Oahu’s red cardinals, Hawaii journal, 9/25/87

September 25,

Returning to Oahu was a time for watching the cardinals, those impossible northern birds of snow, hopping beneath the plumeria trees amid the scattered blossoms. Some with their gray bodies separated from the redheads by a white collar, so clerical.

I left for the tropics the week the pope visited San Francisco. Kathie and I walked along the beach dipping our legs into the aquamarine shade and we talked of possibilities and limitations.

A lone red cardinal hops at my feet in the midst of a sea of gray-frocked redheads. I try to imagine the sand as snow. These incongruous birds transplanted here because someone was homesick for dark Minnesota winters, and brought the birds here to the tropics where winter never comes.

Do they still have the urge to migrate? And where would they fly to, 5000 miles from shore? The Pope makes his journey up the California coast. My grandmother and aunt get as close as they can—the first time was when I was in Rome, my grandmother said. I have never been to Rome. If I were in California, I would probably protest his stand on AIDS, homosexuals, abortion, and the rights of women. This is where I stepped out of religion.

The Pope returns home and there is very little media coverage on his visit.

The plumerias on the crabgrass are browning at the edges under the tropical sun. It is near the equinox, the time of balance, when an egg will stand on its head for several minutes on end. One boy said his egg stood for 10 minutes before falling, but at 6:45 AM, I was asleep after a long night of fitfullness. And that small life inside making its presence known.

(abridged from a longer journal entry)

VOICE OF THE DEAD POET AT CITY HALL: FIRST SAN FRANCISCO ARTS COMMISSION FAIRE POETRY DAY IN HONOR OF BOB KAUFMAN

SF Arts Commission festival organizer, Allen Cohen 

VOICE OF THE DEAD POET AT CITY HALL
FIRST SAN FRANCISCO ARTS COMMISSION FAIRE POETRY DAY IN HONOR OF BOB KAUFMAN  (no tear sheet)

The small but steady crowd scattered amid the trees and sculpture gardens attended a day-long poetry event held in honor of the late poet Bob Kaufman in front of San Francisco City Hall, on Sept. 20. The event was designated as the first official Poetry Day at the San Francisco Arts Commission Festival "as an important step forward in recognition of the importance of poetry in our society," stated S.F.A.C. Festival Director Michael Bell, he continued, it's "…a milestone event." According to Poetry Day organizers Allen Cohen and Neeli Cherkovski, this was the first literary event ever sponsored by the Arts Commission in its 40 year history. A milestone event indeed.

Tributes to the acclaimed "American Rimbaud" and avant garde jazz poet Bob Kaufman who died January 12th, 1986 at the age of 60, included music, plays, and poetry. Saxophonist Richie Flores and playwright-biographer Mel Clay, who wrote Would You Wear My Eyes? a biography of Bob Kaufman, joined numerous luminous Bay Area poets including Janice Mirikitani, James Broughton, Jack Hirschman, John Oliver Simon, Kush, Julia Vinograd, Maureen Hurley, Jack Michelene, and Q.R. Hand—to name a few.

Kaufman's former wife of 26 years, Eileen Kaufman; and friend/companion Lynn Wildey both reminisced about Kaufman, and also read selections from his poetry.

Of the 16 poets who read at the Poetry Day Tribute, eight poets were winners from a juried poetry contest (I was one of those poets), and eight were chosen to represent a cross-section of San Francisco Bay Area ethnic communities for this first literary event, Michael Bell stated.

"The original BeBop Man," Kaufman, a legendary figure of San Francisco's "Beat Generation", was supposed to have coined the word "Beatnik." (Columnist Herb Caen made it a household word.) Kaufman was the first jazz-rap poet who brought the oral art of poetry to attention. His social political poetry "Second April," "Ancient Rain," and "The "Abomunist Manifesto" are considered to be among his finest writings.  Many of Kaufman's poems have jazzlike rhythms, riffs and synchopation he learned from the jazz greats—including Charlie "Bird" Parker.

Acclaimed in France as "THE  American Black Poet", Kaufman never received the poetic recognition he deserved in America. In France, his books are as avidly read as Rimbaud's, Kerouac's, Bukowski, or  Ginsberg's  poetry.  Because of the international recognition he has received, Bob was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1960 to continue his work, but failing physical and mental health had already taken its toll.

