producer-director
stage di rector prose person
don owen
sandy Ii neberry
entourage
head of poetry poetry personnel
special production aide
camera man art and design creator
david mclaughlin
tom olsen
anne bromley
john carroll
rob friedman
doug lees
cathy culpepper
business head
paul monger
nose for numbers
passed out by
willie renner
stp and the training bras
messenger, winter '70 volume XCVI, no. one published by the Univ. of Richmond Publications, Inc.
janitors birth pain dawn to the unborn hands
one morning, this february october night poem you mean that much to me addendum to a gathering myth and so it goes and is 4. epistle to ___ _ pause cannot look black roses return the rover field: blues for may field: reprise for may just-add-water instant prayer sincere adam untitled on snarls childhood's memories tide guess for the hairy bugger's future victim that 5:22
reading
joe talley 4
john carroll 5
dave noechel 6
anne bromley 6
randy wilkinson 7
don owen 7
don owen 8
rob friedman 8
hank roberts 9
nancy russelI 14
tom olsen 16
dave noechel 18
cynthia wornom 18
randy wil kinson 18
john carrol I 19
don owen 20
don owen 22
frank howarth 22
joe tal ley 23
david mclaughlin 24
anne bromley 28
sandy Ii neberry 28
john carroll 28
nancy russelI 29
sandy lineberry 29
john carroll 30
rob friedman 32
tom olsen
pictures
janitors addendum to a gathering myth addendum to a gathering myth
4. epistle to __ _ field: blues for may field: reprise for may adam adam tide for the hairy bugger's future victim nathan's really, when you think about it.
doug lees 4
george norfleet 9
doug lees 11
doug lees 16
doug lees 21
doug lees 22
george norfleet 25
doug lees 27
george norf leet 29
doug lees 31
doug lees
editor's not(e)
So here this one is. It's for whatever you want, or don't, as your case may be (or demand).
A gathering of people, one might describe it, or creatures, or both. Use discretion or the lack of it, as our case(s) may require .
Tea and crumpets are being served by the mad hatter(less) and his entourage. A good time was had by all, or all are being had--a good time.
-edo-
janitors
Janitors sweep cold messy classrooms
Students bring in dirt
And throw butts on the floor
Diligently they sweep for hours. getting the trash in mass Voila--apile .
Joe Talley
In this time of chaos when we run from the things we create and search other's faces for our own features and take stranger's voices for our mind's substance the dawn comes when in the still night she whispers ..... now!
Dave Noechel
to the unborn
Encased in a secure darkness with only imagination to pass your days you hear her voice ... not so distant whispering your name to those she loves best
and the kaleidoscopic patterns whirling within your silent slumber translate your rhythm into her song.
eating her food and trying to thank her -it's a kind of music but all she gives you cannot have until ...
-6-
the coming struggle ... together when you will earn the pleasure of her smile.
Anne Bromley
october night poem
Looking around your room Sunday night, I engraved every line on my mind. I sat there, seeing and feeling where you lie at night, thinking, often I know, of me. This made me happy.
I pulled back the curtain, waiting for you to walk in your room. It felt, on my hand and on my face, like your hand and your face, very gentle. Very love.
Gazing out, branches touched, moving smoothly, the leaves slender and soothing as your sensitive fingers. How right a tree should grow, just by your window. It is very beautiful.
you mean that much to me
Windy Friday morning, blowing my hair, giving me flat visions of a new future and windy Saturday night just making me cold. Many a tired night I've spent without the strength, I wouldn't know what to do with anyway; but want just enough for sleep.
You have always run things and my respect is even stronger. But now when you don't want to hurt me and you don't know what you want, and when, for me, trying has kept on hoping; I must act and run the risk of losing everything.
Don Owen
Rob Friedman
addendum to a gathering myth
This story was related to me by a young lady attending the University of East & West in Autonomyville, Missouri. While I have edited it somewhat (with her permission) to gain coherence, minimize repetition, and eliminate details requiring lengthy explanation, it remains essentially her own.
