself in protest to other artists who may consider themselves “free”. This man under the floorboards is a cat with eyes that see multicolored circles resembling prism changes, and he is really dead to the touch, for he is elastic like butterscotch. Let us call him “Eric” after the horn player who deported himself after obvious reasons including other’s pretentious egos, or black and white reflections making all practicing pacifists war mongers because they have taught themselves how to cry deep saturated crystal tears in between speeches, those who only observe life as an intimate experience only to be shared after the dream is realized or else life becomes lost external and prostituted. This country could be an unchained roller-coaster about to spin into its neighbor’s circles, those shadows again. That Platonic allegory again; that cave trip where no man is secretly his own story, instead somebody’s rumor. America is screaming for individuals to abandon the fortresses and tend to the campfires lighting up its streets and walkways and observation towers and gardens down below. Feeling satisfied to act alone or in paris instead of react to some conference or some court battle or some premeditated decision by some self-assembled church mass to “all join in” “we’ll teach you the way” “alone is loneliness” and “power in numbers”. It all depends on servitude and mass destruction and perhaps self-importance. Perhaps depends, our future that is, depends on the individual to deal himself a progressive hand of anarchy to rescue and preserve creative life as we know it and the madness that gives us inspiration and the guts to communicate our dreams.
1974
Tucson