Letters to Celia Woloch

c/o Vins van Neerven, 

Hogerbeetsstraat 97 III, 

1052 VV Amsterdam, Netherlands 

   
Celia, my grlfrnd—                 Aug. Sept., 1992-93?

In the weightlessness of space, an astronaut’s heart shrinks. —Omni

AUG 20—Even in between sobs, it’s good to hear your voice via the Ma Belle satellite. And yes, I’m not writing much, lacking the focus. Where are the poems hidden? Why won’t they come?

Maybe this letter will open up the dam (Amster-dam: the 16th c. dam on the Amsterele river is real, not a metaphor. I’ve given into the timelessness of being at loose ends—with no agendas, hidden or otherwise—in a country not my own, seeking what oddities life has to offer.)

Where do poems come from? Page One of my notebook documents the oddities of The Final Frontier: After fighting nearly three years with Soviet bureaucracy for permission to hook up a computer telecommunications system with the Ukraine for a cultural exchange program, I finally let go of the idea. 

Then, shortly after April Fool’s Day, I received my first E-mail message from Oleg via GlasNET. Was it incongruous to read a satellite message transmitted half-way around the world that began with: “Cosmonaut lands, doesn’t recognize his own country?” 

Ex-lovers aside, how ironic: my first message from the new independent nation, Ukraine, is not about freedom, but about space, the final frontier. O-oh K.!?

Yes. Forgotten during the 1991 August coup, stranded Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev helplessly watched his country disappear: changing its name, anthem, and political order. The abandoned space program was officially broke with no way to get him home. 

Secret calls in the night; someone trying to sell Soviet space ships for hard currency. When Krikalev eventually returned to Earth after ten months in space, he didn’t recognize his own country. It was then discovered in the weightlessness of space, an astronaut’s heart shrinks. 

Moral: be careful of hasty conclusions and hearts stranded in space. Complex metaphor swiftly approaching from the starboard side. Will I regret not going to Russia after the Fall, and seeing for myself, the changes?

Amsterdam Journal: Vins & Joos 7/15

5 PM I'm on my way to Vins's flat to be checked out by his lady. Paul asks you haven't met her yet? I say, It's somewhat strange to me too, but Vins was an old friend long before we became lovers. I just never thought I'd be riding a tram to see my ex-lover and his woman some three years later. It takes some getting used to. Being on the outs like this.

Odder yet, since I saw Jan Bogaerts yesterday, meeting with him at the Winston Kingdom a couple of hours before I was to see Paul, the widening gyre of three men, are ripping apart the very fabric of my life.

Jan ambushed me in the alley near Winston Kingdom with his Leica. I usually avoid the camera lens. I hopped off the metro and ran through the alleyways from Niewemarkt, amazed that the map actually worked. My relationship with maps is suspicious at best, I am always the most surprised when I get to my intended destination.

15 July

Amsterdam Journal: dinner & gin

14 Sunday 1 AM

I'm back home from Paul's house. And now I'm really confused. Is it me, or him? Both of us? Is there something going on, or is it all in my head? Diffuse sexual buzz, versus pals? Or is it that men just can't help themselves? I can't tell whether he was considering seducing me or not, we were pretty cozy on the couch after dinner. And if he was truly wishing to keep his distance, he wouldn't have sat next to me like that.

I knew he was still feeling a bit addled from his wisdom teeth, no pain pills today, so he could drink wine. I keep thinking, what does he want from me? I use stories to keep our distance, to cover the questioning looks. I said I need to know how late the ferries run. Offering him a way out, and he responded by saying, If we leave now, then you can catch the last tram home. Which I did.

He rode me down to the ferry on the back of his bike, this was forgivable contact, my arms around his waist and my boobs brushing his buttocks as he pumped the petals down the streets. The stars were out, he yelled over his shoulder, It's so beautiful, and I answered, It's the first time that I've seen the stars in Amsterdam. It's so beautiful, I think I'll just ride the ferry back-and-forth all night long.

I did hug him goodbye at the ferry, because the lack of contact between us is so obvious. Everyone else is three-kissing me right left and center, but we've never so much as touched. Is it because it's a loaded issue, or is he undemonstrative like the English? Afraid I might get the wrong idea? The not-touching makes it more obvious. I keep reminding myself that each thing takes its own time wrapping its own gift. Be patient. I'm observing him, learning his patterns. Like a game of cards.

