Beerspit Night and Cursing (14 page)

from

yew Love Baby

Sheri

note/ I mean the flies on the sea storm debris & one thought of North Beach & how the lice there hop on any of us who get blown in by a storm…
Bomkoff
& me when I’d go over in a lonely fit/ but it was not the beach/ only back water/ still those flies/ listen Buk—there is a natural ‘room’ outside made by the grove of trees & I just made an altar out there by some weird set of perfect circumstances that one led to another…it has a rug & an altar & My Ladye & will take foto for you…in 1954 Ezra prayed for an “altar in the grove” for me & I just today received it…it is most important to have faith because otherwise you’d never know what it was when it did arrive and I didn’t mind at all being blown away from Ezra’s beautiful Life into the back waters…I needed to
KNOW
more about Life that I’d not have known safely with him—the wilde storm took me away & led me to my Altar in the Grove…we have all heard a strange melodic whistle out here…Gib, Ernie & myself…I heard it about 3 a.m. one night it woke me up…not a bird sound…too human & Ernie heard it & Gib & we all flashthought the samethought…Pan…Pan’s here & he will visit my altar…I know it…I just put Narcissis & orange vine flowers & pine branches & spruce…for him/ he will come…I have a sort of bed-chair there & that persian rug…he will come to my grove’s altar…& we shall have a painting of the Great God Pan…and if it’s suspiciously like Ernie…ah/ what’s that but a manifestation of the strange ways the Gods work…aaaaaaaah??? but we shall have it…no one has seen him now these thousand ages…my Pan my beautiful God Goat…

3 carburators & no brains just pulled out with my number one husband tearing light-speed down the highway to test their job…man what a generation they are these 16yrolds…they did not produce thinking men but thinking machines…that car had the intelligence…the 16 yr old is just a collection of wornout
negro slang…oye…our future…buk for xt’s sake don’t split & leave
ME
here…to face growing old with that as ‘gootttt government’ even
Barny Baruch
will despair…

oh my altar the gods gave me…Buk I will see the Lady there & entertain the Great God Pan…we hear his music & very early sat a.m. pre-dawn I went out to wet myself in the mistair & that melodic whistle went right past my ears with no earthly body to it of any sort I fled wildly laughing but fear-fulled panic stricken nymph…Pan is returned—the Great God pan returns…
ANY
thing may happen now…and back to this dream of life…

Love

Sheri

Middle of Dec. [12] 1960

Yes, Sheri: got your letta and cards…
hoy!
which I am duly stashing and filing in my own future groan box for this thing eternity, which I am leery ooov…eternity being a
WORD
, a working-word put on the table to explain away heavy measurements. Put a mouse in a box and he will not think
ETERNITY
, he will think: sides of box, sides of box, I must get the hell out. I am mouse-thoughts rather than people-thoughts, yas, so they do not trap me out in the purple clouds looking for golden rain.

There is not a lot of drama or future looking down at the end of your fingernails and that is why I am
MAEOMAD
, mad.

Your cards will have Buk rereading Gramps while cracking his beer. Yes, I just opened one—and your side went
SISSSK
! ’n my side went
BRRACK
!, which shows u the female ear hears one thing and the male another.

Rec. letta today from
Literary Artpress
—Eastern Washington College of Education—saying they are taking a poem of mine called
Anthony
, which as usual, I don’t remember writing.
Suppose I was thinking Cleopatra in terms of modernity 1960…Some poems I remember writing and some I don’t and I think the ones I don’t—they are the best. I guess it’s because the mouse-thoughts are not then at work.

Mystery-wise, I guess I mean like edge-wise, as edge as u can get, the thing slanting at you in green sunshine.

I do not like to see the dead birds and seals; I know it is all necsry and they do not grieve, just the drunken man walking the sand standing against the forces, music and chills running wild…one man, and the sun is armies and the bones of the dead knit the earth like crabgrass…ah
shit!
, and I am awakened today by 2 old gals in the hall, high-dead voices:
YES, IT GOES ON WHEN YOU TURN IT THIS WAY AND IT GOES OFF WHEN YOU TURN IT THIS WAY, SEE…HERE! LET ME SHOW YOU! NOW WATCH! WHEN YOU TURN IT THIS WAY
…

on and on and one keeps thinking: the same thing, how fk can they keep on with the same thing…15, 20 minutes…but they do, yes…
NOW SEE, DID YOU SEE IT? CAN YOU TURN IT? TRY IT. NOW TURN IT
.