"Jnar" is derived from the Norse or Germanic "Einar" and is pronounced accordingly. Hank Roberts
The sun rises daily yet, though Prof tells us it gradually spends its mass in nuclear reaction to dwindle at length to a cold compact cinder. Had one to look at everything the sun sees,surely would he more than presently dwell on razor blades and bridge abutments. But do not. Certainly are the prime bastards dangerous, and the fools more so, but they sit upon a timed bomb, and the thin gunpowder trail winding over the wastes to their fortified cistern has already been lit. For against the destroyers and the enslavers the resilient marrow cells of the race have thrown a gaunt smoldering adolescent who is somewhere in the world now working, working, and whose name is I nar Bass.
lnar is no longer at the University. Here he had a friend named Conrad
Wade, who is dead now and buried. Here he k-new (and carnally) the blind girl Isobel, who played so beautifully upon the pipe-organ and who became pregnant with a child not his to love. And here, in a small way, he knew me, who am cal led Mary Cannon, but when he was to leave I had no hooks
to hold him.
He had been two months in the hospital. One day last April--a but-
tery-sunshine day when all the world, as he liked to put it, was a suburb of Marseilles--he saw Isobel Stark forlornly aboard the Greyhound bus out of Autonomyville, climbed back into his brutal little sportscar, and tried to kill himself on the witch's-pot of a road that leads west from The Village (as we call Autonomyville proper) to the campus. What the rescue team pried out from under the ruin of the car was so much chopped meat, except that it breathed. Two weeks later he waltzed up out of a coma and asked them to unplug the intravenous tubes. Two weeks more and he was allowed visitors.
If lnar had always been thin, it had been a refined muscular thinness, the thinness of a racehorse, or of a weasel. Now he was positi\7ely skeletal: a face among-the starched I inens all prominence and hollow, the color of raw biscuit dough. I wanted to cry, when I saw him. But then he opened his eyes, and warmly consumed me in his eyes, smiled in his eyes, and smiled, 3nd said, "You do me proud, Mary. Come here." And folded a kiss into my hand and then I wanted to laugh and cry alike.
"How do you feel, I nar?--Stupid question."
"Hardly. A billion times a day pronounced, but just once begs a sensible answer. 'Give the young lady a teddy bear.' Physically, to be sure, I hurt-but a healing hurt. Dr. Rosenfeld puts me loose in another month, albeit in plaster, and promises a 4-F into the bargain. Crushed cartilage in the knee: they can fix it, but they can't guarantee it."
"Well at least you don't go through -10-
all this for nothing.''
"Nope. One might suspect a guiding hand, were one wont to suspecting guiding hands. I ain't. Simply am I glad I'm not dead. I am lucky. I have been warned. Exercised my suicidal tendencies and gotten back with my skin. Most of my skin.'' Then shifted his mien, as though a casement window had shifted slightly with a breeze and no longer threw the sun at my eyes. "I am glad that I'm alive, Mary. And that you came to see me."
Not without inward debate did I ask, "lnar .... Were you really trying to kill yourself?"
A wry melancholy, quirking the corners of his mouth: "Not really. Just .... the sun so blasphemously warm on the yellowy-green new leaves had no sympathy for desolate strangers. I had seen so many sad people, and had not a damn thing to say to any of them, that could do any good. After a while the little devil down in the bilge of your braincase starts thinking deliciously bleak thoughts, and if you don't watch out the rest of you may go along with the gag. Do you see, maybe?"
"I don't know. I don't know .... But please don't do it again, I nar."
"I sha'n't, Mary. I promise. I've been vaccinated now.''
