For the longest time, the tin and phosphorous stars seemed to hold pose in the sky-- the jasmine night blooms dismissed notions of mourning, and yellow-white candles embraced their wicks as if flame were dreams, and their bright sleep knew the gods' blessing to continue, endless.
For a charmed while, the moon shrugged off her chill, orange-warmed by breezed leaves-- the nightjar hid herself along a wet-black branch above us, and though she seemed to be only rhyme and rumor tucked between pointed wings, she carried her children in her mouth to move them, secretly.
For just those moments, however sustained or brief they really were, everything around us bent kindly our way-- all green things, and all feathered, brought us our own names and the desired other's to build ourselves, our keenest hunger, and our softest satiety from.
We were there, for the longest time, for that charmed while, for just those moments,
and then? Then we weren't, and the way back had burned behind us as inevitable and harshly bright as sunrise. _______
I am saddened this morning to hear of the death--apparently by heroin overdose--of the great actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. I loved him in "Flawless", "Doubt","Capote" and "Magnolia". Not so much in "Love, Liza", though it was the script, which had him huffing gasoline throughout, and not his acting that I didn't care for. As a recovering person, I'm shattered that such a talented person has died by that familiar demon. I'm grateful to have escaped, one day at a time. I'm sick that this incredible actor didn't.
It's amazing to me how personally connected one can feel to an actor or actress, because something they brought to life resonated in one's heart and soul. Actors and writers do the same thing, don't they; they make tangible those intangible feelings we all have, and give them form we can look at and nod our heads and say, "Yes, that's it." And we feel that we come away with a little piece of truth. A little more humanity.
Having read and been fascinated by my father's copy of "Holocaust!" by Paul Benzaquin (1959), I was familiar with the subject of the famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire of 1942, and looked forward to reading this book. It was okay, but I liked Benzaquin's book much better.
"Fire In The Grove: The Cocoanut Grove Tragedy And Its Aftermath" concentrates largely on the behind-the-scenes chicanery that set the stage for this disastrous fire in which almost five hundred people lost their lives. Public officials who accepted bland assurances that "everything is according to Hoyle" without actually conducting inspections, shady nightclub management that placed profits over safety--many of the exits were locked or blocked, to prevent anyone skipping out on their check--and accounts of the trial of those accused of involuntary manslaughter, dominate this book.
I had hoped for more personal stories of ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary disaster. A thousand people went out to the Grove that night expecting nothing more dramatic than a good time; half of them died, and many more were injured and traumatized. From the newlyweds whose life together lasted only three hours, to the illegally hired underage busboy whose match may have started the blaze, to the Coast Guardsman who escaped unharmed, only to rush back in to save his date, there is plenty to be told, but Esposito doesn't spend a lot of time on these stories. The Coast Guardsman returned into the burning nightclub four times, managing to rescue several patrons, but never finding his date, who he had met only that afternoon. The last time he emerged, he was engulfed in flames. No one so badly burned had ever survived up to that time, but he did survive, lived another fourteen years, and married one of his nurses. In an incredibly cruel twist of fate, he died in 1956 when his vehicle ran off the road in heavy fog and he burned to death. Esposito tells his story, but almost only in passing.
What this book goes into depth about, are the tangled web of Boston politics, the shady practices of the owners of a prohibition era speakeasy turned nightclub, the scrambling, after the fire, to shift blame, and the legal maneuverings of the subsequent trial. Esposito has done his homework as to the many locked or blocked exits, the flammable nature of the Grove's "exotic" decor, and such stuff as the dummy corporation that owned the Grove, and the public officials who enjoyed being on the club's "free list", having their drinks and dinners comped, and then failing to perform their duties to insure public safety.
It's not a bad book, but I would say to be aware of its focus before reading it.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
―
Anaïs Nin
I know you loved me, and that you had used sonar to detect me standing next to you, taking vows.
A fake ID is fine when one is sixteen. Fun is fun, until one starts marrying people and moving in. A common language must be agreed upon. Semaphore is a strange way to say "I love you", especially if one doesn't, particularly. You were kind ointment on the burn and there were no other medics, that's all.
I looked in the mirror and saw only glass. I looked at the page and saw only an innocent white blankness, but innocence is unbecoming past a certain age. One is expected to have learned something, to desire something enough to wrap one's self around it no matter the requirement in blood, and one really ought to, eventually, have grown some guts.
Thank you for loving me, or, the idea of me. Thank you for then becoming false and foreign, and for going mad. Thank you for removing all comfort so that I could know it wasn't comfort I wanted. Thank you for teaching me that I am strong enough to survive such sustained insanity.
With nothing to stop me, I became myself. At first, all I wanted was to be a pretty girl. Is there any coin as common as being a pretty girl? Look around. Has it stopped being a general cultural goal? Do I look fat in this? In the mirror I saw that I was not conventionally pretty, but I was me standing there in front of myself at last.
Passion, that's what I wanted. Pick a place you've never been and go there. I picked. I went. I went as myself. I went down in flames and then picked again, went again. I can fly, and not just in dreams. Here's the thing I wished for. Fasten those seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
I looked at a page and it was white as a bandage. I loved, I bled, I spoke my new name and went through a thousand dressings. There were nurses, a lot of them, all pretty, but I was the only one turning gauze into garlands.
I am a little bird, a butterfly, nothing much, but there are lions strewn dead in my path, behind me. Look again, they are gone. Look a third time-- the butterfly has lioness eyes, and the little bird? Why, the little bird sings a song that can be heard across the night and across miles, saying I am here. I am here. I am here.
A bird who thinks she speaks for lions, houses souls of lions. I am. Hear. _____
And guess wut?!? The three poets who brought you Gemini/Scorpio/Capricorn are back! That's right, Mama Zen, Hedgewitch and Fireblossom have a new book out, entitled Three-Note Howl: The Wild Hunt. We're excited about it! Pick up a copy at Amazon.com.
Come in, kick down the damage door where the skull-pitch bitchsmile sits, have some nail and screwdriver stew, burn down the kerosene cloud, and rain light little knee-capped fire goddess, rain light.
Come in, crap out, call the cops, cancel the Christ, sidewind down the ventilation shaft, and eavesdrop on the vomit-talk of the municipal madman who claps the tune to this whole gladhand genocide, feed the lion crouched in the cushions of corporate homicide and sink like a stone. Down is the new up, some like it rough we need to know now, sister whether you've got this.
Come in, come on, run down the hot tip of the century hidden in a pitchman's penny eyes. Let a lung loose, scream it, scroll it, tweet it, fuck it, be Bo Peep of the broken water main, drown this demon-deck in the miles-wide plastic tide and rain light, little mercury-silvered mer-goddess, for all the god damn good it will do and fuck's sake and forevermore, shine and shiver and
rain light. ________
This poem was posted January 29th but then I deleted it cos....well, cos it is so angry. However, I have been urged by several readers to put it back up, so here it is.