Always an outspoken critic,  Kaufman experienced many brutal confrontations with the police which he documented in "Jail Poems" and "Would You wear My Eyes?" Kaufman's explosive and elegant outpourings ignited the San Francisco "Beat" poetry scene.

Kaufman was one of the founders of Beatitude Magazine, now in its 33rd year.  Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and Kerouac were deeply influenced by his work. Kaufman published numerous broadsides and his three books, Golden Sardines, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness, and Ancient Rain are still available through City Lights Books.

In 1963, after the assassination of J.F. Kennedy, Kaufman took a Buddhist vow of silence neither speaking nor writing for ten years until the Vietnam war ended.

...
Let the voices of the dead poets
Ring louder in your- ears
Than the screechings mouthed
In mildewed editorials.
Listen to the music of centuries
Rising above the mushroom time.

—Bob Kaufman
    from "Believe, Believe."

On Sept. 20th, the stage in front of City Hall rang out with the words of "THE American Black Poet." The S.F.A.C. has made a first step forward in recognition of the importance of poetry in our society." Poetry Day should be an annual event. Will the S.F.A.C. continue to support literary events or will poets have to wait another 40 years to be heard?

SIDEBAR/PHOTO: A giant bar of Ivory soap carved into the likeness of the "Venus de Milo" by sculptor Art Grant and a roped-off section of grass sown with thousands of bullets representing our nuclear warheads, were some of the conceptual art pieces on display—suitingly surrealistic—for the event. Kaufman should have been there. It's too bad he had to die first in order to gain recognition as San Francisco's Poet. "Let the voices of the dead poets/ ring louder in your ears."

9/87

Journal, Enroute to Hawaii, Bearing Witness

Having returned from Guatemala, and unable to write about it, I depart for Hawaii and I marvel at the strange turn of events. I'm still on the road seven weeks later. This fast life and I'm not sure why the images won't come to me.

Yesterday, at the CPITS conference in Ben Lomond, I got a copy of American writers abroad edited by Carolyn Forché, from Tomi Nagai Roth, whom I know from the Napa Poetry Conference, and I haven't written about Dave Evans' death yet, or the one I am about to commit in two weeks.

And while reading prose, one of the things that struck me was that muteness is not singular. Carolyn Forché calls it "conscious preoccupation." It's as if (war correspondent) Harry's camera suddenly became too heavy to record yet another atrocity. 

My camera didn't record it all all those National Geographic shots of peasants being held at gunpoint, nor did it record them being quaintly ethnic either.

I didn't want to document this, become a witness, so that I, too could say I've been there. The shock value of the unreal postcards – somewhere between the two is what I wish to record. This muteness that lives inside me remembers much and I have to trust that it will all come out in poetry.

It's hard to find lyric images from the soldiers with Uzis stats who stopped the jeep for the third time in 6 miles, or when the women lying on the sidewalk in rags, hold up a gnarled hand for cambio, her milky eyes can no longer focus, from too much alcohol and abuse. Our bag ladies are quite yuppie by comparison.

Next to me, a man in uniform is reading a Star Trek novel while waiting for his flight. I wonder how many men he directs towards the war machine with his three color bars like so many Guatemalan belts. The title of his book is called Deep Domain. 

Two men discuss the existence of potential planets. One, an astronomer, complains of light pollution. The other sells airline insurance. I've been in so many planes the past few weeks I'm afraid the chances of being in the crash have increased. 

I can't forget those flaming horses falling from the sky in Mexico City when the Belize cargo plane crashed. I can't help but think of the irony of those six legged gods conquering the Indios one more time. 42 dead. All this numbs one.

I am preoccupied by what I have seen to the point of muteness. How can I begin to write these things? Also, the knowledge of what I already know to be true, I bring to my writing. Bearing witness.

The soldiers have Uzis, they got them from Israel, with US money to make those weapons. Therefore the US is offering military aid to them, albeit indirectly. 

This also means that guerillas have AK-47s because of the nature of the war beast. I don't know what AK-47s look like. I know that the guerillas of El Salvador and Nicaragua are armed with AK-47s. And I assume that they are Russian guns. I dont' want this knowledge in my head. But I can't unlearn it.