He sometimes dismisses or underplays things, so I have ask him again to see how he answers on the second or third round, and from that I learned some semblance of accuracy. For example, I asked if he understood Welsh words, and could he read a sentence? He answered, yes, after telling me he didn't know Welsh. When I questioned him he said I wasn't being precise enough. Oh?

I asked if he was using the Shell Oil building as his guide to the ferry terminal, he answered, The Galaxy Hotel. I was proposed to once in the Hotel Cosmos, I replied. What did he say? asked Paul. I said, I don't know, it was in Russian. Obviously I refused, I said, As you can plainly see.

For dinner I had brought wine and flowers from the red light district. I'd gotten them earlier with Jan Bogaerts, who met me at the Winston Kingdom. We shared oude jenevers (ancestor of gin), in tiny tulip-shaped glass filled to the brim, at Amsterdam's oldest jenever shop, Van Wees and Wynand Fockink. It tasted like I was felling a juniper tree and breathing in the sawdust. We wandered down the streets catching up with old times. I hope I'll have some time to write about him tomorrow.

Amsterdam Journal: time slips away, Charles McGeehan's flat 7/10

10 July

How time slips away from me. I'm feeling guilty because there is always so much to do, and I'm not trying to accomplish it. Yesterday, I stayed at home, nursing my period. Such bad cramps. I had to soak in the tub at 3 AM to relieve the pain. My cousin Sinead called from Petaluma, she has an international line at work. She said to go out on the day trips and don't let the time fritter away.

I've been in Holland nearly a month now, and I have done very little by way of touristing. And I was so busy with Poetry International the first two weeks, I was truly exhausted by the time I got to Charles McGeehan's flat.

Charles is Bert Schierbeek's official translator. And then not having a physical space to sleep, was truly distressing. Charles lives in complete and utter chaos. Every room in the house is filled with paper, and there are tiny rabbit warrens where you can move from room to room. A lot of my time was spent in making his place habitable. Herman was right at home here. Neither have any domestic skills.

But I have limits. I literally slept mid-book stacks and made my bed with blankets on top of boxes of poetry. I was pretty busy during the first week at Charles's flat making some semblance of order out of decades of chaos. If we weren't on the ground floor, we'd be in danger of capsizing. Perhaps because Charles has had brain surgery, is why he's so chaotic. But Herman has no excuse.

Moving here was the first respite I've had in months and months. What did you do when you are truly tired, and need a rest? And too tired to rest? Fill it with things to occupy your time? Or catch up? My heavy periods didn't help. You're supposed to do things on vacation. I'm merely existing, living Dutch, as I always have, whenever I come here. My morning ritual of Dowe Egberts espresso, and wafer-thin slices of ouda Amsterdam cheese on dark bread toast sustains me.

Still so much to do. Visit Wim Hofman in Vlissingen, Maya/Maija in Almeer, and Jan Bogaerts in Liessel. I'm still not sure if we're going to France with Bertaijn, Bert's sister, and Charles' ex-wife, next weekend. A part of me is waiting for Waldo to call, dammit.

I still want to go museum-ing here and in Rotterdam. I gravitate towards museums the way others visit pubs or clubs. I still want to visit Leiden and Utrecht and Gouda. Groeningen is out as Maria van Daalen is teaching in Iowa.

I need to finish my translation article on Breyten Breytenbach and I need to also find an Afrikaans dictionary in order to finish my translations of Breytenbach's work. I am writing an article on Poetry International for Poetry Flash, perhaps interview Martin Mooij and Jules Deelder, the Night Mayor of Rotterdam, for it truly is the end of an era.

I'm hurt because Vins hasn't called me, or Marcel Koops, or Jan Bogaerts, for that matter—so much for old friends. I’ve been here a month. I guess it’s better that I’m staying with Charles after all.

UWP journal: poetry files from Vins arrive

13 July. Today I slept late. I’ve been depressed lately, especially yesterday as I dreamed I was still in Amsterdam, and Vins was sitting on the floor, I could see there was a disaster about to happen.

And he said, go home. Sort of like how you tell a dog to go home, the emphasis was on the word go. Cold and deep was his voice, but it wasn’t directed at me. Sure, there was trouble, yes. He was part of it. But he was also shielding me from it. I had no business becoming involved with him. He was telling me to go home out of love, not out of anger or hatred. To protect me from something, I know not what. His own darkness.

Yesterday I finished reading Dracula, it has a quality similar to that, protecting the women folk, especially Mina Leven, though she had a wondrous brain, “like a man’s,” someone said. What catastrophe was about to rain down on Vins’ head here?

