Autumn in the Abyss

by John Claude Smith

  Immersed in Abraham Kalinski’s posthumously published The Beats Out Beyond (City Lights, 1961), an historical tome on the world of poetry in the ’40s and ’50s— he’d passed away from “natural causes” New Year’s day 1960, during the hullabaloo outside of The Camera’s Eye nightclub in San Francisco, California, where Henry Coronado had just had his first and last reading— I was in my head, taking in the magic, the madness, the madmen and mad women who gave themselves up to words. The polished vision was broken as I heard what had to be my third missive from the mysterious messenger drop to the floor beneath the mail slot.

  Actually, I had not heard it, but sensed it. I went to the door and there it was— another message. This one was scribbled on a torn piece of paper, as if no sealed envelope was deemed necessary, that familiar block lettering etched hard into the paper, with but one word: Stop.

  I crumbled the paper in my fist, a comedic show of defiance. Me, a man afraid to step outdoors.

  I knew where this was all leading. I would have to find the will, the strength within, to battle my demons and whatever demons lurked outside my door, and talk with one enigma— Randlebot— to acquire insight into another enigma— Coronado— to appease the niggling obsession that had taken roost in my brain. A worm eating to the core of an already rotten apple.

  As was habit for me, though, I allowed the worm to leisurely feast. Anything to delay the inevitable.

  I read more from Kalinski’s tome, of Coronado and Randlebot’s intense, fiery relationship. Randlebot had been married, though the parameters of marriage meant nothing to him as his promiscuous nature had led to many affairs. Upon connecting with Coronado, his marriage dissolved. As witnessed in public, Randlebot’s affections had approached idolatry. Coronado, though, expressed himself as he always had, still adorned with a mask of aloof impudence—“a real condescending bastard, don’t know how Randlebot could deal with him,” poet Peter Orlofsky had noted. But a handful of times Randlebot seemed to regain his self-respect and lit into Coronado with rage and fisticuffs to boot. Yet always, within a day or two, they would be spotted together again, deep in conversation, as if nothing had happened.

  Kalinski’s book had been published in 1961, a little over a year after his death. A little over a year after the infamous (and quite prophetic) 1959 New Year’s Eve Welcoming Chaos reading at the now defunct The Camera’s Eye nightclub in San Francisco’s North Beach, a haven for the Beats. Though Coronado was in no way a Beat poet, simply being a poet in San Francisco in the ’50s meant acknowledging the classic venues of the Beats, such as Caffe Trieste, Vesuvio, City Lights Bookstore, and the aforementioned The Camera’s Eye, as well as poets and writers and artists imbued with the outsider mindset.

  Moving on to Kimberlee Caspian’s slim, Coronado’s Pandemonium (Stagnant Vertigo, 1972), I got a more succinct overview of the defining incident in Henry Coronado’s life and a harrowing occasion for those who experienced it firsthand.

  The Camera’s Eye Welcoming Chaos event featured many visionary poets. Their poems were less Beat-driven and more wide-eyed and terror-filled. Philip Lamantia debuted a series of interconnected poems, “The Stars in Our Souls,” that featured cosmic imagery of a scintillating nature, yet he abandoned the purity of this path because of the incidents that followed the event. Grant Marlock and Sharon DeVries also exhibited exemplary work of depth and vision that left the audience awestruck, especially DeVries with her scatological rant, “My Gender is a Weapon,” which had nothing on the outside to do with gender issues. It was more an excursion through the underbelly of life in the city as perceived by an unknown, perhaps alien, entity. It was chaos to the nth, the perfect lead in to Coronado’s first and last reading.

  Though Coronado had been a force within poetry circles for a decade, he’d had no books published, had performed at no readings. A smattering of poems in small press journals had been the extent of his output, yet these vital, bleak poems had left a huge impact. His reticence had kept him out of the limelight until Randlebot had convinced him to do the New Year’s Eve reading.

  After Lamantia, Marlock, and DeVries had read, the place had reached a fever pitch. Coronado took the stage at 11:45 p.m. with the intention of reading three poems— two of his highly-praised published poems, and a new one written especially for the occasion, what Randlebot called, “an epic piece in style, scope and hallucinatory vision, a bridge between now and our unmapped future.” The poem was introduced as “Autumn in the Abyss,” yet confirmation of the title was immediately in question. Lamantia claimed Randlebot had told him the title was “Coronado’s Pandemonium” (hence, Caspian’s lifting of it for her book about the event), while other attendees suggested variations of both.

