creased I thought what’s worse, to see
me back down or drop dead on the spot?
So I stopped arguing and stepped back.
The man, almost spitting by now let his
wife pull him away, and as they backed
down the street he kept yelling for every-
one to hear that I was racist scum and so
on, me wanting, and maybe even trying
to yell back that I walked these streets
fifty years ago with my black love and
got beat up and spit on and run out of
town for it and now smiled every time I
saw a racially mixed couple stroll by as
though without a care because now they
could in this town, and I felt I’d been
a part of what caused that change but
now was being blamed for the opposite.
STRING THEORY
I wasn’t good at a lot of it—
but there were things—
strings connecting me to
music—jazz & r&b mostly—
I could play piano—I had a feel—
soul some said—(like poet
Ralph Dickey who had more
keyboard technique but lacked a
certain swinging intuitive
rhythm)—and words—mine—
not maybe most original—
but originally mine in ways
that favored reverence for
a truth I never found any-
where else—and movies—
or those serial movies that
are TV—in my time I
made a contribution—whether
anyone noticed or not—
I tried to step back, like
Lao Tsu says, but found it
complicated—more complicated
than I knew how—simplicity
being my mission—my love
for the boy I couldn’t protect
in me back then but vowed
to stay connected to—do you
hear those one-syllable words?—
they’re the ones that trip me
up since they removed that
foreign object from my brain
that explains my poetry now—
though it always did—
from SO AND
jasmine—Tunisia
—how evocative
like ’40s films
black & white
yet fragrant &
bursting with life—
vital in a way
that’s filled with
the more subtle
colors light
and shadow
provide through
skills no longer
needed or applied
—extent—is that
what I meant?
[ . . . ]
I know I haven’t done
enough—oh sure I’ve
stood by my core beliefs,
thank God, most of the time,
haven’t you? and often
paid the price for telling
the truth, even if it was
inconvenient or impolitic
at times, or made myself
look not so good—even
genuine heroics I’ve had
my part in, as I’m sure
we all have at least once
more or less—but I confess
I didn’t fly to Liberty
Square in Cairo to take
my place among the heroes
of this season, like I hitched
to places all across this
nation in the ‘sixties &
beyond to stand up for
the truth of our common
humanity in the face of
racism and war—more
bullying confronted and
sometimes the victim of
—love, I thought then
was the answer—as so
many of us did and I
still do—not just like
anyone who wakes up
in an operating room or
just before they go in
feels all that matters is
their loved ones—but
too the love of all our
commonality even when
wired differently so that
simplified slogans can
sway one wiring this way,
the other that, to see the
spirit of love in all things
not just creatures like us
and those apes over there
staring into our eyes
with a look that is so
tired of the lies about
our differences, their
“inferiority” they
know intuitively isn’t
real beyond the deal we’ve
made to behave like it is—
I still talk to rocks, let alone
trees, and they always talk back,
mountains and clouds and
meadows and shadows
and the glories winged
cousins bring to any view—
the choice we always
have to get as close as
we ever will to the truth
in the heart of all things,
even the despicable bullies
holding Weiwei hostage
as we meet here tonight
to celebrate our love of
all creative attempts
to fulfill our humanity . . .
I wanted to write
a special poem for
this night like I
sometimes have before
to tell what I know
as well as I know
my heart’s scars
but my brain’s scarred
now too and it doesn’t
work as well as it once
did, nor do the connections
between my thoughts
and the fingers typing this
(I know I should move to
voice activated programs
so I don’t have to go through
the hassle of retyping
and retyping and retyping
until the word I meant
to write is finally on the
screen—but I’ve been
using my fingers to
express myself in so
many ways, on the
keys of the old portable
typewrites of my tough
(I meant to write “type-
writers” of my “youth”
and would normally
make the correction
but both words make sense
for that period of my life:
“typewrites” and “tough”)
and electric typewriters
of my thirties and early
forties and computer key-
boards ever since, or
the keys of pianos, upright,
grand, electric and acoustic,
or organs or Rolands or
Rhodes or whatever was
available, but I can no
longer do with the same
facility I once had—I know
a lot of folks have the same
problems who didn’t have
brain surgery—but the way
it happened for me was sudden—
before the growth affected me
I typed and played piano as
fast and as accurately as always
—and then one day I didn’t
anymore, and that’s still the
way it is tonight—I can never
get it right the first time, but
have to try and try again until
I do, like a child just learning,
again, but now who understands
so much he never did before
because too much came too easily,
and what didn’t I usually ignored—
but t
hat door—the “easily”—is
closed, if I want to enjoy the
pleasures writing and playing
piano always gifted me—
I know musicians much younger
whose injured wrists or elbows or
arms or vocal chords or other
physical restraints have caused
them to face the same crisis of
inability, I’m not comparing
myself or complaining, even
if it may sound that way to
you, I’m explaining because
that’s what I do, I say “this
is the way I’m experiencing the
truth of my life right now and
what I see around me, and you?”
