HERE COMES THE SUN

Resurrection is evolution. Change is constant. Death is birth, etcetera. If we don’t live it is because we are dead, and then not dead.

Life: Music. Rhythm. Harmony. Song. Voice. Sound. Roar. Cough. Snore. Poem.

Bersone sent this note and first draft of a poem, EASTER 2009. The notes between us that followed is the correspondence below. We’ll print only the first version of the poem here, and then the last at the end. This is how things grow, and how energy engenders energy, the universal law.

Evolution. Resurrection. Happy Easter.


Email to the Buffalo
Sunday 04/12/2009 11:07 AM Bersone:

howdy doody bro -- messing around with an old Ting: shooting it off
feeling it's a hodge-podge but part of the mix. Happy Easter, Mon.

Easter, 2009

I wonder if it’s some kind of sin
to take refuge in pleasure
at this time

birdseed that sparkles
like crushed topaz
on the carport roof

is it some kind of sin
to evaluate the rusty seavan
in the Laundromat parking lot
and be so gratefully repulsed by the bloating
garbage bags tossed on top of it
(swelling so silently in the sun)
to feel that this ugliness
confirms my presence

and allows me
to enjoy the couple that lives
in their car, the hood up, the trunk open and she
seated on a stool
as he combs her hair in the sun
dipping his comb into a bucket of water
occasionally, sparklets sprinkled
for a second as he flicks excessive
moisture into the air

when in the middle of everything
everything they do is done
carefully, for example, how he shaves
in the sideview mirror, and folds
his little towel so precisely

what has happened to time
during this mutual duration
are actions now some kind of diminution
of worry or simply a suspension
of consequences or is it really

a sin to wait it out like this
marveling at my improbable birch tree
its thin limbs pulled down by plump
sparrows that watch
me bring my coffee cup

to my lips. When will he throw out
more seeds, they think. When
will he get on his job! I am

in this world, that’s for sure --
just ask the birds. Perhaps my pleasure
is some kind of sin

redeemed only by my gratitude
for the El Tio Juan taco trailer
fate has put
next to the Laundromat, the Laundromat
with about eighteen
aluminum vents on the roof, quite silvery,
actually, beneath the cumulus

clouds bulging higher, there edges
so sharply defined by shadow
they’re almost solid . . . dear dear Life

accept my plea
I don’t deserve such beauty
that it expand before me so that all I do
is be stunned by wonder
when there is so much to do
to help our poor world

yet this poor rich world
so comically orientated by horror
with its little store, painted like a Mexican flag
and run by Arabs who seem to hate me
our poor rich world

with its headlines
of international events --
Christ! This neighborhood is an international event!

And the pleasure it affords
with its mariachi music out the front door
and rap out the back
and me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed, coffee, and reading
Yeats! For Christ’s sake! Look at the sparrows!

some focused on seeds
some on the cat licking its paws
as it reclines in the ivy
that has climbed with spring green leaves
up onto the corrugated greet fiberglass carport roof
left over from the fifties

everything proceeds from where it is
and everything is transforming itself
like a million Christs emerging from the underworld
or rummaging around
in the underworld off my back porch

buoyed by pleasureful sin
the smell of bacon! The refuge
of what is at hand: my neighbors
seem to be Mayans, and next to them
Vietnamese, and across the street
an old white couple continuously prepare
their car for a trip to the doctor

And Flo, with her two boys
and the neglected dog, and the birds
who have discovered seeds sparkling
like brown sugar on a fiberglass roof
while around the corner at the Hell’s Angels’
headquarters the throats of motorcycles are snapped
into fire purely for pleasure

O world you don’t
forgive us our pleasure, you give
more and more pleasure and beauty on top
of the horror and ugliness
in the mix of torrents and bullets and screams the flight
of lights in our minds will continue to ignite

our hearts until we get off the dime
Yes, I ask, who’s going to pick up
that old entertainment center even the Mayans
threw out. Inertia
will carry it downstream along with everything else.
What we have is the ride

and I’m at the helm.


Sunday 04/12/2009 3:34 PM Buffalo:

There is much fruit in this basket, my Bro - along with the Easter eggs and candy rabbits. The deepest sin of pleasure is to be blinded to life, a crime you have yet to commit. The greatest horror of the roadside bomb it to ignore the sparrow shitting without a second thought. And that is another crime you will not burn in Hades for - nor will those who read your poems with empty mind and open heart. Today is devoted to resurrection, while every day is a new resurrection. As for me, I'll take the erection over the resurrection any day. When I die I want to stay put. I am no Sisyphus. Once up the hill is enough, then I'm heading for the next hill, then the next. Today is Easter, tomorrow is not. What's most important is this Spring sun on my back, and the little birds fucking like rabbits. They sing so sweetly when they're horny, just as we did Spring after Spring after Spring.