  Not that any of this mattered. As Coronado took to the stage surrounded by candlelight and incense, he quickly read his first two poems to moderate applause. The residue of DeVries manic reading had yet to dissipate. Coronado’s feeble, anxious reading, his voice cracking, his eyes skittish, was “severely putting a cramp on the evening,” as one patron put it. “One would think a man of his formidable stature would have a voice worthy of God, but he showed no signs of being able to live up to his swiftly dimming legend.”

  Before his reputation was completely ruined he returned the focus to himself in a curious way. He walked around the stage and snuffed out the candles set in stylish, wrap-around wrought-iron dragon sconces along the back wall, then stepped out to the front row of the audience and did the same to the candles in matching dragon candleholders on the tiny tables. He pinched each wick as one would do to oneself in a particularly bad dream, praying for escape.

  There was no true escape from what followed.

  Coronado was almost fully immersed in darkness. The dim light from the remaining candles on the table tops behind the front row cast brooding shadows that danced in a macabre fashion in his direction. Some witnesses spoke of shadows without a foundation in reality, figures lurking and looming, as if culled from the stone walls. His presence gained a foreboding aspect, his countenance etched with an eerie quality most described as frightening. The papers he’d read from during the first two poems were scattered to the floor. He leaned into the mic and recited in a voice many claimed was much different than the insecure timbres he’d adopted during the first two rushed readings— as if this one was the only one that mattered—“My gift for you, all of you who disgust me deeply, is true pandemonium. Dark revelations with apocalyptic consequences. Only I understand what the mere speaking of these words will bring, though you will taste their venomous intent soon enough.” At this point, an anonymous member of the audience blurted a disparaging, “Evil, man,” much to the shushing chagrin of others in attendance. Coronado’s strange transformation sobered up all but the most soused. His mouth stretched wide, “the leer of a sated hyena,” according to poet Neal Cassidy, and continued: “Chaos is the god of logic, the only god worthy of humanity’s misguided meanderings. The logic of madness. The madness of true pandemonium.”

  Silence from the audience as he paused, sobriety snuffing out even the most slippery tongue.

  “And He speaks through me.”

  After which, reports conflict— even the confirmation of the exact words he spoke. Each person questioned for the book, as well as by the police, said something different. Some took this version— the most succinct piecing together of his words— and changed it into something that suggested monsters of the id and ego. Others agreed with Kerouac’s curious, post-interview comments that suggested the corporeal existence of monsters outside of the id and ego. Everyone knew one thing: two dozen people died that night, a dozen in the fire that engulfed the venue, another dozen in accidents and suicides in the few hours past midnight.

  Perhaps most troubling of all was that three of the suicides killed themselves by mutilating their eyes. Burgeoning poet, Marianne M plucked her eyes completely out of their sockets with a spoon.

  Furthermore, no one could confirm anything beyond the introduction t
o the poem, yet there was, as with all recollections from the evening, enough evidence of “lost time” to suggest a mass hallucinogenic experience. Authorities suggested that drinks may have been tampered with, spiked with a drug of immense potency. Reports had Coronado starting his reading of the final poem between 11:50 and 11:52 p.m.. The bedlam hit full force just after midnight.

  As I read these recollections, dicey as they were, a sense of dread escalated within me, much as when my agoraphobia becomes overwhelming. I felt Coronado’s presence within me, a flickering light of recognition, and felt the weight of his words. These strange feelings were born of those words, I was sure. I scribbled incoherently, blocky letters like toppled skyscrapers, yet I could not put those words to paper. My unease escalated. Nausea swam as sharks around a raft, blood from the injured staining the water, increasing the menace, their hunger. Yet my obsession remained resolute, no matter my discouraging physical reaction.

