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Another Way to Play

Page 24

by Michael Lally


  not just the order for the start

  of our hearts’ flicks . . .

  We love being alive

  and trying to share the craziness

  of what it means to know it! I mean

  did we really come too late for true greatness

  or just on time? What is this new place

  that defines L.A.-New York and all

  the rest as just a state of mind?

  Energy versus Peace? FUCK THAT SHIT!

  The Peace of Energy that makes us

  generate a void of minuscule delights

  like we once relied on artificial

  stimulants for, no more, maybe at last

  we can reflect the serious sensuality

  of the stars we talk to in our walk

  through the sea we have become—

  We are the masses who survived

  the troubled times that rhymed

  our lives the way old Hollywood

  serials did, and understand our

  laughter matters. Literally.

  That’s the secret of creation,

  transforming laughter into matter.

  We can finally accept and still

  hope, like reality is the freedom

  of knowing who we are and where

  we’re at and the ideal is sharing

  that completely, without fear,

  then letting go, not hanging on

  but knowing anyway, because we’re

  smart at last and allow ourselves

  to be. What are these humming

  motors anyway but mammals of our

  fantasies! Sure we talk to cars

  and TVs and expect the music to

  invade our brains, the motors

  of our smarts that drive our

  hearts to caring about it all.

  Hey, what’s L.A. but the

  city of Lost Angels where

  we all were born, even in

  New Jersey cause what’s

  left of that is something

  close to nothing, as the

  categories fade and rede-

  fining the specifics is

  less thrilling. Like Elvis

  isn’t. I wish they’d fish

  him over the rainbow of

  telescopic infinitude so I

  wouldn’t have to bother with

  the memory of his collar

  turned up and hair that thick

  I thought it was hereditary.

  The Shirelles, now there’s

  some memories that never quit

  changing, big women and still

  growing. We made ourselves

  in the images of images and

  then got rid of it before we

  came. Coming isn’t the game

  it once was. And neither is

  going.

  ***

  I only wanted to go far, be a star,

  understand the way you all are.

  Love, money, friends, family,

  a stimulating environment, some good books,

  records, art, photographs, furniture,

  place to sleep and eat and work,

  make love and shower, shit and entertain in,

  maybe a good car,

  some free time,

  your name in the paper now and then,

  or in a magazine,

  or on TV,

  your image too,

  or in a movie, on a record, in a book,

  or on the cover,

  in the titles,

  on the lips of strangers,

  in the minds of a worldwide audience . . .

  So you move to El Lay

  to make money and become a star.

  So you lived in New York City

  to make art and smart sexy friends.

  Which wasn’t enough.

  So you move to El Lay where

  she has almost transparently blue eyes,

  so intense they give the impression

  that there has never been a person

  they haven’t seen through.

  She has to be over fifty,

  perhaps well over, like in her sixties.

  It’s so hard to tell these days;

  or was it always?

  Her eyes communicate such strength

  when you look into her still beautiful face

  you feel beyond time.

  Her body gives it away a little.

  Small, but not delicate,

  there’s something obviously

  deteriorated about it

  that seems in such contrast to her face,

  unlike those strenuously physical

  geriatric exercisers whose bodies

  always seem to be made up of knots

  and wires and strings and really ugly

  imitations of some impossible youth.

  Anyway,

  I love her.

  I fell in love with her the first time I

  looked into her eyes. I can’t resist a

  woman who sees right through me and

  is beautiful too. She’s the real thing,

  a total woman, smart, beautiful, and

  old enough to be my lover, I mean mother,

  maybe. Maybe not.

  I’m not that young myself anymore, just

  having walked through the door marked forty.

  The best thing about which was

  suddenly realizing why old guys can find old gals

  sexy. When I was a kid I could never understand

  the obvious attraction

  my middleaged aunts could still retain for

  my middleaged uncles and vice versa.

  Now I know. There’s a girlish glow

  to most grown women that never disappears,

  and if you went through the same or close-by years

  with them, you can’t help but see it,

  and it makes you feel some kind of sympathy and

  understanding for them, and then

  on top of it they have this look

  of having been through some things,

  around the block as many times as you,

  and that creates some crazy sexy feelings too.

  It’s all so new,

  being old,

  I mean older than I thought I’d ever live to be

  and still be me.

