August 14, 1996: I was the feature poet at the Art Bar reading series

                                      

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday night I was the feature poet at the Art Bar reading series and I performed with my guitar and accompaniment on the recorder by Brian Haddon. I sang my poem “Portrait of My Quicksilver Headdress". Features are asked to provide copies of one of their poems so that everybody could read it while they are performing so I copied the whole poem out by hand on a continuous accordion stack of old style continuous feed printer paper. I asked Dennis, who was sitting at the table next to mine to pass the top end of the paper to the next person once we started playing and so during the poem the text was snaking around the room like a paper dragon. In the end, features are supposed to answer questions from the audience. Brian stood there in dark sunglasses and a leather jacket and fielded the first question. We exchanged a whisper and then he told the audience in a mobster accent that, “Mistah Christian refuses to ansah that question on the grounds that it might incriminate him!” Someone asked my poetic influences and I said, “The Monkees and Dr. Strange comics”. I also did an impersonation of Mick Jagger at one point. I think people enjoyed themselves.

                                        

Portrait of My Quicksilver Headdress 

So here I'm again with my writing 

That illusive nomadic Muse 

that comes charging from the unconscious frontier 

like a ravaging horde of Mongols 

to lay waste the card-house empire 

of my conceptual Mind 

is back now to dance on the damage with me 

well at least for one more clumsy time 

But nowadays I have to venture 

deep into its sweet resting place 

drag it kicking & screaming from out of its bed 

& then slap it till its wide awake 

just to nail down its dancing convulsions 

like Christ on my high forehead's cross

Oh, but make no mistake from the shape of this mask 

Know my Muse it is always the boss 

Each one of my comatose projects 

that had lain there so dumb on their backs 

half-formed, like thalidomide babies so long 

are now spread like a thousand card hand 

of poker dealt out by the dealer 

who is my sweet imprisoned Muse

But I'm beguiled by all the wild jokers I find 

in this deck that I've so much abused

All the brutalized, ink-blackened pages 

that had crunched themselves into soft balls 

in the killer womb inside my frustrated fist 

& to warm smoky freedom had rolled 

away on the underground railroad

conducted by garbage truck crews

well they're back now to fight through my Memory's court 

for their forty pages & a Muse 

Yes I'm back once again with my Baby 

that had swum for so long in the womb 

& the ultrasound films of that boring process 

are continuous echo-reruns 

on the nightmarish Walt Disney channel 

that plays in my Subconscious Mind

providing the vaguest reflection of me 

that my ego could Hope to design

It’s my fantasy's one-sided quarrel

I won't have to avert my eyes

& there's no counter-wit here I must circumvent

There's nobody to tell me I lie

So I'll lie in here all by my lonesome

just soaking up in my own brew 

that’s so warm & so deep I just might go to sleep 

in this alphabetic-stupor-stew

I use this typewriter to hammer 

a hole for myself in the wall 

of the towering mountain of purposefulness

& my voice as a beckoning call 

to call you all out of your caverns

so I can then investigate

& comparatively determine the size 

of my own spread of surrealestate

If you've all been knocked on your asses 

in as many good & bad ways

then you're fattened by Memory like I have become

& writing is one way to lose weight

Cause experiencing & teaching 

are two halves of one breathing process

& those of us holding a lungful of Life 

can now pass on that Eventful breath 

But our tiny Minds can't seem to handle 

Sensation's chaotic crossfire 

that charges the electrical circuitry 

of each Moment that challenges time

So that’s why we cause them to mutate

& bleed into Future & Past

diluting them into a thin "Lady's Drink"

who's tall volume might cushion their blast

Then we sip with the greatest of leisure

Hope & Memory's candy cane straws 

reweld them back into a plastic Moment

merely flawed by some surgical scars

that run like a railroad track border 

between these two Nations at war

whose dividing line is as hard to define

as the one between ocean & shore

Yes we tend to keep our lives separate 

from Reality's smashing sea 

with dams made of bones from our clinking closets

& amnesia: the sealant between

Then we prick that dyke-wall with pinholes

to let just a little bit through

But its high where the wall's thin enough to be pricked 

& the footholds are so very few

& most of us are far too lazy

to climb up to where its that thin

& less of us have the digestive system 

that will hold that effulgent-juice in 

long enough so that when we do spit it 

deep into some young thirsty Mind

it won't be so rich as to make the kid sick

or go down as more grape-juice than wine

But in my Life the gray knotted tapeworm

that is my excuse for a Soul

keeps me stealing that blood that’s been barely tasted 

from that foaming-toothed vampire’s hole

that serves as the garbage disposal of prayer

& of blessing of curse & of sigh

from who's lips we read the equations of Time

& who's nickname is simply "The Sky"

Sometimes it takes years of rewriting 

to translate one Moment in Time

& though the translation is never complete

it might unveil a piece of my Mind

& almost just might count for something

in writing as in hand grenades

which though they fall short of the targeted mass

they still manage to blow it away

But I write cause I don't have the courage 

to sit or to stand or to walk

in peace so I mirror these black fireworks

inside me with a crude voodoo-doll 

that shields me from most of my Demons

but is also a fisherman’s net

to catch them to serve as the ingredients

in my diet of Dark-Angel flesh

Its a parachute serving to soften 

my descent through solitude's space 

that bottomless Mind-shaft of boredom & fear

that I tumble through from day to day

& I fall through these out of Time Moments 

with or without pen in place

wrapped up in a mirror-lined crystal cocoon 

that will give me illusions of space

But what sails me away from one island 

of boredom becomes one in kind

So even though I get a sense of focus

lining up with a Moment in Time

its too bad it isn't the Moment 

my body is feeding upon

but a Moment that hangs in the perilous air

no momentum to carry it on

I can't seem to hold my attention 

when ideas fly in large flocks

but the counterbalance of this difficulty 

is my flexible method of thought

& a talent for seeing the order

that lies in Perception's "Outback"

which renders me so much more beautiful 

than the rest of you cloven-brained hacks

My acrobatical circus-boy Mind

keeps on seeping through all of the cracks

in conception & emerges triumphantly 

as a glistening penis-head buck

Yes I'm raking the sky with my antlers

& their explosion frozen in Time

a quicksilver ejaculation that sprouts 

from a well at the core of my Mind

My thoughts are slowed down by my writing 

just long enough to be shocked 

by their image reflected inside of the page

& for one fleeting Moment be caught 

like deer staring into car headlights

just long enough to be pulled 

back inside myself to become the soundtrack 

of my dance for the Calendar Girl

They go back in myself orchestrate the striptease

of my Internal Calendar-Girl