On the prairie at sundown,
there’s a diagonal highway where most don’t know
the time of day or distance to the next town.
I’d blown a tire by an oil field
and only had eleven dollars in quarters.
Getting dark when a trucker hauling a Caterpillar
stopped and asked where was I going, I said New Mexico.
The driver offered me a ride,
so we loaded my motorcycle up behind the tractor.
We were taciturn through a long black window night.
Our sun rose over scattered clouds
for another hundred miles
before he dropped me and the green bike off.
Roy, New Mexico at noon had a tire shop and store
where I called Johanna from their pay-phone.
But she wasn’t home
so I signed a work order for a new tire
put the quarters down and left my bike in their bay.
A gruff lady at the store gave me
a bundle of shopping bags
and said Johanna’s place
was an hour past a blue house.
So I started walking toward the blue house.
The old lady had described an adobe cube
on a rock hill with a rough wooden porch around it.
When I got toward the top I hollered at the cube.
But she wasn’t there
and on the other side I saw a wooden shed.
Back around to the front of the adobe,
I opened a plank door to a large window room.
An open interior with a rough kitchen table,
an old wagon bed, a splattered easel
with a haggard panorama, and a window chair
I thought I’d seen somewhere.
The carving underneath said, number 57 by Max Gonzales.
I knew Max from the Voluntary Jail and after pulling it around,
I sat through sunset in an old friend’s chair
as dusk tried to tell me something.
So I went into the kitchen and found her note on the table
saying to go ahead and use her shed
and whatever I could do for food.
Instead I went back to Max’s chair
and fell into a hard dream
about a man in a straw broom ruin
sweeping the same place
over and again till he got it right and died.
The broom multiplied into rows —
then rows into fields of straw brooms.
A New Mexican sun woke me stiff and cold at altitude.
I made and swallowed strong coffee for warmth
till the shadows withdrew
and I went to her shed with a straw broom,
a new shed made from old pieces,
I swept the grime into a corner
and shoveled the pile and wood stove ashes into a bag.
And after hosing everything down
the shed dried by afternoon.
She’d stacked a cord of wood against her house,
I carried an armload of splits into the shed.
An iron bed frame, mattress and rolling chair
were on the back porch.
So I got them into the shed too, found a hammer
and some nails in a kitchen drawer
to make a desk by the door.
By evening my desk and chair
were opposed to the bed in the front.
The wood stove and fuel on the far side.
My first place since Yosemite
and there weren’t any evergreens blocking the sun.
The stove lit easily before I went into her home
returning to the shed with my gear and a wooden box.
Gear was a blue tarp and three Yosemite blankets
wrapped around the weather suit.
Manuscripts were clamped to thin boards.
I unpacked a Robert Caro book on LBJ
along with the fifty brown paper shopping bags.
Spreading the green blanket across my desk,
laid out red pens, a copper ashtray and the paper bags,
also my children’s pictures and some candles.
Overturning the empty box
I put it by the iron bed, lit one of the candles
and made up the bed with two gray blankets.
Laying down on the flat wool, I imagined
sturdy chairs each one better than the one before.
But my shadows had gotten out of hand
till they calmed down with another candle on the desk.
Then I went over to Johanna’s for a beer
came back with a few and a mixed salad.
Leaning back in the chair, I recalled
the poet, Luthor Rollins using a phrase, ‘Moscow Salad’,
which was his way of emptying the refrigerator.
Finishing a beer, I added wood to the coals,
opened another beer
before rolling and lighting a Drum in the shed.
The writing began with smokey queries
crossing the prairie and then it left the questions far behind.
Words scrawled on shopping bags
about a diagonal highway where most don’t know
the time of day or distance to the next town.
I’d blown a tire near an oil field
and spent eleven dollars in quarters
by the time Johanna brought whiskey
and warmth to the iron bed …
We only met the one time
but she spoke down low asking me to join her.
A striking woman in a sleeveless dress,
we left the crowd and the torches
and walked down to the river below the yellow house.
The moon showed far side sycamores
as she stood smoking by the river sound.
She said her living came from satisfying men,
usually by the month and her friends called her Mrs. Holmes.