I nar was on his feet in time to take his finals, "albeit in plaster," and he remained in Autonomyville until they cut the cast off his leg. But one day in July came a rap at my door, and I nar--whose interest in me had never been aggressively sexual, however he knew and respected my qualities--was asking me to dinner. In a middlingrespectable Italian place, with candles
in wicker-bound Chianti bottles, belly-wonderful with baked lasagna and a vin rosf he was just old enough to order and I not quite to drink, he nailed destiny suddenly on the prongs of his glittering eyesight, saying, "I sha'n't be back in the fall. At school, I mean." ... ?"
"It simply is not written. There is too much rubble lying about, from other people's tragedies. Nothing more to be done. The scene shifts, as in Shakespeare, to another part of the forest. I must be gone."
"Will you transfer?"
"I think not. I needn't sweat the draft for the time being, thanks to Rosenfeld. My money is gone. My car is gone. My studies are at a milepost. More than anything, I am inclined just to slice my anchor rope and slide out into the center of the river. There is a
girl from New Orleans I should like to see again someday, and a sad-eyed lady named Johanna Dahl, whom I believe is now in Arkansas. I want to work, to get back my grubstake. I want to learn the things you only learn the hard way. I'll miss you, Mary, but I still must go."
"Sure. If you want to be free, I understand. And hell, I never had any claim on you."
"You will always have a claim on me, Mary. I mean that. If I can ever help you, ever, no matter when or where or in what, just holler. I'll be owing you."
"Why?"
"Because ... because I thought you were one of the desolate strangers, but all along you were just like me."
That was July past. Now he is gone and the crisp leaves after him and the gray skies hint at snows. I have no
lover, and my marks are yet but low B-ish, and I am back up to a pack a day of Chesterfield Regulars. But in the fold of winter's nights I no more weep into my pillow--just hungrily remember, and prickle sweetly about my nether hairs. For against the destroyers and the enslavers the resiIient marrow cells of the race have thrown a gaunt smoldering adolescent who is somewhere in the world now working, working, and whose name is lnar Bass.
Fully a year ago (last November, that is), late of a Saturday evening, a south wind throwing rain at my leaded windows like handfuls of gravel, did the all of everything--the damnable crispness of Madame de Sevign~, the memories of too many unexploited pairs of blue eyes, the growing glueyness of my room on me like slept-in clothes, the aftertaste of folknouveau, when its bleakness is no more a shock nor its gentleness a consolation--coming to a sudden sour curdle--did the all of everything drive me out, out of the dorm (a very mausoleum), out of the thickening air, out in my buckskin suedes-marvelously multiply stained, polished slick about the elbows--careless of my hair, careless of my shoes, only so mightily glad of the rare cold air and the swept slamming waves of rain pasting my body to reality as it drove me over the splattering roads and through the wounded ditches and pools of shadowed black verdure ... the headlamps of occasional cars raking me, the pendant leaves wiping along my length, and I laughing, laughing, and at last weeping in crazy revulsion at my droopy days -12-
dropping like wet cigaret butts, while the rain pounded pure on my neverto-be-naked body as if my clothes were so much soggy toilet paper.
The rain had stopped. I lay a-center a vast silence, framed by the mad melancholy orchestration of many drippings. The unyielding cold wet grittiness spelled along my right cheekbone and temporal ridge--the sol iciness spelled along from my right shoulder in the suede, along my thigh in smelly wet wool--was of a wall of the underneath of a bridge. A railroad bridge which no trains use any more, which lies across an excuse for a river, about a mi le from campus. I had stopped crying. I lay encysted in the numb spent resultant of my furious malaise.
Can I tel I you if he came as a mortal, squishing his boot heels in the mud, or rose in sudden germination from some mislaid dragon's tooth? The one is strictly true, the other essentially. He was there in the snap of a match toward flame: warmly real in the brief glow as he lit a cigaret--a young face, fiercely distilled, offering one sad smile against all my woes--and then just a comfortable shadow above me, a single bobbing coal a friendly beacon. He squatted by me on the balls of his feet and gave his cigaret to my lips. I accepted it and smoked at it--1 was beyond questioning--and after I had consumed perhaps an inch passed it back to him. The tobacco was strong and unfiltered and swayed me like a drink of whiskey but it brought me back out to my edges. "Thank you," I said.