So let's leave this with Leon Russell: Don't get hung up over Easter.

Good poem. Keep chewing, and don't forget to breathe.

Buff


Sunday 04/12/2009 5:55 PM Bersone:

I changed shit according to your reaction, dropping most of the guilt
stuff, which wasn't in the original but came in after I was reading
T.S. Eliot's more conservatively religious work. Acknowledged as a
Great Poet, I thought I'd read him a little bit. He was great but at
the end of the cycle, Lawrence more at the beginning. Anyhow, I stuck
more to the images, I haven't reread this over too carefully and
figure there may be some discontinuity here and there, lack of
bridges or transitions but it tries to catch us doodling on the brink
as we are wont to do as our canoe heads into the rapids.

Larry's coming over for some dynamite thick lamb chops Ruby picked up
at Taylor's, a great old neighborhood Italian deli in Sacramento.
Today was warm, and we working in the garden, turning over some dirt
and we saved a big robin that lost its tail last night; we threw a
towel over it and put it in a box and called some rescue wild animal
place Ruby found in the phone book. The lady said the feathers will
grow back quickly if they're pulled out not cut. Last night we heard
Maya in a bit of a fight and we presume chased off another cat;
perhaps this cat was what got the bird and maybe Maya disturbed the
assault because I don't think the bird could have escaped. It's
wings weren't broken, nor its legs, but it totally lost its tail and
showed some skin on its back making it unable to fly. It could hop
pretty well, and work the wings, but they need the tail I guess.

Talk to you soon.


Sunday 02/12/2009 6:26 PM Buffalo:

Some great images - a thread through it all - humor and horror stacked like a BLT. I love your work.

Inspired by Steve's stories I reformed the one attached. I think you've seen this. Every day is a marvel. Good lord, what a trip this all is!!!

The Robin is an interesting story. Demise is waiting behind every moment. The birds take it in stride, and they never whine. I hope it survives. We all need a little tail to make us fly.

Here's a toast to you all for your Easter lamb: To you, my friends, on this day of resurrection. You are my inspiration!

With love...

Buff


Monday 04/13/2009 9:05 AM Bersone:

Hi Buff,
Just finished reading through the story, Assassination, which is wonderfully fluid; the first line grabs you right away and puts the mind on a track of memory and line of thought that seems to run concurrently with the story. I breezed through the gambling details a little hurriedly, I noticed, and found myself at the end meditating a bit on the close relationship between sex and death. I remember Erika telling me, who was in her mother's womb during the bombing of Berlin during World War II, that her mother told her stories of mothers, feeling that death was imminent, and having adolescent sons whom they felt were going to die also and, realizing they would die without having known a woman sexually, had sex with them as Berlin was being bombed into rubble. And in New York, during the brown-outs, sex must have gone on at an unprecedented rate because there was a bumper crop of babies nine months later. As for your story, it is continuing easily; I'm not sure how you changed it, inspired as you say by Steve's stories. That the narrative has solid ground under it may be part of it. The story within the story, the fate of the artist within the young, diffident stumble-bum carrying the vision, holds the suspense for me, how he becomes a man, essentially, for the promise is that the man he becomes will define manhood differently than the inherited convention. Looking forward to more. This thing is coming out.

thanks for your reaction to what I sent you. I'll attach a version with a few corrections. Personally, I don't know what to think of it; some of the metrics I liked but I wondered was it a bit like crocheting a doily. I did feel pretty good about yesterday, though, and Larry came over for a good dinner.


Monday 04/13/2009 1:35 PM Buffalo:

Yo Mon –
Thanks for your comments on ASSASSINATION. I am happy that it took you somewhere. Yes, real sex is like dying, dying into profound peace along with your mate of the moment. Greed is also a form of death, but in the opposite direction, thus the whole Reno bit. The winning streak described actually happened to me much like it is described, minus the absurd fantasy bit, which, of course, is rather Milleresque.

The influence that Steve had on the story was that I suddenly saw it as a complete entity in itself (this, after reading several of his stories), rather than as just a part of the larger story – the novel. I’ve done the same thing with the first chapter of the book about Maxwell dancing in his underwear in the desert, the afternoon in the sand storm at the house of Charles and Jasmine, the coyote near the lake, and sleeping under the stars. (DESERT STORM) I intend to do the same with SUICIDE BY PRAYER. I should be able to make up a collection of these things and have them printed up in a volume through the self publishing route. This is what I am encouraging Steve to do, though he is rather cool to self publishing, and I honor his understanding of the profession about which I know nothing. I hope we can produce a collection of your work – maybe under a heading like SWIMMING JOURNAL, just as an example.

