From the shadows of a home town always rising from ashes with eternal fog lying in them like a heavy spirit comes... The Frisco Kid! An appreciation by Charles Plymell
Drowning like Li Po in a River of Red Wineby A D Winans is a book to be proud of. It’s a pick-it-up-random poem book that gets right to it, with selected poems organized chronologically from past publications, 1970-2010. One might think that 364 pages of verse (and colophon page) would be a lot to take in, but it is not. Everything is all right, like the years went by, exactly right, bringing it all back home. San Francisco was home to us all. She opened her doors to everyone, alone, weary, and timeless... from Jack Black to Jack Micheline. Everyone got a taste of that home, but Winans is the only one I’ve met who was born there. He must share her coiffed comeliness and spiritual highs, splashing her nacreous pearls from deep black water splayed into the fog of love, the mist from her eddies pressing back the lusty egalitarian thrust until it obeys. It always seemed a small town because it’s vertical, on different planes, each neighborhood seething with scenes. During my limited tenure, it seemed I lived on every street, if not neighborhood, or knew someone who was in this or that scene. And floating through those different planes were layers to its natural beauty that gave off the essence of love but could also sink down darkly and cruel as hell. Through Winans’s eyes one can live those streets again, like a Bob Kaufman looking out the window of a Muni bus in silent study of all action passing on her streets to the last window-framed panorama.
The book too, is exactly right, as a book should be made. The poems aren’t tucked in as a filler to the pretentious pages of slick magazines; they are presented in the best selection of typeface, the poems placed correctly on the page. Li Po would have approved. It has the right feel, the right dimension, and the right geography to go back to and turn the pages like wrapping dreams.
Winans and I are about the same age, and we both discovered the Beats in the late 1950s. We both had unconventional childhoods. My best times were in the fifties. We heard the McCarthy hearings in real time. We developed a similar political philosophy somewhere between Li Po and Upton Sinclair. Like most poets in the Bay Area grown into the sixties there was politics in our poetry. He served time in the service. Mine in the ROTC ... a Clinton/Bush deferment. I arrived in his old middle class neighborhood, the Haight, as the decade of the sixties began, before the kids took over the streets from little Russian ladies. He knew poets I did and the bars they read in, and the magazines they published in. San Francisco was constantly changing, sometimes overnight.
I didn’t know Winans in San Francisco but met him later at an Independent publishing event, “Small Press.” We took part in some of their organizations. We learned how the game was played and over the years watched it change into the “Politburo of Poetry” as all things government do with friends rewarding friends. Over the years, we’ve corresponded and shared our views on poetry, political scams and awards. We spot the phonies and neither of us much cares for labels. We’ve seen “revolutionary” poets & middle class kids get permission to protest. We’ve seen famous poets howl against Moloch and the government only to receive several thousands of government money and keep the Beatnik flack, not black, flying at the landmark tourist bookstore in North Beach. We’ve seen hypocrisy in all flavors in all the poets the city spawned. I’ve often wondered how he sees the invasion on his home turf.
My biggest regret is that I wasn’t with him when the great jazz clubs flourished in the days of Billie Holliday that he remembers in his poems, or the great blues legends like Johnny Lee Hooker. Yes, the times were always changing there. By the time Pam and I went to Mike’s Pool Hall with Ferlinghetti (Pam was underage), the GoGo girls were dancing in every joint. I got to see Sonny Rollins at an embarrassing two-drink minimum gig in North Beach when he was either too sick or too broken to wail. Yes, the city was built on Rock n’ Roll, Fillmore and the Avalon et. al. But the poets knew that it was really re-built, again and again. It all comes back in the works of Winans. It comes back as subtle and real as Bo Diddley’s words at the Avalon, a thriving line-in the street psychedelic hall bringing us the new sounds and lights. His words haunt me when he came to play to a handful, this “unknown” who said “and here I am now playing for you. Mercy Mercy Mercy.” I think I know what he meant. You will get the full history with Winans’s poems. They tell it real. San Francisco was always home to the outcasts from any origin. They became family. The moon on the water beckoning for all comers. The sun over the hills and bridges all bringing commerce, ships going to war. Friends and families living and dying. A changing city like the long nights and sunny days. My sister died in that Chinese Lantern of the Western Moon.