Then he spoke to me, and his voice was as harsh and unmusical as sheared
aluminum, but filled now with a commanding gentleness: "It is 0. K. that life be a bitch, that such nights as these be not wasted."
"Is life a bitch?"
"Did you come out here to stargaze?"
"Oh. No, I guess not." And I felt a stirring as though I might learn to laugh again. Soon.
He had handed me his handkerchief: "Blow your nose. We'll get some coffee someplace that doesn't mind tramps." Yes, I was learning.
This was lnar, who was my solace that ugly winter, with his poems, his philosophies, and his smoldery gray eyes. A sophomore at East & West. His hand unselfconsciously in mine, he led me up through the dripping woods till suddenly on the glistening black road his car stood idling noisily, one of those lean British machines that fits you like a pair of drawers. He saw me into the cockpit and strode around through the wash of the head1ights to take the wheel, and then we were whipping furiously up and down streets I soon lost track of, and almost immediately, it seemed, opposite lnar in a back booth of a cheap cozy restaurant (pleasantly reeking of corned beef and kosher pickles) was I drinking excellent coffee and talking of cabbages and kings. And of my forlorn self, that was and am called Mary Cannon.
And in his eyes upon me was what, had I known it to name, I had gone to the rain for; and in his laughter lay no mockery, nor pity in his smiles .... This lnar; that was to be my solace that long ugly winter, that was to know what we most can't even
guess at, spoke of himself, and of me, and of things to come, all in his wild moist vocabulary.
" ... I am entranced with women-such strong complex things, of a class with Ferraris and German clocks. That she should bear child--once, twice, or whatever, if at all--has she such a fabulous apparatus, autonomous of her brain, over thirty years in her working like an ant colony. Mark the incessant menstrual progression, the vast subtle array of hormones, the bewildering inventory of your pelvic constituents, above all the fabled intuition ....
" ... When you turn your steps toward the sun you leave the rest of everybody looking at your behind. In order to pretend they have no behinds, they pretend there is no sun ... .
" ... I am a poet--a butcher, as I once said in a poem, with cockers pan i e I eyes--a sad cl own turned gladiator--a patron saint of lovers, lunatics, lamplighters, and lycanthropes. Full-blown I sprang from the head of Zeus: pen in hand, glint in eye, armed, clad, and circumcised."
I later lay abed, full scoured awake, and in the polished lens of the pitchblackness considered the aspect of a world, however corrupt, containing one of lnar Bass. For a winter and a spring I watched him grind the instruments of h-isundefined task, and when a complacently bleak world strove at him in a gathering surge of venom, salted his end of the brass balance with a few godless prayers.
... I forgive you your going, my dearest I nar--that was foregone. It is
enough that you exist, and that your own peculiar visions be wrought upon a shit-deep world. Watch your back. Watch the proof of your blend. Remember, once in a while, one who, if of dubious charms, loves you past all loving. and
so it goes and is
I used to worry about keeping a friend. It is harder to keep that fire Than to find the first spontaneous spark: To keep that constant high Than thrill to the first perception: Not to overestimate the low After we care heart and soul: Not to expect too much, or demand too much. -14-
To realize this part of me has been beautified, Sacrified--
That I am more responsible, And when I am not, To wonder if it is as easy to accept.
There is no more anguish than to watch it go: Feel it lukewarm now, and turn away-Search for what is missed.
The agonizing analyzation: We change. (I wanted some dramatic separator) Nothing more.
This is what I think when I know no words to tell your worth, How much you mean. "Be free, and don't worry about the inevitable." (Could there be security, anyway?)
I used to worry . .. (It is a passing fear.)
We cannot mete out our lives.