I said go on.
Several years before, she’d stalled her car
on the other side of the river as a horse and rider
pounded along the bank in and out of those trees.
They veered and rode over in the heat. His horse was lathered,
rearing as the rider asked if she had trouble.
She said yes to the old man and he left.
Twenty minutes later a truckload of mechanics arrived.
The following day, she waited by the river in the sycamores.
That’s how it began…
Women liked my grandfather because he was a brilliant man
with a fine cast to his head and his life was desirable.
She doubted if he ever really saw himself,
which made him even more attractive.
Also he was dying at the time and probably didn’t know that either.
I asked about her clients; she mostly passed. Did he understand?
Not at first but when she told him, nothing really changed.
A widower wrapped around several hundred thousand acres,
she imagined him changing the land and never saying very much.
To her he was a legend with a yellow mansion
describing young Jack Kennedy or getting wide on the guess rows.
She told him some of the shocking things in her life.
He watched his father die after a crop failure.
They met several times along the river before the pain got too bad,
talking about the boy running table after table in the pool halls.
Or seeing his wife fade before living it out
as an old man with a tremor by the wash of a stream.
I wish Mrs. Holmes had gone on
a voice calls out to “Naomi”.
but someone called out from the torches.
Facing them on our way back from the river sound.
She spoke of working men for money, said she still did,
Closing towards the crowd, she kept touching my arm,
so we paused before the torches with that last thing left between us.
It came when she moved off, turned
and asked if he’d driven himself to the hospital.
Later on, I rode out of Fresno on an oily gray motorcycle
and down through the years inside a national poem,
I’ve never forgotten her face when I said that he had …
I’ve often used people to talk to,
sometimes, my children, other times you.
So don’t be too concerned if I wonder
how you’re doing, just grab some nectarines
and get in that really great position in bed.
Our last episode was the night
of the New Mexican night lion.
Since then I’ve done some things.
The children have grown well.
Their mother lives in Missouri while I rode in and out
of the Hill Country, made a few Texas records.
Made a few more on the Oakland streets with my son.
Moved south into an Airstream trailer
on a Ventura road that the wildfires left alone.
I live there now below the mountains
called the Transverse Ranges.
This evening — I’m working
from the hard end of the pile –
Where my brother, Russell, got lost in the flow —
then two of my sisters, Sarah and Amanda —
whose lives closed not so ago.
My mother’s been gone a long time.
My father’s cough took him there too.
We’ve moved on from all those acres farmed
to other kinds of active poems with literary purposes.
In closing, I’m sending you a Moscow salad of writing
because you’re a woman I’ve always admired.
But tonight — we’re retiring with an aging tool. Meaning,
there’s an old musical player by my bed — an early Edison.
where they wound the cylinder
and lowered the needle into the wax.
Sending out a rough flawed sound —
which goes on until the thing runs down — Johanna…
Every once in a while
I’ll ride west from Fresno to Mendota.
Veer southwest from Mendota,
twenty minutes or so across the San Luis Canal.
Then head generally south on dusty roads
a few more miles till you come to my parents’
old wooden shack on the Cheney Ranch.
An austere flat roof ruin on mostly abandoned land
along the water right of way to L.A.
The surrounds are beige alluvium from the Coast Range
off to the west and there’s some rough mountains
up there named after a girl, who grew
to be an old woman, probably died long ago.
Often you can’t see the mountains
because they’re behind dirty air.
The ruined shack itself is barely alive in the late afternoon.
I parked the white bike and went inside.
Gray rotting tires and broken sprinkler pieces
kept the walls from falling in, and my mother’s first kitchen
was painted a very bad — aqua.
I went outside and rolled a smoke.
Across the road there was a faded yellow crawler tractor
on the edge of a dry field and in the old days
it was about time for the shift change —
where the day man had to get ready for the night man.
He would aim his tractor and disk
toward the rough mountains named after the girl.
Disk to far end of the field, that was called a through,
turn around and come back beside the through,
that was called a round. Move south half a telephone pole
and do it again six or seven times.
That was called laying lands for the night man
because the night man couldn’t see the mountains.