Jack Micheline came by to rally me to read and bring the “word” to the people. I had a good job on the docks and was starting a family. Besides, I said to him, how would you compete with the fame of sensational book trial no matter the poet and poet storeowner were (out of town) and let the Japanese-American clerk who sold the book stand trial, just in case it backfired. The days of Life and Time are over. They just want the tourist version. Micheline left dejected, but hopefully to Gino and Carlos bar to have a drink with Winans and revitalize the words again. Or the Anxious Asp to hear poets insult the poets from Cleveland in their hippy drag. It was like that. It could be a tough town. We didn’t walk to the docks with Longshoreman hooks in our belts for nothing. The town was built on many layers of compassion and destruction, giver and taker, almost religiously. I wonder sometimes how a poet would live all his life there. Probably by writing lines to William Wantling, an example of the many poets who walked the streets of his town: “Looking into the cracked lips of sorrow/I walk the harsh streets of tomorrow.” (Pg. 297) Pick it up and open it anywhere. But to really find out how the poet down South who wrote about the poet up North and what happens with the poets from the East who come to the West and drank at the bars in Winans’s home town, you’ll just have to open the book in a river of red wine on pg 183.
Among A.D.’s direct antecedents are Jack Micheline and Bob Kaufman, two outlaw literary characters, even among the outlaw beats. From them, the poet was inspired to define his poetic stance from the power of ordinary speech. . . [h]e began to hone a keen and original sense of observation, a matter-of-factness standing in direct contrast to literary trends of the 1970s and beyond. There is a theme of opposition in these poems -- an opposition to literary standard-bearers. This is evidenced dramatically in an elegy for Kenneth Patchen . . . “where were they when you lay in your deathbed/crippled and dying/where were they when you lay starving and broke?”. . .
The poems dive deep into the past -- memories -- hidden moments or scenes on the raucous streets of San Francisco’s NorthBeach . . .
old men and women leaving behind their sins
dressed in simple hats and death black shawls
bowing to the holy eternal mumble
of dead saints dressed in gold thirsting
for the wine that is denied them
This rich language hovers on the edges of the surreal. The poet floods us with finely-drawn portraits. They draw on time bumping into time, rip-tides of images, observation torn out of pathos.
the heads of the masses staring always
staring searching for paradise
fat and content smoking tijuana slims
stone faced magicians. . .
◈◈
Neeli Cherkovski is an applauded poet, critic, memoirist and literary biographer.
I was born in San Francisco, and have lived here almost my entire life. I was born at home, premature. My mother said the doctor told her I would not live a long life. I’m now 74 and the doctor is long dead.
Poetry and writing have kept me going all these years. They have been the wife and children I’ve never had. I’ve had fifty chapbooks and books of poetry and prose published and have appeared in well over a thousand literary magazines and anthologies. I’ve given countless readings and made lifelong friends. None of this would have been possible if I had not discovered the magic of poetry. I believe that in the long run my poems and prose will tell you most about who I am. As I said earlier there is no separating my poetry from my life.
I get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee and read the newspaper, spend a couple of hours at the computer, pick up the mail at the post office, take a thirty minute walk, return home, listen to my jazz records, put in a few hours of writing, and then it’s time to go to bed and get up in the morning and start all over again. That’s what life is pretty much about. The growing up, the learning, the wild years, the mellowing, the settling into a routine, and then one day it’s over. I’m satisfied with my life and the way I have lived it. Writing poetry has helped keep lady death from my door. The demons are still there inside me, but I no longer let them control me.
I don’t think any one man’s life is really that important, but what he does with it and leaves behind is. I hope I have earned more good karma than bad karma points. I hope in the end I can look death in the face and say that I’ve played the game honestly and that I never sold my integrity. In the end integrity is all a writer has. Sell your integrity and you’ve sold your soul to the devil. A D Winans
This is a career spanning book of poetry from A.D. Winans, 398 pages. This book covers the period from 1970 - 2010 and contains a selection of poems from all of his 51 books over a period of 40 years. Paperback edition, limited to 100 copies in wraps. Perfect bound. $20.00 International postage add $11.00
NYC 1980, Columbia University Dorms photo by Richard Morris
Here's some of it:
from Straws of Sanity (1975)
FOR KENNETH PATCHEN
where were they when you lay in your deathbed
crippled and dying
where were they when you lay starving and broke?
there was no wailing then
there were no sounds of wild lament
not even a quiet weeping of the soul
no hungry hands knocking at your door
as you lay looking up at the heavens
barely able to talk or move
where were they when the hour of darkness came
when the blackbird sang out in disguise
and the bullfrog in the field silently cried
strange how the vultures gather here like blind ravens
crawling the lonely streets with their cawing
gathering in twos and threes to read their swollen lines
here at north beach where the written word dies slowly
no real sign of emotion in this bought and paid for audience
each poet following the other like a line of corpses strung
out ten miles in a neon lit graveyard each voice rising and
falling the coated sugar on their tongues intent on mourning
down the hours on this moonless evening where terror
and agony are partners and the shadow of your being dances
along the mountains coated in bright enamel.