  I owned Kalinski’s tome, a pricey acquisition via eBay many years ago, but Caspian’s book— a footnote in Zimmerman’s comprehensive appendix— was nowhere to be found. Even evidence of her publisher, Stagnant Vertigo, was non-existent. When I was about to give up my search, I lucked into finding a website with the complete text— something that did not take any special keywords to access, just the umpteenth typing of variations of the title, author and publisher, yet one last time— and there it was. I would say it was the fitting reward for my hard work, yet the reward seemed more a curse as the night enveloped me. It was a thorn in the paw of my obsession as there was no contact info for Caspian, the publisher, or even whoever had set up the website. All info was nil beyond the text from the book.

  The wind rattled my house with such might as to inspire a thought to skip through my mind of The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy’s tornado-inspired trip. My agoraphobia swelled. The confines of my house seeming more claustrophobic than welcoming. Sweat beaded and raced down my thick jowls. Showers being a rare commodity— my girth and apathy or simply pathetic ways inspiring minimal quests for hygiene— my already pungent aroma grew moist lending a moldy, maggoty taint to the already repulsive stench, ambience… life. No wonder my inclination was to stay inside this rat-trap abode. My sour smell and sour mind were content to pollute only within these already tainted walls, not intruding on the stale air and stale landscape outside. As if it mattered.

  As if on cue, the roof became a playground for incomparable chaos— a different source of chaos than at Coronado’s first and last reading, yet I felt a connection, an impossible bridge between the two disparate events— as what sounded like a dozen large animals trampled the already splintered shingles, their intent on feasting on whatever crossed their path, or perhaps battle for supremacy. They were kings of the world above and outside mine. Screeching, mewling protests, iron-willed howls, wire-brush scratching and sonorous laments echoed in the bones of my jaw. My teeth chattered. My wherewithal was withdrawn.

  Or perhaps it was God pounding on the roof— wake up! Wake up!

  I palmed a fistful of aspirin into my mouth, chewing and swallowing with determination, as if aspirin could stop the anarchy above me. I knew it couldn’t— the anarchy loomed always, waiting for my guard to waver— but at least it might derail the oncoming migraine. I pushed away from the computer desk, the creaking computer chair relieved at my exit, wrapped my stained white terrycloth robe tighter around myself and covered up the evidence of my loathsome being. I had to regain my focus, move it away from myself, as nothing there was ever of worth, and back to Coronado, a man of questionable worth and much mystery.

  But as the commotion continued on the roof, I waddled back to my bedroom and covered myself in shabby blankets, stuffed my sausage-thick fingers into my aching ears. A useless shield against the world outside and my hellish existence in here.

  Hours or days passed, I did not know. The many clocks that clattered as a convention of cane wielding men, an unrelenting click, click, click sounding like distant gunfire, or perhaps far enough to be cannons, with a cannonball about to bulldoze my house, tear a hole through the front door, open me to the mercy of what lay beyond— dear God, please, no!— meant nothing to me. Nothing, other than where the mind takes it. My perversely persuasive mind; my perversely perverse mind…

  I peeled the blankets off. My robe was drenched with the sweat of sleep spent in nightmare landscapes. It was always like this, every awakening confirmation of the legitimacy of Misery and Disgust.

  I made my way to the kitchen on wobbly legs, the firecracking joints in my knees and hips in need of oiling. When I pulled on the handle of the refrigerator, the suction seemed stronger than usual. I wondered when I’d last opened it. I spied dozens of crumpled ramen packages on the sticky countertop— eaten raw as all of my pans were either passing time with the filthy plates and glasses in the sink, or crammed into every nook, cranny, or shadowy corner within the refrigerator incubating whatever repellant leftovers that filled them. As the door opened with the sound of a forced kiss, these thoughts and the foul smells that wafted from within— alien and indescribable— impelled me to slam it shut. I would not be eating anything from in there. I clumsily tore the cellophane off a carton of ramen and snatched three bags before heading for the den.

  Settling into my computer chair with a grunt as it groaned, I tapped on the mouse and a murky light radiated weakly from the monitor. Tearing into the ramen package with my teeth, I squeezed out a mouthful of the hard noodles and took a bite.