I finished my letter to Jan Bogaerts, I’m sure it too is related to my depression. My immobility, my inability to work through the dilemma of both Jan and Vins, childhood friends not speaking to each other—and I was the fulcrum.

Vins says that he loves me, but he is not in love with me, and I know he can’t seem to live with someone. It’s too upsetting for him. Like me, he needs solitude. I leave, give him his space.

Saturday, a letter came with a copy of the poetry files that he had kept. We fought over the phone when I discovered that he went into the private files on my desk. He claimed it was an accident. But I am glad to get the Dutch to English translations. Some poems have gone through the sieve of three languages. Like Marta Manarini: Spanish to Dutch to English.

But it was a wonderful letter particularly adept in avoiding issues of the heart, shedding light on nothing other than I arrived at an unfortunate time. He took his crabbiness out on me.

With Vins, there is no equilibrium between work and people. He feels secure being with a community of teachers, scholars, and writers. I wonder if moving away from friends and lovers, to that of a colleague is the right direction? Then the yes. Our affair had run its course, but we were having trouble letting it go.

There was a very funny story about Vincent van Gogh, buying copiachu, a paint softener, and VO medicine. When Vincent asked if it could be mixed with turpentine, the shopkeeper replied, do you have to destroy your sorry ass even more?

Vincent wanted to give his colors more light and depth, and he used the thinner liberally. Even now his paints aren’t dry And probably never will be. The Potato Eaters and his windmill and trestle paintings are still wet. But the varnish over the top shrank, causing the paint to craze. In 1928 The Potato Eaters was given a new, backing and restorers hot-glued it onto a new canvas. The paint and varnish will remain forever wet.

At Schiphal, all the guards sport machine guns, in preparation for the Israeli Prime Minister’s arrival. Prime Minister Rabin, Dutch Prime Minister Lubin, and the Israeli Embassy are all out to greet the Prime Minister Rabin. Utter chaos.

Jan diagnosed Vins’ hennaed hair as a harbinger of midlife crisis. Maybe so, but it sure was fun slopping what looked like cow shit on each other’s heads, and then washing it out. All green and red.

Unfortunately the henna nested in my hair like a Rastafarian nightmare, and I had to resort to a comb and gobs of cream rinse to coax the last of the henna out. I like my hair hennaed as it’s much thicker and has a red sheen to it. It isn’t all that different from my natural color, but it covers the gray nicely.

Today’s mail brought a parcel from Vinz, half of his birthday roses, because he never bought me flowers, some chocolates, two love, notes, my modem cord, sweatpants, and a wooden Hans Brinker skate. Thawing treasures from the flea market.

Amsterdam journal, returning from Belgium

26 Saturday. We returned from Brussels late, and went to a meeting for Wereld Scriveners in Amsterdam, a group of foreign writers who want to create an avenue for publication, and recognition. I found the problems, typical and depressing translator Kavlijn Stoeffer put it this event together. Vins sits and listens to me give voice to my misery. I’m too tired to write, as usual. I’m hoping for some quiet time to recollect my thoughts, etc., in the near future.

Later Jan calls Vins, and they talk for quite some time. I rouse myself from sleep. Jan says, you are waking from a dream. And though I’m depressed, I wake up a bit from the depression. He says, this is the state I was in when I came back from San Francisco and only now am I coming out of it. He said, now I am more focused, literally, and have gained clarity with the Hasselblad camera. The slowness of the cameras system gives him reflective time.

I have not written about Jan or Vins because it has been too painful. Vins is snorting in the kitchen because I am talking to Jan, I am unused to this jealousy which is not entirely unfounded, I might add, but what am I to do when Vins says Jan called in order to talk to you. What am I to say to him when nothing ever happened between us? 

Jan wants me to come to dinner tomorrow in Lissel but Eric Vleugels is coming over. I am looking forward to seeing him again. As much as I hate to say no to Jan I can’t see any way out of this pickle. It is so banal, so tragically human as to be nearly comical. Maybe I will laugh later.

Poetry International journal, CPITS networking

15 Tuesday. I am making more CPITS contacts (Poetry International Director Maartin Mooij invited me because I work with children.) Bert and Thea Schierbeek, Horacio Ferrar, Marjan Meijer (who is working on a kite project), and also Dimitri Prigov (I showed him a poem of his we published in Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost—he was so full of himself, I didn’t want to give him a copy). 

