WAS IT A SURPRISE? Y mil gracias!

Grandkids Eddie Hollandbyrd and Emma Birdie Byrd with their good friend Ana Jo Yellen.
Photo courtesy of the El Paso Times

NOTE: On April 13th, Lee once again surprised me with a party, this time for my 70th Birthday. 160 people came. My gosh. Lee was expecting maybe 50 or 60, but suddenly she was flooded with RSVPs. Our neighbors across the street--Esther and Orlando Arriola--opened up their house for the party. And the wild rumpus commenced. I'm not able to write everybody immediately, but this is my first swipe at saying Thank you, thank you--to all those people who came, all those who couldn't come and all those who are my friends. I am truly blessed.


Dear All,

It was a wonderful party. Truly a wonderful party. I was in a walking dreamy ecstasy for most of the evening. Muchos abrazos, many tears, much laughter, all those memories, good food (“potluck is always the best kind,” and of course the Taco Man) and cold beer and delicious wine. Plus all the children. They were our witnesses. They will take some understanding from that party. That’s what I believe.

Two days after the party, Lee and I went on a business trip to Houston and then came back to desks full of stuff to catch up on. Long lists. Now I’m in New York City for a month, doing some business but also taking a sabbatical. Some time to myself, reading and writing. The older we get the fuller our lives become. So very strange. And yet, all that time, in the time since the party, in the back of my mind is this letter churning—“What shall I say to these people who have been so nice to me? Who’ve honored and blessed me with their good wishes?”

So this is my try to say thank you. 

Most everybody asked me, “Was it a surprise?” Many of you were at the Palmore Apartments in Sunset Heights when Lee surprised me with my 50th birthday. And then again when I turned 60. Same place. My gosh! So certainly I should have been expecting something. And, yes, I was. Yet it didn’t happen the way I expected it to happen, the weekend before, so I was left in an empty place. Afloat in a sad wondering. Maybe I was wrong. 70 years old and nobody cares. Pobrecito. I thought: “I guess she’s not going to do it. Shit.”

Still, our friends Polly and Rob had invited us to Ardovino’s Desert Crossing, two days before we left for Houston, so I was cool with that. Sort of. And the lucky thing about me and surprise parties is that I’m an oblivious guy. Especially if somebody starts me talking about things important to me. 10 years ago—before the surprise party for my 60th—Connie Voisine started talking to me about poetry and poetics. Jackson MacLow and his theories of chance. Weird oblique topic. I got lost in the conversation. This time Rob Dowtin did the same thing. He started talking to me about Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, in particular, the first one, Dukkha—life is suffering, change, anguish. An interesting concept. Especially if you’re about to turn 70 and it really begins to surprise you (lying in bed at night) that there really isn’t any light at the end of the tunnel. Rob’s discussion turned an ignition switch. I started to blab away 90 miles an hour as we drove up Louisville Street. I saw our friends Peter and Candy Cooper. Oh, yeah, now I know. But, really, that didn’t bother me: I was in Cuckoolandia by then. Swimming through a warm pool of euphoric air. Ideas. Images. Lee was on the front porch with Polly. I was hustled into the house. Yeah, something was happening but my mind was no longer in gear. I was buoyant. Grandson Eddie came to get me. Across the street was my granddaughter Emma Birdie. And Andy Byrd, our baby boy—a man now, a wonderful man—here from San Antonio. Surprise! My gosh. I began to weep. Lee was holding my hand. Behind them Johnny Byrd and Susie Byrd and their families and behind them 160 people. Friends from all my various lives. Surprise! Friends from Albuquerque when Lee and I were trying to figure out how to grow up and care for two kids who would become three kids in Las Cruces; writer friends from the world of poetry and ideas and culture and politics; friends and colleagues from the world of publishing and loving books; friends from when I used to coach Andy Byrd soccer; friends from my Zen Buddhist practice; friends from the glory days of the Bridge Center for Contemporary Arts; frontera friends and friends of political activism; Tuesday night friends from playing old man basketball at the Missouri Street Center and then hanging out way too late at the L&J; neighborhood friends; friends who are simply friends, good friends; friends who are friends because they are good friends of our children. A big mix of friends. The wonderful stew of my life. I am so blessed. I wandered among you enchanted and ecstatic, so blessed. Oh, so very blessed.

Lee and Susie, the Primary Instigators

So yes, the answer is that I was surprised. Very surprised. Still surprised.

My deepest thanks to all of you for your friendship. For those who could come, for those who couldn’t come but who wished to be here. Thanks especially to Lee Merrill Byrd, such a marvelous and enchanting woman, and to my wonderful children (how very lucky Lee and I have been) and grandchildren, all of whom played their parts in the drama of the party. And in the peculiar comedy of my life. And to Esther and Orlando Arriola who so generously opened up the doors to their patio for us all.

It’s ironic but so important for Lee and me to have found our home rooted here in El Paso. Here we’ve put our hearts and minds to the many lessons of crossing borders—all the many borders, oh, they are boundless—and we’re learning to be whole.

