poetry

The Night David Bowie Died; or, All the Time By Dale Barrigar Williams

Nightstands, lamps and books,

and we two stretched out on the bed,

we were both staring at separate

corners of the ceiling thinking

about something else, I suddenly noticed,

radiator of January clanking.

Then suddenly

we started talking

about David Bowie.

I don’t remember who

started it, but we were soon

wondering out loud about

health problems, genius and conflict,

how you need love and hate for creation –

like the man in the lobby

of the transient hotel

on Grand Street, LOVE and HATE tattooed

across the knuckles

of both hands, just like the guy

in the movie.

The very next day, we heard through

the systems that Bowie, the person,

was now gone

from this world.

Except for everything he left

back here.

We, Sophia and I, ah, we

were still together

then. And sometimes I called her

Mary

Magdalene.

It was before

our relationship

got too sick

of its own intensity,

and died.

Suddenly, like him.

No goodbye.

People always say

they don’t see ghosts

but I see ghosts

all the time.

Seven (or Fourteen) Reasons Why Bob Dylan is a Writer for Our Time by Dr. Dale Williams, aka The Drifter

When the dust settles, one man, at least, will still be standing.

He might only stand five feet seven inches in his socks (Eminem is, and Kerouac was, five-eight, a precursor and an heir), but Alexander Pope, one of the dozen or so greatest English poets of all time, was four feet six inches tall. (Pope died in 1744 at the age of 56.)

And Bob Dylan has more than a little of Pope’s verbal resources, great heart, wild intelligence, deep soul, artistic energy. If “Eloisa to Abelard,” by Pope, doesn’t break your heart and make you want to go on living, nothing will.

The Drifter has compiled seven reasons why, with their flipsides, Bob Dylan deserves his Nobel Prize. The reasons are brief and they are meant for quick reading in a busy world; but they are also meant to be pondered upon and thought about more later for any and all who are interested. (And meant to be USED.)

ONE: He both does, and does not, care what he looks like, and he looks like it.

TWO: He has done a lot of drugs but hasn’t done so many drugs that he isn’t still going strong at 84. The life of the artist, any artist, is a balancing act.

THREE: He puts out material at a relentless pace as if this were the most important thing in the world, and then does little to promote it.

FOUR: His “style” of life and work are ancient and modern.

FIVE: His work can exist “on the page” or in the air.

SIX: He does, and does not, care/s about “quality.”

SEVEN: He goes out into the world – while wearing disguises.

(Afterthought: Those last two should be hung out with like zen koans…)

Saragun Verse: Poems and Pics

(Sir Andy Hisster)

Andy knows the truth

He keeps it in his bended ear

He rattles my cage and shakes the key:

“Poor human, guilt gives you unnatural fear

Cats and Dogs don’t make up demons and gods

That look like the fool you see in the mirror.”

(Alice. D. Doe)

Alice D. Doe is both kind and wry

She enjoys ivy and never asks why

She keeps her nose to the wind

And ears on alert

She’s all right with the birds

But Bluejays are jerks

(Skully before)

Skully the skell put his girl through hell

He laughed when she pulled out the ax

(After)

Skully has laughed his last

Thanks to a boney lass

Saragun Fable Verse: The Strange Case of Nikky Smonnicks

i

Nikky Smonnicks is a ghost without a host

No one died to make him

Some say not so, they say he lived and he was a cabin boy from the Barbary Coast

But that turned to be a corsair lie told to stake him

To the mirthless earth of self made men

So say they who long to be the flesh Nikky had forsaken

ii

Any ghost can be a special spirit

Human beings seldom get near it

Ghosts are burned clean at life’s end

The quick must unshackle from liens and wills and dishonest trusts before they are completely all in given

iii

Nikky Smonnicks it seems never lived nor was a stillborn child fitted with a shell common in both heaven and hell

He began as a ghost completing a journey never begun

How can this be, someone like he, a song finished yet neither written nor sung?

It matters not in the end even non-events can be considered done

iii

So welcome to the afterlife without a before, the angels and demons hope you are fun

You are an unlikely hair on the head of time

A Zombie in reverse

A long running show never rehearsed

And the reason why The Book of the Dead

is off by one

The Amoral: One needn’t live to be successfully dead

Saragun Verse: My Ode to Ignorance

i

ignorance is profuse

ignorance ever ‘mounting

ignorance sounding clues

to vacant armies surrounding

ii

ignorance knows squat about karma

ignorance does know jokes about yo mama

ignorance shrill and vile

it exists to sicken and spits verbal bile

iii

ignorance like wine spilled on a fine table cloth

ignorance sees no irony in a pastel goth

ignorance only wants to win

easy, jig, ignorance lets the air in

iv

ignorance is sesequipedalian

ignorance is mainly mammalian

ignorance is an ever spreading disease

like evil, the second concept of being

Saragun Verse: In Memory of the Crow’s Nest Tavern

It was not supposed to end like this

A parking garage over the abyss

Wall-eyed Bob used to cogitate

From his stool in 19-something-and-8

he’s dead

like Viv and Tom

and that

other Bob

and that

Robin so ugly

save for blue eyes

and that

weird little guy

Who sang like Merle Haggard

On Karaoke Night

Glaciers creep down mountain faces

No one alive will see the changes

An inch a year means not ten feet to lives

Whose times were measured by Saturday nights

Saragun Verse: Pope of Alpha Centuari

i

How far are you willing to fly

To find a vicar to shine your mind

What insult will you bear

In grace for a ten percent share

ii

Who’s gonna to serve your mass

Now

That you’ve departed the blue ball of

Vow

Indulge your sins and pledge your soul

To me

The Pope of Alpha Centauri

iii

The universe is an endless second chance

But everywhere it is still a dimebag a dance

Open up and for a tiny fee

You can be an angel wild and free

Courtesy of me

The Pope of Alpha Centauri

iv

Pain is the same inside every skin

And the losses still out number wins

Take four years at the speed of light

Everyone in hell loves the night

Endless and without memory

The Pope of Alpha Centauri