* This a free sample of extracts from ‘Come Again’ by Harry Hoogstraten (Barncott Press 2015). The complete version is available in print and ebook editions. Full purchasing details are here.
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COME AGAIN HARRY HOOGSTRATEN
BARNCOTT PRESS
Come Again © Harry Hoogstraten 2015 Cover photograph: Anon. Back cover artwork: Harry Hoogstraten. Cover design: Chris Sanders. ISBN-13: 978-1512270389 ISBN-10: 1512270385
Published as print and ebook editions by Barncott Press 2015. www.barncottpress.com Some of the poems in ‘The Organ Works of Johann Sebastian Bach’ appeared in the following magazines: Concentrate, The Sunday Times, Rolling Stone, Coyote’s Journal, Dutch Song, Icarus, Broadsheet, The Kerry Man.
Contents Forew0rd 1 From the Field 3 The Organ Works of Johann Sebastian Bach 19 Boxing Days 55 Come Again 105 Letters 129 The Voyage 198 Akimbo 145 Still On A Perennial Printing History 171 En Route 173 Closing Time 176 Reviews 177 About the Author 181 Acknowledgements 182 Also by Harry Hoogstraten 183
Forew0rd Through Harry Hoogstraten’s tales of beatific euphoria we learn that time sides with the wise ecstatic, provided his survival skills are informed by poetry – a fine, clean-limbed poetry. “Have winged words thus flown? Have feather, will travel.” writes the much traveled poet Harry Hoogstraten as he journeys through space and time, equally at ease with mining for cosmological nuggets as with the truths that warm domesticity can dig out of the human psyche. He contains multitudes. With one breath he’s the ascetic Diogenes, with another he’s promoting what he suggestively calls “the state of succulence.” A man who adds many glowing stitches to life’s rich fabric and is still boxing his way out of the box. Heathcote Williams 2015
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* This a free sample of extracts from ‘Come Again’ by Harry Hoogstraten (Barncott Press 2015). The complete version is available in print and ebook editions. Full purchasing details are here.
From the Field
3
FROM THE FIELD
it started to rain it felt good so we stood there Â
5
FROM THE FIELD
Pawwaw A fire burnt a lake into my thumb a cat’s paw between our feelings the tears pain fears the story SCREAMS the pin breaks thumbpanned fountains fountains !! the old senses flatten all memory
Second Version you have gone to a party I look around and wonder in which saucepan I will heat up the irish stew the apples were icecold and bubbling 6
FROM THE FIELD
Shining Bright pushing along the barrow I wheel to a stop a welder on my path how delicate the way people turn their faces as the fire undresses naked I watch the rainbows spark
Afternoon Tune thru the cold fog I walk whistling paraffin and pears
7
FROM THE FIELD
Old Shoes somebody left his shoes behind I need a pair for bakery nights the heels are worn out of the valley I look for the slopes in my head trying them out from wall to wall
Poem darling I've just written the poem to end all poems o good than we can sell the typewriter
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FROM THE FIELD
Cleaning Up For Visitors quietly sweeping the road the foreman calls me and tells me to cut down everything that grows thru the pavement he shows me attack ! and his feet take root and his arms grow fire he pointed and said all the way down the road I get my shovel cut the grass for our farm of to-morrow and leave the flowers and dream that if he returned and he would object how I would lay down my shovel and go into silence I looked up and there he is in his sky blue shirt in his cover-alls and says gently that’s right now sweep it all to-gether and i’ll have it taken away he looked at the flowers nodded to a pile of paper on the other side of the road and touched my shoulder later I watched an old man with an old story do his job he picked up everything I had left behind including the flowers
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FROM THE FIELD
Up The River it caught up with me finally after 2 or so days and well after fried rice balls so up the stairs to get the torch jacket and firmly wanting to get it out and over with I stepped into the dark and followed our path among stones and murmers when I got to where I felt it would do I did what I had to I could have closed my eyes and for a short time I actually did but it didn’t make a difference I hoped for a sign it was cold but at the same time I thought it would be embarrassing arriving in another world with my pants down however nothing happened and I reached for the paper my eyes on the stars
10
FROM THE FIELD
Cleanly Gone In The Free Friday Afternoon Sun washing a white very long scarf in a yellow plastic bucket with a white handle full of foam the bucket in the white bathtub foam flying bending over to do it I thought that that could almost mean anything pity I don’t really want anything
The Tides this evening sitting in front of the open fire looking for news absent mindedly scratching my head my fingers found a something curiously I hold it watching it for some time will it move ? in the seas of my eyes the sand rises mad with fire we dance
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FROM THE FIELD