My love to you all. May we all, in our own way, be a blessing to our communities, to our friends and to our families.

I am so honored to be your friend.
Bobby
bbyrd@cincopuntos.com (Please write if you have the yearning.)

PS. Oh, there were so many presents. Odd. Unusual. Artsy. Funny. Practical—like wine! Like mescal! All the potluck food that filled the table, a true cornucopia. Like friendship, the most practical gift of all! I’ll be writing to each of you as time allows. Also, see the links below for El Paso Times writer Ramón Rentería nice piece about the party, the photographs that appeared in the Times, a wonderful article by Cheryl Howard and also visit her facebook pages for more photographs.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_20453802/ram-n-renter-rituals-el-paso-transcend-ethnicities
http://photos.elpasotimes.com/2012/04/21/faces-and-places-surprise-party-for-bobby-byrd/
http://borderzine.com/2012/04/eulogies-for-the-living/
 http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3720521741635.2166786.1533544141&type=3


PPS. THINGS THAT WERE BEHIND (please contact leebyrd@cincopuntos.com. Lee’s the keeper of reality)—
Large stainless steel bean pot
Large red bowl
Metal Bowl
Red tea towel
Black tongs

Post PPS: Lee promises to write an essay telling the real true story of how we first met. Ha! Keep her to that promise. You’ll never believe it. Hasta the next time. bb

Saying Goodbye, Saying Hello

Raymond Depardon, New York City. Manhattan. Central Park. 1982.

Thanks to my friend the photographer Bruce Berman 

for introducing me to Depardon's photographs.[1]

 

Santa trudging through Central Park. My gosh, the photograph speaks eloquently about this time of year.You got to be careful wherever you live. You'll look up and see Santa trudging through the goo of your life. 

I wish to send my best wishes to all of you--peace, good health and well-being in your mind, body and heart. Peace and understanding too for the U.S./Mexico Border and for the world. It's a precarious time now for our communities and for the generations to come. I'm one of those old fogies that believe that peace begins in our own hearts. Blessings to all. 

Here's something I scribbled down the day after Christmas. It's sort of a minimalized diary of my own Post-Christmas day.  

•

 

Monday, December 26, 2011

This is the way the year ends and begins—

Extra little Merry Christmas turds.

Snowmelt seeps out of the mountain.

You can end this poem anyway you want. 

---

[1] Shit. I don’t like to use so obviously copyrighted material. But sometimes the impulse of the time overrides my concern. I’m guilty here, and I’ll be happy to remove this post if somebody asks me. In the meantime, please visit Depardon’s site and Wikipedia Page. He’s a remarkable photographer.

The Whalen Poem

Some of my poet friends don’t understand my allegiance to Ron Silliman’s Blog, and they certainly don’t understand why I lament the loss of Ron’s unrelenting blogging (along with the babbling of poets in the comments section) that came to an (almost) screeching halt a year or so back. To those folks I have two new words—William Corbett. Aka Bill. For some reason I’ve never paid much attention to Corbett’s work. I’m out here in El Paso, he’s over there in Boston. He’s plugged in, I’m not plugged in. No, that’s not true. I’m sort of plugged in. I think my wires got frayed. I think it was 1973. Lee and I, like Hansel and Gretel, went off following the trail G.I. Gurdjieff for three or four years. That’s a long other story. Ni modo.

Anyway, Silliman from time to time breaks his silence[1] and his overwhelming catalog of poetry events and dead poets and videos of poets reading (some dead, some alive) with a personal blognote.  On June 3 of this year he wrote about Corbett’s little book from Hanging Loose Press The Whalen Poem. Shit. Even the title made me want to buy the book. I’m a Philip Whalen addict. Corbett says this about his book of poem—

I spent the summer of 2007 reading the galleys of Philip Whalen’s Collected Poems. I was in Vermont and had the leisure to read slowly, ten or so pages a day. About halfway through the master’s poems I began to write The Whalen Poem. I kept at it until just after Halloween. No book I have written, poetry or prose, has given me the deep pleasure I felt in writing The Whalen Poem.

I understand exactly. I’ve done the same thing. My only dilemma with Corbett’s book is that I didn’t write it. Of course, I would have written it my way. Differently.

Here’s a little piece that gives a good taste of the book. The poem has the off-the cuff dreaminess and improvisational energy that Whalen had, but of course it's purely Corbett being who he is. Besides, I chose it because I’ve felt this same confused emotion so many times in my life. Growing up and having all these different poetry heroes and then finding out they aren’t (weren't) who I thought they were supposed to be in my imagination. 

