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The Blog Bog
The Mag Rack
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THE DEATH OF CARLOS CASTENEDA
At the window of the Kiev
surrounded by NYU film students
post-modern kids with ontological tattoos
rite-of-passage piercings
I spot ghosts on 2nd Avenue
Adam Purple
who peddled through the 60's
still on his bicycle (no longer in purple)
a new girlfriend in the wake
of his white beard
Eamon
the punk construction worker
lean arms swinging from a cut-off leather vest
has gone gray
embarrassed by
my age
I'm relieved to see Eric's
antique goatee
vibrate
when I tell him
Marie Louise Von Franz
is dead
Jung's mystical sister
who defined the Puer Aeternis
and synchronicity
with him in
the underworld...
Over apricot Danish
Eric recalls a moment when
recently departed Carlos Casteneda
visited the Marlboro Bookshop
to check on sales of his work
-More like Al D'Amato,
than Harrison Ford."
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then laments a flood
in his apartment water damage
to his American Mercuries
especially now
that Mencken
is timely again
at the end
of the Late Pleistocene
when the extinction of most large mammals
finds
Boobus Americanus
alive and well
-Which doesn't explain what happened
to Lanford Wilson or Sam Shepherd
after their early successes
at Cafe Chino.
-Yes, he agrees. They seemed to fade
overnight unlike Arthur Miller who
(unlike Houghton Foote)
grows more elegant
with age.
-It can't be easy to outlive your audience, I observe,
watch them cease to exist. Miller
moved to England where
they revere him.
-Ever think of living in Europe?
-Sure, I admit,
but can't say what keeps me here
adrift in a culture driven by
accelerating speed of obsolescence
watching the worm
of indifference
hollow out
my heart
Paul Pines___
|
ULYSSES IN DECLINE
So, we traveled
their ears stuffed with bees wax
against the Siren song
and every time I strained against
my ropes they tied me
more securely
to the mast
they heard only
their own heartbeat
but I heard
things which can't be repeated
to anyone before
or after the passage
being all and only
the smallest part of this narrative
the smallest part of this narrative
took nine years
from beginning
to end
all of it a siren song
in my autumn ears
hair crisp as
dry leaves
sounds different now
than the tale I told
less clear
I was not one of them
and can't really know
what they saw
or felt no one
who manned the oars
ears stuffed with
beeswax survived
to tell me
Paul Pines___
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