Catfish McDaris

Albuquerque, New Mexico

to

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

mac th nife

Catfish McDaris

“I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on July 29th, 1953. I learned to lay brick, block, and stone from my father and grandfather. I was in the artillery for 3 years in the army. Then I moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin 35 years ago. I worked for the Post Office for 30 years and married a Mexican beauty 28 years ago. We have 1 daughter, soon to become a cop.


The interview I did with Charles Plymell [♣] is my main connection to the Beats. I did the first interview in ‘97 & another recent one for Outsider Writer. Plymell is 77 & I'm 56, so I’m not really old enough to have known the main Beats well. I did do a book with Bukowski & Jack Micheline (Kerouac wrote the intro to Micheline’s 1st book) ours was called Prying (an anthology of poems published by Four-Sep Publications 1997).


At the Beat reading at Ginsberg's farm [1997] was Anne Waldman with her nephew, David Amram [♣] with his daughter (he owns an organic farm now), Ed Sanders (formerly of the Fugs), Ray Bremser(an ex bank robber, and poet, now dead), Dave Church (a cab driver poet, now dead), Janine Pommy Vega, and many more."




[♣ Charles Plymell welcomed Neal Cassady, his girl Anne Murphy, and Allen Ginsberg into the large apartment he rented in the Haight area of San Fran in 1963; Plymell also became a close friend of Bill Burroughs. I will soon do a feature piece on Plymell who, with his wife Pam, started Cherry Valley Editions - and published Herbert Huncke, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Ray Bremser, et al. ♣ David Amram, most people won't know - he played backup music for Kerouac when he read.  Editor]

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The young Catfish McDaris, Corrales, New Mexico. 

Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire

He asked me if I'd

read before him

"Sort of warm up

the crowd for

the main attraction"

he chuckled

I replied,"Sure,
remember the time
Hendrix opened for
The Monkees?"


Wrinkles of doubt
clouded his forehead. 
 

Two Red Sailors

Sitting here in my
rat hole apartment
looking at the painting
Jack Micheline sent me
before he died


I miss him with all my
heart, his ghost might
be sitting in the
closet for all I
know


Listening to Guy Clark
singing about skinning
a Hollywood movie star


About there ain't no
money in poetry and
that's what
sets a poet free


I realize I have no
idea what I'm doing


Maybe the two red
sailors know, all
I know is I miss
Jack Micheline

Like a heart attack
from GOD.




OB GYN Blues


Accompanying my wife to the gynecologist,
I found a seat in the waiting room, pregnant
women kept arriving, I tried to doze


I soon came under attack by the
farting contest, one lady sounded like
a Vespa scooter, poppa pop ftttt ftt foo


Another matched her with a braaat
braatt braa bra like a sheep being
strangled by barbed wire


Another sounded like a snoring
wino in his death throes nghaaa
nghaa ngha ngh nggggg aaaa


The last sounded like a 62 Corvair
with no muffler being revved up,
she grabbed her ass & screamed
“Oh goodness” & took off at a run


I laughed & cried so hard, a nurse
was removing the oxygen, as my
wife & her Dr. exited his office
She took one look & said, “Don’t
even ask,” they all gave me
the evil eye.





No Longer Here


a dying bull's eyes bulge
from a nightmare disbelief face
amigo's daughter is dead


i watch his soul
shrivel & walk away
tears river down granite jaws
fist sledgehammers pound
hearts to a bloody pulp

not expired not passed away
no longer alive
a piece of meat for worms


23 years
she'd been his life
her whore mother long gone


there are no words to convey solace


watching my daughter
opening presents under the tree
i lapse into guilt & pain
a blue sorrow
i can not imagine
it claws my eyes to blindness


my wife stares at me
without understanding
like something abstract
a de Kooning


"this is suppose to be
a happy time" she explains


but I'm gone

jack lemur just released from prison hulk 'success' (one of nelson's ships)

from the play 'yellowgirl' by phil motherwell.

painting on arche paper by karl gallagher 1980s 

Contemplating Insanity

I stare at the sun,
but it gives no warmth.