I got up and threw some clothes on and came out the door with a three day beard. I had only slept about 5 hours in 4 days.

They were turning a dusty old floor lamp. Out in the hall.

“How you doin’, kid?” one of them asked me.

“Oh great,” I said. “Just great.”

…You’ve had some visions. I’ve had two, both of which scared me. Tell you some time. Right now left thumb cut, makes it hard to type.

Aye, then Gib lived through your excrements!

Ginsburg. Well, I could never get through reading
Howl
. I hadda give up early. But then, I have these troubles. I could never get through
War and Peace
. Or the lesser novels of our times:
The Naked and the Dead
, or such very badly written books as
From Here to Eternity
. And James was the
OTHER
way…he wrote so
well
, I couldn’t bear him.

I figured u wouldn’t like my titles because I know your mind. But u evidently don’t know mine yet…when I say whore, gambler and imbecile the terms are endearment, and when I say I want to give them trinkets, those are my poems. I cannot say what my poems are (pomes?) like
Triple Carburater
what, so I say where to send them and what to do with them, and say a title like
Rockdrill
is very strong but I do not feel so very strong
when they turn and babble about the lamp in the halls.

There is no them. There is no future. My bones will sleep in the mud. Yet I understand what you are trying to say and I enjoy your saying it. It does me good. I respect your flow. You are a good one, Sheri, and you may yet get us out of the mud. But I’ve seen so many dead on the altars and the sun is coming down on the bone face and they do not feel the sun and they do not feel me, just as if you died, Shed, your voice would stop, and maybe you’ve left me some pieces of paper and I’ve eaten a can of cookies made by your hands, but don’t you see…that makes me angry:
THE CAT
^*
KILL
bird, and yet it is childish to want to go on; I do not even want to go on; life barely interests me; I guess the death thing I need, and we’ve got to face it. I am a stone face upon a stone altar, and the larvae and the grub are hunting lovers from
Tristan
to an indication of lightning.

Don’t know if Payne is a bugger. Know he works from the outside in, and when you work from the
OUTSIDE
in, so hard, you are only trying to establish a beginning so you can work from the inside out, yet keeping the inside. Yet Payne senses strength, he can smell it out like a bloodhound and track it down, and yet when he gets hold of it…somehow it doesn’t affect him, it doesn’t
build
him, and he’s off again…with another bloodhound…trying to catch another fox.

You absorb and grow. You even absorb me, first carefully sifting out what you consider the poisons.

I can’t imagine printing sacred poetry by selling one’s ass. But Jory brought over one one night, who yes—that was exactly it. Long golden hair, talking like Oscar Wilde. Oye. And I just sat there and grunted. old man Buk.

Shed, you have 3 husbands. I am your spirit-husband and I am not jealous. That is what bothered Fry.

Speed makes the modern man more manly. It is the dragon of the times. Even I, Buk, have had my auto insurance canceled, and above-mentioned Fry once said, “As a poet, you’d make a good race driver.” And she didn’t mean this thing in New Orleans.

Heard from Jory couple of weeks back. Things are bad with him, but wives and babies meant he wanted too MUCH at once.

Glad Pan is back, sure. But…yes, I hear him on my radio now: the mosquito dance. Can you imagine the m’s dancing to Pan’s pipes, buggering each other?

Tell your 2 husbands to get drunk together and then they will either love you equally afterwards or kill each other. Hoy! I’m going.

