NO GOING BACK

No Going Back

as always, for Marcia

I arrive in Denver on the fourth day of July in 1975 after twenty-seven years of East Coast life. My girlfriend (let’s call her “Crazy”) had at the time wanted to experience Kerouac and Cassady’s “the West,” and so I had resigned from my life and tenured position in Jersey and moved here to accommodate her wishes. We found a second-floor one-bedroom apartment at 14^th and Elizabeth and set about reinventing ourselves. I found work as a waiter making more money than I had as a teacher and commenced the life of a Bohemian, writing poetry and starting work on my “great American novel,” activities the time constraints of my career as a teacher and union organizer had precluded me from indulging in. I found great pleasure in my disassociation from all that been before and reveled in my newfound anonymity. Writing in long hand on the built in table of my walk-up apartment, such things as my teenage gang membership in Philadelphia, my degree in physics, and my tenure as a professional educator had little to do with this new life as an artist I was undertaking; quite aware I was that I would never return to the life I’d known before. Sadly my girlfriend embraced not the uncertainties of living in the West as an artist, and by October Crazy was in NYC, never to return.

During the time Crazy and I lived in our Congress Park pad on the second floor of the Elizabeth Arms, we were friendly with a couple that also lived there, Ric and Sandy. Ric was a folksinger and social worker and Sandy was, well Sandy was a wee bit strange, as strange as she was beautiful. Sandy and Crazy had been summer friends, a friendship based on the similarity of their childhoods and upbringing, and, in retrospect, their apparently fragile mental health. Both were sexy and exotic (Crazy was a Mediterranean beauty and Sandy was archetypal Aryan), and both women expected men to take care of the mundane matters of life – like making a living. Both had been raised by very wealthy parents who lived in gated and exclusive enclaves, Crazy in Wellesley Massachusetts and Sandy in the Bahamas. I especially enjoyed eyeballing Crazy and Sandy from my writing table window as they sat, late afternoons, on the front porch. My first fantasies of infidelity and “the other woman” were incited by the vision of the two of them, smoking cigarettes and drinking wine, rocking side by side on the porch glider, comparing notes, and gossiping about Ric and me.

Shortly before Crazy abandoned me and left Colorado, I bought a house on Pearl Street and lost contact with Ric and Sandy. Crazy leaving me was brutal, for I was deeply in love with the woman I imagined she was, and I sought to numb my pain with alcohol and drugs. On my evenings off, I’d prowl Congress Park and Colfax Avenue – places we had loved - on foot or in my van in a nostalgic hunt for the ghost of Crazy, and one night I came across a bewildered Sandy outside the 7-11 on York Street around the corner from my old apartment. She lit up when she saw me, and the hug she gave me had a hint of sexual innuendo that was hard to ignore. She clung to me like a child clings to a favorite grandparent or a favorite toy. Like the lost to their savior.

I asked after Ric, and Sandy told me he was in a hospital in Thornton. Minor surgery had corrected a herniated disc but he’d be in recovery and physical therapy for another week. She asked after Crazy and her eyes got sparkly when I told her of my Ex’s return to the East Coast. I do believe she actually licked her lips with a serpentine tongue, as she appeared lost in thought. And then she asked if I’d give her a ride to the hospital sometime soon as she had not been able to visit Ric. Public transportation, its schedules and transfers, was beyond her ken.

So, with a wee bit of lust lurking in the shadows of my intentions, I arrive at my old apartment building the next morning. Sandy and Ric lived on the ground floor across the commons from where Crazy and I had lived, and she was waiting on the communal front porch. She bubbled with excitement as she flew the length of the walk and climbed into my van. All the way to Thornton she gossiped about Ric and his increasing demands on her abilities. She practically hissed a litany of things that needed redress. Did Ric actually expected to return home to an organized apartment, one without dirty dishes and piles of laundry? Did he really expect her to keep track of her medication and dirty clothes? Suffice it to say, Sandy was all over the map, mentally and physically. She constantly changed stations on the radio, rolled her window up and down, down and up, squirmed, one might say “writhed” in her seat, all the while prattling on about Ric’s peccadilloes, his dislike of clutter and certain sexual practices, his Zen stance on organization. His absurd talk of finances and the future, as if money or tomorrow matter! She’d never cleaned house in her life and she was not about to play maid, even though Ric brought home the bacon. The entire trip was a harangue of non-sequiturs and unrelated trivial chastisements of Ric and his maddening expectations. At the hospital there were other telling revelations. Sandy had forgotten to bring Ric his Gibson guitar as he’d asked. “Left it on the porch.” She’d failed to bring his checkbook. “Couldn’t find it.”  She’d not remembered his request to bring him a few joints. “I don’t know how to roll.” She hardly looked at Ric and when she left to use the restroom Ric confided in me his assessment: “Sandy’s off her meds! Look out, Eddie. Her demons are as venomous and real as she is beautiful and flighty.”

On the way back to Denver Sandy announced her intentions. She’d be leaving Ric and the Elizabeth Arms. Tomorrow! “And could I,” she asked, “move in with you?” - a tricky question, one I had no sure answer for, to say the least.

On the one hand, I was entranced by the blue-eyed blond beauty that was Sandy. Even though I had been deeply in love with Crazy, I had sensed an un-fulfilled desire in Sandy when I’d first met her and Ric, a passion I imagined I might be able to satiate. I remember sensing Crazy had picked up on my feelings about Sandy; my girlfriend had been especially assertive making love her remaining time with me, going as far as to fake or achieve multiple orgasms. And now here was Sandy coming on to me, bringing into focus my loneliness and horniness and longing for what I’d had with Crazy. But on the other hand there was Ric’s mention of Sandy’s demons and her medications. 

So I played it safe. “Sandy, how about I come by tomorrow. Last night, today, it’s been a blur of intoxicating emotions. Like a whirlwind in my heart. I get it that you and Ric are done for, yet being with you, I can’t help but think about Crazy. You two were like sisters. And I will admit that even when I was in love with Crazy, I used to think of you. You are one beautiful woman. Let’s do breakfast at Pete’s Kitchen in the morning. I need a night to think about your moving in with me. And I’m not sure if you’re talking as roommate or girlfriend.”

“If I move in I won’t be paying rent,” were her parting words as she sashayed up the sidewalk to the Elizabeth Arms.

Next morning I arrive at Sandy’s. Again, she’s waiting on the porch. Again down the sidewalk to my van she flies. 

I’ve decided to give it a shot, taking up with Sandy, demons and all, and I tell her as much. You might compare my lonely and horny and bemused decision making to a car going ninety-miles an hour down a dead end street with my dick in the driver’s seat and my rational mind blind-folded and tied up in the trunk. All I know is that I’m game and I’m gonna get laid. Enough said.

After a passionate kiss initiated by her, Sandy tells me she’s going to leave it all behind: her old clothes, her old life, her old ways, and her old medicines. She wants to start her new life with me without baggage. “All I need,” she tells me, “are a few things: make-up, tooth brush, hair brush, boots. Be back in a minute,” and out the van she flies, up the sidewalk and into the Elizabeth Arms. I await her return with all the nervousness of anyone on a first date, of someone about to seal his or her fate.

Minutes pass and my nervousness increases. To what have I committed? What exactly are the meds Ric spoke of? Who are the demons? More time passes. I exit my van and make my way back towards the building where I once lived happily with Crazy. Ascending the steps to the porch I see my first hint of a demon at work: Ric’s Gibson guitar.  Behind the glider against the railing, its hollow body splintered, its cat-gut strings gyring from the tuners like a nest of snakes, it apparently had been rammed repeatedly by the glider: a gone guitar for sure. More than a minor chill percolates below the surface of my skin as I step into the building and approach Sandy’s apartment, the door to which is open. And beyond the threshold is a nightmare. The former Zendo of a living space is topsy-turvy with retribution and destruction. Broken unwashed dishes fill the sink and clutter the kitchen floor and counters. Every closet and cabinet is empty, as is the open refrigerator. Foodstuffs, in and out of packaging, and cookware and clothing scattered helter-skelter from kitchen to living room baseboard constitute a maze even Daedalus could not solve. No path anywhere. The smell of sour milk mixes with the odor of soiled laundry, molding washcloths, and rotting fruit and meats. Even the temperature of the apartment is off the charts, in line with the thermostat setting that I note: 88 degrees and rising! And then I sense her aside me, coming as she has from the bathroom aside the kitchen. In her hands are the personal hygiene items she came back for: her hairbrush, toothbrush and lipstick. She’s wearing white cowgirl boots. She looks not at the destruction she has caused; rather, she looks piercingly at me, as if there’s nothing in the world but me. She quickly and haphazardly paints her lips with the purple lipstick in her hand then brushes her long cascading hair slowly. All the while her eyes give me their full attention. Then she unbuttons her blouse. She wears no bra. She empties her hands of brushes and make-up, all of which join the mess on the floor. She steps forward and falls to her knees in front of me unzipping my pants with the quick work of fingers. I close my eyes to the scene around me, to the world I know, as she takes me into her mouth. She swallows me ravenously, dead-set determined to make me unaware of her demons, but standing there, as I approach orgasm, I see in my mind’s eye unfolding visions of snakes and birds. They slither and flutter all around as they escape from her mouth and leak out of her eyes. I press the back of her head against my body in an attempt to escape the visions, to return to the tactile, the sexual, the here and now, but my hand’s first touch of the back of her head, my first skin to scalp, is met with a cruel rebuke that kills more than my sexual buzz, a warning that she practically squawks: “Don’t ever touch the back of my head. You can have the rest of me, my breasts, my lips, my ass, but my head belongs to them. Then with her side-winding arms slowly undulating, she flutters her fingers in such a way that I sense for sure the nature of her demons, the vipers and raptors to whom her head belongs. Her ophidian dance of arms and quivering flicker of digits ends with her appearing catatonic as she kneels before me. Then she unwinds herself cobra like as she coils to the floor asleep. When she awakens a little while later, she is docile, almost penitent. She knows I won’t be taking her home to my house. She knows I’ve seen her madness. Literally and figuratively. She asks that I take her to Denver General, to the psychiatric ward. “They know me there,” she whispers.