We will not feel it always, But feel it now! And then again, later. And that will surpass "enough." I won't artificialize.
Nor call for constant elation.
Nor take offense more readily, now that I trust. Must accept now
As I accepted the gift when it came. Ups, downs, even indifferent mediums.
Who must continually read to know rich imagery exists? Or force a line, to know he can express? -15-
Nancy Russell
I sit here now, wondering--why, I lose sleep over you. Is it your pleasing form, Or your yes to my--requests.
-16-
I think that this is whyAt the very start--but Then, that stops and something replaces.
It is a feeling of: loneliness
That of the shepherd to his sheep, To the farmer, his land; To the boxer, his hands
You of course are these to me; The milk of sustainment, The honey of all my kind, love; And to me, - - - - -Life.
For that one moment-I must sacrifice sleep on the pretense that, that moment soon-so very very soon, will come ... Listen. -17-
One, courageous man can sustain on a deserted island
Two, men can live without love
But, that third, oh, yes....
He is like a 33 1/3rpm needle stuck--turning endlessly
Until high-high above Heidi Reaches with her hand and touches
So, so soft she touches
Tom Olsen ,
return the rover
John Carroll
Return the rover, welcome the old, shadowed stalking down the cold road - inward-bound and neverending, for it was so painless to wonder about the outside;
and remember the rambler - he was not alone as he tripped through those forests of honeycomb homes, and laughed as he stood in an ocean of wind, and walked among the cells of the outside;
while the ribbons of plot wound tight to his breath, silenced and cooled by a free stream of smile, awakened around that path through the wood, he spoke to himself the same words in the outside; he remembered the lame, and laughed in the outside;
and bring back that mantis trapped in the tree: he built rainy prayers within his green-fashioned game; he was gambler and plant rooted to his ways, tapped by no fever, no listless cry for haste, for he slept in his smiles, unaware of the outside, and his dreams ran miles without touching the outside;
but return the rover - his line has been torn; his shadow is shrinking in time to his tune, his cold hands are restless on the door of his sleep as his world of immortality opens its gate; (but he walks with a smile unknown in the outside, for he loved for a while, alone in the outside).
-19-
Maseke/a plays "No Face, No Name, No Number."
The dead phone lies on the bed's corner, Peeping, staring from under the rumpled blanket. Pall Mall menthols lie beside me, the only thing to touch. One burns in the ashtray, as I burn in my mind.
It is nearly seven my watch screams. And the phone is dead still, And I cannot give it life and restore my life. Hugh's trumpet shrieks, pleading my frustration. I wonder how it happened. But it has.
Quickly and fully, it has happened.
The pen limps crazily across the page, Trying to say what I find so hard to speak. It's recording the suspended time
field:
blues for may Until I find you.
I know I write to give this to you, To let you know. Can you realize what it takes to write For someone, and mean it?
It takes so much feeling, To force the words that speak the truth on the page, To face my feelings, my heart, the pain.
My blue robe will drop into the floor. I will wash my hair with VO5 Blue Shampoo. I will leave the dead phone, Turn Masekela to silence, Pick up the Pall Malls-Still all I have to hold.
Don Owen
I will go looking for you-half-knowing it's probably four or five hours of agonized empty searching. But I must hope to find you. Just to see, speak, hopefully hold. I will look--just for you. And give you this, To try to tell you all the depth of all I feel.
-20-
-21-
field: • reprise for may
You always bring me to music without words. That's the essence, a slow steady rhythm, a silent dusky movement. This time it's a happier song and I won't try to sing along.
Still no words--no spoken bond-Simple gentle sound That's swaying fresh since Wednesday night.
just-add-water instant prayer
In rising to the singing of birds, and the first Non-rainy day in so long, Swing your legs from the sleep carriage - but don't get on your knees. Today's Just-add-water instant prayer is a smile and hello to the first Christ you meet. -22-
Don Owen
Frank Howarth
Human life is sincere
Created from an act only to produce
A sincere human life
With no pleasure involved and Certainly not to reason.