An AfternoonAnd Hello quietly in undershirt and between sorting the garden twigs and brambles stones and roots a policeman walks in “do you mind” as he sits down (it’s a small village we’ve moved into) after the chimney and the fishing he throws in time and space and soon he is scribbling x-es and lines on paper x+n as the end of all where no other beginning would be at least I think that’s what he tried to mean on parting I brought it around to yes we would like children and we’ll do our best he laughed and said anytime I tried to go on in the garden but suddenly I felt tired so I put away the barrow and sat d o w n later we watched a robin in a pinetree 12
FROM THE FIELD
You Thought He Needed It I dreamt you came next to me in a crowded cinema wanting to smell your breath for cock I asked you to open your mouth you did and later I threw my socks into your hair
A Jamaican Xplaining the X-mas Holidays To An Indian In the Middle of the Bakery Night sunday monday tuesday wednesday sleep thursday sleep friday saturday
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FROM THE FIELD
3 People In Fuck In a Hot 4 Tatami Room At 5 In the Morning I watched my wife eat her first pussy 2 nights ago as I licked the hairless armpits of our nineteen year old girl with soft thighs small nippleless cuphills she has been hotly stroking Rosula’s hair for some weeks now “I like to play with you” she never cared much but tolerated me a bit drunk as they kissed ( 5 teenagers got killed in the water) I licked the purple dots on her arse and made her crack warm wet slowly she gave more opening wider (grand ole opera tzing tzing) wildly sucking rosebuds so big ne my tongue slip lick sliding along secret thunder gargling the pink is so much more visible on this hairless like baby pussy a mouth full of thigh meat balloon bubbling marble dip virgin arsehole (could it ever have shat at all so clean pure and hard) in other words I love you chainsmoking bringing back the joyjuice a finger first lucky I cut my nails recently (now! is that a lie ? for then?) Rosula nippling away the girl deep gone all brown “yes me sunbath all nude” with open legs pussy lips all brown Mongolian features the shaved stubbly heads of African queens (why not !) 14
FROM THE FIELD
the back of horses ears zooloo lips embedded sideways inhaling two fingers now (then) what time to use timeless mindjuices dripping to be drunk thoughtlessly return to the warmwomb lipheat ! armpits all over above me loose pubic hairs growing everywhere spitsperm warm drinks the fan cooling our toes Lulu our puppy crying howling in the garden “I’M THIRSTY LET ME IN!” (fuck the when !) time to move the head forward no hairs to worry about no nots to unfinger all clear pink ghostly yellow honey au itai ! don’t push sea what you’re hiding me (insists the radio) let the stretch spread loveomotive gently nipples forgotten most women can’t resist a cock once it’s inside as long as they don’t see how it got there not so lesbian after all well she is only nineteen said Rosula later while looking for pubic hairs in my moustace AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA !!! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!! OEH OEH OEH OEH OEH OEH !!! COME ! CAME ! arriving on soft sweating marble atsui oei hot ne ! yes now that you have had it that too I can give you 15
FROM THE FIELD
you don’t have to look me in the eyes the way you’re oozing more nippling in front of the fan whispering distractedly later the girl fell asleep while I fucked Rosula it took so long don’t worry dear you don’t have to come again and after all i’m your wife in the afternoon the girls gave each other clothes we ate icecream together and Rosula said she had enjoyed it (this is so exciting sings Tony Bennett) WE ONLY FIND WHAT WE ARE MEANT TO FIND ! coming back and there it is here “her pussy lips are so short though mine are much longer no ?” well yes that’s what makes it intresting (while the girl slowly pulls at my steaming cock ) tokyo VIII-’67
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FROM THE FIELD
For An Old Man In A Sushi Shop O dear old man how did you know I needed yr feet to rest on for a while ! the door opened without being touched you lowered the blinds in front of the television set and sent out one of yr angels to get me a cool drink a mountainstream to rest my brain in so gently you asked me about our tulips so gently you prepared my kappa maki so gently you fondled the ginger before whispering it in front of me so gently you turned down the flames under the green teapot so gently you served me a blue sky so gently you received me with open branches so gently you reminded me again that we are only just what we are supposed to be so gently you wished me a good night and smiled me safely home O dear old man how did you know I needed yr feet to rest on for a while ! I bless you in heaven o god I bless you BLESS ! BLESS ! BLESS ! BLESS ! BLESS ! BLESS ! BLESS ! tokyo VII-’67 17
* This a free sample of extracts from ‘Come Again’ by Harry Hoogstraten (Barncott Press 2015). The complete version is available in print and ebook editions. Full purchasing details are here.