kenneth patchen
◈
from All the Graffitti on All the Bathroom Walls of the World Can’t Hide These Scars (1977)
BADLAND WOMAN
(for anne)
she’s there bringing bad memories
like a carnival sideshow freak
she brings you back to
the worst days of your childhood
like a parent intent on making
you pay a long-overdue debt
her eyes are a pair
of vacant suitcases waiting
to take you nowhere
the songs she sings
belong to a forgotten
hollywood matinee idol
she walks your dreams breathing
heavier than an obscene phone caller
carrying her wounds around
like a harpooned sailor
a bandage stuck to rotting
flesh
40TH BIRTHDAY
i seem to remember wantling writing
a poem about how
he never wanted to be a poet that
he would carry a lunchbox just
like the rest of them if only
the strange mutterings would leave
him alone
now at forty
i feel pretty much the same standing
naked as a deadman’s shadow wishing
i had been blessed with
the skills of a union carpenter instead
of these heavy words locked away inside
these aging brain cells
forty years old feeling
like the worn impression on
a buffalo head nickel holding on
to these fading visions
like an immigrant unable to escape
the old country
the moods coming and going
like cloud banks sinking slowly
like the “titanic”
the ghosts dancing on the deck dressed
in words of fire
and as each day brings yet another illusion
harsh as a hobo’s dreams
i sing the song of my chosen grave
the lines dancing
like a ballerina on
a high tension wire
while a friend of mine considered
a success in the business world
tells me that like him
i should make a list of priorities
and stick by them no matter what
but the hooks are too far in
too high up into the gut
to do anything about
a poet is like a train
a romantic trip back into another time
he is good for a laugh or two
someone to converse with/occasionally
sleep with/and always someone to stay
away from/when he is down and out
americais no place for
a poet to grow old in
a poet is not a thing
i would want my child to
be
I PAID $3.00 TO SEE BUKOWSKI READ
I paid $3.00 to see Bukowski read
then went around to the side exit
and got in free
sat behind stage on an old piano watching
the old man sit at the table drinking beer
and facing his enemies
his hero worshipers reading
one good poem for every three
bad ones and
the audience not knowing
the good from the bad
and after it was over after
his admirers had cornered him
for his autograph and whatever else
they could get out of him which
was nothing
he smiled took my arm
and said,
A.D.
i want to see you at the party
and then climbed into the van with
the young kids who envied him
the young poets who said
his poetry was the shits
the young kids who hated his guts
the young kids who told him how
great he was
the young kids who wanted to
be seen with him
and one or two who wanted
him dead
and so i refused a ride in
the van not feeling comfortable
with undertakers who drive
live corpses to sealed graves
before their time
and got in my own car instead
and drove up across van ness
across the streets of
my home town
and arrived at the party
a half hour late
and “buk” was getting blown in
the bathroom by a pretty middle-
class hostess who probably gargled
listerine
and it was wall to wall bodies
and the usual crowd
the young poets who were jealous
of the old man
the young poets who seek instant fame
the young poets who would never make it
and the young women who had made it already
once too often in bedrooms and hallways
in alleyway and in johns with pushed
up skirts and knees scarred from
one too many head jobs
and the old enemies were there too
john bryan edging his way across
the room whispering low key
“you better watch it my wife is here
carrying a knife”
and hank shrugging it off
and saying that was in
the old days in
los angeles
can't you forget?