Being nice to your fat Grandmother Who's dying (and rich) Is sincere; Since she knows your motive and left all her money To your sister Who loves you as we all do.
Athlete's foot is sincere. Famous sincere men are: Al Capone Judas Stalin Oswald Pope John and your TV repairman.
Sincerity is beautiful It is life We are all sincere.
Sincerity can be helping others For no reason Other than a draft deferment.
Spending money on a female With no reward but her good company is sincere (and ridiculous) Because she sincerely loves you (and your M.D. degree). -23-
The only sincere act Is being insincere And that is questionable. Joe Talley
adam
David McLaughlin
It seemed like just another weekend, but now I looked down twenty thousand feet below only to see my favorite city swimming pool, once again in the shadow of some scattered clouds. I could only see a few heads above the red-cushioned seat tops in front of me. After the stewardess had placed a glass in my hand, I realized I was finally above the constant rains and Detroit.
I had worked hard with the city division of the United Parcel Service all summer -now it was my chance to break loose before going back to my senior year at Notre Dame. I don't know if it was the weather or what, but Detroit was continually becoming too small for me. Maybe I was just stir-crazy. As I thought about the city and my destination, I realized how some people can't bear to live in the hustling rat race of the city. Then I considered that these people never had the experience of watching women fake like they're looking into the big department store windows, when actually, their eyes are concentrating on their reflections. But some people know all about the city, how dangerous and exasperating it is. Yet, these people miss the attitude of self-satisfaction which is seen on a worker's face as he sweeps up small pieces of paper cuttings while above him, the massive printing presses of the city newspaper spin out the world news late into the night. But, some people know all about the city and it just isn't their type of life. These were my thoughts as I looked at the little destination box on the cover of my tickets. It said La Guardia.
As I gladly watched the sun outline huge mountains and bottomless caverns in the clouds, I heard a soft and determined voice whisper my name. I quickly looked up and recognized the sparkling bronzed face of Tina McDermott. It had been a few months, no, I hadn't seen Tina since last Christmas when she was home for a weekend. Tina was a lovable girl of less than five feet in height. She was like a little sister to me because we had been friends from kindergarten and often confided in each other. A group of us had spent last summer at a seashore city on the Atlantic, and when September came, Tina decided to remain there with Adam. Until that time, she had lived in the red brick split-level on the corner of my block in Brighton Heights, Detroit. That Christmas weekend I had seen Tina at one of our Notre Dame parties ',Nhich are given by those students living in Detroit. She seemed like she wanted to ta! k although we both had dates and it just was not the place. As she sat down next to me, my curiosity was up because she was so happy. Her brown eyes made no doubt about that. I recalled how a friend of mine had once ca'led Tina "meat petite." She hadn't changed a bit since that day early last summer when we all set out for the seashore. It was in this seashore city where we first d=scovered the midget named ft.dam. Tina had first seen Adam in a large amusement -24-
park, standing beside a large mirrored weight scale, and wearing a suede cowboy hat which looked more like an umbrella in comparison to his body. Behind the large weight scale were the normal shelves of prizes; stuffed animals, painted plates, and lamps. Adam was in charge of the display which was cal led "Adam guessesyour weight." In his hand he held a microphone through which his voice boomed out "Guess Your Weight?" "Step right up and I'll guessyour weight." The thing was, if he did not guess a person's weight within ten pounds, the person got a prize. The further off the person's weight, the bigger the prize. Yet, if he guessedone's weight, accurately, the person lost his money. I remembered how his voice was infectious to the masses of people. After all, even the little kids knew their weight. It was even more interesting than guessing a person's name, or at least Adam convinced the passers-by of this. Besides being a midget, I could see how Adam seemed handsome and intriging to Tina. She told me how she was instantly drawn to him both through her curiosity and womanlike sympathy. She was curious because of this strange life
as an amusement park worker while sympathetic because of his deformity. Adam's feet were as wide as they were long, yet his legs seemed extremely small We hdd to call Tina along twice before she could break away from Wdtching Adam. We didn't see him again until the next weekend at a beach party. He was there alone, although everybody seemed to be talking with him almost as if he wcw1 really popular or something. But not the good-looking, strong, WAI i dre-.,sedtype of populdr beca1Jse he was deformed It was as though he was very sincere while calmly f?nJoying this party
The beach was nothing but a continuous party that summer. Finding the parties
was easy, the problem was being able to transport one's frame another hundred feet down the beach to the next party. It was only a couple days later that one of the local guys had totally shocked Tina upon telling her that Adam controlled a major pimping industry in this seashore city. Tina told me this had damaged her image of Adam, who she thought was a happy and kind little fellow. She could not accept him otherwise, even though she felt attracted to him. Surely a rough life had forced this disadvantaged man into such a position. I told Tina that she was probably right, but also that it was his I ife not hers.
