Another Way to Play

by Michael Lally

  different I couldn’t recognize the

  games we all play with denial in

  those phony smiles Keaton threw around

  playing the clown for death instead

  of life where we all live whether we

  like it or not—hey, wait a minute!

  I wanted to tell you about my first

  Oscar party at Spago—where I

  threw some tuxedoed guy against

  the wall when he tried to tell me I

  couldn’t cut in front of him on the line

  to the mens room—I thought I blew

  my whole career as a star when I’d

  realized what I’d done—but later

  he told my then wife that it was

  the most exciting thing that had

  happened to him all year—

  I thought, wow, I’m glad I’m here

  where coked up craziness gets

  rewarded—only really I was full

  of fear when I moved here a few

  weeks later in ’82 and met a lot of you,

  fear I’d never be able to expose

  myself as honestly as I had to friends

  that went back so much further—

  fear that I wasn’t good enough

  because I didn’t have the money—

  was like the honey the health nuts

  pretend is better for you than all

  that sugar we consumed when we were

  kids—wait, I really want to stay

  on track and get back to the art

  I came out here to practice—and

  did—that’s what’s gone down

  in these six years too—I did get

  to see myself on TV in a way I used

  to dream I would—and even when it

  wasn’t very good—or I wasn’t—

  hey—goddamnit it was fun!—after

  all it isn’t like the war on AIDS or

  the creeps who think this government

  the creeps who think this government

  is theirs to run is gonna be lost or

  won by what I do as a bad guy on a

  nighttime soap—no, what it’s gonna

  do is give hope to the people I came

  up with who think, or thought, that

  guys like us didn’t get this far and

  if we did we were stars then and forgot

  what it was like to not take any of it

  too seriously—oh six years in another

  town without the renown I thought would

  be mine has left me so much more humble

  which is something I guess I need

  to be—but it has also left me

  with all of you—and the chance to

  make a new dance beyond the jitterbug

  I flew through the bedrooms and back

  seats and closets of my past with—

  I mean hey, in ’86 the dirty tricks

  of Nixon were dismissed and suddenly

  he’s an “elder statesman” and if that

  doesn’t make us wake up and laugh

  out loud at all those who would make

  us proud of our worst qualities what

  will? We still got some time left—

  for some of us to get tough with the

  stuff of life that turns us on and hold

  a light to it for the rest of us to get some—

  I mean I gave a reading where I read

  for the first time only work written

  here in this town, and it not only

  went okay, an old old friend did

  say—“Now that’s a real poetry

  reading”—and I thought they all

  were—and they were—only now—

  it’s not to stir your juices only

  and have you remember me as the star

  of poetry that sounds the way we

  sometimes think and talk and share

  what we’re afraid others might find

  trite or at least not as mighty as

  the real art stuff—no—I meant

  to share a vision that has driven me

  since my first memory—of a world

  where love is not just an advertiser’s

  cliché but a way of life that isn’t

  serious like lying, but hopeful and

  funny and important and honest and

  significant and something that effects

  all of us, the entire community, the

  community of the universe, like dying

  does—okay, that’s not heavy, just

  take a second look, what I’m saying is

  there is no book of love without death

  and there is no death without love—

  unless it’s a death that is lying—

  and I know that truth is something

  so illusive we can never really reach

  it, but hey, we can approach it if

  we try, and there’s nothing saying we

  can’t dance as we do, and even dance

  til we die, even if our dance is only

  in the eye of those who love us—

  that’s what’s really gone down these

  six years, my heart, to the depths of

  despair and fear and regret and sorrow

  only to rise again for the miracle of

  today that was only yesterday’s tomorrow.

  ON NOVEMBER SECOND NINETEEN NINETY THREE

  I spent four hours and more

  on a strip of the Pacific Coast Highway

  traveling between Rambla Vista and Sunset Boulevard

  which would normally take ten to fifteen minutes.

  It had been the brightest, clearest day

  of my eleven years so far living on the Santa Monica Bay.

  But it grew dark from clouds of smoke

  billowing up from the ridges lining the road

  and blowing over the backed up panicked

  and yet patient traffic and on out over the Pacific.