  These are some thoughts that moving from New York

  to El Lay has provoked. There’s so much space here

  to panic in. The idea of “image” was crucified here

  for everyone’s sins and then resurrected to be

  worshipped for as long as this place lasts

  and influences the rest of the world.

  Hollywood, one of the greatest sources of power

  the world has known, and no real throne, no armies

  or obvious superiority except occasionally

  in technical, even artistic, ways.

  But oh these fucking days of driving from

  one crazy studio lot to another and feeling

  as much at home as I ever did

  in the apartments of my peers through all the years

  of poetic ecstasy and self-destruction.

  What other homes have we ever had, let’s face it,

  then Hollywood, the New York of bebop & jazz

  & street scenes & energy highs (& its flip side:

  galleries & Frank O’Hara, off & off-off and then

  on Broadway again) or “on the road” or on TV

  or radio or stereo or juke box.

  Let’s face it Charlie,

  we coulda been real home lovers

  instead of dream chasers which is what we are.

  Only worse than the Romantics of old,

  we can get real cold

  and see right through that bullshit

  as we watch the technology unfold

  into a future of dreams & nightmares we never

  forgot.

  SIX YEARS IN ANOTHER TOWN

&nb
sp; And I can’t believe all that’s gone down—

  I’m talking to the trees again

  and I haven’t done that since

  God knows when—because I guess

  it’s Him, or Her, or It I’m talking to

  when I look up at a tree and say

  you got any advice for me today?—

  and they always respond the same way

  Frank O’Hara did, when he appeared to me

  in the back of a checkered cab

  on my way back from cheating

  on the then woman in my life

  a Costa Rican beauty I still miss

  as I miss you all, even if I don’t

  call you too often—or at all—

  I was high—on boo and other stuff—

  we’d met at a literary awards event

  where John Ashbery, O’Hara’s close friend

  had just received the nation’s highest

  poetic honor—or close enough—

  and then we all piled into this bus

  that took us back to the Plaza Hotel,

  where Eloise once romped when I was

  just her age only now it was me

  thinking about this Canadian Jewish

  beauty, famous for her literary liaisons

  and how it would feel to be inside her

  and know her famous beau, who was a rich

  kid still at fifty, wouldn’t know,

  but I would the next time he looked

  down his nose at me and my much

  tougher poetry, the way I saw it—

  anyway, I was full of guilt by now—

  having been inside her and her home

  and done the jitterbug of life and

  then got up to leave and though I

  had never deceived her, had told

  her of my life with Ana and my son

  from a still undivorced ex-wife—

  she got mad and threw books at me

  calling me “you bastard you son of

  a bitch” as I fled down the stairs

  and out into the New York night and

  the checker cab that sped downtown

  with me mumbling in the back seat

  about my guilt although I’d never

  cheated on Ana before and wouldn’t

  again and she’d never know—and

  when we broke up it was because she

  couldn’t stay away from some younger

  version of myself who gave her the

  baby and marriage she wanted and

  followed her home to Costa Rica

  and some position in her family’s

  mini-empire—but this night we

  were still alright except for my

  feelings of being a rat to everyone

  concerned because I never seemed to

  learn that the possibility of making

  love was not an imperative—I

  felt so bad I thought I was dying—

  from the dope and loss of hope that

  I would ever be the man I thought

  I was—when all of a sudden there

  beside me in the cab was Frank O’Hara

  in white shirt, open at the collar,

  sleeves rolled up, and khaki pants

  and penny loafers—he put an arm

  around my shoulder and in the voice

  I’d only heard on tapes and records

  told me it was alright, that if I

  hadn’t done what I’d done that night

  I wouldn’t be me—the Michael

  my friends seemed to love and even

  admire—and that I wasn’t gonna

  die—or even have to lie—because

  nobody would know—and I was so

  relieved I cried a little—something

  I only do when watching TV or a movie

  and when I got home Ana didn’t seem

  to notice anything, only Miles, my

  little five-year-old locked eyes

  with mine and asked “What’s wrong?”