The parties continued, mostly beer, once in a while some grass. Tina was picked up by a popular lifeguard at a big cook out on the beach, while everybody appreciated the cold beer "after the hot afternoon sun. Once the real party had begun, however, Adam came waddling in with his usual uncanny sense of timing and his brown suede hat. I recalled the weird look of the lifeguard's face upon realizing that whatever it was which Tina had glanced at, had given him the feeling of a discarded pitcher in the first inning of a ball game. Tina really dumped that guy in a hurry ... and against our wishes, she went over and started a conversation with Adam. The next day she confided in me and told me about her conversation. She said that Adam's words and lines just seemed to slide into place with growing persuasion in every syllable. She found herself changing her ground on her life-long morals without hardly noticing it. Her mind was working, yet she could not find a single word which would even sound mature enough to utter. She felt herself slowly losing and grasped hungrily for those basic ideas that this man was once kind before life made fun of his deformity. She lost the fight --not only the verbal discussion but also the willpower to avoid or forget Adam.
None of the others in the group liked Adam and, more than that, we didn't like Tina's seeing him or her getting involved in any way. After talking to Tina, I was surprised how strong a hold Adam's deformity had on Tina's sympathetic instincts. It was totally indivisible. This was the strongest bind between two people I had ever encountered in my life. Well, above all, Tina was a kind and warm person. That part of her nature must have had a lot to do with it. It seemed to me that Tina was determined to save Adam even at the expense of her own life and nothing could change that. From the way I viewed Adam, Tina had a lot of work ahead of her but money wou Id not be one of the problems. I heard that th is I ittle man made over seventeen hundred a week during average times so I knew that Tina would not starve ... after all, September was then only a week away. We all loved Tina a lot and missed her on the way back to Detroit, but she had made a decision, that was her prerogative. She was free.
Wow, here we were sitting beside each other again, almost a year later. She was beginning to relate what had happened in those intervening months. I was very much interested in the outcome. She described those first weeks with Adam as a period when his friendship has completely surrounded her. Surprisingly, Adam had taken Tina in as if she were his very own and taken good care of her. Adam had even liked Tina's friendship and concern for his welfare. Tina told me that her first trace of success (and happiness) had come one day in early November when Adam had
mentioned giving up the pimping industry instead of being murdered in an upcoming power struggle. A couple of weeks later, Adam woke up in the middle of the night and said that he would quit pimping for good. And he did.