Roberto Juarroz and Bert took the CPITS flyers as did Marjan, so the news is getting out that way. Apparently those of us who teach children how to write poems are a rare breed. I gave Bert one of my Dutch chapbooks, he said he would introduce me to someone who also works in the schools tomorrow. I talked with my photographer friend Jan Bogaerts tonight and he said the Mongol poem was beautiful. I asked him how did he get a copy of that? And he said, a spy.

(PI archives.)

THE QUARRY AT REGENWEG

THE QUARRY AT REGENWEG

                                —for Jan Bogaerts

With that feeling of déjà vu, I came home to a land

bright with flowers and heather bogs wrested

from the distant mouth of the North Sea.

The wind lifted my skirt, verifying my sex,

as I gathered metamorphic rocks—

once the backbone of mountains—

reduced to lining these raised roadbeds.

Strangers, we were sleepwalking the fields;

the cows watched with indifferent eyes.

I saw you radiant in the afternoon light,

your camera, like a bird poised for flight.

The alluvial grass frantically waved

as if to warn us of lions and dangerous currents

hidden in the transparent layers of history:

this ancient riverbed where the golden armor

of a Gaulish warrior from the quarry was dredged.

We made allusions to walking on water,

I stood in the arena of the mirrored afternoon

wondering which reflection to trust,

afraid to find myself on the other side,

like you, no division between the sexes.

The pantheistic September sky hissed,

wounded by the forthrightness of distant steeples,

all that blueness leaking back into the sea.

Like salmon roe, mountain ash berries,

enflamed the carnivorous sky.

The milky horizon blurred until we

once again were sleek silvered fish

readying for that final incestuous journey.

We forgot about extinction,

hypotenuses of triangles,

or the collapsing of time itself.

Like lowing cattle, eager for salt,

the wind licked at our legs.

But it was time to return to the barn,

we had no arms to let them in—

only the dark, knotted tide rising

over the shield of grasses

and defeated stones.

1/29/93 & 8/13/94
2000 Transfer Magazine

THE HEALER

THE HEALER                 

            — for Jan Bogaerts, photographer                                                                                                                                                  

The new year: I slalom to work on back roads,

thinking of whales & the coming extinction—

Rare snow in the folds of Mt. St. Helena:

I can't tell the clouds from mountain or ocean.

Cliffs rocks thaw and tumble and spout

to the middle of the road like noisy children.

I cannot separate the pieces of my life:

artist, teacher, poet, photographer . . . 

Through the camera lens, an empty house

on a steep hillside reflecting blue sky,

arched windows eyeing a cosmic joke.

Grateful for the weak sun,

a grey horse in a pale field

practices for that final sleep.

I think of age and love—not seasonal love—

but loving a cat, a stone, the sky equally.

Nothing readied me for losing my horses in winter.

Telegraph Avenue dusted with the purity of snow,

the homeless dressed in something acceptably white.

Snow turns to the sentience of a rainstorm.

The children write, making comparisons.

The word that comes to mind is hunger—

Light grabs water with a desperation born of darkness,

dancing with its own origins, its own death.

They are hungry for the archaic language deep inside.

Extraordinary light after rain.

The seven-year drought officially ends.

Beneath swollen creekbeds,

the fossil thirst of water, unslaked,

underground rivers older than civilization.

I have trouble staying on the road,

gravity’s uncertain which way to go.

I count my friends among the homeless

who, having nothing, hand me small gifts.

Stuffed toys, polar bears and blue whales.

In the Tenderloin—the River Styx—I seek Daniel,

finding only vacant pools of pavement.

Charon is well paid for his time.

Tracing the coastline with new eyes

reminds me of the time we don’t have.

To make up for it, I write letters no one will read.

Through the aperture of memory, I want to say graphos,

for the time when words and pictures weren't separated.

Artist-shamans. A sculptor working with AIDS patients

thought she was inured to death:

each one took its own time sinking in.

The HIV women who are next, won't come to my workshops.

The nature of her work has changed. Artist as healer,

she makes shields of shining copper with faint ciphers.

Today, in San Francisco, the undocumented life

of the 10,000th AIDS victim flickered out—

Each silent vigil, a statistic for the record,

enigmatic obituaries in hometown newspapers,

interred skeletal lines of artifice.

The sculptor stressed the art of saying goodbye—

She miscalculated, thinking she'd have time:

I was so sure he'd live another two months.