And whatever kind of woman
the girl became, that was some seventy years ago —
and now the dirty air has changed things.
In the late afternoon, the dust of the matter blocks your sight
so you can’t lay lands to the woman anymore …
There’s a wall across the street — so they call it Wall St.
It was one of those nights I’d gotten lost inside a stanza —
when I heard a couple on their way to somewhere,
talking on the wall. The broken sounds
of their conversation carried into my Airstream.
Yeas — Nays
I listened and nodded at the spaces
between the yeas and nays —
which triggered some odd memories —
one on the legendary black woman who raised me —
then won a very big bet — so I made her into a Rainfall Hazel.
Next — I wrote down another woman
who spoke five languages, seven if you include dog and cat.
Johanna wore ungodly manila panties,
a wicker Thanksgiving basket at the crotch —
a cornucopia of benevolence —
a dynamic cheetah on the motorcycle.
My overall conditions were a little ragged.
Ventura weather was mild. Quesadillas kept coming.
Stars watched over my slab. White bike was tucked away.
Last year’s murder at the gate felt long gone.
Mudslides and cellos mean bad news — Margins narrowed.
Dogs howled. The couple went their way …
Yeaaah, ahhh yowl
Dear Mr. Wildcat,
Peter Stafford called this morning
to tell me about Seth’s death.
Your brother was a timeless friend of mine
and also to both of my children.
A very fine guy and by the age of 36
Seth was the creative force
in hundreds of Austin productions as a writer,
vocalist, world class bass player,
generous sound engineer and producer.
But I knew him mostly as a friend and lifetime teacher,
a quiet young man who taught me about musical structure
and courage because he had a lot of that.
Early on — Seth gave away a constant stream
of knowledge along with the rest of the band,
Peter Stafford, then Winston, Landis Armstrong
and finally, Joey Thompson.
The man made me better than I am
while providing guidance in the studio,
the kitchen and live microphones on the road.
He was central to the creation of my artistic character
in the ‘Not so Damn Bad’, ‘Maybe an Anne’,
and the ‘Panorama’.
Then there are so many other memories
like the night he brought a couple bottles
of NightTrain to the wood shop
for the ‘Rain Prayer Demo’.
And of course onstage where the language of sound
involves the meaning of everything —
you look to your right to find Seth playing
memorable bass lines with that great green bass
and his shirt is off and you got those nipple rings too.
Seth was a special friend.
So Mr. Jimmy Wildcat, I’ll miss Seth Gibbs
because I loved him as you do.
With great respect to you and yours,
Roy Ruth …
When you’re early you hide behind garbage cans
and the stench doesn’t capture the feeling of the city.
Your mind has dried up and you count everyone’s steps.
But it’s the not so damn bad, the not so damn bad.
A cop presides over the cars
and sounds and windblown voices
The barkeep don’t notice you’re filthy,
a morning beer and you don’t either
Cuz you really haven’t slept in days
watching the buildings rise and fall.
But it’s the not so damn bad, the not so damn bad.
But it’s the not so damn bad, the not so damn bad.
It’s the not so damn bad, the not so damn bad.
But it’s the not so damn bad, the not so damn bad.
But it’s the not so damn bad the not so damn bad.
Yeah, it’s the not so damn bad, the not so damn bad …
Sometimes, once in a while, but not too often,
I’ll visit some old familiar friends in my Airstream.
The midnight magic of a Willie Mays swing and a miss,
or the muddy fields of Baltimore with Johnny Unitas and the Colts
flowing into Secretariat running alone into legend at the Belmont.
Greatness is revealed in strange ways and forms — the Wizard of Oz,
Jackson Pollack and Lincoln’s letters. Peaceful Bones, enough said …
Capridae was born gray
in the wrong kind of grayness found.
She didn’t get to put her baby arms around her mom.
So we honor her mother and father
and any other kind of sadness found.
And since you’re up there runnin’
Where the stars and planets abound.
We need you to be a watchful baby girl,
who can help us out from time to time.
Tell us what it’s like out there … beyond our world …
Beyond ourselves.
You said to turn right at Andromeda …
Stay pretty and clean with the blues and greens, Capridae
Cuz we’re all comin’ to see you …
Yeah we’re all comin’…
We’re all comin’ to see you, Capridae.