  Coronado’s “Autumn in the Abyss” according to those in attendance who were still able to comprehend what they had experienced dwelled within each of us. It was a paradoxical seed rooted within spirituality that some perceived as the heart of his atheism, while others considered it an extension of his early use of opiates. Although Coronado claimed he stopped years before, to ‘keep his mind sharp for the forthcoming battle.’ From what others have pieced together though, his so-called visionary lines had deteriorated into pure fantasy. Unreal, but not surreal. He hinted at other beings, perhaps Gods, which as far as I cared, invalidated the gist of his new work. He wasn’t forecasting the future in his ever fatalistic manner. He was imagining the unimaginable, which might work for horror fiction, but as poetry of substance, no. Sorry. I don’t get it and I don’t care. Nobody’s been able to paste together a precise version of “Autumn…” anyway.

  —Carlos Dragonfly, poet.

  Coronado feigned ignorance and even malice as to the depth of the tragedy that had transpired that evening. “Perhaps the truth is a bit too ruthless for the masses to experience. No matter how open-minded they claim to be. It’s not up to me to limit perceptions, to put a stranglehold on reality. It’s up to me to open doors. It’s up to me to show the way. It’s up to others to decide whether to step through those doors.” The use of the word ruthless really set my teeth on edge, rubbed me in a way I found unnerving— an enthusiastic sandpaper massage of naked flesh— yet also forced me to reconsider my understanding of my obsession. I wondered if the darkness he trumpeted with such contempt for his fellow man was the source of my attraction to him, not just his strange disappearance and the rumors that hounded him. Was I simply ogling the accident out of human curiosity for something, someone, so ugly? Really, what drove me to need to know more about this human stain? His attitude repulsed me, yet his attitude was shaped much as mine was, as mine is now, by my distrust of all that is human.

  My confusion simmered, needling me with the thought that my obsession had more to do with envy than abhorrence.

  I laughed out loud— a choking insult to the act. Chewed noodles sprayed on my keyboard. Something shuffled slowly on the roof as if being dragged.

  With the tragedy of the Welcoming Chaos event, since much of the crowd had imbibed enough alcohol to make any three port-bound Navy crews envious, the quality of the information was less than stellar. Outsiders looked at the tragedy with snide deprecation as if they thought it the product of a misguided movement, jumbling the event
within that negligible branch of the arts the Beats occupied, even if it had nothing to do with Beat poetry, per se. Online reports were limited at best. The only note on the fire was that it was started by “carelessness.” Nothing more. Strangely enough, there was nothing to be gleaned from the online archives for newspapers from that era, either.

  Russell Randlebot went into seclusion.

  He had suggested the event, had even worked with the owners of the venue to promote it. After the deluge, the madness and disorder, the deaths, he wanted nothing to do with poetry, art, or Coronado. His only comment on the event, before taking on his hermit existence and living off the money his paintings and art books had garnered: “I was excited about where it was all going. We were all excited about where it was going. But Henry… I prompted him to leave certain esoteric elements out of his work. He simply shrugged his shoulders as if none of it really mattered. But I knew it mattered. He lied to me before the event, saying he would not mess with the really dark stuff. That was his way, though. He was a real manipulator. Then he took it too far. It was an abomination he unleashed.” When asked to explain his last statement, according to the interviewer— Candace McClean, a hot shot New York critic for the arts, —Randlebot stared at her with a sorrow she expressed as “palpable,” yet his response was curt, filled with a simmering rage: “You’re an idiot if you want to dig deeper, Candace. It’s all of our deaths you’ll be hastening.”

  Again, the oblique nature of Coronado’s existence rose to the top, cream to be skimmed off and fed to his demons, his legend.

  Over the next decade, conversation, analysis, and dissection of “Autumn in the Abyss” reached a fever pitch as it dominated the poetry world. Candace McClean’s 1977 article for Art News, Autumn is the Winter of our Discontent, pieced together a dozen stanzas of the poem gleaned from the fractured reports of survivors of Coronado’s reading. In mapping out stanzas from the poem— yet not the complete poem, an utterly impossible task made more evident with her article— a curious disassociation seemed at odds with her goal. The lines had a mutable quality, ever-shifting within the landscape of memory. Evolving to fit the mindset of the individual. McClean posited the ninth stanza portended “atavistic yearnings that emanate from deep within.” According to her, the stanza opened with the line, “My bones glimmer luminous beneath saltwater flesh,” which perhaps aligned itself with her interpretation, if one was immersed in a fantasy mindset.