The Organ Works of Johann Sebastian Bach
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Poem Found On Dublin Kitchen Chair To-day it rained and we visited strange places.
Night’s Rain Water We wake in the calm early winter morning to a heavy white sky drinking tea made with night’s rain water.
Treasure The loving grace of a handkerchief returned is the warmth which remains this summer night.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Short Days Night falls in the time if takes to turn our head sounds thrown at the light black mist over the mountains rain blown through the branches of the pine tree small temple bell to peace the spirits in the wind.
The Ocean In the afternoon sun the morning rain still soaks me + from a lifeboat.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Lakes Now It is raining and the snow which fell this morning has melted you are getting ready to go shopping for milk and cornflakes while I return and cut into the last quarter of the blue material which represents the sky in our sunflower car park.
Blackheath Aren’t you getting up? she sits down on the floor kisses me our lips are so soft in the morning.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Our Windows to the East 1. we wake with the storm still raging rain I get up to open the curtains then come back to lie by your side the pine branches sway in the morning light. 2. Such lovely wind is there anything you want from the mountain?
All I Ask If you do break through that egg permit me save the shell to clean our empty bottles with. 24
THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Green Socks Timothy was told by his grand-dad that he couldn’t help him put stuff on the grass as some of it might get into his rubber boots (he looked at them) and grass would grow in them.
Gallarus The road to the oratory is rough and only 2 years old the oratory 1200 years roughly the road was laid out across a couple of fields with the money the council got for work done on Ryan’s Daughter the walls of the oratory are solid and the stones laid at such an angle without using mortar so that the rain could go in so far and no further we took the same road back to the old bus
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Friday FishDay - for Johnnie Edgecombe
The fishman comes by in his waterblue car sometimes he comes on Thursday but to-day is Friday and the mackerel left the ocean at 2 this morning he’s been up all night caught them himself Johnnie always said I love fish, man I’m a fish head until he had enough and left for Denmark we get 3 big ones very pretty with sharp clear steelblue markings and mother of O ocean pearl petrol belly hued a shilling each, few pennies more than when bought directly from the boats as they come into Dingle harbour but we don’t get to the boats that early the few pennies more are well worth the price of the O ocean pearl petrol belly slit.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Still The jackdaws in our spare chimney flap their black wings keeping us in touch with all the clan fights next winter we’ll send them smoke signals asking them to leave they’d better take notice.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Our Lot A Lot Old man in Dingle butcher’s yard where I’d come to see about some skins to cure was picking his way through the guts and offal of as freshly slaughtered sheep offered a smile as he wrapped up a bundle to go
Written to-day for to-night When the bats speak in their sleep about the convictions of their courage it’s time to unfold our wings and not fly into things.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Early Spring Hitch The mountains are so pretty with the snow bright in the sunlight the shops slow in buying the fruit it’s her first day out to-day says the driver proud captain we wind the windblown road down into the blue sky.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Age The sadness being old having to hurry The madness being young having to wait.
Every Time Oh! she said entering you’re in bed surprised though she could have guessed with the hailstone hard hitting the house I sit up half dressed in bed Oh! your hands are cold yes I say from not touching you and I admit yes I always say that but then it’s always true when I do.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Organ Works of Johann Sebastian Bach the mathematical exactness in the organ works of johann sebastian bach is all very well but how does one get laid in these regions?
Boxing Days Come closer she said from a distance learn what it’s like to live in other places.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Wellingtons Marianne Nearing the village wearing some large pair of rubber boots look by this time I never have any socks left.
