Holy Water From An Autumn Rainstorm
Welcome to fall, which comes quickly and grips Portland like a gray vise. Fall can never come too soon, as things left in the summer sun too long begin to dry up and blow away. The city comes to life, breathing the heavy fog of Willamette autumns.
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Fall dawns on the city some September afternoon,
coffee and cigarettes, dark bars and rock,
the taste of woodsmoke on Southeast evening bike rides,
the city's rivers carry you to the ocean if you
don't plant yourself deep in the banks,
sometimes the constant Cascades-to-the-sea flow
hypnotizes the bank dwellers until the world
turns upside down and shakes out its pockets on you,
hold your breath and it'll all pass by, flowing
over with fallen logs and mermaid ghosts,
at the first flash of fresh air through the algae,
you've got to grip the muddy earth and stand up strong,
the city keeps changing while you hide your eyes
from the loose dirt and blood the waters shake
off, catch your breath when you rise,
stand too fast and the blood rush blackens
everything and you sink deeper underneath
the river's incessant abacus flow of days,
get back up and take a slow stroll down to
where the bartender forgot your name, but
remembers your drink, the waitress still
smiles because she's never seen the bad days
you bring when you're still underwater,
those bodies that haunt you, the boats
you missed because you couldn't lift
your hand, they're all just ghosts,
the dreams you faked yourself into fade back
into butt-filled ashtrays and dying candles,
drink up and jump back in, you're
not the first one poisoned,
throw it all up and start clean, another
fall comes on.
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We spent the last week of September in San Francisco and the North Bay area. I found some words in places I'd seen before.
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Dogtown limit sign hanging from a tree leaning over California One,
keep your eyes open or you'll miss the
hidden Bolinas turnoff, meander around the lagoon
with the pelicans and sandpipers, avocets and curlews,
sea gulls and fiddler crabs, egrets and herons,
canyon ranches where fifth-grade memories sleep silently,
waiting for time's inevitable return, three more coyote
stories, still wishing to be a mole in the ground,
still following the drinking gourd,
even that slow broken ocean slide highway
crosses back into the gray noise death civilization
of too many people thirsting for dollars
the easy measured failure of lives
steered aside from the endless pursuit
of beauty, the magnificence of the
eucalyptus aroma, the perfume of tea-scented bushes,
salvation promised in multilingual bird songs
and granola women celebrating the decay smell
of regenerating rotten fruit and debris,
the lagoon fills over centuries, becomes a
meadow, later a peat-bog graveyard,
childhood hopes, still praying on night hike
pitch black coast grassland hills, above quail canyons,
and still rolls to the Golden Gate,
that heaven-departed Highway One.
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In San Francisco, I was once again pursued by the ghost of Gregory Corso, and it's possible I'll soon follow this message with an all-Corso issue. Perhaps I might write a biography of America's most purely romantic poet and poet soul. In the meantime, I wrote an elegy to Jack Micheline, who I knew little of before he visited me in a dream on this trip.
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Jack Micheline met the angels on a BART train to
Orinda, 1998, hypnotized by the white-white-white-yellow
lights of the eternal East Bay Hills tunnel,
the clickety-clack roll rhymed with the countdown
chant of Cassady along the cold Mexican rails,
numbers and foghorns lull me to the same
constellation consciousness, neither a star-bound
supernova nor a death-bound rail rider,
still staggering to the dream train lounge car,
perhaps Jack holds forth there, purgatorio soul
sentenced to roam the rails though his
only earth-bound crime was unrequited
love to the soul-sick East Coast city that
left him hopeless, crawling back to the
San Francisco lover always waiting,
ready to sing him another love song,
Jack I know your spirit before I know
your words, you lazed into my mid-vacation
dreams and asked for a smoke and a
few words to a lazy hopeful dreamer,
Jack you sing of truth and beauty and
the euphoria joy of hot chicken soup
and women who understand every word,
another beer to you, Jack, and I'll look
for you next time the door close beep
whisks me off 79 MPH on East Bay
elevated rails, the clickety-clack calls
you back home to the Bay City that
loved you for Jack Micheline.
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Janet, the bartender at Vesuvio, once again took care of me in mid-afternoon, prescribing the perfect tonic for my ailing soul, this gin called 209, brewed from an old recipe at Pier 50 in San Francisco.
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I opted for a career change at Cafe Vesuvio,
counselor Janet heard the miseries of a failed whiskey man,
the brown choice hooch of washed-up miners
and failed night barons whose kingdoms shrank
to sheltered doorways in left coast city nights,
"I need to lift my spirits", I told her and
she took charge, none of the motorcycle-thrust
theatrics of all-action no-knowing Portland
college degree baristas, so bored with the USA,
straight 209 poured the bartender doctor
with a smile that said welcome to the new office,
gin drunk ready to start bursting juniper
berries in red careless faces,
welcome to the well drink of hope,
the new job don't pay any better but
when you sleep at night, despair visions of
whisky delirium give way to dreams
of cricket and derailed Undergrounds,
scrawny high desert bushes cheer "welcome home!"
you don't need to be another drunk miner
or a failed post-jail on the road driver
dying against the bottle depths,
Welcome to the gin world! where it's
all bubbles and bounces and
"how the hell you all doin'?!?"
Dr. Janet rescues another destitute patient.
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I submitted that poem for a little display here in Portland, but alas it vanished into some sort of ether and never appeared where it was destined.
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True prophets endure the ignorant wrath of false apostles,
actors proud to proclaim microscopic truths
to pond-bound ducks quacking to find mother's line,
the messengers of TRUTH and BEAUTY absorb the
incessant wasp's sting with pure Buddha joy,
the gentle whispers of eternity comfort
the crucified,
the airline roar of machine-made nothing-noise
deafens the city dwellers to the sky-bound
messages of salvation and celebration,
the whispered peaceful chant gathers weight under the
incessant howl of the soul-killing industry,
waiting patiently for the lights to finally go black
and the factory gears to bind and lock shut,
the words of beauty keep on humming, gentle
murmurs like a sonic BOOM!
cutting through the eternal silences,
the prophet weathers all storms.
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Yes, the pipes of prophecy are opening once again for the fall deluge. Make sure your gutters are clean and your drains unclogged- there's a storm coming in.
I'm taking some time off of the increasingly self-contained open mic scene of Portland, waiting for new blood and visionary ideas to take root in a city where too many talented people spend too much time gazing at their own reflections in the bottom of cheap booze glasses and not enough time singing truth and beauty to masses who've never needed those words as badly as they do today. Since Plato, politicians and philosophers have held poets at arm's length, terrified of the power of words wielded like weapons of enlightenment. I invite all the poets and would-be poets of Portland and the world to step up and validate the fears of the establishment, the soul killers that control our communications, our relationships, even our emotions through the enforced captivity of the wage-slave prisons we sell ourselves to for cheap, quick highs. No weapon carries the changing power of well-aimed words.
Enjoy your autumn. You've earned it. Summer chaos subsides into autumn's blanket.
I am, Mikey Golightly.
