Normal Again

Time running away..."tainted love/don't touch me please"...song coming from speaker behind me in the best place I've found to write in New Orleans...not saying where...it's mine for now...liking this style more & more natural to me...nobody owns it...Shakespeare stole from Aeschylus...Louis Ferdinand would crack up heap scorn get a laugh out of it and move on...poor angry intelligent bastard with a ringing in his ears from WW I bomb blast...postwar novels the funniest stuff I ever read...all of it!...ha! ha!...high-profile writer-artist humanitarian-doctor (treated the poor pro-bono all his life)...medical investigator of industrial workers' health conditions for The League of Nations...revolutionizer of French literature with his three little dots...an exclamation point his only other punctuation...stuff moves like a speeding train through his maddened consciousness with a constant ringing in our ears...high-profile nazi collaborator only the best-known is all...one of the most famous men in France!...everybody did it except Sartre Camus and their gang of communist Maquis...Celine the discoverer of "Destouches Point," (his real name)...a way to find tip of pancreas by measuring from armpit...wrote some anti-Jewish pamphlets he didn't like the Jews anyway...it wasn't illegal to dislike the Jews then...had fancy dinners with nazi muckedy mucks because he liked good food!...but who knew about the murderous camps?...anybody who was somebody collaborated one way or another...Celine scorned their hypocrisy...didn't mind saying so...after the war everybody in the country had been in the underground resistance...ridiculed the Diary of Anne Frank!...totally fearless!...fled with the nazis into the bombing holocaust after Ike took Paris...confined in jail a year in Denmark...exiled to a sick coast in Scandanavia a year...tried in France & acquitted...they almost hung him...ha! ha! ha!...then wrote those three hilarious books chronicaling the madcap retreat into the bombing!...BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!...I will never get over Dr. Destouches...poor guy he told it like he felt it...He was pissed!...maybe he lied...we all do!...get over it!...you're a damned liar too...come on admit it you told a lie today didn't you...two!...a dozen!...hundreds!...thousands of lies if you add them up...lies of omission too!...the crime of silence!...liars all over the planet!...we have to survive!...LIE!...nothing will put you under the dirt faster than telling the naked truth...they kill people for it!...

"Mike, the devil runs this world," my grandmother Louise Lee said sadly after reading some tragedy in the Beaumont Enterprise...sitting by the window in her green rocker, paper folded over flowered apron she made herself...she made everything...my clothes Pat's clothes the tablecloth and doilies...took in knitting sewing crochetwork...no welfare then...born in a turpentine camp in East Texas...tough little lady my grandmother...five feet tall and took no guff from a man...unlikely she ever tested a cuss word in her life...she walked the line...raised her daughter's kids...hard times...taught us Jesus was watching...bought a cow to give us milk...I couldn't stay off her little bully...he bucked me into the drainage ditch every time...turn the lights off leaving a room...scrape the pots clean the plates close the window shut the door turn the heaters down save natural gas...take the little ones to church...to Sunday School...to revival meetings under tents...let them play in the sawdust...sit them down & make them listen to the Word...I didn't understand a word of the Word...but I sleepily heard the sonorous lifting falling raging pleading threatening soaring bullying seductive reasoning voices of preachers...the rhythms tripped a circuit in my brain copied to my hardhead harddrive with brainwave osmosis...I'm Irish & soft-spoken of course...a natural orator no trace of stage-fright...soft-spoken and hard-to-hear until I feel anger which is fear...please don't make me afraid of you...be gentle with me...I can't stand aggression...it makes me crazy...



I lived in Harlem & other tough places...I don't show fear but that doesn't mean I don't feel it...feel it all the time don't you?...maybe I'm the only one...I faced down two armed young tough blacks on lonely Brooklyn subway 4 a.m. and never moved a muscle...I was shaking inside...I threw myself into rushing water to save Elise from going over falls onto rocks & pulled her against the current she was so afraid and she hated me for it...Jan's fault he kept bringing it up...o well that was another age and the bitch really is dead...pull my hair will you?...break my glasses?...sell my books?...I'll see you in Heaven sorry about that you know I loved you and actually gave you to Joe he wanted you more...bad karma both of us...next time!...see you next time maybe we'll be lovers again!...next time!...