She spends her nights fighting the facts.

When someone asked, Who heals the healer?

A photographer said I am a servant of the light.

To serve light, one must also know the darkness.

I am hard at work, unearthing

incandescent ancestors of words

for the time when language took its first gulp of air

and cried out in the night.

I am working hard

to fortify the ramparts of memory

for the time when words fail us.

1/14/93  (rev. 8/4/96)

The Healer (prose, no efile)

POEM TO A MAN LEAVING HIMSELF BEHIND

POEM TO A MAN LEAVING HIMSELF BEHIND

As the plane taxiing out the runway,
a rainbow appeared right in front of the storm.
The plane’s red shark fins slice through the clouds,
as if to sever the rainbow for hope, for the gays,
for the artists, a rainbow for all of us.
Afraid of flying, you eat Mary’s brownies
I smuggled through security,
the plane was delayed and so we had a beer.
We are more than a little intoxicated,
chemicals within, chemicals without.
Last night I heard you whisper thank you for being there
as you turned out my light, kissing me good night
and then sleeping alone. It was not our time for love.
but the love is there nonetheless, yes the pull.
The heart wants what it wants.
Vins says you’re equally gay, I say equally straight.
But we kept kissing each other goodbye anyway,
your hand slipping down my back, skin against skin,
as you said, thank you for being my mother,
my sister, my grandmother, my brother, my...
stopping at the word that won’t rest easily upon lips.
I thought unrequited love was reserved for old plays.
Watching your plane rise, momentary smoke,
my heart in my throat, remembering the plane crash
I witnessed at the Bijlmer, and in Portugal.
Your plane pierces the sky, one moment a black dot,
another, gone forever. Will I ever see you again?
And I think of your fear of flying,
especially after the Dutch airplane disaster,
you said you didn’t want to be buried
in the hinterlands of Leissel,
you wanted to be among friends. And you said,
how lonely you are for no boys will sleep with you,
and the despair that you loved women too.
You get lost at the point between a woman’s breasts.
What I will remember is you rising up from the bath,
all brown and golden, a tawny feline,
something gorgeous to behold.
My eye grabbing that moment in time.
With your photography—the impulses in the moment of taking,
a thief of light, whereas mine is in the taking of images,
without film. A thief of memory.
These are the words of our lives.

1/7/93
SFO
First draft

Each Seeking the Other (no efile)

Journal entry, 1/4/93, San Francisco, with John McBride, Jan Bogaerts

1/4/93 I spent last evening with John McBride and Ken Bullock drinking wine and in Enrico‘s. John gave us the key to his uncle’s house on and we wound up hanging out in the Mission district going to used bookstores. I got a full length man’s tweed coat for six dollars. It’s freezing, I relish the warmth.

Jan went off on his own into the night. We didn’t have a preset time to meet up, he had no key so it was a bit touch and go. I’m sleepy, crabby, not particularly interested in either John nor Jan. But John looks better and better these days, he will never leave the memory of his exwife behind. I’m feeling a bit jaded these days myself. Confusion has fled and I am left with sheer crabbiness. 

We staggered around Washington Square afterward, and I was definitely feeling the wine, we were listing a bit. I was esconced between John and Ken so I wouldn’t get lost. We were laying hands upon each other quite a bit at Enrico‘s. Like raccoons at the cat bowl.  

Most likely it was the wine but John didn’t just put his arm around me to steady me, and I still can’t tell if there’s interest, or it’s merely politeness. John was looking particularly attractive, but it didn’t do anything for me. Timing is everything. And John tells me that Enrico‘s is where, after a couple of “far out motherfuckers,” which is a deadly cocktail, John proposed to Marianna Rexroth. It didn’t end well. Kenneth didn’t like him, mad their life miserable.

The trouble with all this attraction stuff is that once acted upon, you cannot go back to being friends, no matter what they say. There’s an easiness that flees when we become lovers. I thought love was supposed to draw people closer together. Instead, the walls grow higher. Maybe there something wrong with me that it happens so. 

I’m sorry for the vast gulf between Jan and me, I know there’s nothing I can do, after the fact. Again he tells me I’m so beautiful and that I should believe it. I’m perplexed. He takes myriad photos of me that I will never see.

After a meal, some harmony is restored, something that was there before all this craziness started, resurfaces. Friendship abides. We have a shared history to anchor us, when I stayed with him in Lissel, and Vins. We are torn between virtual realities. He was so pleased by my photo proofs, they’re not the best that I’ve ever done, but I just don’t have the time to work on them. 