I drive to Sixth and Bannock. We sit silent in the parking lot for quite a while before she leaves me alone in my misery, bewildered, bemused, bewitched, and now with visions of snakes devouring birds and raptors ascending with talons full of snakes leaking out of my mind’s eye into my memory. Two days ago I was simply lonely. Now I will be forever hungry to go to a place to which I know I can’t return.

RONNIE RITA & ME

cover photo - Woolworth's Photo Booth circa 1965

 RONNIE   RITA   &   ME

as always
for Marcia

On my 50 cc Honda, a newly minted 1965 toy of a motorcycle, Glenn Quenzer and I, we are, after an evening of dipping into the folk music scene at the Gilded Cage in downtown Philadelphia, returning to Mayfair in the Great North-East. We’ve been pushing the envelope of loyalty to our hood and boyhood pals recently and have been hanging out with strangers: older kids, college girls wearing leotards, Ben Franklin-eyed men sporting goatees, elbow patches and berets, dilettantes quoting Rimbaud, and folkies singing Woody Guthrie. I’d developed a serious interest in the writings of Bob Dylan and had found the Gilded Cage in my search for poetry. Operated by Esther & Ed Halprin, the coffeehouse with backroom stage is ground zero for folk music and Bohemian pursuits in Philly. The first cover charge of my life I pay here. 

Glenn and I, we are still card carrying members of our teenage gang, “The Wall,” our gang’s moniker, a result of the location where we congregate: on and aside the low retaining wall in front of a large house on Walker Street at Hartel. It seemed there was a strange attraction between the girls of Holmesburg and the guys from Mayfair, and the stone wall served as a maypole of sorts, a touchstone for adolescent hearts to swing around and voices to harmonize a cappella in front of.

Now because my interest in the poetry of folk music and Glenn’s interest in playing guitar and singing on stage are outside the common interests (mostly drinking and fist-fighting) of others in The Wall, Glenn and I have mostly kept our growing passions, our interest in the arts, to ourselves. This Friday, we have opted out of going with the rest of The Wall to a major dance at the Concord Roller Rink, a somewhat serious sin of omission, as you never know if there’d be trouble for someone of the Wall, given the events of my life the last three weeks, as my mouth and Glenn’s fists have always been part of The Wall’s arsenal. Should there be trouble, as often there is, we are surely to be missed.

Heading east, hoping to rendezvous with Fiddles and Ebberly and Bauers and Dubuc and the girls when the dance lets out, we are cruising in and out of the electric buses and automobile traffic on Frankford Avenue. Debbie Marion in her customized 1964 and 1/2 powder-blue convertible Mustang recognizes me and my wheels and honks and waves as she revs her 210 horsepower, 289 cubic inch V-8 engine at the Robbins Avenue light. Part of me has always hankered for Debbie, because, after all, her tail bumper sports a sticker that reads BEATMEUCANEATME. 

Always the devotee of ice cream and custard, and knowing Glenn still has a few bucks left from his Grandfather’s stash, I downshift into the parking lot of Gino’s just west of Levick Street. The frozen treats here, they ain’t Breyers - they ain’t even Dolly Madison - but I got to say I crave sometimes the vanilla chocolate double swirl soft serve custard Gino’s serves. Glenn when he’s flush seems to go for the burgers and fries, which are outside my budget.

So we are standing at the walk up window enjoying, as always, the look and presence of unfamiliar people and places - for as I like to say, Who knows where love hides? - when a familiar and exceedingly unwelcome face appears, the face of my nemesis: Ronnie Ryan. He’s behind me in line tapping on my shoulder and he’s accompanied by his Bridesburg posse, some eight or nine thugs none of whom are smaller than me. I say “Unwelcome” because last month alone I was beaten pretty badly by Ronnie Ryan twice. First in Wildwood New Jersey and then in Wissinoming Park. All because the very woman I am hoping to rendezvous with after the dance lets out in an hour or so, Rita Romero, has been making out with both me and Ronnie, double dipping one might say, while, when alone together, professing to be going steady with each of us. Naturally, the seventeen-year honor code of 1965 dictates that we fight each other anytime we meet. Easy for Ronnie to subscribe to (at six two and 220 pounds) but not so easy for me (at five eight and 160 pounds). Not to mention, in all the fights I’ve ever had, I’ve never ever won. 

The Wildwood deal went down brutally and foolishly after we’d encountered each other on the boardwalk in front of the Starlight Ballroom. Believe you me I was not keen on fighting Ronnie Ryan given his hulking size and cocky smirking glowering, but I had no choice if I was going to maintain my honor among my fellow gang friends with whom I had hitchhiked ninety miles to be here. Because fighting on the boardwalk would surely lead to being arrested, Ronnie and I decided to take our fight away from the eye of the police who maintained a heavy presence amongst the boardwalk throngs. We left our friends, his and mine, to trash talk each other and we headed west up Oak Avenue in search of a secluded spot to fight. The whole time we are strutting and posturing, I am wondering at the depth of my foolish pride for I know in my heart there’s no way I can win. Hell I’ll be lucky to get out of this with all my teeth. All I can hope for is a miracle or a lucky lucky lucky punch.

So into the dark side yard of a small summer cottage we go. Oddly we are surrounded by big beautiful full bloom roses on the perimeter of the yard. Hundreds of them. They will serve incongruously as the ropes of our ring. Not waiting for an imaginary bell to ring, I throw the first half dozen punches the instant he turns to face me. And I connect with enough force to raise a welt on his left eye, and my Saint Joe’s Preparatory Jesuit High School ring has cut his flesh and drawn a little blood below his right eye. I keep throwing punches most of which he blocks by crossing his arms in front of his face. I go for his mid section hoping for that miracle but I am already tiring after punching furiously and dancing to avoid his grasping me. Ronnie seems not to really have any boxing skills and simply appears intent on wrestling me to the ground. With all my remaining strength I throw a wild left hook and connect with the side of his head, but the Cyclopes that is Ronnie just keeps advancing. And then I’m done for as he gets his arms around me, trips me with a foot behind and smashes me to the ground. Soon he’s got my arms pinned with his knees and my body with his ass. His fists are now free to pound me, my face, at will. The full moon in the midnight sky behind his head forms an ironic halo, given the demon I consider him to be. His first punch lands not quite squarely on my mouth as, in utter panic, I squirm with all my strength beneath him, causing him to lose his balance atop me slightly, a result of which my eyetooth fang rips the flesh above his index knuckle. As he raises fist to deliver a second blow, his blood drips in my eye. He spits at me and just as he’s about to deliver what portends to be a knockout, the miracle I had not time to pray for happens. The yard lights come on and a tiny little woman with a voice as big as she is small let’s us know: “I’ve already called the cops. They’re on their way. Get the hell out of my yard.”

And off of me Ronnie Ryan flies, and before you know it, we’re both on our way back to the boardwalk as fast as our feet will carry us, Ronnie on one side of Oak Avenue and me on the other. Honor’s one thing; cops are another. When we get to the Starlight our friends surround us. From the look of things, Ronnie with his one shut eye, bloody cheek and hand, it looks as if I’ve won, although both Ronnie and I are aware of who was about to see stars. Surprised my teeth are still intact, I can’t believe what I say next. “Hey, asshole, this ain’t over yet. I want you Tuesday night. In Wissinoming Park. Nine o’clock. And then we’ll see who’s going steady with Rita.” 

Now what prompted me to ask for another potential beating, I’ll never know. The only possible thing I could come up with is my belief in miracles. And my belief in love. But belief in miracles, like belief in hope, is not a strategy.

The next morning I hitchhike back to Philadelphia. Rita calls to tell me that she can’t believe that I actually fought Ronnie Ryan. That he looks so bad with a serious black eye and stitches on his cheekbone and knuckles. That she’s torn up about her mixed emotions. She goes so far as to confess to me in a whisper, whereas she and I have engaged in some pretty orgasmic petting, that she’s totally and especially confused because she’s “‘gone all the way’ with Ronnie (only once)” and she’s not sure she can still see me, even though she swears she’ll “always love me!” 

And I’ve already scheduled another fight, a fight I’m destined to lose again, for there won’t be no little old lady turning on her lights in a rose garden.