  We—my girlfriend and roommate Kristal and me—

  had driven to Malibu when we walked out of

  the laundromat on Montana Avenue and saw the

  piercing blue sky encroached upon by a thick and

  sinewy cloud of smoke that seemed to be coming

  from Santa Monica Canyon. But once there,

  where we drove, on Kristal’s instigation, we saw

  it was further up the coast and without any

  hesitation kept driving until we reached my

  daughter Caitlin’s street, which winds up from

  the coast and bends back down, and with

  her boyfriend Nels Brown she lived until that

  day on which the house, the apartment they

  shared was in, burnt down to the ground

  of the hillside from which she had been

  admiring the clarity of that day’s view in

  which the ocean met the sky in the kind

  of sharply drawn line we thought would

  always be there when I was a boy a continent

  and ocean away. I mean it was a perfectly

  clear day, the kind that once was normal

  and expected before smog and haze and all

  kinds of pollution and distortions of God’s

  beauty was accepted. My daughter didn’t want

  to leave at first. It was still early in

  the fire’s growth and no warnings had

  preceded ours. We talked about it for an hour.

  We even discussed what she might take were

  a disaster truly imminent, and joked about

  her dragging a foot locker full of things

  from her baby years and childhood I kept for her

  until she grew and moved away. But

  not that day. She didn’t want to make

  a fuss. Every item we’d discuss and I’d

  suggest might be best to take she’d get

  upset and insist
it would be too difficult

  to try and differentiate. “It would be like

  moving,” she said, and instead just finally

  took a couple of things, some photo albums,

  address and check books, a change of clothes

  for her and her boyfriend. She, and even

  Kristal, had made fun of my persistent

  insistence that we should go before we got

  stuck up there and PCH got closed down.

  But when we finally got her cat and

  few possessions that she took into her car

  and mine and drove down to the highway

  it was already a parking lot. And the

  wind had grown so strong and hot it

  seemed the fire was already in the air

  if not yet visible in flame and smoke

  where we were. But it soon was and

  thank God by then we had been creeping

  forward inch by inch, it seemed, enough

  to just stay forward of the smoke and

  rushing flames. At one point Kristal got

  out and took a walk and Caitlin opened

  her door and I did mine and she said:

  “Thanks—you’re a pain sometimes but

  thank you.” And I wanted to cry and

  go back and get that foot locker and

  her paintings and her boyfriend’s keyboards

  and music and all the rest. And I wish

  I had the power to make it all right.

  But I don’t—and never will. The rightness

  is in knowing that and going on with it

  still as though I didn’t know. I do.

  MY LIFE 2

  When I was 10,

  I thought I was “Irish,”

  even though I was

  born in the USA.

  When I was 20,

  I thought I was “Black,”

  even though my skin

  is pink & freckled,

  my hair is straight,

  and I have no

  African ancestry.

  When I was 30,

  I thought I was “queer,”

  even though I was

  married and had

  two children, and

  all my fantasies

  & obsessions & com-

  pulsions & attractions

  were and had always

  been about women.

  When I was 40,

  I thought I was a

  “movie star,” even

  though the movies

  were terrible, and

  I was terrible in

  them, and almost

  no one knew them,

  or who I might

  have been in them.

  When I was 50,

  I thought I was

  “enlightened,” even

  though I wasn’t.

  But of course I was

  and am—enlightened,

  as I was and still am

  —an Irish-Black-

  Queer-Movie-Star.

  IT TAKES ONE

  TO KNOW ONE

  (Black Sparrow Press 2001)

  WHAT?

  Who won? I feel like

  I’m almost there—what

  were we competing for?

  “the store” “the farm”

  the barn where it all

  began—the can of spice—

  the nice lips on her face—

  the place where we fell

  asleep at last in peace &

  woke up to the air we

  remembered that isn’t

  there anymore—the emp-

  eror has no lungs left—

  he’s only pretending to

  breathe—& as for us—

  who won—what?

  HEAVEN & HELL

  1. HELL

  Hell is

  no escape.

  And no acceptance.

  2. HEAVEN

  Ah, heaven.

  Heaven is

  more complicated.