Ah yes, the interim between shifts, we are off again to Enrico‘s. Who knows where it will take us this time? I may wind up coming home alone. I walk on, Jan photographs Columbus Street from inside Enrico‘s, I feel at home, the waiter recognizes me from last night. Ken is a few minutes behind me. 

Ken and I managed to kill off most of a bottle of Beaujolais before Jan returns. He has shot over three rolls in less than 45 minutes. I thought I was fast. But he has a sweet and stealthy Leica camera. Ken tottered off, and we headEd for the Saloon. I have been inside more bars during the past two weeks than I have in an entire lifetime.

Jan is working the crowd. I am alone, but not alone—which is an interesting phenomenon. He is very good at working his way into people’s psyches. He both charms and disarms. He will do anything to get the photo. I watched him get right into the singer’s face, rhythm and blues, heavy on the rhythm.

It truly is interesting hanging out with him. I can observe in a way not necessarily available to me if I was on my own. He’s like a satellite knight. The world really is a stage. Some drunks turn up, break the 4th wall. 

Before dinner, we tore down the walls that had risen between us. Jan said, I am a servant of the light. We talked about the stories of who, and what we are. We were in agreement that we have met in previous lives, that everything is circular. He said, you don’t have to explain it to me, I know. 

We listen to 60s music and have trouble with our relative age. Are we 40 and 44, or are we 20 and 24? How ironic, he’s the same age as Bob, my old boyfriend. He tells me about Mark’s story, how his father came home looking for his wife and she was upstairs, dead, having killed her daughter as well. Mark was only six when this happened.

Jan says he loves Mark’s vulnerability and wants to have sex with him. I say I hope you want to make love as well… Need I remind him that he is in the AIDS capital of the world? He wants to fill this trip with as experiences as possible—soon he will fly home to Amsterdam.

When Jan tells me Mark’s story, I cannot stop the tears from falling, maybe it’s because my own mother tried to commit suicide so many times. Maybe it’s the immediacy of words following between us, across the dinner table, the intimacy of shared meals softens the harshness. Jan says, as a man I know what a man wants, I like to have a cock to hold onto so I won’t fall out of bed. I can’t begin to know what a woman wants.

We wind up in the Castro, at Moby Dick‘s, he’s saying goodbye to his new friends—it is a dead night in North Beach as well. We stumbled into Spec’s on Saroyan Alley, the poet’s bar, I an on home turf. I haven’t been there in years.

Jan wanders off to take photos. I’m sitting at the bar, taking it all in, and it’s OK really, though he claims to be a gay lover, there’s also the heterosexual attraction but he can’t negate it, hence the dilemma. Spec asks me about Herman Berlandt, and how the writing is going, offers me a drink.

Weird, I can sit in a gay bar and feel OK. I am as sexual as I want to be, and I don’t have to worry about fending men off. For Jan, it’s the possibility of an endless meat market, and all I can do is to be a buffer for him. Who’d a thunk that I’d be in such a predicament? Jan thinks I should document the lesbians of Castro Street as my assignment, but I don’t have an interest in lesbians. I am content just to watch him in action. I tell him I am looking for poems, not women.

THE EVIDENCE OF LIGHT

THE EVIDENCE OF LIGHT
—for Jan Bogaerts

When the film in the camera
winds down to the last few exposures
what remains are small pieces of the self
scattered across the globe;
there is less of me returning home each time.
The concept—elusive like the notion
of the camera stealing small pieces of us—
inevitably thins the soul
till it becomes translucent as isinglass.
They say travel toughens the heart,
but the heart is another matter—
each time I begin to believe love is a thing of the past,
some man crosses my path
and I am a fallen Magdalen weeping at his feet,
the carpet of my hair hiding my shame.

Two men contemplate the acute angle of the sun
piercing the dome of City Hall.
There's something of that time of day
when everything is crepuscular in notion,
I am haunted by ordinary light and shadow.
I cannot escape the clutches of a dream
as if reality bent itself towards sleep,
toward the void, the depths from within
where reside broken pieces of the dream
while the truly dead wander the parameters of this house.

Ask me why this matters and I will tell you
I have seen Jesus living in a desk drawer
in this abandoned house full of empty rooms
while those statistics sleeping in Market Street doorways
roll up their sleeping gear each morning
with the sacramental tenderness of priests readying for mass.
What of the thousands dying of the dreaded acronym
no one wants to name?
The homeless spread shrouds over their belongings.