Tuesday night arrives and I’m with my pals, The Wall. Ronnie Ryan arrives with his Bridesburg gang. There must be close to thirty of us milling around in the middle of the park. My honor, Rita’s honor, and Ronnie’s honor are on the line. Sad I am to know that winning the fight does not mean that I’ll be winning Rita. It would seem her woman’s heart is in the corner where sex lay. That she’d fucked him not me had taken me by surprise as the naïve seventeen-year old Irish Catholic in me had not seriously considered going that far, yet.

And then it’s me and Cyclopes. In the middle of a park. Fighting because we have to. Again, I land the first few punches, again damaging Ronnie’s eye, but alas Ronnie Ryan is intent on wrestling me to the ground. And soon he’s again got me pinned. Kaboom! And I literally see stars as I wonder is this what a concussion is? Kaboom again! And then, honor be damned, I concede. “You win, I give in, I give up!” To which he replies, “You ain’t nearly had enough.”

And then as he draws back his fist to slam again my exposed defenseless face, he is lifted (literally) up into the air with a picture perfect uppercut delivered by one of my posse, Bobby Brennan, who says, “Eddie said he’s had enough.” And then all hell breaks lose as The Wall and Bridesburg begin to rumble. Everybody’s swinging except Ronnie who appears to be walking about in a Cyclopes nightmare. One eye again puffed shut, the other staring blankly. And then it’s the sound of sirens followed by the sight of paddy wagons at the west end of the park. Everyone skedaddles and retreats into the Wissinoming neighborhood night including the befuddled Ronnie who is guided to a car by two of his buds. No one gets arrested. Twice now I’ve been saved from serious damage by the intervention of others. 

And now here we go again as Ronnie Ryan stares me down. Outside a Frankford Avenue fast food joint that serves frozen custard! Both his eyes seem to be working. The stitches are gone. His balled up fists in the neon light are the size of cantaloupes.

The artist in me has already started cutting ties to my neighborhood gang, but now I am wishing all my pals were here, because my only friend, Glenn, well, he literally has a broken arm. We step out of the queue and I confer with him. I ask him quietly if he can drive my Honda with one hand. He nods in the affirmative and I slip the key to it into his arm sling. “Be ready;” I tell him, “I’ll be back.”

I approach Ronnie and his gang who are now clustered in between their cars. 

“So what’s up?” I ask. “Do we have to fight again?” 

And he responds, “No point in that. I’ll just kick your ass again. I want the motherfucker who hit me from behind.” 

“That’s not what happened. It was a fair one we were having and when I said I’d had enough you should have been happy and quit. Instead you did not relent, wanting to hurt me some more, and my pal just put an end to it. His name’s Bobby Brennan. Lincoln High’s star fullback. If you want to know what he looks like, his picture’s in The Evening Bulletin. And if you’re looking for him, we hang at The Mayfair Bowling Alley. Come on by sometime. Believe me, Bobby Brennan won’t mind ringing your chimes again, seeing as you don’t obey the code of what’s a fair-one. When someone concedes, it’s over.”

I sense that Ronnie’s about to change his mind and go ballistic, so to get out of fighting him again, I peremptorily offer out the tallest of his pals. “Hey, how about you and me, asshole, across the street. Just you and me in the alley. You’ve come for blood. Let’s spill some. Yours.”

So here I go again. Fighting for a chick who’s fucked my enemy. Fighting for an honor code that I’ve abandoned. This skinny motherfucker I’m about to fight is so tall I’m not even sure I can even reach his face, so I put everything I got into body blows. My third punch knocks the wind out of him, and to the concrete on his knees he falls. I can’t believe I’ve actually won a fight! “Had enough, I ask? Man, come on, this is crazy. We don’t even know a thing about each other and here we are. Why?” And then his breath returns and he’s up on his legs and digging in a dumpster from which he retrieves a rather hefty piece of serious lumber out of which appears to protrude some bent and gnarly nails. He swings wildly at my head and when I duck he smashes the two by six into the brick wall behind me. So forceful is his swing, the stud snaps upon impact with the wall. His torque propels him to spin and I hit him with a roundhouse in the back of his ribs. He falls to the ground wailing.

“What the fuck, you don’t even know me and you might have killed me with those nails had you not missed. You’re fucking crazy man.” And I kick him in the head with all the arch and power of a forty-yard field goal attempt, as this has long since ceased to be a fair one. He rolls on his side holding his cracked ribs and I race back across Frankford Avenue just as Glenn wheels out of Gino’s parking lot. I hop on back and down the Avenue we fly. To the dance, where for the last time I am stood up by Rita who does not show for our rendezvous.

Well, after Ronnie Ryan gathered up his pal with the cracked ribs, they headed for the Mayfair Bowling Alley looking for Bobby Brennan and me. But as I said, The Wall was partying at the Concord Roller Rink where Jerry Blavit was hosting a dance. Upon arrival at the blowing alley the people Ronnie and his pals encounter are not The Wall, rather they are a somewhat older group of nineteen and twenty year old badass boys who occupied the inside of the bowling alley. Most are future cops and many have already been to Vietnam and back. The Wall deferred to them always and reverently and amongst ourselves we referred to them as “The Men.”  Ronnie and his pals were unaware there were two groups of boys who hung at the bowling alley. So when they walked inside 

as if they owned the place,  demanding to know where Bobby and Eddie were, they were met with the fury of The Men who had no idea at all who Bobby and me were. The Men only knew we were from the hood and Ronnie and his pals weren’t. When the melee was over, Ronnie had two serious black eyes this time and I do believe even his Bridesburg pals were done with looking for me and Bobby and done with defending Ronnie’s and/or Rita’s honor. 

Next morning I call Rita to put an end to my misery. “I give up,” I tell her. “Please, don’t ever say we’re going to meet again. After the dance, after school, or after you fuck Ronnie.” Her crying into the phone puts an end to my tirade. It’s the last time we speak for close to fifty years.

But in the end both Ronnie and I, we both won something for all our machismo foolishness. Ronnie went on to marry the beautiful two-timing Rita, and I went on to enhance my teenage reputation as one crazy and fearless motherfucker. A reputation of which I was and am still quite proud, for it’s an honor to live as such in the memory of boyhood pals.

GANG OF POETS

cover art – Michael Bergt

GANG OF POETS

as always

for Marcia

In keeping with Bohemian tradition, the poet and publisher, Larry Lake, my good friend and mentor, first published my poems illustrated by Michael Bergt as a broadside in 1979 entitled affirmations via his BOWERY PRESS. Likewise he published my first collection of poems, citysight, also with illustrations by Michael Bergt in 1981. He was a great compatriot (and at times enemy) who taught me to keep sacred the contract I had entered into with my muse. I also learned from Larry that writing is a lifetime’s commitment and that art is about serving one’s community, not one’s ego. Another Lake wisdom is that brother poets are brothers forever.

So when the filmmaker, Continental Catterson - whose only claim to fame was that he had produced a video documentary about an art opening at Larry Lake’s Bowery Gallery in the early 70s entitled The Bowery Gallery – when Continental Catterson shot Larry twice, I took it rather personally, as any victim’s brother would.

As far as the authorities and the Denver DA were concerned it was a coin toss when it came to the criminality of Catterson’s actions: it was either premeditated felonious assault or a Make My Day situation, for Catterson had shot Larry as Larry reentered Catterson’s home after an earlier argument about money and Catterson being eighty-sixed as the cinematographer in a film that Larry had written about a couple of home grown revolutionaries who intended to blow up Vail Colorado with a “minor” nuclear bomb that one of the revolutionaries had stolen from Lowery Air Force Base in Denver. I think the delusional Catterson might actually have believed that Lake actually possessed a bomb capable of wiping out Vail, that Catterson might some day be witness to an act of terrorism, because in preparing for his role as one of the film’s fictional anti-heroes, Larry used to whisper conspiratorially in an aside to friends and customers in his bookstore:

“Hey remember when John F Kennedy said that he was the only person who could push a button that would launch a nuclear bomb? Well, he was wrong. I have a tactical nuclear weapon that I stole when I was in the Air Force and I have hidden it up at Sam Pace’s cabin in Evergreen.”

Production of the film was currently in limbo as winters in Vail are hardly conducive to filmmaking and Michael Klein, Larry’s favorite lens guy, would not be available to replace Catterson as cameraman until sometime in March.

Now Catterson had been so rattled by his demotion from cameraman to go-fer and lackey that the day before the shooting, Thursday, February 12^th, he had visited my wife, Marcia, at the studio where she worked and babbled to her his evolving concern that Larry was going to shoot him on the morrow, as Catterson owed Larry money for building and painting a backyard fence, and he would not have the money on Friday as promised. That Catterson shot Larry a day after asserting that Larry (who did not own a gun) would shoot him, put my opinion of the entire incident firmly on the side of premeditated attempted murder.

But for Larry there was a silver lining within the cloud of doubt surrounding his being shot, as Larry left Denver General with an open ended prescription for morphine to deal with the pain of the numerous surgeries that saved his life. Given his predilections for narcotic vision and pain relief, Larry much preferred morphine over the methadone he’d been using to assuage his cravings. And he was happy. Larry eventually confided in me that even though it was decidedly a premeditated assault, purposeful pay back of sorts for Larry “using” Catterson for his cameras rather than his cinematic skills and for Larry having slapped Catterson when Catterson claimed he had no money at present to pay Larry for a week’s labor building and painting the fence, Larry declined to press charges and opted not to pursue a civil suit as he did not want to put his friend and art circles with which he was involved under scrutiny, as the ripple effects of such investigation could reveal sundry heavy-duty Bohemian drug connections.