and of course
he couldn’t because
hank had made it and
he hadn’t
and the poets from berkeley
and the poets from los angeles
and the poets from san francisco
and max schwartz
the only man trying to get into prison
when everyone else is trying to get out
and the homosexuals
and the groupies
and the leather clad crowd too
which included one chick with
her shriveled tits hanging out
and her male slave wearing
a dog collar
and then i grew tired
and started to leave
when i was introduced
to this rich girl from australia
who travels on her father’s money
and lives on
castro streetwith
the homosexuals and fucks those
who aren’t
and she’s got a pair of tits
that stand out
and she opens her shirt and shows
them to me and says that
she can’t drink alcohol that
she’s on antibiotics
and coughs and sneezes
and i figure that
she has a cold
and then she’s clutching me
and shoving her tongue down
my throat
and i’m dry humping her against
the wall
and she has her hand on
my cock
and I have my hand down
her blouse
and she has a half-foot
of hardness threatening
to roll a lucky
seven
and she pulls back
licks her lips
smiles and says
i shouldn’t be wasting your time
you remember the antibiotics
and I nod my head
and she says
i’ve got the clap
it won’t be cleared up
for several days
but I liked your poem
the crazy john postcard
i had given her and
i nodded my head
do you have a phone number
she said
and i nodded yes
and she took it down
and said:
i’ll call you when
i’m well
and left the room
to french kiss this
dude in the hallway
who maybe
she wasn’t going
to tell
and so I went home alone
and beat off on the bed thinking
of this girl from houston that
i had a good thing with
a week earlier
the one buk had paid
$300 to fly to
san franciscobecause
he thought
he was in love with her
and she thinks
she is in love with me
and me being too tired
to be in love with
anyone
the loneliness of
the clock ticking down
the hours
like an old organ grinder playing
the final chords at an unattended
funeral
◈
from NorthBeach Poems (1977)
FOR PADDY O’SULLIVAN
Paddy O’Sullivan
home again wearing
the scars of the past
like an engraved bracelet
passed on from one lover to another
walking the streets of north beach
in search of old visions now only
memories in the nightmare mirror
of madness—swapping tales
with obscene priests hung over in
the drunkenness of eternal failure.
Paddy O’Sullivan of Kerouac tales
and Cassady visions
Paddy O’Sullivan walking Washington Square the bulldozer death lurking everywhere.
Paddy O’Sullivan does your typewriter
still talk to you in
the lonely hours of the night?
Paddy O’Sullivan alone in
San Francisco
city of suicides past and present
waiting for that lady poet
who will forgive you in the morning
for forgetting her name in
the hour of dawn when our needs are soothed
with the power of the written word
that stirs moves inside us
like a runaway express train stalled
on the freeway
like the haunting breath
of a hound dog closing in for
the kill.
Paddy O’Sullivan where
have all the poets gone walking
straightjackets trapped by time
the sun is not as you see it now
everything changes and yet remains the same
the streets are no more or less intense
the lines on your face are the lines
on my face as we move back into
the body into the inner flesh measured by
the amnesia of yesterday.
this town coughs up its dead most rudely
the raw nerves of time returning to haunt me
oblivious to the thirst lying still at
the edge of the river.
the blueprint of our life etched in
the dark shadows of
the soul.
paddy o'sullivan 1976
◈
from Venus In Pisces (1997)
MAKING IT WITH MY BABY
Let the wagging tongues wag
And the loose lipped zombies
Say what they will
We'll sing to each other
In the still of night
While calico cats stoned
On poems
Run through our dreams
And rainbow drenched clouds
Drag themselves across
The sheets with
The falling away of our clothes
ON BREAKING UP WITH SHEILA
9 hours a day at work
Another hour counting down
The hours
Commuting to and from work
Dodging angry motorists
With middle fingers
For brains
And when I unlock the door
And sink down on the sofa
And listen to the angelic voice
Of Billie Holiday
My mind tells me
That I need a drink
Maybe many drinks
Various ghosts chewing on me
Later I tell myself
I'll haul my tired ass over
To the typewriter
Sip on a glass of white wine
Try to pen a line or two
Trying to put off going to bed
Forever forced to remember
Your smell on the sheets
The taste of your flesh
Your warm back on mine
So I hit the typing keys
Trying with words
To still the pain
Of what I need
And never had
My mind my need
My weakness
No different than
Any other man
Thinking of love
Thinking of fucking
Thinking of you
Pounding out my regrets
On the typewriter
Savoring the lush taste
Of creativity
Hot as your flesh
Feeling the weight
Of your memory
Heavy as an anchor
Tied to the tip
Of my tongue.