And since you’re out there runnin’
where the stars and planets abound.
We need you to be a watchful baby girl,
who can help us out from time to time
cuz we don’t know what’s out there, beyond our world.
So as we honor your mother and father
And get ourselves on past the Andromeda.
You go on staying pretty and clean, Capridae.
Cuz we’re all coming to see ya …
Yeah we’re all com-in’…
Yeah we’re all comin’ to see you, Capridae.
Oh, we’re all comin’ to see you.
Yeah we’re all comin’…
Yeah we’re all comin’ to see ya, Capridae …
One evening at Joanna’s in New Mexico —
Mr. Red, a hairy red cat slept on her lap
as she asked about my hat.
So — I looked back across time and told her
about those cold harsh rains in the Mendocino redwoods
just above the dwarf trees in the Pygmy Forest.
Bought a flat brim Stetson at a hardware store.
Found they warmed up your days and gave you a place
to keep your keys and smokes at night …
Years have passed
and I’ve gone through six or seven by now.
All of them fine tools, some given to family —
others to friends.
This last one is worn and weathered
like it’s almost done.
Guess I might be too.
Bought it in south Austin, Texas —
off of Congress Avenue on my way
into Stuart Sullivan’s Wire Recording —
where a band called the Potwashers
played a background piece called ‘Panorama’.
Stuart and I had asked for liquid — but we got fluid instead.
All of us are wrapped and warped by passing time.
You could say — from the dwarf trees of many kinds —
through the motorcycle years — we’ve written a panorama —
and the worn and weathered hats — have seen it all …
by Justin Morgan
Demonstrate that the view of a camera
panning across the landscape captures perfect wonderment.
FIRST:
Let Y with respect to some unknown, x, be the view
of the camera panning across the landscape.
THEN:
Where f with respect to time, t, is the underlying sum
of these views then the derivative of f must be Y.
Therefore it must follow:
Y(x) = f’(t)
f(t) = g’(dreams)
g’(dreams) = h(SIN(φ))
g(dreams) = ∫ h
∫ h = [Perfect Wonderment]
Y(x) = [Perfect Wonderment]
Q.E.D.
All Rise…
Your Honor, at first I asked Hector
of the Public Defender’s Office to give you this letter.
But since he’s moved on to larger things — I’ve done it myself.
This is meant both as a gesture of respect
and also for me to gain some perspective
on my D.U.I. arrest, appearances in your court,
followed by a 60 day sentence in the County Jail.
Before surrendering, I left my lighter in the courthouse bushes,
appeared in court, was shackled
and taken through the tunnel into jail.
Throughout the fall and into winter
I’ve thought about this letter.
In the meantime I briefly looked into your life and history.
I admired your athletic, legal and judicial careers
and how you and your friend, the neurologist,
are encouraging young people in local high schools.
Over the years the cultural road
has taught me to size up character.
I have done that with you — also, Hector.
My own mostly came from desert farms
and a house full of history, where my people
were good at hard things
and the personalities were wide and varied.
In my early twenties I married a Kansas farm girl
who’d come out to California to break up large farms.
We had two children before the marriage shattered,
and I left the desert farming to find a better self.
My attorney and others suggested writing
because it didn’t require wealth.
Reading deeply for the next seven or eight years,
I rode all over the United States on junkyard motorcycles.
Started writing in Austin, Texas,
because you could ride year around.
And even though I got through school
without finishing a paper,
I established a literary style and voice —
along with a flair for musical production,
mostly in Austin and later on in Oakland.
My vehicle became an evolving street man
who replaced farming with writing.
Some of the language was financed in Yosemite
by working as a pot washer in an industrial kitchen —
so my bands became the Austin
and the Oakland Potwashers.
I’d ridden out to Austin to rearrange years of sound —
Then I rode back across the Southwest
and stopped — at a motel across from a steakhouse.
Checked in, gassed up and went to dinner.
Ate alone at the bar. Drank three beers with whiskey shots,
met some film guys, had two more and left.