lov,

Buk

15/dec/60 7/35 a.m. thurs./ s.m. lee pobx 46 san gregorio calif

buk/ am using old type[writer]/ excuse got no time to set up new one just for one letter but must tell you…last night as it began to rain & was delightful I walked down the path to the sacred enclosure…out in the
Larches of Paradise
…but they are really firs of some kind…I was chanting to the great fields full of high bush…“Pan get yr goat’s ass in out of this rain…take refuge in my
temenos
Pan…take refuge in the temple tonite…” & as the dark was on us…I get a bit hincty as
Stanley Gould
calls it & don’t like being out in the gloaming…so in I went…& about dawn this day with Gib warmin’ up the olds convertible…I went down the path to my temple & I was singing…“I am going to the Temple where the Great God Pan took refuge last night” and I knew there wd be a ‘sign’ but I didn’t really know—and I froze in the ‘doorway’ where Tree hath a long green finger which touches me…as I enter…on the forehead & dew is my holy water…my altar is an old kitchen table with a chinese covering on it of black & orange silk with tassles with gold/orange beads & silk dangling from each corner & on it is a bottle of flowers & little egyptian seals one made in clay from Gib’s Pharaoh ring with a seal saying “The Sun knows I speak
the truth” or somesuch…& an olifant that I haven’t sent to
Mr. Lowercase
yet & my bottle of distill’d sea water & some home made candles in old artichoke heart jars…now filled with wax & a jar that formerly held some scotch lime jelly now holding some of the vine flowers & narcisses & pine & spruce branches…the altar had been moved—it had been up against the thick tree trunk & now was moved & the flowers knocked over & the candles knocked over…one candle is the red altar catholic kind…It cdn’t be the wind…because I have some chinese & some indian beads of many colours hanging from slender tree branchlets & any wind that wd be able to move the altar wd have blown off the beads…& I have a wee ivory
quan yin
about one inch long snug’d in the fork of the tree over the altar as Quan Yin is one of the many names of my Goddess.

Pan moved my altar—nothing was missing or broken…it was if a large goat or animal or man had climbed up the cliff & entered from beneath that branch which makes a ‘wall’ on the cliff side & moved the altar by his weight…I was mad & called Gib to see it & I told Pan wherever he is…“you did
NOT
have to be such a goat damm it…” and Gib just left…a while back when I started this…& as soon as he was gone down the highway…I hear that sweet seductive melodic note of music…sometimes it is 2 or 3 notes but today…this morning I heard it 3 times…one note each time…coaxing luring & plaintive & rather like a musical apology…of course a deer cd have moved it or a wild cat seeking shelter…from the rain…but only Pan can make those musical sounds that are sweet to the ear as prim roses to the eye or that tea of honey hot water & peppermint leaves or drops…is the taste buds…It is so sweet when heard that one feels the belly satisfied…as in eating but to tell the truth man I don’t wanna SEE him/ iz enough to hear him & know he is on the premises/

I got so sick of them bleeding heart white apologists saying “white” soupremecy that I finally wrote a letter to der hediterrr & told him that one is NOT “white” one
IS WHITE
& not about to feel any guilt for it/ the chap had said that we “white” soupremecists always feel soupreme because of something
another white had done…& had no accomplishments of our own…like an ostrich looking at an eagle & saying “we birds sure can fly” so one said that it was not of the real world…not natural; moral; or ethical to make it legal to banish the song of the nightingale because the crows caw & hawk/ and one said a bit more…I am bored with it/
MOCKING MY OWN SKIN OR MY MAW OR PAW OR MY TRADITIONS & MY CULTURE OR MY RACE…DEGRADING MY RACE OR MY SEX OR COLOUR OR GOD AINT GONNA ELEVATE THE NIGGERS OR US EITHER
…I told the editor to advise his niggers to read
frobanius
…

my good white men are driven into drink from the sheer lack of adventure & boredom of a land run by the product of the race sewer/ I know from living intimately with almost each race in the world…One has husbands all over the world’s races…and no freedom of any sort was possible until I let my temper out…& they got to love my wildness & if one said: “my what a noble cat” my chinese father in law made my life miserable that day for using a tabu word…when we are all alike…now he loves me & I can talk straight but it took 6 years/ I am not going to feel prejudiced or guilty—I am not going to allow any man to mock me…I am making my old age secure/ these animals if allowed to mock now…will be after my life when I’d be too old to fight back

so my dear Buk you may expect yr friend to be scandalised as Our Invisible Mawsters aint gonna like a slave behaving like a royal person…I have defended all my husbands of each nationality/religion/colour & race of this world…now I shall defend my self/ my husbands all being cowards who fear the censure of any other male/ I am now no longer “white” I am
WHITE
goddamit this snivilin sniveling over colour sickening…like a male with his dick out moaning “oh mine is too little…what’ll I do…so you cut some of yrs off…willya like a good brother?” or chicks without tits a-moan…it is unnatural not to hate wot you get born until finally you learn to love it…