I got up at 4:30 and worked at the office until noon, which I will have to do tomorrow, as well. All this pisses me off because it is just a distraction from the real work; a pint of blood for the vampires of commerce. When will I finally call an end to all this shit!

I am enjoying reading and re-reading the Easter poem. It is a journey through the universe, down main street, into the backyard, to nowhere. Quite an accomplishment, that. One of my favorite lines:

me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed

That touches something true in all of us, if we have enough guts to admit it. How can all these people see anything in it’s true form, who are so full of self-importance? Even Obama is a funny joke; and the pirates; and the Governors, and doctors, hiding behind something called Science. What a joke they are, indeed.

Listen, I hear that poet singing – or is that a dove in heat? Hardly matters. The truth is always known no matter who tells it, or what. Just listen; that’s the job.

Thank you!

Buff

(Note: If you have an interest in the two stories mentioned above, ASSASSINATION and DESERT STORM, send me an email and I’ll send them along. Buff)


Monday 04/13/2009 3:1/ PM Bersone:

I learned something once. There's a long tragic poem, written oh I don't know -- in the ten hundreds, Tristan and Isolde, and I was reading fairy tales once, maybe in Grimm's, and came across a fragment of it. The whole story had been lost to the teller of the fragment, and he told his story like a short story, thinking no doubt that that was all there was to it. When I compared it to the original, longer work, where the whole plot was laid out, the difference was that the teller of the short story embellished his fragment with more details, which gave it a richness of texture, you might say, as a compensation for the powerful narrative drive of the original where the full tragic meaning came clear in the plot and trimmed off non-essential details. The illusion in the fragment was that there was more time, more time could be taken with details. I remember one of Picasso's teachers saying of him, when he was a student, that his work was as good as the others but the difference was that he didn't waste time in surface detail, presumably shading and clothing detail and so forth. He was after the visual rhythm in the figure, inside and out, so with a deft stroke or two he caught the movement of the bones which caught the gesture of the model. Sometimes it looked abstract, because he left everything else out. He wanted both the inner and the outer, and wasn't prejudiced only toward outer appearance. Maybe this is analogous to short story vs novel. I tell you, you've always had a powerful narrative drive but, I think, writing is like using muscles, you develop more stamina the more you write, and can hold forth the illusion and flow of language longer. Writers like Dickens, for example, or Steinbeck, are powerhouses like this. But your drive is natural, and would grow exponentially to use, I imagine. Of course, we must both caution ourselves in imagining so much superstructure that the whole thing collapses before we get pen to paper. It's a dance with oneself, I suppose, and we know the Fool. But sometimes the illusion of the Fool is necessary to get things done; the pragmatic man is full of limitations.

I can't tell you how much your appreciation of my little poem means to me at this point. Yesterday was a pretty good day and the poem seemed to come off ok by sort of working on it out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes the secret may lay in not taking it too seriously. By the way, the sandstorm description, once you mentioned it, came back in a vivid flash, with him looking out the window, at the streetlight swaying in the desert wind: quite a picture of the wasteland.


Monday 04/13/2009 5:29 PM Buffalo:

What a great lesson you share with me! You really nailed it! You are an excellent teacher, in part, because you refuse to teach – you participate. You know, this is exactly how Bob teaches his drum classes and precisely why he is so popular. I can see you teaching a string of classes in creative writing, much like Bob does. As far as making a living goes, wouldn’t that be more rewarding for you than what you are doing in the City? Anyway, thank you! I love this: “We must both caution ourselves in imagining so much superstructure that the whole thing collapses before we get pen to paper. It's a dance with oneself, I suppose, and we know the Fool. But sometimes the illusion of the Fool is necessary to get things done; the pragmatic man is full of limitations.” Now that I think of it, Bob has said almost the same thing to me about the Fool. We should ask him about it the next time the three of us are together. I just picked up this from the internet: “The Fool is the spirit in search of experience. He represents the mystical cleverness bereft of reason within us, the childlike ability to tune into the inner workings of the world.” How apt, exactly what you meant by the Fool. But the bigger lesson is your cautioning about imagining too much superstructure. Even when I was playing with Tinker Toys I tended to make things that were much too grand to stand alone. And yes, I must go to the writing gym every day for a workout, build my writing stamina which will bring more patience, and quit wasting my precious time trying to fulfill the dreams of others, an impossible task. How, how, how can I break away from these old and defeating habits?

Thanks, amigo! You are indeed an inspiration!!!