But this story is not so much about Larry Lake and Continental Catterson as it is about sloppy sloppy journalism.

At the time of Lake’s near death on Friday, February 13, 1981, WESTWORD was still in its infancy or, you might say, toddler-hood. The original founders, Patty Calhoun, Sandra Widener, and Rob (last name forgotten) were still hands-on and a little more than three years into their publication of Denver’s alternative arts weekly. Now weekly means tough, tight and rapid fire deadlines and when a young journalist name of Ken Freed showed up six hours before going to press with a story about the shooting of one of Denver’s more infamous and note-worthy beatniks, they cut and pasted Freed’s story into their layout on the spot without giving much thought to the content of what Freed had written. Sad to say it’s diligence be damned when a deadline demands.

Now Mr. Freed was a newly minted journalism graduate who had edited the Metro State student newspaper, and hence his credibility with WESTWORD. Unfortunately, he was a better student than he was a journalist. His source for his take on the shooting, a used book and liquid opium dealer named Bill Good, possessed no first or even second hand knowledge of the events surrounding the shooting. Mr. Liquid O Good knew nothing of tensions surrounding the making of the film about blowing up Vail, nada when it came to Catterson’s demotion in the film’s hierarchy, zip about the fence and the money owed. Good simply disliked Lake as Larry was, indeed, a gracious charm-ster when he wished, a favorite of the women, bigger than life, and a bad-ass Air-Force trained boxer to boot who had bad mouthed Mr. Good regarding his greed around the liquid O he sold. So when Freed – under the influence of Mr. Good – wrote that “Larry Lake deserved to be shot” because “Lake was an art bully,” and WESTWORD ran the story, more than journalism ethics were violated, and, in my Irish mind, some redress was in order.

Now at the time, I liked WESTWORD (and still do). Early on in May of 1979, WESTWORD had published a piece on Colorado poetics and had spoken of Allen Ginsburg and myself as being central figures in Colorado poetry, illustrating the story with Marcia’s photo of me reading at Café Nepenthes where I hosted readings. Still it was WESTWORD that had dropped the ball as far as I was concerned when it came to the fiasco of the Lake story. Freed and Good were petty, talent-less small minds, minor players in the debacle, but the professionals, Patty and Sandra and Rob, should have at least read and understood the slander they were printing. They should have known better.

Now at the time, Marcia was some eight months pregnant (as was Larry’s wife Barbara, who had introduced me and Marcia). Still, Marcia and I took it upon ourselves to visit the second story Larimer Street offices of WESTWORD to express our outrage and to demand both an apology and a rewrite of the story. In actuality I think Marcia feared what I might to if I went alone, that’s how worked up I was over the story.

We ascended the stairs and huffed and puffed our way into the one-room office shared by Patty, Rob and Sandra. I was so mad about the defamation of my pal Larry, so full of pent-up anger and hostility, my one hundred and sixty pounds upon my five-foot eight frame probably appeared more like two hundred pounds upon a six-foot frame. First I flung a dozen copies of the WESTWORD issue containing the story in the general directions of all three editors. A tornado it seemed had entered the room the way the pages of the paper vortex-ed and helicopter-ed in the air before landing on the desks, their laps and floor. And then, without so much as a howdy-do, I launched into a whirling dervish litany of accusations concerning Patty and Sandra and Rob’s professional shortcomings and failures as editors to fact check anything Freed had written (hell, he didn’t even have the location of Catterson’s house correct) and highlighted their utter insensitivity to the fact that a beloved artist and man and about-to-be-father, my best friend, and a publisher like themselves, had been shot. With a gun. In the liver. With real thirty-eight caliber bullets. By a man who had hidden the cocked and loaded revolver behind his back. Shot twice, the second time in the thigh as Larry lay bleeding on the floor; a third fired bullet had missed Larry’s genitals by inches. By a pathetic excuse of a man, a faux hipster sociopath who hid a loaded gun in every room of his house. A man who often expressed to those he thought he might impress at gatherings and screenings and openings that he looked forward to the day that some neighborhood kid, some teeny-bopper gangster wanna-be, might break into his Five-Points bungalow so that he, Continental Catterson, would have license to shoot and kill. And, I roared incredulously, WESTWORD’s justification for this attempted Make My Day murder is that “Lake was an art bully.”

Now I will admit I was a little over the top, dramatically speaking. I will also admit to maybe speaking with something other than a corporate inside office voice. Hell, I might have been speaking in tongues. I will also admit to pointing fingers and threatening two things: one, that I would contact every WESTWORD advertiser and badger them into advertising somewhere else – maybe in Boulder’s SOLDIER OF FORTUNE magazine - and two, that I would blab to everyone I knew that Rob was quietly giving up his interest in WESTWORD so they he could pursue his current passion of becoming “a fucking mercenary soldier in Africa,” something I bellowed in a most accusatory tone, a tidbit of info I had gleaned via the Denver art-world grapevine, something that I suspect that neither Patty or Sandra were aware of, given the flush, the beet red complexion that overtook Rob’s visage with my revelation of his intentions to become a trained killer.  “Go ahead Rob, pick a side and feel free to murder people on the other side, and, please, take Catterson with you.”

I think Rob wished he had a gun as I stared him down. Both Patty and Sandra averted their eyes downward from Marcia’s and mine in a sheepish admission of their complicity and guilt. After my tirade there were more than a few moments of silence before Ms Calhoun broached an admission of WESTWORD’s mistakes. Marcia and I soon left feeling some what vindicated and satisfied, as Patty promised she’d publish a retraction or apology written by someone other than Mr. Freed. She attributed WESTWORD’s sloppy oversight to looming deadlines and hurried late night corner cutting.

And, to WESTWORD’s credit, they published an apology in the next issue, lampooning both themselves for their lack of oversight and Mr. Freed for the callousness and inaccuracies of his story.

And then in 1987, on the tenth anniversary of WESTWORD, Sandra Widener - who had left WESTWORD and was currently a staff writer at NEWSDAY in New York - submitted a piece for inclusion in the silver anniversary edition of WESTWORD. Basically Sandra admitted to being exceedingly scrupulous, indeed, obsessed with fact checking and that she intermittently suffered nightmares as a result of publishing the story of Larry Lake’s shooting. She said she would sometimes awake in the middle of the night worried that that “gang of poets” – her memory was that there were a half dozen or more angry poets - that the gang of poets that filled WESTWORD’s office that day in 1981 would storm into her New York City walkup in the middle of the night demanding redress for some failure on her part. Somehow I find it funny, rewarding and empowering that Sandra remembered me and my eight-month pregnant wife as a gang of a half a dozen poets.

SAINTS AND SNAKES

cover photography - Marcia Ward

                                     


                                Saints and Snakes

as always

for Marcia

Back in the day when I became a journeyman – as opposed to apprentice – poet, I met a rather talented young writer, pen name of “Snake,” at a poetry reading on Seventeenth Avenue in Denver at which I was a regular attendee.

Snake was a tall handsome young man, early twenties, a mix of Latin and European ancestry; Germany and Puerto Rico were his two principal not-too-distant ancestral homelands. His poetry was Kerouac-esque, mellifluous and chatter-y. He had picked up the ball that a drunken Jack had dropped, and I could see Snake making a big score someday in the poetry arena. I introduced myself and told him I’d love to share with him what I knew of the Bohemians, poets, and beatniks of Denver, that he should come to my house and listen to a few outrageous tapes that I possessed, recordings of the late greats, James Ryan Morris and Stuart Z Perkoff, and the living legend Tony Scibella, the Kid in America, himself. “There are,” I told him, “other approaches to the poem besides the one popularized by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.”

So off to my home on Pennsylvania we go. It’s about midnight and I know my wife and sons will be sleeping in our family bed, so it’s softly and quietly we tread as we enter and get comfortable in my living room. Now my wife Marcia grew up in Wyoming where silence (aside from the wind) is the song of night, and I no sooner turn on the stereo to listen to Jimmy Morris when Marcia, awakened by the recorded voice, walks, somnambulist like, into the living room. She’s wearing flannel pajamas and she rubs her eyes before stretching her arms upward and then forward to embrace me. Because she is not wearing her contact lenses it takes her a moment to realize that I am not alone in the living room, and when she does her modesty dictates that she not stay and she returns to the bedroom. I join her and explain what’s going on with Snake, assuring her that we will be as quiet as possible in the other room. She frowns disapprovingly at my mention of the name of my new friend, but then blows me a kiss before rejoining Passion and Zenith on the futon. She is asleep again before I leave the room.

“Who was that creature?” Snake asks when I return to the living room. The tone and subtext of his query, as I read it, indicates that Marcia’s appearance was as charming and enchanting as it was brief. I think to myself, “The boy is smitten.”