the bright bursts of yellow
announce a spring still
struggling to arrive—forsythia
and daffodils followed by
the eye-opening white blossoms
of the dogwood tree in our yard
or neon pinks of the cherry
blossoms in the nearby park—
the more exotic blossoms on
the screen or page when I
try to write, here’s some
uncorrected typing:
and oc cour se it’s allsi
fucking meningliess oh
what thrtwa thy asportiaons
ame upont this whatever
yes, we all noticed how
the force of “fucking”
somehow survived intact—
but that’s not all
that’s moved on
[ . . . ]
what happened
was I went
but I came back
I did it but
then I stopped
I knew but
then I forgot
I was but
now I’m not
now it’s old news
the blues I play
never come out
right ‘cause
that connection
between the keys and
fingers and brain
ain’t, like I said,
the same anymore,
but when a door closes
for now or ever as always
a window opens and
new synapses replace
the old flashes with
bold distinctions—
like how I always found
Meryl Streep and Anette Beining
unattractive, no matter how much
I admired their talent, or
Mitzi Gaynor’s girl-next-door looks
so abrasive—
I liked the darker
beauties and
their darker arts—
then they removed
that part of my brain that
wasn’t supposed to be there
and where once having been
born in the Swing Era
made it always about
rhythm & tone, now those
old ideas were gone and
whenever Meryl or Annette
or Mitzi’s image shines
from old movies on TV
I feel actual glee at
their presence in my
living room, overflowing
with desires I never knew
I had because I hadn’t
until now & this rewiring—
the Meryl-Annette-Mitzi-
attraction and affection
connection—so that when
they aren’t beaming from
the small screen I swear
I feel no attraction or
affection for them at all
but when they are—the
mysteries of what I always
believed was me
but now know as merely
electric impulses in
the thought battery
that’s the hybrid
of my brain . . .
the smell of
rain here—
or the way
here smells
when it rains
don’t fight
the goodness
in you or
anyone else—
Hubert Selby Jr.
taught me that
you know how
long it took me
to type
and retype
and retype and re-
type until all
the words were
actually the
ones I intended?
of course a lot
of what comes out
is more “poetic”
in some sense—
like “tough” for “youth”
or “angels” for “angles”
and “tripe” for “type”
“sea age” for “message”
“meadow” for “Meryl”
and line break for
apostrophe and
frustration for
accuracy and bottomless
self-pity for stamina and
perseverance—timidity
was never an option
although it ruled
so much of what
appeared as bravado
—am I making sense
and why do I feel I
should—do I repeat
myself and in so less
exiting ways than
Weiwei does—man
I admire that guy,
his presence even
just in photographs,
and then in films,
you can see his spirit
and its generosity and
acceptance of what is,
then using it for what
can be—
I’ve never been
humble enough—
I wasn’t tough
or noble or good
enough to shine
at sports—but
I was smarter
about most
stuff than anyone
I grew up around—
and I had a pro-
found respect
for originality,
of which I thought
I had my share—
when it didn’t
seem to get me
where I thought
I should be—I
made it known
in ways that put
the onus on you
for not doing
enough to bring
justice to my
cause—my due—
my getting through
the obstacles I
knew were there—
where others
seemed spared
from the reper-
cussions I drew
fire from—come,
let’s kiss and
make up, like
Nina Simone
always wanted
then refused
to do—original?
she was—as is
Ai Weiwei
who surprisingly
looks up to
Andy Warhol
who risked so
little, although
maybe not—
he got shot
by a woman I
knew, that’s right,
Valerie Salinas,
when she got out of
the hospital for the
criminally insane
someone dropped her
on the steps of my
“commune” as we
called them in those
days—the women who
till then had been big
admirers became afraid
once she moved in—
they feared her constant
pacing and muttering and
rage at those she thought
had taken advantage of
her—like the time I came
home to find the upstairs
toilet plugged because
she’d ripped up the house
copy of her S.C.U.M.
Manifesto and tried to
flush it—then left it,
as they all did, for me
to plunge until the
pages all came out
and the toilet worked
again and my kids could
use it and when I went
away for a reading in
Boston with some friends—
Ed Cox, Tim Dlugos,
Terence Winch—the
women in this radical
lesbian-feminist “commune”
—don’t ask—told Valerie
I didn’t want her there
so she moved out and
when I got back and they
told me I was dismayed—
I got along fine with her
and kind of enjoyed the
way she made all visitors
so nervous with her smoke
filled pacing and muttering
in our communal living room—
I liked a lot of her ideas too—
she was the first person I knew
to explain the differences between
men and women by the nerve
endings in their genitals and
taste buds on their tongues
and olfactory absorbers in
their sense of smell, and color
recognition facets of their eyes—
men are simpler, she’d explain,
they have so much less of all
of that they just miss a lot—
it was one of the reasons she
said she didn’t mind having sex
with them for money (she
became a hooker for a living
after she left the house we all
rented and I moved out of not
long after this) because they
were so easy to satisfy, so
simpleminded and biologically
formed, but she only loved
women and preferred their
bodies and complexities,
though she found the ones
in our supposedly revolutionary
commune chickenshit—
you don’t know
what you’re missing,
people I love
get ignored or
forgotten, poets
artists, actors
musicians
I don’t always
know what I’m
missing
the trees always
talk back—
Valerie thought the solution
was electricity, to somehow
make men more sensitive,
like the women she loved,
they needed to be wired
with more electricity—
I understood in those first few months
after the operation, when I couldn’t
read and then only out loud and then
finally could, well enough to pass—
what it felt like to be a child with
learning disabilities or an adult with
rightwing simplicities or—and this
was maybe the most difficult to
accept—blissfully contented with
only the capacity to eat and drink
and hold conversations with one
person at a time, sublime satisfaction
sometimes I’m still overwhelmed
by too much stimuli, a crowd, a TV
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