However, three days later, according to Tina, Adam had an uncontrollable urge to go back out to the beach and re-visit the amusement park. I tried to picture the park, empty and frightening, as Tina described it. "The ominous convention hall had seemed to overshadow the park like a huge God," she said. Chunks of trash and leaves blew around in circles while the dust had often gotten into Tina's eyes. Upon observing Adam, Tina had remembered how distant he seemed, almost as if imaginary people walking about this park were controlling this tiny, deformed body like a puppet. Continuing, Tina said, "as we passed the old wooden building which housed the crazy house, magic carpet ride, and mirror room, something happened that scared the hell out of both of us. A strong noise, like a soft shuffling, had been slowly increasing, louder and louder, from within the three dark floors of this old building. Then, only a few feet away, an empty old piece of a carpet shot out into the worn exit section .... " Even as Tina told me of this incident, she shuddered when recalling how she had almost gone into shock. Adam had grabbed Tina's hand and practically pulled her back to where his VW was parked. As the car pulled away, Tina had felt an inner feeling that Adam was all hers now, and their lives were free of the past.
After telling me that she had been home to get some items she owned, I realized our jet was beginning a descent. Tina made a sexy little pat on my forearm with her small hand as she said, "Goodbye, James." She then went back to her seat and things. As I walked down the modern airport corridors, I thought about how shiny that little band of gold looked on Tina's finger.
untitled
I don't really need you .. . now cause there's nothing sexier than this aloneness in a wheat field --me and the grasshoppers! Grasshoppers look funny making love--in their stilted way (I'll bet the female's frigid) And the wheat stalks wind, bend, fall to the will of my crushing body. No, I don't need you .. . now cause the worms are copulating near my toes and the dachshund is driving the setter crazy.
And here come low-flying crows depositing blessings from heaven on an unsuspecting couple
No, I don't need you . now cause there's nothing sexier than watching trees swallow kites and listening to five-year old squeals of anguish-not sophisticated enough to be called obscenities.
on snarls
Wake up early and go take a walk
With shoes and an oversized jacket
Field grass gets tangled and glued To the cobwebs with dew at night. So now you can part it and comb out the snarls.
Anne Bromley -28-
childhood's
•
memories
where will you roam, when your slight flower returns from her ashes? you could touch the stars if they would catch you resting; you could seed the clouds with the raindrops on your umbrella transformed into childhood's memories . what will you sing, when your idle friend rediscovers beauty? you know she never talked about it; you know she never spoke about it.
John Carroll
Sandy Lineberry
tide
It was at such a time the first sorrow came I do not remember it clearly.
I don't think I remember any sorrow clearly.
Sorrow doesn't lash like the wind.
Sorrow licks the shore with her foamy tongue
Then leaves her salt behind.
I cannot say when first the salt entered the wound. For I, too, ran in the wind.
The wind was my friend then. It beat against me, but it also kept me from falling. I opened my heart to the wind.
The wind can be gentle, you know.
But perhaps I began to soften.
And she would not have that of me.
I still think the wind forsook me because She didn't want me to lean too heavily
On any one thing.
Life is not like that.
The wind wanted me to be strong like her.
But I am only human.
Putting my energy in sand castles
And wishing upon stars. -29-
Nancy Russell
If I wanted to sing a song about it, I'd sing loud and throaty and throbbing. I don't want to right now
Instead I'm past ready A lullabye is all I can muster.
Sandy Lineberry
for the hairy bugger's future victim
no one seems to know what time will do or how to feel love this one part and hate the other you can not know and you force yourself from life to life riding this one wave and then another lost somewhere
you are trapped, fitted into one spot dangling over water lost to one world, loved in others
you seem to care what time will do and how to feel love this one part and hate the other yet you can not know and you force yourself from life to life riding one wave and then another
trust finds itself but you are trapped, hung in one spot dangling over water, lost to one world, lost in the other you can not swim; fear the water. -30-
John Carroll
that
I'm sitting here and listening to my music and wondering if my friends hear the same song I hear
Did you know that "people think of people who drive buses as bus drivers rather than
Sometimes it's fun as people who drive buses" Did you know that
The intricacies of boredom that are explored are so hopelessly endless
Years ago... I saw that was that
seeing the different colors of the letters and laughing and looking at the other people here and listening to my music and wondering if my friends hear the same song I hear
Rob Friedman
