Gus 1969 © Arthur Lazar
The Intellectuals at Okie’s Bar for Gus Blaisdell
They are lovers of their own distortions who sit in such darkness music steaming about them beer swelling their muscles / sense and temperance tortured into hours of speech to dowse their minds’ reflection Ocean at night leaps up in tongues of green illuminated spume and dies on sand A residual humor flaps its wings evacuates into air The bar is headquarters for difficult gymnastics
There is nothing outside but stars and a sliced moon cold now in Novermber that arrogant Heaven peopled by the dead Cars wearing holsters cruise the boulevard at one with those harmonious seasons and cycles to which the balls of drunks aspire: to be contained in Purpose molten fluid pouring through strict cylinders to arrive at the laurel bush at last completely relieved done with hessian duty into the arms of a goddess more woman than ghost
We are not the mob that coils around Fortune’s rim Snake eyes inhabit our bones seeing fumes canopy all gay processions (prophesy also the pit where brains are buried) so we refuse to march hippity-hop through Hell instead our toes quick as red coals spend our laughter in heads of foam matching the need for bright occasions
Gene Frumkin (1928-2007) from Clouds and Red Earth Swallow Press
***First published in The Only Journal of the Tibetan Kite Society, 1969 edited by Howard McCord , The Tribal Press