Well I sort of take Snake under my wing. I publish a poem of his as a broadside, a full color affair. I illustrate his nostalgic words with a collage I make with some of my own boyhood memorabilia: Holmesburg football team photos, a black and white of my Mom, and me mugging with boyhood pals. Snake winds up eating dinner with my family three, four, five times a week. When I have an opportunity to move to North Denver into a sweet Victorian on 37^th Avenue, Snake follows and rents a second story walk-up apartment right next door. I can’t help but think I’m living the poet’s life, mentoring young Snake as I had been mentored by Larry Lake who had published my first broadside ten years earlier. In fact, Snake is as close to family as it gets, given the amount of time we spend together, and I share business and art opportunities with him as well. He plays with my young sons and gets on well with my dog and even my persnickety cat. Snake housesits when my family travels to Wildwood NJ for a week at the beach. We share some very crazy 80s times as well, partying with counterculture abandon. On more than one occasion, we dodge trouble together with a capital T, sidestepping authority, attributing our luck to the purity of our dedication to poetry and our respective muses. Indeed, we are brother poets burning brightly.

And then Snake hooked up with the love of his life, and we, my family, didn’t see him for weeks. He wasn’t at home and he wasn’t at our dinner table. And then as suddenly as he had come into my family’s life, he was on his way to New Mexico with the woman who would become his wife. The day he packed up his belongings, mostly books and artwork, we met his mysterious love, Veronica Pinon.

Veronica was an artist and teacher, the daughter of a prominent highway contractor. Her family could trace its roots in New Mexico back some two hundred years. She was not New Mexican, she was Spanish, she told me more than once, with an air of distancing herself from any association with the Native American/Mexican gene pool. Entitled, privileged, talented, a go-get-er. Veronica took, for reasons unknown, an instant dislike to the Bohemian that I am, as if I had been a poor influence upon her lover, no matter I had published his poetry, nurtured his general entrepreneurial and artistic spirit, had fed him home cooked meals the last few years, and granted him access to the touchstone of family, mine. Well, Veronica was not the first girlfriend of a friend to put the brakes on friendship with me as I have generally lived my life with Irish abandon and often Steppenwolfed the road less traveled. Outside my home on 37^th Avenue, I wished Snake good luck and bid him adieu when he drove off, enchanted with Veronica, to begin a new life chapter in New Mexico.

Months go by without any contact, and I must admit, I missed Snake - moocher that he was - my apprentice, my friend, the younger brother that I never had. And then, out of the blue, we receive in the mail an invite to his wedding. In Santa Fe. In two weeks. And would Marcia bring her cameras to photograph the nuptials?  Well it’s no easy task leaving town, even for a weekend, when there are children, a dog and cat, and a home where being vacant for days invites burglary. But we get it together, the house and pet sitter, and Marcia even goes the extra mile and rents over-the-top special lenses and purchases special low light film to photograph the evening wedding.

We leave for Santa Fe at midnight so our young sons will sleep the bulk of the eight-hour car ride and we arrive early on the morning of the wedding. The hotel where Veronica’s family from Albuquerque, Snake’s family from Wisconsin, and some Denver friends are staying informs us that we can’t check into our rooms until 11 AM; thus, I have the clerk ring Snake and Veronica’s room to come up with a game plan. I’m figuring we’ll hook up with them, maybe have breakfast together, catch up in general, and give Marcia and Veronica time to figure out an approach to the wedding photos. But instead of a warm welcome and invitation, Snake tells me that he and Veronica are planning on sleeping in, after all, they were up late, and that we should simply hang out in the lobby until we can check into our rooms. Walk around the plaza. And please, don’t call again until the afternoon.

Well, my first gut instinct is to return to Denver. Now! But Marcia is really looking forward to photographing the wedding. In low light, with her special film and her rented lenses. And her photography was to be a wedding gift, to Snake, who had been a member of our family the last few years. So, counter to what my gut and heart are telling me, I agree to stay for the ceremony, and I swallow the pill of Snake and Veronica’s rudeness. Despite being as tired as I am after the all night drive, I lead my family on a tour of what I know of Santa Fe, for I had spent a week here some fourteen years before. We visit the Loretto Chapel and I retell the tale of the spiral staircase that coils its way from the ground floor to the mezzanine.

When the Loretto Chapel was completed in 1878, there was no way to access the choir loft twenty-two feet above. Carpenters were called in to address the problem, but they all concluded access to the loft would have to be via ladder, as a staircase would interfere with the interior space of the small Chapel. Story has it that the Sisters of the Chapel made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, to solve their problem. On the ninth and final day of prayer, a man appeared with a donkey and a toolbox looking for work. A season or two later, the dovetailed, magnificent spiral staircase was completed - without use of a nail - and the carpenter disappeared. After coming up empty in their search for him, some concluded that he was St. Joseph himself, having come in answer to the sisters' prayers.

After our visit to the Loretto Chapel, we take a short drive to Hyde Park just outside town along Little Tesuque Creek in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and have a picnic of a breakfast there. I tell my sons that I live in Denver because while camped at Hyde Park in 1975 I happened to have a conversation with a Santa Fe politician who convinced me Denver was better suited to my dream of opening up a bohemian coffee house restaurant than Santa Fe, because Santa Fe locals, he told me, eat at home, and visiting tourists eat in high end restaurants.

Back at the hotel we check in and go to our room. We hope to catch a little sleep while Passion and Zenith luxuriate in Saturday morning cartoons on the cable fed big screen. And we do. Upon awakening, we again have the concierge connect us with Snake and Veronica’s room as Marcia needs to scout the wedding sight and reception area for photo backdrops and get the skinny on how many group shots of family and friends she will be taking. She wants to be sure to properly allocate her film. She is hoping to shoot the bride and groom with her large format, four by five, camera, and to do so when the light is at its low-in-the-sky, late afternoon best. Her excitement with her task, however, morphs to frustration and anger, when Snake tells her that Veronica has decided that she does not want to have to organize any part of her wedding day around photos. In fact, Veronica would prefer that Marcia not even bring her cameras to the ceremony, her reasoning being that somehow a camera will rob the ceremony of its spiritual validity.

Impulsive decision maker that I am, we’re on our way towards Taos on the High Road as soon as we pack up all the gear that we had just unpacked. Never have we been treated so rudely. So gracelessly. So disrespectfully. And we are clueless as to why? And never have I ever felt so un-forgiving.

But forgiveness is a funny thing.

Years pass and one day I am graced with a letter of apology penned by Snake. He confides that Veronica had always been jealous of our (mine and Marcia’s) relationship with him. Veronica disapproved of my dropout beatnik approach to life and art. She was envious of Snake’s admiration for Marcia as an artist and his self-confessed and unfulfilled infatuation with “The creature that was Marcia.” She was scornful of my counterculture entrepreneurial endeavors. My disrespect for authority. My Irish nature. Snake tells me that over the course of their lives the last two years in Germany where Veronica had gotten a job teaching art at a US Military High School, he’d gone straight and gotten a college degree. They were planning to move back to New Mexico as Veronica had secured an elementary teaching job in a small, indeed, tiny Spanish Land Grant town, Cordova, on the High Road to Taos, north of Santa Fe. He invited us to visit sometime this summer as they were hoping to open up an art gallery where Snake hoped Marcia could exhibit her fine art photography.

As I said, forgiveness is a funny thing. And so, Marcia and I, trusting in the sincerity of Snake’s apology/explanation forgave Snake and decided to reestablish a relationship with my former   apprentice, and the eight hour ride to Cordova became a yearly thing for my family.

Now Cordova New Mexico, home to world-renown woodcarvers, is a very fecund place. The original village has a wall around it, which had been built to protect the inhabitants from wandering Mescalero Apaches. The first year we visited, a garage not a hundred yards from where we slept was set a blaze and burned completely to the ground before the fire truck from Truchas arrived. The cause of the fire: arson. The next time we visited, Snake’s best friend in Cordova, a young wood carver who had introduced Snake to the craft of making santos, Wally, he committed suicide. The third time we visited, three dogs were shot-gunned point blank in the street by one of Snake’s neighbors, his way of continuing what I was told was a forty year old feud between two families. The fourth time we sojourned there, water for the town dried up and National Guard trucks had to provide drinking water for the four hundred plus residents. Our final visit to Rio Arriba County, however, proved to be the craziest.

Marcia’s career as a photographer had many phases: fine art ala Ansel Adams came first; then wedding photography for a couple of years, and finally, straight up commercial photography with the purchase of the business we have owned the last twenty-two years. One of Marcia’s most successful clients was the sculptor, Glenna Goodacre. Glenna has sculpted presidents; her life size bronze of Ronald Regan stands in the Regan Library. Her Woman’s Viet-Nam Memorial adorns Washington DC, and her Irish Memorial in Philadelphia sits just off the Delaware River down the street from Independence Hall where her thirty-five life-size bronzes greet the ghosts of Irish past who haunt the wharfs of Philadelphia at the site where the émigrés landed in America fleeing the Irish famine. Glenna once lived in Colorado and had her sculptures cast in Loveland and that’s how Marcia came to photograph her bronzes, usually at the foundry before shipment to wherever they were going. One year, after moving to Santa Fe, Glenna asked if Marcia would come to New Mexico to photograph a recently cast monumental sculpture, a large wall with children playing on it. She offered to put Marcia, me, and the kids up for a few days at her guesthouse that sat on the estate that housed her studio. The sculpture was going to be moved at summer’s end to somewhere in California and she hoped Marcia could photograph it before then.