Reduced to numerical equations                                                                    

the layer of humanity stretched thin as ice

at the altar of the streets, prays for oblivion like all the rest.

It is so silent, reminiscent of the many dead, with more to come:

What of their stories? Who will write them, who will listen?

You say they've gained the wisdom and clarity

usually reserved for the aged, and they are not yet old.

The glitter of the city pushes back the invading darkness.

Cavities of desire and grief implode into this room

as we gather the evidence of light for the proconsul.

We need arms to hold us, to stop time—

not just the camera defining angles of light.

1/1/93

Journal entry, New Year’s Day, 1993

Journal entry, New Year’s Day, 1993 I dreamed of men pulling moss off the branches of oaks, gathering small green tufts of them. I don’t know what for. It had something to do with the evolution of love and time. Today it is sunny, welcoming after the hard rain. Paul Ellis said Eastside Road was pretty bad last night, he had trouble getting home, and he thought it was going to flood. Deep, distant roar of creeks after the storm, a new day. A new year. I’m catching up on the old year by reading my mail stacked in uneven piles all throughout the house, I have been away since mid-December when photographer Jan Bogaerts arrived from Holland. I’ve been booking venues for him to photograph and researching, making contacts in the gay community for his Granta photography project. It’s been a tumultuous couple of weeks, flirtations gone horribly awry. Jan is all over the place. It’s like he’s in the world’s biggest candy store—men, women, me. He doesn’t care. He’s out there. I’m so out of touch with time, that I’m surprised to find a blurb on my project, I get a mention in the cultural arts newsletter. And all I can think of is that I desperately need to sleep.

LETTER TO JAN, WINTER SOLSTICE

LETTER TO JAN, WINTER SOLSTICE

Fishing without hook or line in the subtle stream,

I practice the act of turning stones,

Turning them again to find clarity within.

The walls become an impassable mountain range,

The past, a crowded bed, a pentagram,

The evolution of friendship, an alluvial veil over bedrock.

These words rippling the muddy pond.

Sometimes in dreams I meet strangers .

The veil lifts, images, fragments, pieces of the puzzle.

But the gift of sight muddied our eyes.

The knowing without words. Do you ken this?

A raised cock, burning sage, fortuning desire

Worshipped in the old way, the longest night.

Tell me where friend ends and lover begins.

The verb  wal, stranger; we are strangers.

If we tear down this wall, will another rise? 

With these words we uncovered old patterns,

In that vulnerability we leaned closer

Towards concentric rippling haloes of light.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

The notes of the shofar horn bring

The strange ramparts tumbling into the sea,

Turning them back into stones of the field.

The dark pools, unfathomable—

Once we were inexorably proud mountains.

The river polishes us down to size.

1992?

rev. 2002 for Transfer Magazine

CHRISTMAS IN YAMMOUSSOUKRO, 1991

CHRISTMAS IN YAMMOUSSOUKRO, 1991
       —from photographs by Jan Bogaerts
                      —for Jan

Imagine the basilica of St. Peter

rising from the African jungle

devouring the light of the Ivory Coast

in the village of Yammoussoukro:

this monument, a president's desire

cast in European stone.

Insignificant as an apostrophe against bright marble pillasters

a tall woman crosses the piazza

burning into the retina—

not like the temporary flash

from looking too long at the sun,

but with the dark endurance of counter-suns.

A black child on a white boulder

lays down his small bundle of rags

to observe the camera lens.

Christmas on the Ivory Coast:

the infant who will never sit at the right hand

of Santa Claus, nor learn of the savior's birth in a manger—

The Wasting Disease, an articulate hunger.

Searching for Mecca,

the men of Yammoussoukro

turn their backs on the sun.

It is said: When two elephants fight, the grass loses.

There are no more elephants on the Ivory Coast,

only obscure fetishes of the crocodile—

Africa is a country of families:

here, where the president is God,

a basilica inexorably rises from the jungle;

the massive arms of the portico—

comprehensible as the moon—

embrace only the air.

9/92

Liessel, The Netherlands

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION (short v.)

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION   
     from  Jan Bogaart's photos, Eindhoven

In the football stadium, a congregation of clergy in drag.

Sequence cut to championship fucking finals

in the south of Catholic Holland,

(where else, says Jan, the photographer.)

Used rubbers hanging from the numbered pegs

as contestants candidly look on. 

