Autumn Collage by Serge Gurkski (online e book reading .TXT) 📖

pomp in the Pampa

They need a poet out on their limb …

I sit in Northern Argentine Desert

Don’t get me wrong: my purse is filled with Sue’s stolen money

So I sit there and watch a family of beige-colored foxes
Do what foxes do, if you leave them alone.

And I think: m’écrie
A cleaning up of memories is due.

I stay at Ricardo’s hacienda
“You can stay”, he said,” for’s long’s you wan…”

So let me update you:
Mi chica Suzie is dead:
How comes? Comes like this:
In Peru of all places
She overdosed the smack.
La Bella e finita!

How I cried!
Still cry

No no no no no no no!

“Come” said,” to my place”,
Elisá in suburbial B. Airés

“I’m in grief”, I tell her on the phone,
“Nada mi gusta right now.”

“Ey ey”, she hurts my ear, “you come, yes?!”

She is an excellent poetess, just ugly like hell,
Or maybe that is why she is so marvelous with words.
I’d married her if she wasn’t that hairy.
But maybe I will…
Un vaca,big as a
Mountain of flesh,
Lets its .. tongue,
Lets the monster of her tongue
Hang out.
Maybe a message to me?
A Message to me:
Her incredibly huge brown eyes
talk to the behind of what I hide,
talk to the behind of my well-developed frontal lobes,
making my bridge hum.
As Ricardo is not a rancher
I suppose, you, my welcome stranger,
May be an encephalologist.

See how easy it is to make a learned person smile.

So you are and you are eagerly eying my bottle of schnaps as well.

Okay then…

ну что ж, as we Russians say instead:

So we drink
And his name is Tom
Not Igor or Alexey or Leo
As in toll’s toy
“Серёжа, “he says:
“let’s – as night approaches – set up
два, two issues worthy of dispute.
Are you with me?”
“So much and so long,” I respond.
“отлично, Serge: So it is agreed we
First let the grey of our we-s, let our brains
fool around with Davy Deutsch’s multiverse concept
as presented by him in CA in ..?
“in” I say, “let’s say: the latter 90ies…”

“Can”, I mumble, “we have Gaye up for a light side-issue?”

“Uhm”, the Tom man replies, “Russian Soul boils down to,
- to keep this serious – boils down to Евтушенко
and … Булат”
- “Окуджава?” (me)

“Yes.” Tom’s awake now.
What a lil Schnaps can do!
Well, Russian minds
Operate best on purified alcohol,
And me, German-Polish maverick, too.

“So we go for the shoot-outs now?
And have not even yet decided about topic two?”

Tom’s switches to Russian: “Right. Theodicy?”
I: “”Post-Leibnizian? You wanna bring up modern orthodox theologians?”
Which makes him laugh: Ok, стихи?
” боже мой!” I sigh, “really, Tom ?

Poetry?” -
“да, приятель, Тургенев?” -
“Now we re talking.”

He mixes our booze with Argentine buffaloes’ milk

Красноярск! I watch the sun eager to leave us.
I pronounce красно like грозный.
“Milch der Frühe,” You drink more.
“Suicidal poets?” me mumbles, rollin’ a cig.
“Not really, uh: … Multiverse now, ok?”
On to Deutsch.

I laugh: “I mean .. I understand him so well…
craving a fucking solution here
but…
Well, I am wondering if you could bring a pro argument?

A non-metaphysical one”, I add.

“You’ve only read his paper, right?” I ask him.
“He’s more convincing when he
lectures”

Tom leans forward. “We both know that we can’t really
Discuss the multiverse issue. It is simply too metaphysical.”

So Tom’s brain goes somewhere else:
“Serge, my brother”, he says, “ talking space we have to get micro”

I nod of course.
Which is funny because 5 (in words: FIVE) Argentinian vacas
have just joined us and all of those 5 cows bow down their
monstrous heads to Tom’s remark.


Boulevard Blue

I.
He sipped cheap coffee , inhaled tobacco, glanced
down and along a dusty boulevard
brimming from life impossible,
love nonsensical, tears sparkling
silvery and if licked off, of easy salt,
she was precious as cats’ moans and worth a
yesterday’s lover’s sigh; So he kissed burnt lips
like dead flamingoes , leaving a crush of sand
on his tongue. “May I leave you
a dime and a rose still bleeding her color
of love?”, he mutters, while strol-
ling on down. …

II.

There’s a bit of rosy blood
in the first morning hour of the boulevard,
dashed with pencils white and blue,
but the colors are rehearsing still.
Out alone here he opens his eyes
to an unkind, hard world at first.
On the look-out for the wounded and the poor,
birds and babes are hungry for weak and loosely flesh,
nagging and yelling and biting ears.