Pollock by Namuth

He was drunk

He was nasty

            Many knew

We young ones didn’t

He looked great

Brooding in denim

Cigarette between long fingers

On the running-board

Of his beat-up Model-A Ford

On the Evergreen Review cover

Names of heroes

CAMUS

BECKETT

SOUTHGATE

O’HARA

He’s not the same now

You grow up and adjust

You want the old feeling

It’s still there but not

To be trusted…well,

It’s not for him anyway

But for that world when

You didn’t have to know

What you know now

▼

I even had this feeling about Philip Whalen. I first discovered his book Memoirs of an Inter-Glacial Age in the U of Arizona Library in 1964 and from that time on I read everything he wrote. His poetry and its underlying poetics gave enormous energy to my own work as I wandered through the landscape. I only heard him read once in my life. He came to the New Mexico State University. I had looked forward to the reading for months but when I heard him I was disappointed. He didn’t read the poems like I felt he should be reading the poems.[2] The old standards, poems I knew by heart. Poems I had shouted aloud in my scruffy apartments in Tucson and Seattle in the 1960s. Shit. Later that evening at the party at the Somozas’ house, Whalen had so many Zen-wannabes imported from Santa Fe hanging around that I couldn’t get close to him. Besides, I didn’t feel any connection to them. They lived in Santa Fe, I lived in El Paso—enough said. I couldn’t read Whalen’s poetry several years. His reading had sucked that energy away. But I finally realized  that was silly. His poetry was viscerally connected to my work. I finally forgave Whalen for being Philip Whalen. Weird. Or maybe I forgave myself for being who I am. Or something. Maybe I just learned to sit on a zafu and stare at a wall. Even that Whalen had contributed to.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, this is supposed to be a celebration of Bill Corbett’s book The Whalen Poem. Here’s a couple of short delicate pieces for a cold snowy day during the time of Winter Solstice—

•

There is room here

For 720,000 ladybugs

Devouring 4.6 billion aphids

•

EXTREME OCTOBER

Drought in Georgia

San Diego fires

I always go commando

Deserving everyone’s love

---

[1] I’m always worried I’ll find pictures of friends there along with the news of their catching the rickety little raft to the other side. And of course I'm not ready to be up there with all the other dead guys. 

[2] I mentioned this once to Jim Koller and he agreed with me. He too didn’t like the way Whalen read his poems aloud, and Jim was a close friend of his.

Gene Keller on Robert Burlingame

Gene Keller by Richard Baron

As I mentioned in my blognote about Bob Burlingame, our friendship was always punctuated by long interruptions. My friend Gene Keller (singer, songwriter, poet) had a much longer and enduring friendship with Bob, so I asked him to write something. I am posting it below. Gene is one of those necessary pieces of cloth that holds the quilt of El Paso's rich cultural underground together. He's a touchstone. I definitely recommend Richard Baron's unique interview with Gene from Newspapertree.com. Like Robert Creeley, Gene lost an eye an early age, and he tells that story there. The photograph of him is Richard's too. Visit Richard's website. His photographs are remarkable and should be much more widely known. Richard now lives in Santa Fe.

▼

So to Gene's remarks:

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to write about Bob Burlingame (1922-2011). As you wrote, we had an "enduring friendship." In 1968 I took a class in Modern Poetry with Burlingame. We studied Eliot, Frost, Cummings, Stevens, and W. C. Williams. This was in the days of mimeographs, so he would occasionally bring sheets of poems in purple ink by contemporary poets such as Bly and Kinnell, translations of Neruda and Machado. He became my thesis advisor in graduate school, allowing me to present a creative thesis rather than a scholarly essay.

I learned recently that it is said of Barney Oldfield, an early American auto racer, he couldn't think unless he was going a hundred miles an hour. Bob Burlingame's wisdom says, "Slow down. See the world at two or three miles an hour." I love his eye for a clarity of detail as he walked in the deserts and mountains of his life. In his readings of his own poems, he also demonstrated the virtue of slowing down by mouthing each word slowly, giving the consonants and vowels a moment to rest in the ear.

He was a plain man of the Kansas plains who wandered into the Southwest. He came to Texas Western College in 1954. Over the decades he influenced many young poets now entering their own elderhood - Howard McCord, Pat Mora, and Ben Sáenz, among many others.

He offered another lesson, that the craft of poetry was about writing and not so much about publishing. Individual poems appeared in journals, including Kayak, Quarterly West, and Texas Observer. But a book of his New and Selected Poems came from Houston's Mutabilis Press in 2009 - Some Recognition of the Joshua Lizard. The litany at the end of my poem that follows, Plain, is taken from the titles of his poems in that book. At the time of his death in late September, it was noted that a book of desert poems was forthcoming. I look forward to it like water after a hike.

▼

PLAIN

            in memory, Bob Burlingame

If he had been

a creature on

an endangered list,

he might have been

a blackfooted ferret

nestled

beneath a gnarled

hackberry stump creekside

off the plains of Kansas,

or the plainest of plover

only found rarely

in a high canyon

deep in the Guadalupes

under the white peak

of  El Capitán -

ancient reef

overlooking the salt flats

of West Texas.

He becomes a joshua lizard,

dry weeds, yellowood,

rooster, fish, beaver, finch,

blue milkwort, wild cherry,

sandhill crane, turkey vulture,

sunflower, shark, dandelion,

portuguese man-of-war,

sycamore, mountain laurel -

all that sing in solitude.