Everyone's masked for the ball,

even the hookers smoking in the wings.

One wears a chador, naked from the waist down,

well-dressed in nylons and heels,

the star whore in the gurney

chalks up 187 men—all in a night's work.

Michael Jackson, David Bowie and the Pope all at the mike.

Sequence cut to a small town in Bavaria

where Hitler built a train station for Mussolini,

with love from the good old boys.

What of the gay queen at the carnival,

white face, questioning cartoon eyebrows?

The mist covers the crotch of the valley's shame

gravestones covered with plastic to protect them from winter.

It's a white Bavarian Christmas.

A woman forcefully serenades those gathered,

a nun grimly serves tea. Smiles cost money and time.

They are celebrating the alleged birth of Christ with a vengeance.

The oldest woman of the village perfers t.v. to the villagers

who can blame her? Others watch their homes destroyed.

Michael Jackson's face would support whole villages of old women.

Masked young men come down from the mountains

to beat the villagers so they will fully repent for the occasion,

only the offer of a drink will silence their sticks.

All in good fun, they said, nearly breaking the photographer's hands.

All in good fun, said Hitler as the ovens burned.

Did he drink schnaaps too, his mask more natural;

it took a while to see it slipped only to reveal another mask,

 mirrored beneath into green infinity.

Cowbells, a saint's crozier, unsmiling men fold their arms

in front of tannenbaum; the creche child in a coffin of hay

one man grimaces for the camera,

and other smiles while the fool looks on,

a full complement to the theater of saints.

9/92

Eindhoven, Holland


see longer version
SEVEN VIEWS OF PHOTOS AT AN EXHIBITION  

SEVEN VIEWS OF PHOTOS AT AN EXHIBITION

SEVEN VIEWS OF PHOTOS AT AN EXHIBITION  

                                                            —to photos by Jan Bogaerts

1. In a sports stadium a knot of clergy flowering for the Pope.

Internecine wars dropped for an open-air mass.

Score: Visitors 3. Home 1. All in drag for the Holy Ghost.

2. Sequence cut: Everyone's masked at a charity ball,

even the hookers smoking in the wings.

One wears a chador. Nude from the waist down,

in nylons and heels, the star whore on a gurney

chalks up 187 men—all in a night's work.

Spent condoms dangle from numbered pegs

as contestants candidly look on for the camera.

Whoever has the most jism wins

the Championship Fucking Finals in Catholic Holland.

Where else? shrugs the photographer. (Audience laughs.)

3. Sequence cuts:

Michael Jackson, David Bowie & the Pope all have the crowd in mind.

You can tell by the red light in their eyes. The way they mouth the mike.

The way vestments of color drapes itself onto the walls for the camera lens.

4. Sequence cut to black and white:

A small town in Bavaria,

where Hitler built a train station for Mussolini:

With love, for the Good Old Boys.

Burning into memory’s retina,

color film couldn’t cope with the crime.

Spilled wine appears as black.

What of the gay queen at the carnival,

white face, sad cartoon eyes? So much meat.

5. The mist covers the crotch of the valley's shame.

Gravestones covered in plastic—

protected from winter’s hostile art.

It's a white Bavarian Christmas in Berchtesgaden.

Celebrating the birth of Christ with a vengeance,

a housefrau serenades a captive audience,

a nun grimly serves tea. Smiles cost time and money.

The oldest woman of the village prefers TV to gossiping villagers.

Who can blame her? Others watched their homes destroyed.

Michael Jackson's face would support entire villages of old women.

6. Masked young men come down from the mountains

to beat the villagers so they will fully repent for the occasion,

only the offer of a drink will silence their sticks.

All in good fun, they said, breaking the photographer's hands.

All in good fun, said Hitler as crematoriums burned.

Did he drink schnaaps in a gold-rimmed glass too?

His mask slipped to reveal another mask mirrored beneath green infinity.

Some swear he was God. Some know snow angels melt in spring.

What of the Pope? Michael Jackson’s gone from Black to white.

Horse of a different color. Rainbow of a different name.

7. Cowbells, a saint's crozier, grim men, folded arms

in front of tannenbaum; a crêche child in a coffin of hay.

A man grimaces for the camera,

another smiles while a fool looks on,

a full complement to the theater of saints.

Will they ever escape the mountains?

Verlichting en Belichting. A crucifix of light

repenting for our sins. The camera looks on.

9/92 Eindhoven, Holland


see  PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION  (short v.)