As it turned out one of my nieces, Shannon, was planning to rendezvous in late July with my family that summer in Chaco Canyon, a magical place just shy of two hundred miles west, north west of Santa Fe. Nearly a thousand years ago, Chaco Canyon was a major center of culture for the ancient population of the pueblos. Chacoans quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling fifteen major complexes that remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century. Archeoastronomy was practiced there with many buildings aligned to capture solar and lunar cycles, requiring generations of astronomical observations and centuries of skillfully coordinated construction. We were going to meet Shannon and then spend a week on a houseboat at Navajo Lake in southern Colorado. Marcia and I decided to append the photo shoot with Glenna in Santa Fe to the front end of our adventure and, while we were at it, maybe visit Snake and Veronica.

The Pinons (for some reason Snake had adopted Veronica’s last name as his own) had expanded their gallery/home in Cordova and had even purchased the property east of their house. It served as Snake’s music studio. My oldest son was playing saxophone and my youngest played guitar and so after a phone call to Snake, a jam in Cordova became part of our itinerary. After a camp-night at the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, we’d spend a few days in Cordova, a few more at Glenna’s, some time at Chaco, and then five days on the houseboat at Navajo Lake. It would be, we hoped, a rich, on the road, unparalleled vacation, mixing family, friends and business. It took a week just to organize and pack our Mazda minivan; we even had to purchase and install a Sears’ cargo carrier on the roof to accommodate the sundry photographic, music, camping, boating, and swimming gear we’d need.

After camping Friday night at the Great Sand Dunes south of Crestone, we spend a morning visiting Fort Garland, the gateway to the San Luis Valley, before heading to the town of San Luis itself, which happens to be the oldest town in Colorado. Now, unknown to us, in late July, San Luis and the Parish of Sangre de Cristo organize a festival, Santana Days, to celebrate and honor the mother of the Virgin Mary, Santa Ana. It’s three days and nights of party party party, with a parade on Saturday. As we arrive in San Luis we can’t believe our good fortune at having arrived on the biggest day of the year in this charming little town – population six hundred plus - where everyone knows everyone, if in fact they are not actually related. Everyone for miles around is on Main Street, as are a convention center’s fill of low-riders, motorcycles, antique cars, and horse pulled farm relics. The air is alive with the sound of Spanish serenades, Bud lite pop-tops popping, horns honking, radios blaring, Michoachan marihuana sizzling, mariachi music marching, and Hispanic food, deep frying and barbecuing. It seems San Luis is as happy as Mount Blanca to the west is domineering: that is, big time. We spend the morning amongst the   celebrants then climb back into our Mazda to head towards Taos New Mexico, some sixty miles south of the Colorado New Mexico border. When we pull away from the curb I detect a ghost of power loss as the transmission automatically shifts from second into third. A light flickers on my dash. I am spooked, and as the festivities of San Luis recede in my rearview mirror, I consider the wisdom of heading into the high desert mountain wilderness between here and Taos with indicator lights flickering faintly. Wisely, I turn around and head back into the thick of Santana Days, because no sooner have I reached the south end of town than all power to the engine ceases. The motor is running but it seems the transmission is useless, kaput, finito! We glide to a stop. I turn off the ignition and attempt to restart the engine. Again: nada. I exit the van and assess the situation. There are three gas stations within sight, but all are closed for the holiday and none appear to be full service garages. I’m guessing the closest Mazda dealer would be back in Colorado Springs or further south in Santa Fe or Albuquerque. And when I use a phone in a Main Street restaurant I find my guess as to the location of a Mazda dealer was eerily correct.

Well, we are on a schedule and people (Glenna in Santa Fe and my niece in Chaco Canyon) are counting on us. Snake and Veronica are expecting us to arrive today. And then, on this holiday of a saint, a saint appears, a stranger to us, but a saint, nonetheless.

“Car trouble?” he asks before telling us, “From my window I watched you coast to a stop, saw you making phone calls, and can’t help but note your obvious distress. Please know, I’d be happy to help you depart this madness,” indicating with a wave of his hand the revelry around us as the Santanna parade is now in full swing, with a marching mariachi band progressing northward. “I deplore this holiday. By night there will be drunken mayhem, a shooting or stabbing or two, and trash everywhere. Hardly an appropriate way to honor the mother of God’s mother, if you know what I mean. Trust me: she’s not smiling. I’ll tow you anywhere you want to go. My cousin’s got a flatbed. He can be here within the hour. I’m happy to help. Where would you like to go? Alamosa? Colorado Springs, or somewhere in New Mexico? You pay for gas, buy me and my cousin lunch in Taos, and I’ll take you all the way to Santa Fe, if need be.”

Now I’m Irish and believe in luck but this is almost beyond belief, miracle-like; nonetheless, our benefactor, this blue-eyed, bearded Joseph – who could have served as a model for many of Snakes’ carvings of Mary’s husband I have seen - proves to be for real, and before noon my family is ensconced in the back seat of a Suburban to which is hitched a flat bed trailer on which is strapped our mini van, progressing southward on the High Road to Santa Fe.

Well as it turns out the Feast of Santa Ana is celebrated not only in San Luis but in every Hispanic town and Native American pueblo on the High Road between Colorado and Santa Fe: in Questa, El Prado, Taos, Rancho de Taos, Placita, Penasco, Talpa, Picuris Pueblo, Dixon and Truchas. Traffic snakes towards and through each of these towns and crossroads, and what should have been a two-hour drive takes seven. We pull off the High Road and down the hill into Cordova just as the sun begins casting the shadows of the Jemez Mountains eastward. One can’t imagine how happy we are to have arrived at the Pinon hacienda and gallery. Similarly one cannot imagine how happy we will be to bid farewell to the Pinons a week from now, as our time here is fecund with unimaginable strangeness and unmitigated meanness that begins with my first conversation with Snake.

Now our new friends from San Luis had not expected how heavy and slow-moving the traffic on the High Road would be, and they are as weary and antsy to get on with their day, well their night, as we are. Taos had been a madhouse of Santa Ana celebration and we had not even stopped for lunch. Our Saint Joseph and his cousin are hungry and thirsty and wishing they were in Santa Fe already. My hope is to leave the van at a car dealer in Santa Fe after unloading all our gear, here, in Cordova. Marcia and the kids will stay here while Snake and I escort Joseph and my van to the dealership. We will go in Snake’s car so Joseph and his brother won’t have to bring me back to Cordova and they can take I-25, rather than the High Road back to San Luis. I figure Snake and I will catch up during the roundtrip to and from Santa Fe, and maybe do a wee bit of Saturday Night partying in Santa Fe as I am flush with vacation money to burn. So you can imagine my shock when Snake tells me, “I’d rather not drive to Santa Fe tonight. I don’t like going into Santa Fe on Saturday. Have Joseph bring you back here.”

I look at Marcia. I look at Joseph. I take Marcia aside and tell her we should just go with Joseph and stay in Santa Fe. “Leave now!” as I sense another bout of wedding insanity, disrespect and rudeness. But she disagrees and counters my argument: “Since Veronica is pregnant, maybe Snake does not want to leave her here in Cordova without any means of transportation.” I’m not buying it and am protesting with my body language when the saint that is Joseph, overhearing our repartee and sensing my dismay, tells me, “I’ll be happy to take you and your van to Santa Fe and then return you here. I have relatives in Truchas and my cousin and I will spend our night with family.

So off we go, Saint Joseph and I, once again, on the High Road to Santa Fe.

Because celebrations honoring Santa Ana are taking place in Espanola and at other Native American pueblos between Cordova and Santa Fe, it takes close to three hours for the round trip. When I finally bid farewell to Saint Joseph and his cousin in the full moon light of the Pinon front yard, I am greeted by Snake who steps out of the moon shadow of his apple tree. He tells me our wives and my boys are asleep and that we should go up to his studio – which he had named Tibet – to relax and converse. Imagine my annoyance when I spy a second car belonging to Snake parked there. I know it’s his because of the Free Tibet bumper sticker. Marcia’s reasoning surrounding Snake’s refusal to accompany me to Santa Fe had been wrong as there would have been transportation should a sudden emergency with Veronica’s pregnancy have arisen. But I’m too tired and spooked to pry; Snake and I drink some wine and have an hour’s conversation about sundry subjects, including the parochial nature of Cordova, without my bringing up my annoyance with his rudeness.

Morning brings a new day and we eat a simple breakfast of bananas and cereal after sleeping late. It is Sunday and the dealership where I left my van will not open until Monday; meaning I won’t get a diagnosis and an estimate of when I might get my van back until then. This limbos our planned itinerary, leaving it in an uncertain state. We had hoped to leave for Glenna’s on Tuesday morning but I realize we might still be without our van. After breakfast I try to figure out what we might do. Sadly and selfishly Snake and Veronica seem to imply that our problems are our problems and they have no intention of getting involved. They seem to act as though our car trouble was an assault on their convenience and daily life. They assert again that they would rather not drive to Santa Fe, without offering any reason why not. The only thing I can come up with is that they are afraid that their home might be robbed if they leave it unattended. Espanola, the nearest town of any size, is known nationally as the heroin capitol of North America. But even this guess as to the reason for their reluctance does not make sense. They have lived here five years and surely they leave their house sometimes.