His head is full of ache still, like it
would want to fight him, which is absurd
of course, but there’s a cure ; he has a
cruiskeen by his side, a booze-filled flask,
sparing him a sun rising sober.

She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue,
in her own mad mind she’s in love with you, with you.*

To be authentic: it hurts!

————
*Strange Brew

III. (sunny)**

Sit now, unrelaxed though,
upright in front of a world murky.
At times like these I think
Pat Martino or similarly eloquent
Jazz guitar, to brush away
what infests malevolently
the seat of my happiness, my heart,
you know: ridding unhappy thoughts like these.

Swing two doves like Egyptian princesses,
circling each other around and again,
coo-coo-kissing life, blowing my mind off
to wander in and up and out and away far, far.
Farther! Ship of troubled clouds:
Swing my brain away! Sway. Let us dance once
for all!
But of course all gets better some
time.
Like soon later.

………..
** built upon I confess an extreme interpretation of the song: Sunny ,-)

IV.
Mom’s a mess: I’m gonna make it without her
mostly. I’m singing mothers all day these days.
Mothers-Of you know … eMs of destruction, war, blood, hate ,
Hope, milk of consolation, peace and prayer and pain …

All there is, but not from your tits again, not again!
Instead let us paint a warmer, pastel fantasy:
Let me let you take me there , dream bluez.
Rhyme with wine, just feeling fairly fine.
Bourbonize me , hun, for fun. So I drink.
Squinting my eyes, saving vision. Triple shot of that stuff.
Still realize too much shit going on. As I knew.
So phallify, I mean: get it up, man if you still can.
Like life is boring but you must not say so, says mom,
You lack inner resources, says Berryman. God! Reasons for
Huff enough now? Cheers then and therefore!
Says me. And at three amen my barman sends me home.

As if, need more of it? Read Vaihinger then, dammit.
As if I as perfect alcoholic would rely on anyone else than myself!
Like lacking resources! Like as if I would! Like his Philosophie des Als ob
but have booze home. Fictitious beverage. Leveraging lose brains maybe.
At least I still cackle. Canticles. Of despair. Mommyfied.
Momma, I lack your female resources.

As long as the poison flows from bourbon nipples.
Mom
I
Thirst.

———–

inspired by:

- George Thorogood’s version of One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
- Music by The Mothers of Invention, George Clinton, Red Hot Blues Sisters
- Berryman: Dream Songs
- German philosopher Hans Vaihinger (Philosophie des Als Ob)
- booze, mothers

V. Background singing

[ “ if you get too cold / I’ll tax the heat. /If you take a walk – and this is often / I’ ll tax your feet”
Junior Parker: Taxman]

Back on the street, he ambulates,
circling a park , little park in shades to the
right hand side, humming Al Green self-soothingly
to himself, thinks again, he’s best alone,
best alone again. He’s
all smiles into the new day,
listening to background voices,
singing final harmonies,
to harmonize his soul with death.

VI.
Sitting in a bar down the boulevard he’s reminiscing good things to get the day going, possibly good.

[I don’t know if there is a way to reverse sarcasm into metaphors of deep loving, but I wanna try it out.
I met a gin soaked ball-room queen in Memphis …* ]

Rock’n Roll on your hair

Thank God it’s morning again, night been too long, baby,
because nights make me suicidal
and we rather not like that, do we?

But yesterday you sent me a pic that blew my mind away
with sun in your hair and wind fooling around with it.
I love those little strains of red-blonde hair kissing the air,
a celebration of life, and if life’s so sexy, I want to live some more.

So I met my queen of love in Miami,
she had to heave me right across the lovely shoulders [*]
of her mind to save me from the dark thoughts of my night.

Let me blow my thank-you’s in your hair.
You saved me from ultimate despair.

————
*Rolling Stones: “Honky Tonk Woman”


Detox


I LEAVING

Today is another drunken morning, but
the night before yesterday I had
reduced my dosage to 25 %:
I slept for one hour and felt mildly euphoric.

Shower but do not shave: but put on
expensive after shave and a freshly
washed t-shirt plus jeans,
brew coffee and take my meds.

You can tell, I am serious about
turning my life around today.
I take a mini-sip of left-over rum,
fasten my belt and leave the house.

I am first attacked by cold sweat
after my 10 minutes walk to the drugstore,
where I buy tiny bottles of alcohol.
I feel shitty mounting the subway.

I have meticulously calculated the measure
of time left between getting out of
the sub and entering the clinic: 30 minutes.
In the clinic’s park I have to wipe the sweat
out of my face again and enjoy the icy wind,
feel paranoid, smoke and carefully
suck the drug from the can. I get nervous.

I need another smoke and a tree to hold on
to get in control of my wounded stomach:
No time to puke. Someone left a bag on
one of the benches. I notice but ignore.
With guilt and shame and a frozen face
I walk on. AND GO IN

II ENTERING