Meanwhile back at the bawdy house Mike is sitting in the back bar thinking about all the nice-looking women in this place...okay I already told you...well don't think it isn't on my mind...what the hell is this anyway?...happy daydream of fantastical consciousness...this joint is full of women taking a break from something or maybe working who knows...playing pool... flirting with me even...showing their bodies...bending over pool table...bending over me!...tits in my face...tits...ass...legs...guys standing around bulging pants awaiting their decisions like male cats and a turn to shoot...who will be the lucky ones?...the females...if they want it it's there for the taking...in their own good time...they run the sex game...



what was it?...oh yeah A Naturalist in Nicaragua...actually the title of the book...in the 1800s a mining manager representing the Fletcher family of Pittsburg which owned the La Luz gold mine middle of Nicaraguan jungle...spent his spare time observing ants...it was after our Civil War...he found incredibly thick river of ants tramping pell-mell hell-for-leather through the jungle speeding like the Peoples' Army of Vietnam (PAVN)...ants hauling ass!...he can't find the beginning or end...hikes & rides burro for days in both directions...it just goes on and on like the latitude line on a globe...he wonders where are they going and why?...decides to put a stop to it...HA, HA!...does everything he can think of...digs huge ditches fills them with barrels of oil & gasoline sets them on fire...they go around it under it through it nothing impedes them for long...he sees they are crossing logs over streams and even rushing rivers...takes away the logs...they take to the trees jumping across the river on leafy roads...he cuts the trees down!...they make leaf-boats and cross like George Washington on the Delaware...they make bridges of living ants all clinging together millions of others walking over swinging ant-bridges...death is nothing to them...no sacrifice too great...they make boats of living ants to cross rivers...no loss too dear...the ants will go on to the end of Time...they are immortal...they are One...this goes on for weeks...nothing works...the ants win...they don't even notice him...finally he gives up and writes the book...I told my young son this story while taking him and his coldhearted mother to dinner...he broke into gallows-laughter imagining his father fascinated by ants..."Ants!" he chortled...most unimportant thing in the world and dad is obsessed by them...where in the hell were they going and what were they up to?...I saw nothing strange in wanting to know...it's important isn't it?...where they were going I mean...there's meaning in everything...what I think...those ants are teaching us a lesson we don't get it...every answer is out here in the natural world...and order...those guys are organized better than the Vietcong...am I the only one who sees that?...we are plowing up and burning the Great Amazon Forest to grow corn to run cars killing countless uncollected unexamined uncatalogued and undiscovered specie of plants that might cure every disease known unknown or yet-to-come...every illness that ever was or ever will be and God is laughing His Almighty Ass off...suckers! I gave it to ye and ye were too blind drunk to see...I left it with the ants!



His People wait watch & plan...meek of the earth...know who they are...patiently waiting patiently living patiently breathing patiently enduring...someday...one day...some way...yet to be revealed...we all will learn the dance...we shall dance it around the fire under the moon with the wind blowing sparks to the stars...banish fear...work together create peace make it nice and fuck our brains out...music...flowers...peace at last...the sun the moon the stars the flying fish the breezes the surf the birds and the squeals of the teals...firelit nights again the stars...lying with our love in the sand she sleeping quietly peacefully breathing softly lips on our necks legs enwrap't...to make love with the ones we love...wake up & do it again...peaceful life untroubled sleep banished nightmares no war no fear no want no ambition but to learn to give to create in imitation of the Divine Who teaches us every moment we're so blind...eat work create sleep make love dream laugh sing dance play raise kids eat watermelon play marbles with moons and live happily till we die...what we should be doing...instead of this...living in a fucking van alone trying to imagine it...



But it will never happen for me don't ask me why...it's a feeling I got...it's a driving beat behind my life a backbeat stronger now than in the beginning...pushing me forward where how would I know?...can't stand still...don't want to stand still...want to see everything know everything become wise beneficient & faithful live in mens' hearts forever like Fidel...but I'm sitting stock still in this big old empty room and my brain is thumping like heartbeat to music in my blood I heard all my life my feet know the tune...I have perfect rhythm damn I can dance why don't I?...nobody to dance with...something darkly above focusing me here entrap't in someone else's dream...what does this mean?...don't ask me I only wrote it...it's some kind of lesson...

these dames are driving me crazy playing pool in front of laptop...three hours of it and now they are gone the place is quiet only a memory of curves tight pants crotches breasts butts and deep booming meaningless heavy metal music from juke speaker...it's only sound...I look up, see reflection of spinning fan in dirty window...Nicole the sexy bartender comes in to clean up lights cigarette gives me a friendly look...wow...hard to believe...maybe there's hope...but she's married of course...there are others...sooner or later..."patience, Mike"...Sidney's lesson I artfully learned by defying it...I learned it doing time alone on a prairie waiting for rides on America's highways sometimes 24 hours or more...once in Wyoming two cowboys laid down on me with a hunting rifle I had a sign saying "Out"...they wanted to know what the sign meant I told them "out of here"..."you don't like it here?" "I like it fine but I been stuck here 24 hours" I said...they looked at me another minute pulled the rifle in drove away in a spray of gravel...could have murdered me there a mile from Green River no one to see hear or care...another dead hippie...another guy with me we rode in on a boxcar...two dead hippies o well...patience Mike...throw some dirt on him what was his name who cares?...what if it had ended there...