◈
from San Francisco Streets (1997)
GOING BACK IN TIME
I was looking at my scrapbook
The other night
While listening to an old
Woody Guthrie record
Scratchy as a smoker’s cough
After twenty years of lung destruction
And there I was in my youth
Hitchhiking from California to Arizona
And places further West
Heading in so many directions
That it was like getting lost
In the trick mirrors at the fun house
And there were the women
Then young girls
Free flowing spirits
Who gave their minds and bodies
At the slightest invitation
And nights too laying alone
In tangled sleep
Feeling like a deer caught
In barbed wire
Or sitting bunched-up
Cold and disheveled
At the local Greyhound station
Fighting off the eyes
Of leering men who preferred
Boys to women
Now sixty
I realize I was there and back
So fast
Like a derailed train
Running out of track
Returning home
Carrying my life
In a knapsack
The days the months
The years hung out to dry
Like your mother’s washing
On an old clothesline
SAN FRANCISCOSTREETS
I’ve walked these San Francisco streets
Like a cop walks his beat
My eyes taking in her every movement
My brain storing real and imagined changes
In sixty years her changes have not eluded me
She is older now
More wrinkled and cranky
Much like me
But the two of us manage to get along
Like business partners looking after
Each others interest
Market Street once a fashionable socialite
Now a gaudy whore
Mission Streetonce the home of the Irish
Now glossed over
Tough looking youths with dagger stares
Where you guard your wallet
Like a eunuch guards the harem door
You have to learn to give and take
You have to learn to adjust
The city is like a cup of strong coffee
Stir her enough
And the flavor floats to the top
I have walked these streets
All my life
In good condition
And broken down physique
Knowing there is no city
Like her in the world
She is like a pair
Of empty shoes
Sitting under the bed
With no feet big enough
To fill them
She is like a squirrel
Running between the live
Wires of a utility pole
She is like the last bullet
In the executioner’s gun
She is like a room full
Of poets crazed with their
Own conversation
She is like Billie Holiday
Drenched in sweat
She is like the face of god
All forgiving
In her insatiable lust
For life
THINKING ABOUT THEN AND NOW
when I worked in Modesto
back in 1964
I’d drive to Stockton
and sit in the park
drinking with the winos
in Salinas it was field workers
in Crow’s Landing it was with
unemployed Mexicans at Latin
cantina’s
in NorthBeach and the Mission
I hung out with deadbeats and
losers
street people fighting
cirrhosis of the liver
junkie tremors and now
AIDS
in the Fillmore
I cut my teeth on jazz
let Billie Holiday patch up
my bleeding heart
in the Potrero
I saw the last of the
factory workers
growing thinner
like their paychecks
fearing for their jobs
in the Tenderloin
I drank with whores and
prostitutes
who opened their pocketbooks
as freely as their legs
on
Market Street
I witnessed panhandlers
crouched like criminals
in open doorways
a short distance from
the Jesus freaks with
billboards on their backs
pointing the way to heaven
at the old southern pacific
railway yard
I saw the last brake man
smoking a cigarette
eyes vacant as an empty
satchel
while on the other side
of town
high on top of
Nob Hill
society ladies sat in
chauffeured limousines
white poodle dogs nestled
between their piano legs
unaware of the dredges
of humanity walking third
and
howard street
drinking cheap port from
brown paper bags
starving cold disheveled
as the homeless are today
waiting for god or pneumonia
to walk them to the grave
◈
from It Serves You Right To Suffer (1997)
FOR DINO
The Beach is dead
The blood thin red
Dino the bartender lives
In a graveyard
Chief undertaker
Dispensing pain
Like low grade cocaine
There was a time when
I might have invited him outside
Only the tough guy image
Long ago died
The Beach is dead
The poets have left
Dino the bartender
Walks with spade and shovel
Having found his niche in life
The Beach is dead
The ghosts cry in despair
Mad cowboys rope my visions
Hog tie my poems
The curse of Kerouac serenades
The demons of sleep
The Beach is dead.