Trying to save the morning, I suggest that Passion and Zenith get their instruments and jam with Snake. I had noticed a couple of beat-up, pawnshop Stratocasters in Snake’s studio and I knew Zenith would appreciate a chance to play one. Sadly the jam turns out to be a bust as Snake tells us his guitars are off limits, that Zenith would have to make do with his Gibson. After an hour or so of being anything but groovy, we return to the main house. I cannot help but notice that the kitchen has been cleaned up and even the bowl of mangos and bananas that had sat so picturesquely on the table was out of sight. My boys, ever hungry, ask after the fruit and are told it had been put away for later.

Now next door to Snake’s house, to the west, was the largest house in Cordova. Snake and Veronica had tried to buy it, but Josephita who owned it refused the Pinon’s generous offers because she wanted to keep it in the family, not exactly her blood family, but in the Cordova family. As I discover later that morning in a conversation with George Lopez, Cordova’s most famous woodcarver, Snake and Veronica would always be considered outsiders, no matter that Veronica was the elementary school teacher responsible for the education of the children of Cordova. The people of Cordova were tight and their circle was impenetrable. Apparently Snake had really alienated the town when he had taken up wood carving as that art was not something to be practiced by an outsider. That Snake sold his carvings at his gallery was insulting to the fifth and sixth generation wood carvers of Cordova. Just how resentful the people of Cordova were about outsiders is illustrated by a story Snake had told me the night before.

In March a couple from Boulder, Colorado purchased a house across the road from the Pinon Gallery. They sold their home there and were hoping to spend their golden years in Cordova, as they simply loved the landscape and the proximity to Santa Fe and Georgia O’Keefe’s Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu. They were O’Keefe fans and even owned a small painting that they had purchased years ago from Gerald Peters. They made arrangements to move their possessions to Cordova while they vacationed and visited family in Arizona. Their plan was to arrive in Cordova the day after their belongings were delivered to their new home. It had been a wet late winter in New Mexico and when the Mayflower moving van from Boulder with its Colorado plates left the High Road to head down hill to Cordova it got stuck in the mud where the centuries old irrigation ditch was contiguous with the road. The driver walked the last half-mile into Cordova in search of a phone or a tow, and when he returned forty-five minutes later he found the van and everything inside – including the O’Keefe - ablaze. The smoke billowing skyward was an exclamation mark to the unexpressed village sentiment: Outsiders are not welcome here!

But outsiders – a family from La Cienega south of Santa Fe, had purchased Josephita’s house. I guess, in actuality, Josephita, had a hidden agenda and for reasons of her own, simply did not want to sell it to the Pinons. The new owners had fashioned Josephita’s home into a Bed & Breakfast and ran a small café. Since Passion and Zenith were hungry and the hidden fruit was “for later” I suggested I treat everyone to lunch at the café. But for reasons known only to them, Snake and Veronica, tell us they are not hungry; thus only my family and I head to the café. Now keep in mind we are in a town of some four hundred residents and everyone knows of everyone’s comings and goings. We don’t have to tell anyone anything because the family running the café as well as George Lopez and his brother, conversing over coffee in the corner, have seen us approach from Snake’s side door. All appear leery of us, as if we are bringing some bad juju into the room. But after a few minutes of my kids wowing everyone with their enthusiasm for the food and the santos for sale in the display case, our association with Snake and Veronica is forgotten or simply overlooked. We are not outsiders moving here; we are simply tourists, and tourists are the economic lifeblood of Cordova. We get friendly with our waitress, Magdalena, a seventeen year old and chat her up about our car situation, mentioning Snake and Veronica’s reluctance to drive to Santa Fe. Her facial expression informs me that Magdalena finds this not surprising, her disdain for the Pinons apparent in the roll of her brown eyes. I tell her that we’re feeling so out of touch with our hosts, so alienated, that I’m thinking of hitchhiking into Santa Fe and renting a car so we can keep our date with Glenna Goodacre while our car is being repaired.

“No need to hitchhike,” she says, “I’ll drive you to Santa Fe when we close for the afternoon. In one hour.”

“Day two, Saint two,” I whisper to Marcia.

So I refigure our itinerary. We’ll go rent a car and then come back to Cordova for what we’ll need in the short term: Marcia’s camera gear and clothes to wear until then. We will stay in Santa Fe at another old friend’s geodesic dome, Eloi Hernandez’s home, a night or two. And then a night or two at Glenna’s. Once we have our van back and are finished photographing at Glenna’s, we’ll return to Cordova and get what we must leave behind: the saxophone and guitar, our swim and boating stuff, our suitcases and camping gear.

I tell Snake our plans and he seems relieved that we will not be asking him to help. Soon we are on our way to Santa Fe feeling pretty high as the Pinon hacienda fades from view. The last twenty-four hours reinforced the notion that family is sometimes all you have. I tell Marcia that maybe Cordova’s dislike of outsiders has possessed the consciousness of Snake and Veronica. Paranoia can be a powerful disease, one that leads to incivility and distrust. Why else would we have been treated so rudely? And why, I still can’t figure out, are they afraid to drive to Santa Fe?

Two hours later Magdalena is on her way back to Cordova and we are sitting in the Tecolote Cafe awaiting the arrival of sundry friends who live in and near Santa Fe: Eloi and assorted members of his family and other artist friends. Eloi, a Yaqui Indian, was a founding member of the Hog Farm, one of the first Hippie communes, and he had had two wives and eighteen children. My son Passion’s godfather, the artist Michael Bergt and his wife Tamara and daughter Sienna would be joining us along with the poet John Macker and his wife Anne who were driving down from Las Vegas. All of these friends I had hoped to introduce to Snake and Veronica but their aversion to Santa Fe had denied me the opportunity to enrich their insular existence. (And yes, I am aware how judgmental I sound.) After an afternoon of eating and drinking and reminiscing, my friends all head home and my family heads to the Plaza to partake of the scene there. As we wander amongst the displays and blankets full of merchandise of the Native American artisans in front of the Governor’s Mansion, I hear Marcia gasp and utter what sounds like the word snake. Thinking she must have come across a snakeskin belt or a serpentine fetish or a piece of jewelry too snake-like for her tastes – after all: Marcia grew up in Wyoming where rattlesnakes are central to every woman’s nightmares – I turn to see her wide-eyed and seemingly dumbfounded. “Snake,” she says again and indicates with her eyes and head gesture that I should turn around. “There," she says, “across the plaza. It’s Snake and Veronica skulking around and spying on us. There, slinking among the crowd in front of Loretto Chapel. It’s them. They’re here in Santa Fe. Obviously following us.”

Well, needless to say, we don’t join them and we hightail it to a second story restaurant on the Plaza where from our balcony table we can keep watch for our stalkers. Marcia is so shook up by the presence of the Pinons in Santa Fe, that she drinks the first and second Margaritas of her life. We catch our last sight of them, side-winding their way among the tourists as they depart the Plaza. This turns out to be, literally, our last sight of the slithering Pinons in New Mexico.

Resuming our vacation, we spend two wonderful nights with Eloi Hernandez and his family. Passion and Zenith enjoy the party spirit that pervades Eloi’s self-built dome, as people are constantly coming and going and inventing merriment as only the children of a commune do. My kids are up late nights with the adults as Eloi tells his tale of being Jimi Hendrix’ bodyguard at Woodstock. We watch the film on VHS and it’s high fives all around each time Eloi can be seen. And then it’s off to Glenna Goodacre’s where we enter the personal universe of the world’s most famous woman sculptor. Everywhere there are fabulous things: furniture and weavings and rugs and paintings and beautiful bronze statues, many of which are based on Glenna’s daughter, Jill, a Victoria Secrets model, who is married to Harry Connick, Jr. The guesthouse where we stay is the other end of the universe from Eloi’s 60s dome and Snake’s Cordovan hacienda. I estimate the art in the guesthouse alone to be worth millions.

Anyway, as it turns out, we get to retrieve our Mazda on Thursday afternoon. The transmission has been replaced and, miracle of miracles, we are still on schedule to rendezvous with my niece in Chaco Canyon on the morrow. We bid Glenna farewell, pickup our van, and drop off our rental car, before heading back to Cordova to retrieve the gear and belongings we had left behind. On our way thunderclouds develop and before we pass the Nambe reservation a deluge of rain cascades from the sky. The wipers can hardly keep up. But after a stop at Ortega’s in Chimayo to purchase a couple of small weavings and to await the cessation of rain, it’s nightfall and the moon appears amongst the scattering thunder clouds as we exit the High Road to descend the hill into Cordova. Marcia remarks the scene is reminiscent of Ansel Adams’ Moon Rise Over Hernandez, the very photograph that had inspired her to become a photographer decades earlier.