The motorcycle wouldn’t trigger the stoplight,
forcing a turn west into a hit and run
crime scene at Panorama,
which turned into a D.U.I. arrest. Waiting to make a u-turn,
maybe the officer just liked the white bike. I’ll never know.
But there was a lot going on at the crime scene,
which played out over the next several months
as I made seven trips to the courthouse.
My counsel over the phone was an old friend
who has a similar background to yours without the judgeship.
I met Hector the public defender on my fifth trip,
then you on my sixth, saying I do, I have, I will,
and surrendered on my seventh.
I’d told Hector that with all of that, you gotta call it a D.U.I.
and they’ve got the law, guns and keys.
At the time — we were in early conversations
with a production company.
My daughter would soon deliver a second grandchild.
An older sister of mine was terminally ill.
Needing to get the county behind me,
I chose the most direct resolution in terms of calendar time.
Jail itself was not so hard, but it was constant noise
while reading fifty bad paperbacks
and becoming a homey of sorts. Hector came to see me
a few nights before completion.
Upon release, I found the lighter
left in the courthouse bushes
and made the production deal a couple of days later.
My daughter delivered a boy in early December
and I got to see my sister a final time.
These pages were written
up in Oakland after the Ghost Ship Fire.
For me — it’s all in the past. Yet we may meet again
when this letter gets delivered. I hope that we do,
your Honor. Be well.
Roy Ruth …
I spent a summer
writing in a garage across from the zoo,
where you could hear the monkeys screaming
at the freight trains every night.
Jack was an A.A. legend
I got to know at the morning cafe —
a failed Boston Globe sportswriter
who talked sports using a Boston growl.
We’d never known each others last names,
just Roy and Jack till one day he waved me over.
Said he’d gotten traded by the Globe to the L.A. Times
because of Sid Caesar disease. (Alcohol)
I nodded and sat down. He said well it didn’t work out.
He’d gotten mugged in a drunkard’s alley
and ended up in the hospital.
Blood alcohol — .26. That’s a lot
and he agreed that it really was.
So he married the nurse, quit drinking,
moved to a Central Valley town.
Had a boy with her named Danny.
The nurse soon died and Jack raised Danny alone.
Now Jack was a stranger in the valley town.
Reading the local papers — big man this and big man that.
Then he leans forward into my face.
Back in the L.A. days — he’d gone to a political fundraiser
at the Ambassador Hotel for the open bar.
Got there late, had a couple of Manhattans
in the ballroom, maybe five,
and sat down at a table by an elderly man.
They started talking — Tennessee Walking Horses mostly.
Old man knew all about ’em, hocks and tails.
bloodlines and withers. Very smart guy.
Jack called the man a long shadow.
Now let’s wrap it up — Jack moves to the valley town.
Wife lost to cancer. Danny grows.
Jack reads that the big man had died.
Sees a picture in the Fresno Bee.
Says my grandfather
was the Tennessee horse guy in the ballroom …
Every morning the girl next door
wakes to the sound of her hamsters feet running in place.
And her hamster never really said where he’d been.
So when the girl asked her mother, her mother said
the hamsters don’t speak German or Polish.
In fact they don’t know much — but her mom was wrong.
Because the hamster read the ‘Boys of Summer’
just the other evening and cried when he finished,
a big sad hamster with his forelegs
wrapped around an American classic,
kind of like a tragic Greek
because baseball was too big for him.
Whispering how carrots were better
in his grandfather’s time.
Then sadness poured from the hamster
as he released his feelings
about flunking school,
because he watched too much baseball,
and all that he really wanted to do
was to be sportswriter.
So the girl asked her hamster
why not write for tv.
But the exhausted hamster
just slept in her glove…
We need warm rains, informing rains,
rains for our obligations. No more lowering streams
and diminished flows. Just reminders where the water goes,
Just reminders where the water goes
Send us rain for our obligations.
Rains for our obligations, i
nforming rains, where the water goes.
Send us rains, we need warm rains, informing rains,
just reminders where the water goes.
Send us rain for our obligations.
Mmmmmmhhh — Aahhhha.
How’s the goddamn sky? — Mmmmmhh.
The sky is dry — Aahhhha.