FOR KELL
Old guitar slung around
His back
Pure country
Singing the blues
In all of us
With eyes that cry out
To be listened to
Nearly 66
Hard as the highway
By the same name
Leaving a message
On Annie’s answering machine
Readinga poem about
A bird that died
In his hands
Remembering the scattering
Of his daughter’s ashes
Caught in the pit of sorrow
This man of music
This one time old friend
Still fighting
Still scrapping
Like the rest of us
For whatever time
Is left
◈
from Pussy To Politics (1999)
I KISS THE FEET OF ANGELS
dark starry night
fog creeping in
over the hills
raindrops falling
on the window
I see the faces
of old friends staring at me
ghosts from the past
freight trains steam ships
subway trains carrying
their cargo of dead
Rimbaud the mad hatter
Baudelaire
Lorca fed a dinner of bullets
Kaufman black messiah
walking bourbon street
eating a golden sardine
Micheline drinking with Kerouac
at the old cedar tavern
Jesus wiping the perspiration
from his forehead
the foghorn plays a symphony
inside my head
I hear the drums
I feel the beat
I kiss the feet of angels
WATCHING MILES DAVIS PLAY
AT THE BLACK HAWK 1962
long wailing notes
that run up and down
the spine
makes you shudder
like a woman coming down
from a climax
heightens the senses
sends shock waves
through my body
God, Jesus and the
Holy Ghost rolled
into one
◈
from Scar Tissue (1999)
WAITING
The last few months were the worst
As if she were under a gypsy curse
Her children near and far
Forced to watch life flee her
Like a runaway car
Seeing her nibble
At each meal
Robbed of all zeal
One eye on the dessert
The other on
The obituary column
TRYING TO LET GO
A week after Saint Patrick’s Day
You passed away
Yet remained in our hearts
Half smile
Half frown
Hanging around
I still visit your grave
On Christmas
Your birthday
And Mother’s Day
Tied to death’s umbilical cord
That refuses to let me go
Knotting itself like a noose
Around my neck
Too tight for comfort
Not loose enough
To set me free
POEM FOR MY FATHER
It took me decades after his death
Before I could write a poem about him
It was as if a small part of him
Had entered my heart
And remained behind the barbed-
Wire fence he so carefully constructed
Over those long years
Stayed there all that time
Building an invisible umbilical cord
Reaching out for un unseen love connection
Sending signals carried on the sealed lips
Of blackbirds circling invisible graveyards
Finding in death
What we had never known in life
Those ghostly white hands scratching upward
From the grave
Desperately trying to cup the tiny flame
Flickering inside the valve of my heart
◈
from 13 Jazz Poems (2000)
OUTSIDE A BOARDED DOWN JAZZ CLUB
An old man stands in
The doorway
Of an abandoned building
Shoulders stooped
Jesus beard
Ragged clothes
Hands outstretched
Begging for his supper
A tote of wine
His prayers unanswered
Spittle on his chin
Holes in his shoes
Walt Whitman’s forgotten
Child
GHOSTS IN THE NIGHT
the shrill cry of dead
jazz greats ring out
in the night gliding
on dark rain clouds
jazz notes loud as thunder
burst the eardrums
like artillery fire
the 4-walls closing in
like a police dragnet
jazz luminaries beautiful
butterflies spreading
their wings
reshaping the stars
the universe
cosmic matter waiting
to be reborn
◈
from NorthBeach Revisited (2000)
FOR JAMIE
Sitting alone at the
Lost and Found Bar
Here in North Beach
Dark skin centuries
Removed from the present
Tapping your fingers to the
Late afternoon music coming
From the jukebox
No longer able to play
Your saxophone now
Sitting alone like you
Forgotten in a
Downtown pawnshop
Tagged for a quick sale
Someone puts a dollar
Into the jukebox and
Billie Holiday sings
Softly in your ear
Bringing an instant smile
To your face
A lighthouse beam
Dividing the thin line
Between sanity and madness
This is your turf
Your veins burning with
The energy of life
Long lines of images haunting
The afternoon hours
Bronzed warrior of old
Sitting here at the
Lost and Found bar
The beat forever going
On
NORTH BEACH DRUNK
I weave in and out of North Beach Bars
Ghosts at every bar stool
Drunk with memories of the past
Time capsule glimpses of fallen comrades
Flashing through my head
Lenny Bruce at the Purple Onion
William Margolis jumping out
A third story window
Looking for death and finding
Only paralysis
Echoes of the damned
Ring through my eardrums
Like cash registers
Playing a lonely concerto
Inside my head
Lenny
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from Will The Real Lawrence Ferlinghetti Please Stand Up (2002)
Off the rails teenage years, then gradual but radical transformation begins. The next few years were hard work with a lot of help. Student at Art College painting,drawing,theatre. Counter culture, Some years in workshop theatre as actor as designer with Dodge City Players with Phil Motherwell (great writer) which later morphed into NighShift with Lindzee Smith, director and organiser. In 1986 Linzee and I debuted the THE LEATHERMAN playscript which Lindzee was given by Tennessee Williams. It had been sent to Williams by Fassbinder secretary when Fass croaked. It was based on the Hans Eppendorfer and Karl Fichter interview sessions. It was Hans who started the homosexual BDS&M scene, which began in Hamburg (?). We opened it at Rhumbarellas gallery Fitzroy, (later went on to La Mama in Carlton, sans Lindzee) on the 3rd or 4th night I flipped out, arriving late, very drunk, and too crazy to perform. 'The 'Leatherman' was a very confronting piece of work.
Worked various jobs then 10 years washing dishes pots and pans and the second 10 as Chef. Still do bit of painting, writing,digital photography, but not much.