Buff


Tuesday 04/15/2009 6:18 AM Bersone:

thanks for your appreciation. What you said about going nowhere makes
me want to continue this spirit journey so I changed the ending of
this section by going into the falls. I'm thinking of Niagra Falls,
and I figure to enter it through its sound, sort of like an entrance
into hell, a wondrous hell perhaps, at first through the harsh sounds
of the several blocks of arcades you must ply before you come to the
calm power of the falls themselves which, however much they have been
taken over by corporations that specialize in vacation attractions
such as they are, standardizing them in gross commercial terms, the
falls still stand as a major power point. I've written a little of
another section, but I won't send it on now because I'm not too sure
of it and maybe I won't get it done (superstructure problem) but will
send what I have and maybe post it. check it out when you have time
and see what you think. Hope you're feeling ok, with the meds and
all. I know about the teaching but there's not much I can do right
now. What we're doing is what we're doing and it's more than what
I'm not doing.

EASTER, 2009

Birdseed sparkles: crushed
topaz on the carport
roof & the rusting
seavan with black garbage bags swelling
so silently on top
under the sun

in the parkinglot
behind the Laundromat
the Laundromat with about
18 aluminum vents
on the roof quite
silvery, actually,
beneath the cumulus

clouds bulging higher
edged so sharply by gray
They seemed carved

I don’t think I’ll ever get over them
when I notice

the couple that lives in their car,
hood up, trunk open and she
seated on a stool
as he combs her hair in the sun

dipping his comb into a bucket of water
occasionally, silently
snapping a whip of waterdrops
off the end of it before leisurely
resuming combing

so that in the middle of everything
everything they do is done
carefully, for example, how he shaves
in the sideview mirror, and folds
his little towel so precisely

forget time, now, that’s gone
you don’t think Christ in the underworld
underwent his last temptation
in three days do you…I mean
it was an eternity at least

as long as this mix of marvels:
my improbable birch tree
it’s thin limbs pulled down by plump
sparrows that watch
me bring my coffee cup

to my lips. When’ll he throw out
more seeds. When O when
will he get on his job! I am

in this world, that’s for sure --
just ask the birds. Yes I am grateful

for the El Tio Juan taco trailer
fate has put
next to the Laundromat
where everyone gathers

to watch soccer and washing machines’
round windows wet
clothes make faces in
children make faces back at

and a mix of languages annealed
by bickering into an amalgamated lingo
we’ve yet to parse: whoozit!

May we deserve such beauty
so ugly and real all we can do
is be stunned by wonder we
wonder what we can do to make doing
nothing holier than something
for nothing’s sake
to help our poor world

this rich Persian rag of a world
so comical with its horror
with its little store, painted like the Mexican flag
run by Arabs who hand me change
with a disdain so dismissive
its infuriatingly murderous

our poor rich world
with its headlines
of international events --
Christ! This neighborhood is an international event!

Thank you for the pleasure it affords!
Mariachi music out the front door
rap out the back
me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed, coffee, and reading
Yeats! For Christ’s sake! Look at the sparrows!

some focused on seeds
some focused on the cat licking its paws
as it reclines in the ivy
that has climbed with spring-green leaves
shining up onto the carport roof
left over from the fifties:

everything proceeds from where it is
everything is transforming itself
like a million christs emerging from the underworld
or rummaging around
in the underworld off my back porch

buoyed by our sin of pleasure in horror.
The smell of bacon! The refuge
of what is at hand: my neighbors
seem to be Mayans, and next to them
Vietnamese, and across the street
an old white couple continuously prepare their car
for a trip to another world

and Flo, with her two boys
and the neglected dog, and the birds
who have discovered seeds sparking
like brown sugar on a fiberglass roof
while around the corner at the Hells’s Angels’
headquarters the throats of motorcycles are snapped
into fire purely
for pleasure

O world you never deny us
our pleasure you give more and more beauty on top
of ugliness so real it turns
into torrents heaving up telephone poles, sirens spiraling and the flight
of light through our minds to continue to ignite

our hearts until we get off the dime.
Yes, I ask, Who’s going to pick up
that old entertainment center even the Mayans threw out.
Inertia
will carry it downstream along with everything else.
What we have is the ride
and the precious ride we carry within

and I am
at the helm as I nose my canoe
into the rapids and head for the falls.


Wednesday 04/15/2009 6:53 AM Buffalo:

I like your idea and will watch with empty mind.

The rhythm of the falls,
relentless, the roar
of the water dragon, and past
his blazing eyes
the calm of mist, holding
in mid air
the chirp of the Dipper.
Within this din is heard the drip
of mist
the uncoiling fern
the voices
of those long gone.


See what you do to me? Another moment has passed.

Home today. Doing the real work on a cool and cloudy day, but look! Here comes the sun!

Ahhh



Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
It's all right

Here’s a good video of this BEATLES song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUS49XSN6Zs