The Move Gathering the ashes in a white enamel bowl listening for a hole in the wind to pass through
Come Again Amazed and wide aware of the funky airload I love you I want you wo ist mein Handtuch? 32
THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Cure Washing out the skin of a dexter sheep no easy thing John explains how the skin should have been hung to dry the flesh inside out with the wool inside in 4 nails a brilliant light in the sea between mountain thighs scrubbing away at the red paint
Rondo The rich as dumb as they come as smart as they are; they welcome the poor!
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Our Autumn Love - for Joan
As a child a bee flew into her mouth spinning honey a thousand changes when I look at you o my children! my possibilities I wore long socks with holes in them I fell through them careful don’t stand in front of the window I’ve lived here so long you’ll go back to her he’ll come back to me what will happen to us? he died at 28 of cancer we both loved him my first kiss I didn’t know what happened.
Theory Nice try kid Here have another Thai stick.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Not the Machine Take my word for it it was all worth it You don’t have to yell I can hear you very well But please sister dear don’t try to whisper. Oh go to hell with yr mask of culture for the common term is dissimulation. So hit me if you like. Knock me out with rhythm. Stick me up with deodorant for the subtle shift in archetypes. Not the machine but his master’s voice which lays the widow onto the sand.
Through Such rain! the geese in the front garden making happy little noises the mist veiled mountains in the windblown distance. 35
THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Other Night All Aflush As I get older I complain more & more each day, like the wind. I started to mumble and began to utter series of complete absurdities. The Russians, my informers tell me, have nothing on me. Nothing at all. They also tell me that the American couple who showed up late at the vernissage blushed dreadfully after they read of my: “Crocodile with the bouncing balls” act. You’ve not idea, they even tried to translate me!
Only One - for Clive Collins
There is only one yellow chinese bowl on the dresser downstairs and there are no cigarette papers in it. Can I have some of yours?
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Wheels I’m the dealer of seasons. The builder of worlds. There’s a rat in my belly and a pain in the ass. I drink beer for breakfast and dream of the past.
Sometimes It doesn’t take much sometimes 2 bananas & an ear-ring can do you in Now who’s talking?
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Mandalay’s Plaintivity I started the train took off my boots and chopped some wood Not again the main dish something with fish are you going to stay? I think much easier now it smelled of roots
Come Into My Kitchen Just trying to keep the big boys honest see which way the culture is gonna go.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Unlike Me He Sang Want a muffin asked the waiter from the head of the table. Can you hold on to my penguin for just a sec. I’m afraid this well is running dry. How about a drink to go with the muffin?
No One None is to blame. Blame is for God and the Little Children.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Of Mice And Plants Mujik the tiny mouse crosses my floor as if I’m not even here chasing him is no use poison awful I let him give them a finger etc. We’re going away for 2 months could I trust him and his family to water our plants?
A La PlaYa The singer while singing thinks of me. How nice I think and sing a little song myself. Life is just great when you have a radio.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Long And The Narrow This morning I told them straight; “one more word” I said, “one more word from those bums at the sponsor’s office and I’ll throw the book at them.” You should have seen their faces drop. I’d never said anything like it before.
Mobility Now that I know since this afternoon you told me there are no sandwiches between lunch and dinner would you mind if every now and then I come in anyway to ask you for some just so I can drink in your face and see you move around behind the bar between the kitchen and the tapestry.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Darn Socks Step back with the turning on it To the step to the side with the still Turning close the up to the step forward With the turning on to the step to the Side with the close the up to the step To the side with the brush the through (close to the) and step back with it.
Inside of the Plaster The early o invites retching distance makes the heart reel. I hear you pull away from the parking lot. Dear Bat the bill is mounting we’re unable to leave the house. Nowhere to hide inside of the skin much never gets accounted for. There’s a vast world in there How we can ever take it easy beats me.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Adios The cheerfulness of radio obituaries this February is staggering.
We Reason And Slay The next day she took my hand and ran off with it. I kissed her breast. My meditation perfect. These are the ways to sprout or be in dire lambency. Carpenter of all nail to nothing. Who’s that type banging his head against the wall. We bag This yore pack 6bed edwin we lay scattered muddle. 43
THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Way You Look Tonight People Around Here Take Their Faces Into Their Own Hands.