▼

AFTER MY MENTOR

Stepping through the door

opened me like sugar,

triggered a beam.

The clarity of light

through the door

soaked to the marrow.

At home in words,

I'm caught in the continuo

of their music.

A page of poetry opened -

an aural architecture

in a sonnet by Donne.

Like this, only simpler,

a way of seeking

that includes seeing.

Sweet words of light

behind every door,

after my mentor.

(from Chrysalis, 2011)

▼

Here's a nice video of Gene singing a song at a party in the Sunset Heights neighborhood of El Paso, 2009. Puro Gene. Happy and at ease and wise. 

Some Recognition of Salt Flat, Texas: Robert Burlingame

This is how Bob Burlingame (aka Robert Burlingame) made poems. In the mornings, he’d take a cup of coffee or tea into his study and sit in front of his manual typewriter. He’d witness the coming light of the morning, he’d listen to the birds, and he’d sit there waiting for a poem to come along like a visitor. Knock, knock. It would be the poem—a collage of memories and thoughts and images. And he’d write it down. He’d play with it some. Many days a poem didn’t come. So he drank his coffee and went about his life. The next day the same thing. A morning ritual of gathering poems. An ancient sort of hunting ritual. This is what he told me when he still lived in El Paso. Then when he retired from teaching at UTEP he and his wife Linda moved near the Guadalupe Mountains.

His post office box was in Salt Flat, a weird little semi-ghost town on the west edge of the salt flats in the photo above. The peak is El Capitán, the highest mountain in Texas, and US Highway 62 climbs to a pass to the south of the peak. I believe their rented house was in there in the llano up above the salt flat and east of the peak.

My friend Joe Somoza corresponded with Bob. They’d go back and forth with some letters and stick in a poem as gifts to each other. An old fashioned friendship of two poets. Bob’s poems and letters were still hammered out on that manual. Joe had to write him now and then and tell him to change his ribbon. Joe and Jill visited Bob and Linda up there. The house was still on the grid but barely. West Texas is magnificently huge out there. Skies forever, the earth fluid and ceaseless like the sea. Bob loved it up. He liked the touch and smell and taste and vision of real stuff. Joshua lizards. Nickel Creek. The little sparrows and the turkey buzzards. Busy ants. Snakes.

Bob was a great admirer of Judson Crews and his poems. (Besides the Wikipedia piece, read Mark Weber here.) He liked all that sexual energy going wacko in the gardens of Judson’s poetics. Bob and I would giggle together about those garden poems. Dionysius dancing in the mud among the squash blossoms and cucumbers and peas and lettuce. Judson, such a handsome man, was a happy satyr. I won’t name names. But Bob’s poems were more reticent and meditative. Quiet and very attentive to detail. The sexual urge was there but it floated beneath the surface of the poem’s flowing. Once before Bob retired my son Johnny (still in high school) and I picked him up and we drove up to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park which surrounds El Capitán. I had never taken the middle trail up into the mountains—the Dog Canyon Trail or the Texas Trail. I can’t remember which.  Bob led us up the mountain. He was a skinny guy and hiked with steady joy and passion. He had all that curly kinky reddish hair and he wore khakis and a flimsy pair of low top tennis shoes. It was a wonderful hike. We talked about poetry and about Johnny growing up and looked at things. We walked through a grove of Texas madrone trees. Like walking through a Judson Crews poem. It was so beautiful. A great and wonderful hike. And on the way back we stopped at that old gas station and convenience store that used to be perched up top where U.S. highway 62 climbs up out of the Salt Flats. We ate sandwiches and drank water and soda and talked and laughed. It was a wonderful day. I was so glad Johnny had a chance to come along with us.

A Texas madrone grove somewhere in West Texas

Another time we sat in a sandstone canyon. Big round stone. Scrawny trees and grasses rooted in dirt fissured into the rock. Bob, my friend Tom Baker and me. This was in at the tail end of the Organ Mountains between Las Cruces and El Paso. We ate sandwiches and watched a canyon wren dart among the rocks. You don’t get to watch canyon wrens often. They are timid birds but they have wonderful trilling echoing song. We didn’t talk. We didn’t want the bird to go away. I had forgotten this story until right now.

The odd thing is that I had a few exquisite experiences like these with Bob but then he and I would become lost to each other in our different worlds. We didn’t reach out to each other like he and Joe did. I regret that. And now I miss him.

Bob, like so many of my older friends, is pretty much un-googlable. That speaks well of him and makes me sad and proud at the same time. But here are some poems from his last book Some Recognition of the Joshua  Lizard: New and Selected Poems from Mutabilis Press in Houston:

▼

DEAD FINCH IN THE GUADALUPES
With nothing to do
wakeup coffee warming his guts
he remembers the finch
     red at the throat
          he’d found in the yard dead
beneath the immense gaze of El Capitán

empty eye
piece of fluff rotted
to a perfect skull
     its frayed beauty struck
          tears down his face
as he saw but did not want to see
its panache spoiled in final reckoning

he wanted as little to go
though he knew he would
as if he’d gone already
     to the poppy’s yellow
          bloom bravely
separate on a rocky shelf
crisp injunction to tearful woe.