After two weeks ranging fires, the air is finally clearing a bit. The sun was a red ball in the gray sky. On August 30, 15,000 lightning strikes lit 1300 fires. Most of the northern state is on fire. The moon is filled with dragon blood at night. This smoke blends in with the night sky. The stars are imperceptibly less visible.

I amuse myself with scientific metaphors. How to demonstrate gravity with a bucket of water and a rope swinging it overhead.

Or how to demonstrate how a black hole can swallow light. Inconceivable to me until I remember learning how to go into a fast spin on ice skates, one leg at an angle helps to gather speed putting me into an orbit, then lifting it off the ice, drawing it in at a right angle, along with my arms, closer to my body, until the spin becomes a blur. 

It's so hard to hold oneself in. The centrifugal force wants to pull your limbs back out and slow the speed in which you spin.

An imploding star condenses, becomes heavier like the ice skates— PSI. Spin faster than the speed of light so that nothing escapes. Like these events that frame our lives, the actions, louder than words. We are not in control of our destiny after all.

9/14/1987

In November, John broke up with me, leaving me desolate.

Journal returning from Mexico and Guatemala

I'm back from Mexico and Guatemala, and I'm plagued by bad dreams. The red light of the digital clock becomes a fire burning at the top of the temple of the Jaguar at Tikal.

I have a hard time convincing myself that I'm home again. Reverse culture shock. I wake up, not knowing where I am, or who I am. The feeling of utter desolateness doesn't leave me. The soldiers with their Uzis continue to patrol my the perimiter of my dreams.

Meanwhile, thousands of forest fires burn in Northern California. The sun is a red ball in a gray sky, an angry eye in the temple.

9/9/1987

HIDDEN LOGIC (Random Access)

1. Why it took so long to leave and get back

bears testament to the tenacity of astronomers

racing for a mystery, who worry over a rare look

at the Milky Way's inner secrets, and like clairvoyants,

they focus on the trivial magic of a planet

nursery, or the one that got away.

We may solve or witness the speed of morning light

as we board the remains of a ship

to watch the future play itself out like a giant harp.

Inside a comet's tail 500 light years away,

the notion of comprehensive life may be a lark.

Man seems destined to serve time

somewhere for his rapacity.

Who wants to halt the sale of front row seats

for a chance to win an emerald mine in guerilla territory?

Bring out the lions. Little remains of the next frontier.

When taking chances, strike for sleep or death.

It is the same thing as building worlds of crystal.

And who hasn't entertained ideas

of having taken Paris by storm

or wishing they'd slept on a train

New Orleans bound, or finding

a passage home for sunken ships

from the Bermuda Triangle?

They still seem like good ideas.

When there was a glove shortage in Hollywood

we collected shadows, stray bullets, laundry lists,

and talked of strange events like Einstein's Theory

or nude girls who start riots at airpoirts.

At the movies, it's not the woman with the golden

irrisistable charm who gets the last laugh.

The latest news of breast reduction strips us bare.

There are other secret lists.

We leave our notion of beauty and call

it everything but imperialism.

2. After a night in a hollow tree struck by lightning,

it hurt to feel my dream, a prisoner

of the morning cup of coffee,

yet you save your life by

sampling the farm-raised local delicacies.

Puberty arrived before the mail in Paris.

You'd better find another way out of the country

or face false charges for smuggling

opium-filled artifacts.

Democracy leads rebels to their deaths.

One slip could decide the manner

in which you live or die. Ask the Rosenbergs.

How lovely, this green made for springtime.

In the creole tradition,

when talking with the dead, remember

voodoo priestess send messages

with more compassion than magic

and it is good because laughter

is a sign of forgiveness.

Beneath the sea, rain disrupts the promise

of spring, and in the form of singing fish,

the dead roar back to life, finding a passage

that lures the curious like distant memories.

The world's hidden logic is another aspect

of Carnival and the infinite possibility

of an inquiring mind is riding high

on the blues in overtime

because there are patterns for everything.

Sept. 1987? 88?
If Wofitbuta, then September, 87?
original is dot matrix.

part 2, new poem?
see RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY outake

Mexico City – Enroute to the Airport

A young man (a joven) in a blue lab coat, bloodied, and smeared, gazes out the back of the meat truck  driving down the Malecón, the ribs of the butchered cow, like a bloodied harp, playing at the strings of war.

9/1987? 88?