  WHO ARE WE NOW

  We are too tired to figure this one out—

  We want someone else to do it for us—

  We want to be told what it’s all about

  and not have to pay any attention—

  We want to have sex with everyone we meet

  almost, but not risk death by having sex

  with anyone—We want a relationship

  that will last forever if only the one

  we’re in will come to an end so we can

  find the right one—again—We want

  to be poets and actors and songwriters

  and directors and politicians and saviors

  and gods—but while we’re waiting for

  all that to happen let’s just see how

  much fun we can make of all those other

  poets and actors and songwriters and

  directors and politicians and saviors

  and gods—We want it all but it’s

  just too much—We want each other but

  we feel like we’re being suffocated so

  we just want to be alone so we can spend

  all our time on the computer or phone

  with someone else who is also alone—

  We want our own homes if somebody else

  will clean them and care for them and

  maybe even pay the bills—We can take

  care of ourselves as long as we really don’t

  have to because then we’re so tired of

  doing just that we have to get a cat or

  a dog or several of each and birds and

  pigs and take up smoking the cigs again

  until we’re so crowded with plants and

  electronic devices we have to find some

  one to share all this bliss but none of

  them seem to know how to kiss anymore

  and we’re not so enlightened that we

  want to be bored with the lovers we’re

  prepared to change a few things for

  as long as their willing to change

  everything for us—not because we

  want to control them, we just want

  to make sure they really love us,

  because now we’re not so sure we

  really love them but it’s too much

  trouble and time and energy and risk

  to start this shit all over again with

  someone new—so we will be whoever

  they want us to for awhile until we

  can get them to be who we wish we

  really were back when we knew who

  we wanted to be by now—ourselves,

  only better.

  IS AS

  It’s time for beauty

  to make its return—

  not anorexic girls in

  post-heroin mode—not

  middle-class children of

  divorce pretending to be

  death until they are—

  not aging babies crying

  for their milk & honey—

  not “not”—any of it—

  just sit & wonder, awed—

  owed the comfort of an

  eye in sight of itself—

  this is a fact, beauty

  doesn’t ache, it reverberates

  inside our consciousness of

  bliss—I can’t believe I just

  said that—“Rip don’t!”—

  “Nardo—Nar—doe”—“Aghhh!”—

  What I mean here is De-

  liverance—from all that is

  so boringly appalling about

  fate—a turning on to all that

  is inspiringly appealing about

  hate for the nondescript of—

  make a list—your own—of

  what you’d want to hear on

  the phone—see in the mirror

  out the window of your car—

  another world—the one we’re

/>   in—kiss me—touch my hair—

  anywhere—show me the cover

  of a book that is as beautiful

  as we all once were—be.

  from HARDWORK

  [ . . . ]

  “Frank O’Hara is the

  Fred Astaire of American Poetry”

  whispers Bruce Andrews during

  That’s Entertainment, Part II

  I wanted to be the Frank Sinatra

  *

  I thought the Garden of Eden a

  metaphor for pubic hair—I meant

  the garden I wanted to give

  —I couldn’t help what it was

  there—at 34 I don’t think too much

  about death but it’s there as a

  comfort to the living—

  —despite the fun—and

  joy!—in the twist of the torso

  perfecting its fall—o my god how

  I thank you for all the bodies—

  the gardens—

  what’s there—

  [ . . . ]

  shit

  I could always predict

  but couldn’t make anything on it!

  lacked—still do—more so—

  a certain kind of “wit” I so admire

  and covet and am entertained by—

  the difference between Gene Kelly

  and Fred Astaire—

  Tom Raworth and Edmund White—

  I appreciate and hear them all

  the “decongealment” of the

  imaginative

  function

  the ideology of mass

  they call it “spreading it thin”

  two “it”s contradicting the mass

  in our home the communion of

  “art” in “the masses” of my father

  (now dead) saying “work, work, work”

  in my head and the rest in theirs

  the Clint Eastwoods of

  “competence”

  imagine the chance again—

  nice summer day—1958

  at the kitchen sink

  getting a drink of water—

  sun pouring in through the windows—

  two views and the air through

  the open “sashes” and the sound

  of the traffic—occasional and

  distant till a horn honks in

  front and you know it’s for you—

  something to do!

  (here too—August 1976 New York City—

  the sky is an historical blue

  through the windows and the air

  through the open “casements”—)

  shit—that chance—“gone”—

  and the wit to grasp it with it—

  October 24, 1951

  . . . Oh my goodness I almost

  forgot to tell you. Michael got a

  regular report card for the first time