response being so encouraging.
music listens when you speak.
that's when he passed out.
. . . dream." turn the Jane Olivor over.
Keith's boozy brilliant black eyes.
an hour later he's awake.
to overtake us. to absorb us.
we know of others waiting.
riddled with existence.
rampaging actors.
how useful is life?
how love as a thing itself will perish.
all dressed in swan feathers & flesh
you fretful forest & secret.
O sweet confusion.
love achieves what it destroys.
remember the master of drought.
the worth of memory.
don't return but be able.
like you the father must the child.
Aeolian bows & bells
struck with pieces of wood.
transcript of a passing mood.
flattery opens many doors.
each morning I would sing.
your eyes transparent among ruins laugh.
I ran into Rico & Michael
at 24 Hour Doughnuts on Castro:
Rico's on the phone. he's wearing black. a black scarf, black jeans, black t-shirt; everything black, he keeps tossing the scarf over his shoulder and sort of dancing. on the phone. while talking. talking and dancing. big black round shiny eyes. hair swept back off his forehead, combs it with his fingers, talking low. talking intensely. he waves. it's only six or seven thirty. I go in. he talks. michael says: hello. I say who are you he says Michael. I say O. he says have you seen Brad. I say no. he says do you know where he is. I say yes. he says where. I look hesitant, I say well he really doesn't want anyone to know. fury. he says nothing. just looks. looks at me. registers hate. determined. beaming I say nothing. rico talks on & on & on & on & on & on & on in whispers. he keeps dancing to the music. he's WITH the Nuns, he's all in black, he is thin, very thin, small boned really. a person of note. he has a way of throwing out his chin as if to say: look (breathlessly) he looks into your face. look. this is the way it is. I love it Too! he's a one man band. he hangs up the phone. pay-phone. how are you he says brightly, happily, earnestly, dancingly.
the rose is gone from the garden
what shall we do with the thorns
will wilting lilacs bring on summer?
how can he say: 'my soul is ablaze"?
big blue piano Bay twilight docks
keys lips upon your cool way of sleeping
the weather takes care of that.
silence then and wind encountered bells.
it all looks so final somehow, on january 16 his notebook is torn to shreds. on january 21 again 1977 I see him once. I'm Daffy Over You. the same laws that brought us together take us apart. who cursed us with forgotten love. what he needs I don't know. you torment me. you ask me questions that appear to make no sense. these little days that pass. she has an eerie way of knowing. the days come and go. he has dust in his eyes. glazed and looks like a stop light.
love you in a flurry in a spiral
in truth and disguised.
a web of tight muscles.
windows. faces.
a flurry of primitive name-calling.
notwithstanding the novelty of this moment.
cat at the door wants out
she scratches & claws & leaps for the knob.
please, undergo experience with me.
show process with reason.
choose memory to begin
tell us the meanings of love
show us need
question trees
spend the night
take me in your arms
wrap seeds with apples
tie eggs with shell
how there's a flaw in its structure
and confesses something else irksomely
I am the rest between two notes
I've been looking through ads for your face.
he takes a poinsettia from the shelf
and puts it into fear, faceless
I won't forget my last dance for me
saved at the Trocadero Transfer May 1978:
Stephen invited me to the Trocadero Transfer Saturday night. dancing until dawn. a tall black man danced with fire and Stephen danced with silver fans. coffee and grapefruit and "here Jeffery take this" I said Stephen you're so tall, why don't you lean down. he didn't talk much. he also had an entourage of three friends I believe who rather 'preened' him with attention. one I think was his lover. I like the white or silver Seville he drove "Jeffery, sit in the front seat with me" "Am I being taken for a ride is this some strange dream come true. and a moustache too"? I wanted to ask him if he was 'famous' though I thought I'd better not. I told him I thought disco sucked which didn't set too well. I danced to him rather than with him. he kept dancing with those fans -- two of them like wings from a robot heron or egret. he kept fanning me and I kept dancing. he seemed 'beyond' it all and a little unworldly. he was wearing a blue shirt and jeans. we met at the Midnight Sun "Jeffery you're adorable" I got the strange idea I was his pet for the night. curiously tame. he carried more money in his billfold that I thought could ever be possible for a billfold to carry. we kept avoiding each other in the shadows and had nothing to talk about. in the light it was all dance and sweat and eyes. everybody seemed to have a beauty about them like models or untouchably transparent angelic ufo types as if spoon fed on beauty-glow, silver-shine and orange fuzzy caresses. prone to tinsel and flattery. we danced and danced and danced and it was crazy and easy and sweaty. the gray light sky. at 5 am cool light. Stephen invited me to Guerneville for the day in his Seville but I didn't want to go I didn't know why I was a little afraid of all of this wonderfulness I just felt so empty with craving and fragmentation and dependence on beauty to hold me up I just wanted to walk home in the rising sunlight. I felt very happy but very tiny like a movie star after having won an Oscar.
what must try mean
to begin
The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first --
Blaise Pascal
-- Jeff Wietor