The waves crash against
the beach and sanity.


Is sanity swallowing pride?
Is sanity feeling turmoil curl
inside, so deep your guts churn?
Is sanity eating dirt daily?


Insults overwhelm me.
Only steel gives comfort.
A gun is too impersonal.


There is no choice.
I must let my pain
meet theirs.


Therefore am I sane?

A Trojan Whore

While dreaming of

naked women

in marijuana fields

in the Mexican

mountains

The lady next to me

told me how she

threw her panties

at Tom Jones & Elvis

Now she can't find a date

she wrote her phone

number on a pack

of Trojans & slipped

them in my pocket.

 

The Red Sea

One who accepts death
in all manifestations,
will always be a victor
over one who fears
for their life


Acceptance is a reward


The shadows are empty,
they weren't always


Nor was your heart,
nor my promises,
nor our destiny


Our laughter flew with eagles,
our tears filled rivers,
our blood melted the sun


As I carve these words
into the oar,
the fins come closer


You quit loving me,
now I row


But as I stare
at the sea,
I remember your smile.

Caliginous Blues

It was Martin
Luther King Day
I didn't have
any dreams


The 1901 Cincinnati
safe I opened contained
2 kilos of Peruvian rock


A 357 snub nose
a stamp worth 90
grand a signed photo
of Elvis & a stack
of hundreds


I sampled the blow
gathered the loot
boarded a plane


Woke up descending
above Regina, Saskatchewan.

Strangling On Prayers

Mumbling to the river
blue empty sky, words
sometimes strangle


The best stay inside
where shreds of
sanity dwell


Others float in a baby's milk
in the spin of a marble game
in colors on a home made Mother's Day card
on the floor of a church

in a spray of bullets
in a pool of blood
in tears on a black dress
in the dust of a fading photo
of a smiling child


Staring eyes choked
on words better left unspoken.

∽∽∽

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Catfish and the late Ray Bremser - Cherry Valley, New York, 1997

Catfish with daughter Elizabeth

Catfish McDaris recently won a Flash Fiction contest at Buns & Barbs judged by the 2009 poet laureate, Jonathan Penton from Unlikely Stories; he has an interview with Charles Plymell; and a video with Belinda Subraman on Outsider Writer; he has work on/in The, and Black Listed magazines.


McDaris has been published in New York Quarterly, Louisiana Quarterly, George Mason Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Pearl, Bukowski Review, Chiron Review, Haight Ashbury Review, Sho, xib,  Lobster Cult, Thirteen Myna Birds, Beggars & Cheeseburgers, Sex & Murder, Gutter Eloquence, Naughty Girlx, Unlikely Stories. and many more.

He won the Uprising Award in 1998. He has won the Poetry Slam twice at the Green Mill in Chicago, birthplace of the poetry slam. His last poetry reading was at the Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore in Paris.

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McDaris published on these sites (among others):

http://www.thetimegarden.com/

http://www.thing.net/~grist/homebove.htm

http://home.surewest.net/aphasiapress/silt.html

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Previously published:

Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire  http://welcometoyethe.blogspot.com/

Two Red Sailors  http://www.bsu.edu/classes/koontz/barnwood/mag/p05/mcdaris1.htmm

No Longer Here  http://www.echonyc.com/~poets/vol9/catfish.htmll

Contemplating Insanity published in The Hold hard copy magazine.

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McDaris’s 1st interview with Charles Plymell in1996 is published here:

http://www.thing.net/~grist/bove/new/cpinterv.htm

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" mac th nife - yah i remember that name neal said, and so did i, me being younger (then 1968) had known bobby darren's version in '58, ol mac the knife. this kid mac th nife - he spelled out to us. neal an me roared lauging. you could tell this kid could make it, he knew Time. beboperoo didgeri doo. an who were we anyway though neal did express a few regrets to him, like trying to forewarn him, about how life can take unexpected turns that can knock you down - for keeps." jack karlos notebooks: san pedro. (prev unpubished).