  and when I told him nothing, he

  kept looking to see if I was telling

  the truth, so I added “I’m just

  glad to be home” which he accepted

  as true, because it was—

  Wait a minute, that was so many years ago,

  what does it have to do with being here

  in Southern California with you, writing

  about “six years in another town” for

  the new friends I have now, who never

  knew me when I jitterbugged through

  life’s opportunities, cutting a rug,

  giving everyone a hug of true affection

  because I knew, or thought I knew back

  then that every person was a friend

  because inside they wanted just what

  I did, to be free to really dig what

  life has given us, including each other—

  Even the woman I moved here with in 1982,

  even the files they keep on me and you

  to see if we might get in the way of

  Bush or J. Danforth Quayle or whoever

  else the powers that be get to run the

  show up front while they continue to

  milk us all for what they need to keep

  that power to themselves, and if that

  sounds like another decade, well, it’s

  almost 1989, time for this one to end

  and leave us, my friends, as Dukakis

  always calls complete strangers—and

  leave us with only memories of what

  someone has accurately called “The Mean

  Decade”—and enter the time of

  saving ourselves and each other again—

  it’s the earth and the universe too

  now—what an awesome responsibility—

  and how we continue to fuck it up—but

  hey, we’re only human, doing our best

  to muddle through until tomorrow when

  somebody else gets the job we thought

  we wanted—I remember after Ted Berrigan

  died, who also knew Frank when he was

  alive, like I didn’t—two Irish-American

  poets like me, haunted by Catholic guilt

  and dreams of sainthood and sex—or

  sexhood and saint—I always think of

  O’Hara as Saint Frank—and Ted, the

  last time I saw him was in heaven—

  I guess it was a dream—but there he

  was, newly arrived—looking better than

  he ever did when he was alive, trim and

  healthy and clean and sharp and totally

  quiet—a big surprise for a man who

  lived on speed and machine-gunned his

  every thought into the faces and minds

  of anyone who crossed his path and even

  those who didn’t—he didn’t say a

  word, and I walked over to him and sat

  down beside him to tell him how good

  he looked and how happy I was to see

  him because I was, he was my friend,

  who helped me out when I needed help—

  he knew the same codes I did and lived

  his life that way so he could say, when

  he loaned me a few hundred bucks he didn’t

  really have and I promised to pay it back

  right away—“Hey, Michael, it would be

  an insult for you to give this back man,

  it’s a gift, it’s nothing compared to

  all the pleasure your poetry has given

  me” and I could say, when I did the same

  for him when he was down and out like me,

  which we both were most of the time back

  then, I could tell him “vice versa only

  double”—he was my friend—and now

  here he was, in heaven, and not saying a

  word until he smiled at
me, as handsome

  as I ever saw him, when I asked how he

  was doing (dead and in heaven) and he

  said “Michael, you don’t know how great

  it is not to have to talk anymore” and

  it hit me, that must be heaven to a

  guy like him, who never shut up and only

  because he was so generous and smart and

  had such a huge heart did we all put up

  with the din when he let us in when we

  went to pay him a visit—

  Wait a minute! What has all this

  got to do with living in L.A.?

  Well, Ted passed away after I moved

  here, and it pissed me off so much

  I got in touch with my own need to

  pass up speed and all the rest and

  try to be the best I could be for

  whatever time I had left—including

  letting go of sex as the answer to

  my disappointments in life—but

  hey, it isn’t always used that way—

  sometimes it’s just the most exciting

  and convenient and fastest way to say

  we’re still alive today and glad of it—

  Hey, you all say, wait a minute, he

  calls this stuff poetry? I can do

  that—which makes me feel real good

  because the code of this boy’s art

  is the normal heart no matter how

  surreal the circumstances—what

  I mean is, the scene I dug the most,

  came up through, and once was host to,

  made it clear that if you’re smart

  you don’t have to keep on proving it

  in the work so that the person on

  the receiving end goes: wow, I could

  never do that, it’s so difficult

  and clever and precious and like a

  machine I wasn’t trained to run—

  but we say, fuck that look-at-me-

  I’m-educated-up-the-ass bullshit—

  we say the work has got to be fun

  even while it’s taking on the Huns

  of our existence, the bad guys in

  the house of lies who disguise it

  all as in our best interest—

  these guys hypnotize with banality

  as mean as genocide—while they

  hide their true intent behind the

  sense of expertise and techniques

  we can only compromise—forget it—

  art that makes you go, hey, I can

  do that too is what moves me to see

  life through to the end and still

  be friends with myself—forget

  the “off the shelf” operations that

  the experts think we’re better off

  not knowing about—NO WAY! we

  gotta shout our way back into history

  because it’s ours, just like these

  six years here were mine—a time

  when I got clean and sober unlike

  any film by that name, but not so

 

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