Driving cab in New York robbed at gunpoint twice in six years by blacks...I don't stop picking them up other drivers say I'm nuts...I pick up a black man three a.m. & take him to Jackson Heights...a lonely street...out comes the gun a silver automatic maybe a .45 I don't want to look...I give him $180 saying I didn't see your face man..."I'm going to blow your head off motherfucker" he growls cocking the pistol...I point to a spot above my right ear saying "Get me here man get me right here" and wait...I ask God to forgive me...waiting...waiting...waiting...my mouth is dry but my heart beats normal...at least a minute...He releases the hammer saying "You're a crazy motherfucker" gets out and goes...I figure three is a good number finally quit the business...if I had begged for my life he would have shot me...how do I know this?...wanted to hear me beg that was his thrill...with me the thrill was gone...I didn't even know it till then...don't blow my eyes out motherfucker shoot my whole brain out the window...what difference would it make?...it wasn't such a good brain after all...

Never felt better in my life!...weighing what I weighed ninth grade: 135...feeling light and graceful again...suddenly free of all that goddamned stinking self-deceptive love-stuff finally...cold reception at party tonight I don't care...if you want to be dishonest about your thoughts and hide your true feelings that's your problem...I have a site meter and a calendar incidentally...I care more about what made the moon...suddenly I feel the world as it was...as it was when I was young on a calm New Orleans Saturday morning as the day dawned gray quiet & gloomy on Esplanade south of the Quarter...I don't owe you anything see...comfortable people...did you offer me a shower?...Did you ask me to dinner?...I found kinder friendly hearts in low-class working neighborhoods of Albuquerque and Newark...a black family took me in one frozen winter in Englewood I was sleeping in doorways...from goodness of their hearts...you living like a king compared to me and wanting me to work free for some wealthy pretentious arty cheapskate no-talent homosexuals?...no fucking thanks exploitative bastards...it's a way of life isn't it?...you actually think you were doing me a favor...try it sometime...live in a van three years survive on Social Security pittance and false promises from rich people...NEVER GET LAID!...work all winter in cold house in the Channel bathing on a subfloor uninsulated house in the dark with two five-gallon buckets of cold water and a drop cloth catching cold that lasts till March...get sick cleaning up raccoon shit wash dishes on your knees in cold water of bathtub...bathe a body part at a time the water's freezing...so they can rent the house for profit reneging on promises...and you say I disturbed some people?...not even a proffered shower from your holy exclusive digs...work for free not on your life...not on mine either...even a gun by my head couldn't make me do it anymore...I compare myself to you and say what do you have that I don't & it always comes out the same: resources...born with them weren't you?...you got a roof a family a lover and a credit card all in the mail and I been out here alone and starving for you or someone like you all my life hunting down the secret words to save my ass and yours...and where's that fucking contract?

so you see I really am normal again...normal to me is feelings in abeyance like I really give a shit...take it or leave it don't matter to me...make the call or don't he knows you're supposed to be coming...meteor could wipe out the whole block and I would take pictures someone else get the body parts...maybe I could sell photos to FOX make some money get out of here settle in Sweden breath free air find a pretty gal without age-prejudice...somebody blonde...sweet lilting musical voice up and down the scale like impossibly-lovely Margareta in a wispy violet dress that never got dirty...so dear to me still...graceful revolutionary beauty...my communist lover...smartest woman I ever knew and what a knockout...men held their breath looking at her...she walked among them like a common ordinary goddess dispensing smiles hugs plans medicine investigations good sense food observations reports & secret messages with goodwill to all & malice to none except the oppressors she smuggled guns in to kill...then made love to me all night...die happy die happy die happy with a lover like that and guess who fucked it up...no more guns against my skull...no autumn moon no summer sky no midnight love no lullaby...no Star Spangled Banner no CIA or FBI...OR WHITE HOUSE WHICH SHOULD BE PAINTED GREEN...Mike Havenar proud ex-American expatriate citizen of Sweden...head in her naked lap face pres't to her breast...expired late yesterday smelling lovely soft skin a slight sheen of sweat a hard pink nipple...sure...you bet...what a crock Mike...get real...you are here...this is it...real as it gets...a crowded coffee shop Sunday afternoon...no sleep 48 hours in a sadassed city full of hungover drunks under cloudy gray mockingbird sky.