▼

CONNECTING

A friend writes me
a letter, can you believe
tells me he’ll look up my poem’s subject
on the Internet, that endlessly ramifying root
holding us all together as we sway above the earth.

I think fine, I think
of the undulating flights of sandhill cranes
finding their way through a breezy heaven,
the rank perfumes of lakes and rivers below
     their guiding compass.

I think sure, I think
of the busy ants outside my door as they signal
one another to carry in more food,
the soft sibilance of antly scraping telling
     us the wisdom of saving.

I think yes, yes, why not
go to the cold glass page impersonal as a glove
go to it, the book is there these days,
or a view of it, though somewhere
in a dim library you’ll find
     its original dusty and ignored
          its pages yellowing beneath
the smudged lipstick left there once by a girl
who read it in bed, her warm flesh pressing.

▼

AT NICKEL CREEK
(for Joseph Rice)

A while ago we walked
     up to where you’d stayed,
          old friend

we saw where you’d slept
     blue-blanketed narrow bed
          and the glassed wide doorway
you’d gazed through onto the mountain

the first night it rained
     thunder rolled and rumbled
          as you told us later,
your face a smile but serious

we had gathered my poems
     hundreds on white sheets, poems
          reaching back
half a century

but what you remembered most
     was the fierce wind
          out of the pass
and the stars over the mountain’s slopes
that, too, is a poem, you said.

The Luminous Beast & the Cairn for Janine

Cairn for Janine Pommy-Vega

I’ve said this before but, since I’m getting old, it’s okay to repeat myself. Jerome Rothenberg (I think it was him) called poetry “a luminous beast.” Some sort of mythological animal that embodied the words and poems and ideas of all poets. The tail of this beast stretches back into pre-literate times when history was story and poetry was spoken language that had the power to shape the natural world. And it still survives in our language in these digitized bits of information on a computer screen. In poems we all provide sustenance to the beast as it squirms its way into the 21st Century. Like the Tao, it knows its way. I’ve come to trust the beast’s instincts explicitly.

The beast rumbled in my imagination when I saw this photograph of Bob Arnold’s cairn dedicated to the memory of Janine Pommy-Vega (more here and here). It's on his land in rural Vermont. The stone was harvested right there. It would be a nice place for Janine to rattle her gourd, to beat on a drum, the chant her poems. She would love to dance on a cairn.

Janine was a good friend and I came to know her poetry way back when through Longhouse Publishers and Booksellers. Longhouse is the collaborative project of Bob and Susan Arnold. The cairn for Janine is on their property. The poetry and the publishing and work of chainsaws and stone and cooking and eating food and the warmth of burning wood is all part of their one life. 

I’ve never met Bob or Susan. Yet I’ve known of their work—Bob’s poems and prose, their Longhouse venture and their backwoods lifestyle in Vermont—and I’ve fitfully corresponded with them for most of my adult life. They’ve even been generous enough to publish my work in their magazine and in their delicious Longhouse libritos (little books). As I’ve said in a recent letter to Bob, they feel like intimate friends. That’s because we share a common bond with the Luminous Beast.

Please read the Kent Johnson interview of Bob that appeared in Jacket Magazine. It’s important stuff, and it documents a way to live one’s life fully engaged but doing the work of one’s essence. An ancient way to dance. Visit the Longhouse website and buy books there. Read Bob’s work and the poets that he and Susan especially support. Now, I see from the website, Bob has become the literary executor for Janine, Cid Corman and Lorrine Neidecker and he’s constructing websites to celebrate their work. I’m sure Susan is doing at least half the work. Wow.

Bob and Susan Arnold understand.

Bob and Susan Arnold at work in Bearsville, NY. 

2005 photo by Janine Pommy Vega

On the Occasion of the marriage of Johnny and Ailbhe

On October 1st Johnny Byrd, our oldest son, married Ailbhe Cormack. It was a wonderful occasion, and together they seem such a remarkable couple. All three of our kids were together, our five grandchildren. Plus brothers and sisters and friends from around the U.S. Bridget Cormack, Ailbhe’s mother, also had her three daughters together—plus sisters and relatives from Ireland and Australia. It was three days of celebration. Ailbhe and Johnny had gone whole hog and paid the postage too. On Friday night outside in the backyard Lee and I hosted a party for relatives, friends from out of town and the good friends of Ailbhe’s and Johnny’s who did much of the heavy lifting of helping. Big sister Susie emceed, brother Andy toasted them, as well as many others. The San Patricios (yerno Eddie Holland, Ailbhe, Johnny and the gang) played Irish music. The next day was a formal Catholic wedding (this is El Paso after all) at the historic Holy Family Church in Sunset Heights, then a six-hour blowout rock n’ roll party with food and wine and beer up McKelligan Canyon, and the whole thing was topped off by a brunch the next morning at Bridget Cormack’s (Ailbhe’s mom) plus relatives from afar hanging out at our house all day long afterwards.