Snake and Veronica’s property sits on the only road into town, and as we approach, we see their houselights glowing in the valley darkness, as there are no streetlights in the village. But when I turn into the driveway between the hacienda and Tibet, the lights in the house go dark and my headlights offer the only illumination as a cloud has swallowed the moon. As I exit the van and approach the front door up a muddied flagstaff walkway, I see our belongings piled on the rain soaked sod aside the house, covered with a soaping wet painter’s canvas drop cloth. I sense but do not see eyes spying from behind the closed curtains of the gallery. It is obvious that we are not welcome. Maybe never were. And to this day I have no idea how or why a man who shared two years of my family’s life became the slithering snake of every Wyoming girl’s nightmare.

And one more bit of strangeness. After our visit to Chaco Canyon and Navajo Lake we headed back to Denver and again drove through San Luis, hoping to thank Joseph again for his kindness with a gift of one of the weavings we had purchased in Chimayo. At the restaurant in front of which I had first encountered Joseph I ask about him. After all, everyone in San Luis knows everyone else. I describe his appearance: his tall slight build, his carpenter’s hands, his mustache and beard, his odd blue eyes, and I speak of his cousin with the flatbed trailer and Suburban. No one that we speak to has clue. They tell me: no blue-eyed Joseph lives in San Luis.

21 POEMS - Edwin Forrest Ward

21 POEMS - Edwin Forrest Ward

NIGHTS WITHOUT LOVE

nights without love

I looted unlocked

cars, drunk

stumbled I upon

lookin’ for

a bride tossed garter

I’d lost long ago or a

bow for my broken arrow

in my ransacking ways

I was an indian angel

among the trinkets

of glove box and floor

here a condom, there some gum

aglow on the dashboard

saint someone protects

the plunder from me

I take little, just read signs

recycle debris

these nights without love

make a barbarian of me

COUNTERMEASURES

aside water pools and water

falls, stone beneath four feet

in places such as this

we pile rocks

scribe names

to make tomorrow weep

carved intaglio, ancient pine

will fall in time upon

assembled spelling stones

eras leave no bone unturned

mountains tremble

chasms yawn

years from now

arrives too soon

love like ours

nights like this

the only countermeasures

A SERIOUS ADVENTURE

longing

risk

the undress of a waitress

in morning

coffee black and cigarettes

the silkiest lounging attire

TIME IS A PLACE

it ain’t easy

to quiet the world

it ain’t easy

to set the stage right

it’s a tease to look me in the eyes

it’s a tease

to stand in such light

a bureau of cosmetics

a nightstand of books

the lamp off now

the window outside

a dawn bed of flowers

time is a place

a bouquet of earthly locations

HEADSTONE

death is the dilemma

an epitaph cures

write yours now

THEY BURY IN PAIRS WHERE I COME FROM

it is always morning

flesh against flesh upon

lush carpet in a poem to promises kept

Away Forever Swept

SIMPLY SAID

simply said

sun enlightens earth

even the moon needs

sunlight to ride

white across the night

is this not apparent to all?

I wonder

 in these days of art

when upon the face of it

they paint a woman’s flirt

as if the sun were flower

come on! I know

the anatomy of

orchid and fire

who brings light

who is flower

POEM FOR PASSION

all right, kid

put this in your pocket

with the house keys

she will always be younger

than you

with your ability

to woo

even in the city

where quantity obscures

you’ll find her

smooth face, bright

shiver of light, cupped

flesh in your hands

another key:

what to do with it

her youth and willingness

TRUST

trust

it wasn’t easy

to give up the many

for monogamy’s one.

I’d slide my eyes along the lie

of every passing female thigh

every woman met, undressed

for what attire conceals

the toss of eye

the hair reveals.

some say the face. some say

the verb of bending. must

needs be unending, the

tangle of reasons for love.

PUPPET POEM

you need no ESP

to sense the strings

we’ve tangled

the physics of the world

strings the astronomical

the small

puppet to puppet

with no puppeteer

we, the lovers, dance.

I am rising

you are rising

too

THE DISTANCE TO HER ALWAYS

quicker. love

puts lead in the foot

the accelerator to the floor

it’s always a

hurry-home

to love

A CONSPIRACY FOR TWO IN EROTICALLY MAJOR

we do everything together.

sleep, cook, eat, shower, water, weed and flower

play, empower, mistake, parent, work, procreate

inspire, desire, conspire

we do everything together.

now she primps as I write.

the perfect lay of dungaree denim

announces her intention

attracts my attention.

my lover has new lucky jeans.

look how well they fit, she says

I’m dressing for sex at the office today.

lucky for me we work together.

lucky for me we do everything together.

CROWN OF LIGHTS

upon my knees I look up to see

a diadem of galaxies

vortex the cortex of my love

incredulous she asks

how do we make the sun go up and down?

with our love, as always, with our love

A STRUCTURE IN 13 LINES / A WEDDING SONG

this woman

like a poem needs

another’s hands

to make it tight

the love around the braided hair

for this man

what’s to do?

but tie the knot

or lift the hair

to kiss the face

that love would wear

to see the white light

shining there

EVEN THE MOST KINDRED SOULS

HAVE SEPARATE BODIES

love is couscous cake

with lemon curd, the

affections of an afternoon’s kiss

giving up lust for Lent.

love bends an ear to hear

a fantasy to sharpen its

delights against and asks

questions of fidelity

and the trust of just

one name between us.

ah, drive time with my Valentine.

in the back seat, the kids asleep,

and a picnic keeps, as mountain towns

a century golden old ghost by.

the curves along the creek

host an infinity of light

sliced by jagged peaks

as we fly in the face

of a suitcase of facts against us

- we legatees of outlaw mountain lore.

recognize, we do,

the effect the music has on us

as the road follows water through the canyon

while centrifugation creates

our lean of bodies

‘round snakes at fifty-five

and switchbacks at twenty.

we babble our way unto the next

descent and reminisce,

taste the sweat of a hot springs rendezvous

with you, your Pinto winding west

across a valley so high

‘twas lit by stars that moonless night.

one hand upon the wheel I

keep one upon your thigh.

even the most kindred souls

have separate bodies.

even the most kindred souls

have separate bodies.

THE POT QUEEN

a ranch relic lust, who but you

o creatrix, could sativa trust?

who but you, shape shaper of silver night?

who but you insights with light?

in a small garden, in a small place

…no, that will never do…

in a valley vast the mother of the harvest fires up

another fecund moment, a full moon swoon

creeping through the groin of earth itself.

children gather ‘round her, their eyes, like

adoring spacecraft.

the moment is the happiness of handing him, the

partner, man

a flower bigger than his dick, bigger than a bird,

bigger than his appetite.

the Pot Queen loves the measure of his delight at

his first sight of it

anticipates the pleasures of the making love he’s

promised her for later.

the Pot Queen attends well, charms again, this

creature she has captured.

her radiance, the pleasure of happy

I am to see you.

her world, one of interested beings

still interested in being.

her taste, the velvet throat of imagination.

her face, the verb to luster.

NOW THAT STEVE IS BACK

(for Steve Wilson)

now that steve is back

the plainer poems

dressed like bookman

scouting lawn sales

the ass pocket a jingle

with miniatures of vodka

one shot per slug

rambling a bit to insure

the territory’s covered

before opening the bag

that carries home the pumpkin pie

IF EVERYONE BELIEVED IN GHOSTS

if everyone believed in ghosts

there’d be no lies

fortune tellers would

be out of business

or in charge of the future

we could nothing to connive

what with all the family watching

we would just have flower gardens

and throw parties

sculpting beautiful statues

of our selves

for our children

if everyone believed in ghosts

there’d be no bad deals

no short weight

and very little conversation

in the government

the pain would slacken

no stiff necks

and love

would be the subject

of our experiments

THE MAGICIAN

nobody knows

what he does

inside the trick

ever

always

he hides the strings

she moves his hands

IT’S NOT EASY

it’s not easy

to throw away

old clothes

the buttons alone!

BILLY B – (for William S. Burroughs Jr.)

billy b

he be dead

at thirty-three

(like a cypress tree cut down

to clear the air around

a stop sign

- the idiots!

something cute about

 a pirate and a poet

funning themselves

on colorado boulevard

with me on the lark to luck love

and the baby you divined

and you

casually on your way to early death

(aye

and sainthood in a cutthroat heaven)

yes

we were outriggish as you said

the clothes the hearts the hair

and you

on the hospital morphine fly

so high

you’d pass out on a toke of good weed

and I’d take you home to your chair

where you’d smoke your cigarettes

drink your beer - schlitz malt liquor please -

and stare

at alice liddell

doc holliday

or joe frazier

maybe get your strength back in a while

and throw a knife into the wall

or bayonet the couch

I’d water your philodendron

a tropical rarity you claimed

for a year I was gonna get

a new pot for it, billy

and remember lili, billy

an angel come to see you

            I’d hoped there’d be a meeting of the hearts            

and remember the day

you ernie and ray

dressed in wedding bests

out the door at 9 am

catching a ride

to the finest celebration of the summer, your last

tattooed children

actors and painters

cool jazz on the balcony

beautiful dresses across the floor

with booze on the tables even

and mushrooms in the bag

tony scibella was throwing hats

off the edge

and you warned about knives

and revenge in relation to your hat

and that hillside

child-mad you were

defending your hat

and on the way back that night

you wanted to stop at mcdonald’s

but I didn’t have the hour

it would take you to eat

I dropped you off hungry

in front of your pad

and pointed at

the jack in the box across the street