We need warm rains, informing rains,
rains for our obligations.
No more lowering or diminished flows.
Just reminders where the water goes.
Just reminders where the water goes.
Send us rain for our obligations.
Send us rain, informing rain…
I’ve owned several old motorcycles
with worn engines that sounded like coin bang
in washing machines — I rode an oily gray bike
before the mustard brown and my hard green Italian — .
but this is what happened on the white bike
while moving in and out of rains
in a twenty-five mile an hour curve
as I kept going toward Big Sur with some bad words
and some other words that I had — A rough line
about a swollen man on an ocean road where the hills
washed down to the sea in a race with a storm.
Then it got late near Big Sur — I hadn’t written
for a while — and could only give it a day …
My earthly dreams are mostly time warped and financial,
meaning they’re meaningless. But this dream began
outside a pool hall on my way out of town.
A toothless old woman handed me a ham and Swiss on rye
with toasted bread, Best Foods Mayonnaise,
diced martini olives. I ate the sandwich
standing by the motorcycle.
It was good and I wish I’d told her so.
Instead I rode north into nocturnal fog
for several miles till I got involved in a greasy mudslide
on the Pacific Coast Highway near the sea.
My shattered body went cold on the sand
and colder still in the medical van
while the E.M.T.’s talked pro basketball
on the way to the morgue.
The next day a county coroner
made the large Y incision and scooped me out
and pronounced my cause of death.
But I wasn’t buried in a hole in the ground
because that afternoon my spirit
abandoned the planet and joined the Being.
Over time, lots of time, I became an ethereal wanderer
through Catholic portals and Buddhist tunnels
into a vast kind of spiritual; gathering speed
through the vocals that were mostly Emmylou Harris
or Otis Redding. And a billion more years passed
as a traveller waiting for my next role,
be it a mineral or a wave, a stripe or a solid,
somewhat bored by the backspin voyage to somewhere else.
Instead, I became a steady state actor
in an arena where the vastness
and shimmering stadium crowds
meant the rules had changed.
So much so that they landed me
by a pair of unfamiliar personalities called the two Neils.
One was Neil Armstrong,
the other, Neil Young.
Both had good eyes, saying there were no wars
or major errors in my life. I disagreed. Crowds roared.
The two Neils ran me homeward.
The umpire ushered me out of the stadium.
Outside there was a graveled path leading
to a stack of worn tires,
telling me to veer at the old Cadillacs.
I did and the path lowered to a ruby river
with a battered Airstream trailer on a plastic raft.
Looking back, the tires, stadium
and both those Neils were gone.
Didn’t recognize the river, could have been
the upper Yangtze or lower Platte.
Indeed. Time passed and a woman appeared
telling me she was Johanna Sachs
and that we’d met one night in the Yosemite sheep grass
and again in New Mexico.
Johanna offered me
a simple ham and Swiss on rye for our journey.
We ate the sandwiches inside her trailer
which had curving walls around an iron bed
with horizontal paintings of cats.
Afterwards she untied from the dock,
releasing us downstream,
a ghostly raft drifting into a prelude
because the Signmaker had told her to.
The river drained the sounds of things
as the weathered woman explained the Signmaker
as the downstream general manager,
making her his captain of the out there,
while some more time passed
and fluid civilizations rose and fell
and their gains and losses turned to dust and gas,
leaving us pleased with ourselves.
And furthermore, everything downstream
seemed a little vague till our last evening when Johanna
called out to the Signmaker, saying as an aside
some called him the Big Guy, she called him Dave.
But I’ll always wonder if he just wanted to be left alone,
because the Big Guy/Dave just closed down the show
sending Johanna over the side; leaving me adrift
in some female memories and ruby fluids.
So my odd dream closed as the sun rose.
And sometimes inside the Airstream you’re the there,
and the not there – or the maybe in between,
where you couldn’t weigh both ends —
the billion years of Otis and Emmylou,
Johanna Sachs and the two Neils.
But if the Signmaker waits beyond energy and force,
then the entire thing is at least a choice
made in borrowing a voice —
fueled by an old woman’s Best Foods Mayonnaise,
well toasted rye, diced martini olives.
Goodbye…