I was very happy, Lee was very happy. The whole weekend was special. I am always being reminded how essential ritual is to being in a human community. Large or small rituals. A wedding or a funeral or a birth or simply breaking bread together with a close friend or a loved one. Saying a prayer together. Holding hands. Being awake to the life force running through us all. “It’s tribal stuff,” daughter Susie told me. I was asking her about how and when she and her friends (glorious men and women all close to 40 years old) would do this circle dance, the music blasting away, and one by one, the dancers would enter the center of the circle to dance. To strut their stuff. To explain through the music and their bodies who they are. She said, “Dad, you used to do that stuff too. You just don’t remember.”

Well, we didn’t exactly do the circle dance, but as a teenager on Friday nights at the Clear Pool in Memphis, the last song—maybe Larry Williams (“Boney Maronie,” “Dizzy Miss Lizzie,” “Short Fat Fannie”) making all the white girls go crazy—was always “When the Saints Go Marching In.” There’d be a long line of us snaking around the dance floor. It was some kind of joyous drunken tribal community. I have always believed that the rock n’ roll and the rhythm and blues music (mostly the music of Southern Black America) saved my life. But that’s a story that goes someplace else.

When Ailbhe’s and Johnny’s wedding weekend was over Lee and I were exhausted. Physically. Emotionally. We had witness and experienced our fill. It was like we had stepped aside like our parents had done before us. And these were our children, these were our grandchildren, these were our friends and brothers and sisters who we’ve grown old with, this was our community. Our children were at the center of all of this. It was our time in so many ways to be witnesses. I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.

▼

I'm not sure who took the photo above, but it's an iconic traditional photo it works for me. Our close friend artist Jill Somoza took the photos of Lee and me. We were so happy. Below the photographs are two short poems I read at the night-before party. I wrote “Memo #6” on a beautiful night 30 years ago. We had only been in our home on Louisville Street for four or so years. Now he’s a few years short of 40. The age I was when I wrote the poem. The other poem is from my recent book—White Panties, Dead Friends & Other Bits and Pieces of Love. It’s a reworking of a poem I wrote in the 80s. I was proud when Ailbhe chose the last part of the poem for the wedding invitations.

 ▼

Memo #6

When me and my son pee outside in the darkness
He looks at the ground and I look at the stars.

He is eight years old and I am almost 40.
That is the difference.

▼

A Story about Marriage
   
Once upon a time
a long while ago
there was a man
   
who received all
blessings under the sun.
Yet, he missed
   
something essential:
there was no place
to practice his gifts.
   
So he asked God
for the blessing of death.
God gave to him a woman.
   
But other peoples
tell the same story
differently.
   
Once upon a time
a long while ago
there was a woman
   
who received all
blessings from the earth.
Yet, she also missed
   
something essential:
there was no place
to practice her gifts.
   
So she too asked God
for the blessing of death.
God gave to her a man.
   
Because of these stories
babies are now baptized
in their mother's blood.
   
And from these two stories
did wise Solomon first
create his eternal seal.
   
So many stories, my love,
quilted together,
are true and real, like

you and me, me
and you, we practice
our marriage

in this little bit of
time and space—apart,
together.

Amen.

▼

 
Raising three kids has been for Lee and me the most interesting and exciting thing we’ve done in our lives. A truly remarkable journey. I wish many blessings on them and their families and their communities.

The Great Outback

My friend Luis Villegas—“the fine arts handyman”—came out of his semi-retirement and built a deck for our backyard. We’re getting ready for Johnny Byrd’s wedding to Ailbhe Cormack and at the family party the night before we need a stage from which to declare our love. Lee’s been wanting some sort of boardwalk contraption for a long time, but the wedding pushed the ball downhill. Of course our deck had to be different. It had to be shaped like a piece of pie sitting into the corner of our backyard. A square deck is not what we wanted. Luis was hesitant. He’d had a heart attack and he couldn’t do any heavy lifting. Not to worry, I told him. I’d help, I’d hire our friend Gabriel Espinoza. So Luis thought about it some, drew up the design and did the job, along with Gabriel and me, and it’s miraculous. He even curved two 2”x6”x16’ boards to fit the pie around the outside of its edges. A true mystery. Luis kept mumbling about the Steinway curve. I will tell you sometime how he did it.

I’m so happy with our deck that in the early mornings I drag all my cushions outside do my meditation. The sun is rising, the neighborhood is waking up, the air is cool, and I can see the mountains when I look to the west. And, because the deck levitates above the earth on concrete blocks, the ants don’t come climbing up my legs. Life is good. So a few mornings ago I crossed my legs and sat down on my zafu. The full moon was falling in the dawn sky behind the mountains.  I bowed, straightened my back, head pushing the sky aloft, and sat there in my goofy half-lotus. My breath settled into my diaphragm. Time passed like it always does. Ernie our big black cat nudged me. I keep a wide spot on my zabuton reserved for Ernie. I patted him some and he curled up beside me. This is his morning pleasure. I returned to my sitting. A little breeze.

Then I heard some scuffling off to the side. I didn’t pay attention for a few minutes but after a while I had no choice. Clovis, the young grey tabby cat from next door, had caught himself a bird. A yellow-rumped warbler. Poor thing. Clovis is quick and he likes to perch in the trees when he hunts. We think he carries some Siamese blood in him. Clovis had broken one of the bird’s wings and had the bird in its jaws and was shaking it furiously. Then he plopped it down in the grass and watched it for a while. The bird lay there panting in desperation. Then he flapped wildly his wings and try to drag himself away from his tormenter. His exertions made Clovis wonderfully happy. He pounced on the bird and shook him and pranced around. It was his show for Ernie and me. Ernie simply watched, not moving, with that unattached curiosity and grace that cats possess. I tried to do the same. But of course my mind quickly contorted into a mild ethical turmoil. What should I do? The bird was suffering terribly. It would soon die. I thought maybe I should grab rescue the bird from Clovis’ teeth and kill it quickly. I’ve done this before with wounded birds on the road. Slammed it against the pavement or crushed its head with my foot. Not fun. But quick and to the point. But I didn’t do that. I was just sitting there--correct posture, hands lightly clasped in the cosmic mudra, my breath going in and out--in Clovis’ and Ernie’s territory. This is what they do day and night--hunt and kill birds and eat them. No lesson I could teach Clovis, no bird's life I could save. I was their witness and in a way that was a privilege. I didn’t make any decision. Instead, I went back to my sitting. The intermittent scuffling sound grew faint and disappeared. Fifteen minutes later the alarm bell rang. I looked up. Clovis was no longer there. Only a few feathers remained. Clovis had devoured the bird completely.

TIM HARDAWAY & DON'T RECALL MY DAUGHTER

So why am sitting on the ground videoing a Tim Hardaway press conference?

Well, I don’t do too much El Paso political stuff on my blog, and Tim doesn’t like to go into that melee either. In fact, his clumsy entrance into a hot national political issue (in 2007 he announced himself to be homophobic) is the reason he was the subject of my amateur video. Tim, like he says in the video, likes to be remembered for “the UTEP 2-step” and “the killer cross-over.” Oh well.

Lee and I do get involved in local El Paso politics from time to time—sometimes the result of our daughter Susie Byrd (our oldest) representing District #2 on City Council. That’s our district, the district she and her two brothers Johnny and Andy grew up in. In fact, Susie, her husband Eddie Holland and our three Hollandbyrd grandchildren live next door. That’s cool by us. Very cool.

Anyway, Pastor Tom Brown—a right-wing religious (Christian) reactionary—is leading an effort to recall Susie. The basic story line is a bit contorted. The City Council voted to extend health benefits to the partners (unmarried, gay, lesbian) of city employees. Most cities already have these rules. Even Southern cities. It’s the right thing to do and it’s good business. Especially for cities competing with other cities to attract new business. Tom Brown and his cronies blasted the Council. And they drafted “a family values” petition and ordinance to do away with the Council’s vote. The ordinance they drafted was vague and confusing, and they refused to edit their proposed ordinance for clarity. But they highlighted “family values.” They gathered enough signatures, the city held a one-issue election (a very small percentage of registered voters participated) and the ordinance passed. The Council then voted to rescind their new ordinance by a slim margin—4 for, 4 against, with the Mayor breaking the tie with a FOR. So Tom Brown and others are now gathering signatures to recall the Mayor, Steve Brown and Susie. (The terms of Rachel Quintana and Beto O’Rourke expired and they are no longer on Council.)

Susie Byrd, Tim Hardaway, Jody Casey-Feinberg and me @ Cinco Puntos

So enter Tim Hardaway. In El Paso Tim’s remembered for those great UTEP teams (1985 through 1989) where he dominated the Western Athletic Conference. I was a big fan. My friend Tom Baker and I used to go watch those games. Two years running they had Tim, Antonio Davis and Greg Foster—all future NBAers—on the same team. The legendary Don Haskins was the coach. We were big fans. I followed Tim’s career in the NBA enthusiastically. I’ve still pissed off at Chris Webber for pouting his way out of his contract with Golden State when they had Tim, Webber, and Chris Mullin. Shit.

But post-career—despite an extraordinary NBA career (perhaps even a Hall of Fame Career)—his reputation took a nosedive. That’s because he’s now too often remembered for saying, “Well, you know I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.” He was making these statements during a radio interview and in response to the publication of John Amaechi’s book Man in the Middle where Amaechi announced he is gay.

So in the video he announces his change of heart and he gives his support to the NO RECALL Movement in El Paso. Daughter Susie, and NO RECALL leaders, especially Jody Casey-Feinberg, arranged the press conference. Concurrently they were announcing a NO RECALL Rally for the next Sunday.

Good for Tim. I enjoyed talking to him. He was in town for a charity golf tournament and he had agreed to do the press conference. Beforehand, he came by the Cinco Puntos office and we talked basketball and Susie told him the story I just told you. He talked about his family coming to him after he made his homophobic statement and how they listed friends and relatives who are gay or lesbian. He was taken aback, he said. These were people he cared for. And so he came slowly around the corner toward understanding. Besides, he seemed like a nice guy, one of those guys who spent a lot of time in a gym and whose world too much was defined by coaches and teammates. That’s another kind of closet or cloister or whatever. So when he foolishly made his statement and it was blasted over national sports news shows he had opened some doors that he didn’t know were there.

Good for Tim. I’m glad he did what he did.

RANDOM HEARSE: Independent publishing as pure wise joy!

Thanks, Bill Deemer!

Thanks, Kenneth Patchen!

Do it yourself!

Ensōs go round and round: Ed Baker & JB Bryan

West Texas Ensō

by JB Bryan

The Perfect Ensō

by Ed Baker

A few weeks ago I blogged the beautiful and witty ensō by Ashikaga Shizan (1859-1959)--“Eat this and drink a cup of tea.” which is in the collection of my friend Bruce Kennedy. Then, within the next several days, I received the following images from my poet and painter friends JB Bryan and Ed Baker. I’m a huge fan of both men—their work as poets and as painters. Each has found his own path through the cantankerous side of the American grain. They echo each other but they are totally different—different as Albuquerque is to Maryland. Spend some time with their work, buy their books and art, celebrate your own life.

Amor por Juárez: Marching for Peace, June 10 2011

Friday evening, June 10th, 2011, citizens of El Paso marched across the International Bridge to Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, to join la Caravana por Paz y Justicia, led by Mexican poet Javier Sicilia and citizens of our sister city to protest the on-going violence in Mexico, especially in Juarez. For more information about the march, read Debbie Nathan's article here in Colorlines  


When I have the opportunity, I will add more about this event and the pact that was signed by organizations on both sides of the river. 

The End of the World

 

Eat This and Have a Cup of Tea

Calligraphy (Enso, or circle, and words) by Ashikaga Shizan (1859-1959) 

Many thanks to Bruce Kennedy

What Happened?
Sunday, May 22, 2011

New York City

The world was supposed to end yesterday
But Paul and Timothy got it all wrong
They talked to God to see where their math went askew
God said the End of the World needs more juice
Like that jazz sextet at the African Market on 116th
The other side of Malcolm X
Three black guys on the brass horns talking New Age Zulu
Piano Cuban talks back voodoo bebop
The middle-aged Jew translates the Word on his drums
Likewise that skinny Asian American woman thumping the standup bass
(Where’d she come from?)
The Muslims are praising Allah on their prayer rugs
An ancient Japanese guy is slurping at his noodles
Rumor is that he’s enlightened
Although you’d never guess it
He’s eyeing the young women of poetry
Lesbians or straight he has no preferences
They are wearing skirts, they’re wearing naked legs
Their swaying hips prophesy the Ying and the Yang
Today they are our gate into the meadow
Tomorrow perhaps a mockingbird
Summertime and the living is easy, sweetheart
Maybe the world has already ended
Maybe we’re the last to know

●

I usually don’t put my own poetry up on my blog but I’m back from three weeks in New York City. In New York I always get a great feeling of liberation. The rain. The gardens and parks. The people, always the people. Sometimes I think its simply from being among all those people climbing up out of the subways like the animals that we are. This time the subways and the streets were full of hawkers handing out the news that the world was going to end of Saturday, May 21. One yellow broadside I took home was using Paul's letters to Timothy for their calculations of doom. I tried to read it but got bored and watched the Mavericks beat the OKC Thunder. It's an old disease from my childhood. I went to bed as usual and nothing happened. I woke up to a beautiful day and I went to the African Market on 116th Street in Harlem looking for a new kofi, a round hatless hat to keep my head warm and protected from the sun. It's a good place. All sorts of stuff from Africa. A sextet was playing good New York City jazz. A young Asian-American woman was playing the standup bass surrounded by four black men (a trumpet, two sax, one piano) and some kind of white guy hammering away at his drum kit. Obviously, the world hadn’t ended. That was cool by me. I jotted down some notes and that evening I wrote this poem.

The wonderful Enso by Ashikaga Shizan is from the private collection of calligraphy of photographer Bruce Kennedy. I ran into Bruce at the Still Mind Zendo one Tuesday night that I went scavenging a place to sit zazen. I know Bruce from our respective lives in the publishing industry. But I didn’t know he was a fellow Zenster, nor did I know that he was a wonderful photographer and a collector of calligraphy. It was a delightful surprise. And the Ashikaga Shizan fits so perfectly with what I wanted out of this poem. In fact, it says it better.