Teutonic Collodion Verdammte Subtitles! May the world never be safe from sensitive outrage. A token for the tolk: the fleet and the living. I’ve always disliked the hooligan element the shouting from the benches.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Missing They must have seen something like it on television; if they don’t go away after a while you call in the army and order the soldiers to shoot straight into the crowd. That’s the first thing. Talk, why talk? Talk is cheap. They are not joking either.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Olfactual Now listen here Virginia I am tired of hearing you talk through your nose and please take your finger out of my eye. You must be one of these women who like the smell of a horse on a man. What labour we went through. Thank the Lord no backlash on child abuse. When push comes to shove all’s hell and high water.
Big Smoke 40 million cigars in a fire.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Mob No sense of humor, no culture, Brutes, corrupted artists in clandestine affairs, Dull-witted, bombastical façades, most primitive creatures, crooked primates. The clan’s sense of family is a farce. Ruthless, opportunistic, based on blind obedience.
Scales When The Key No Longer Weighs You Can Throw The Bong Away.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Top Dog How many K’s Of honey does The keeper of The summer hive Have to sluice down To the paragon at Central apiaria Come this fall?
You Just You You are my Taiwan and only. My Chinese squeeze. Now pull away slowly Gideon. Forever my radiant trainer at the rim.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Alice In Yamaha Wonderland May I have the level of your attraction please. Anything which constrains is worse than a hammock. It’s infinite
development.
By far detached from what the ordinary brain dictates.
The Night The Dance Is All Some Of The Dancers Dance All Night.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Uterine Pelagic Butts The Hyaline Breakers Men are fond to be found floating bobbing up & down like pieces of cork Women prefer to drown flat & horizontal with their renowned asses tilted upwards ready for spanking.
Long Distance There are many things we never need to know some we will know if only briefly What can be lost need not be found.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Speech of Statues All we did was sit and stare at the once famous steps
Doug The unicorn is my one and only laserbaby. My frozen by lightning twist, just a potshot away. My double-edged rope on the bow. Digital. Just another rose for the roadjig. Dick Dug The Flying Fuck. Was all she said.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
The Sleeping Child Talking Like A Man I hate misery I just want to be Reckless and daring
Unwavering Rhapshod Come- on now I need you to get to know me quickly Come to me swift light of heel swifter than arrow from Tatar’s bow To construct is to demolish. A scenario of breathtaking brevity. The insolence of fools pales with the width of their allowance. Not to them to add it up-
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
In Case Of Crises - for Ed Dorn We all at one time Or another may have to wait For someone to button-up His or her shirt In places where this is Unheard of they play The saw with eyes closed At any serrate A survivor knows how to fold The drawbridge and toll cloth Which in the days to come Would proof our joy and Barrel the daily toyl It’s the space within Which defines the shape And gives hazard to the drum.
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THE ORGAN WORKS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
* This a free sample of extracts from ‘Come Again’ by Harry Hoogstraten (Barncott Press 2015). The complete version is available in print and ebook editions. Full purchasing details are here.
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Boxing Days
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BOXING DAYS
Monday Morning Papa rain against the window pane Mama feet up towards the clouds Babies blown underneath the weather tree
Rio January Go fetch old cow from under the table eating barkpaper finger sticks leaf after leaf memo from the after leaf take me with you when you go to Rio i eat your great devour your bones drink some wine and feel fine with Tiger Rose on the Hammington New Jersey Turn-Pike dove sta in Africa? o trout o salmon o salamo
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BOXING DAYS
City Gardens Airplanes your hand cars going by good-bye country moat good-bye fair-princess of the north sky blue a grass filled with maze and a froth music your mouth red that’s it come sit and kiss me before you go lift your knees drift close that’s it but before you go again let me off the hook and out of the mine of my own making and look but closely this time how we coincide from our respective corners in these fast changing photo motor times
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BOXING DAYS
Mick And His Antics There are big cats on the inside of my door they are harmless as the movements woven into the fabric of your fathomless factory practice breaking the ice and you’ll be thinking winter all the time your gloved hands are weaving a lovely simmering air-song come along they’re weaving come along into this bodice world of burn stakes and muttoning pachas
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BOXING DAYS
Texana Van spins & wheels alright i’m asleep love denied busted jaw eye gone outsight just like her grandmother what would happened sweep sweep
Skome The soldiers are having a disorderly battle Mars who is the god of war is here represented by a pipe and a drum the muscled drum and the hobo melancholico gentle nights nay nay you must not stay
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BOXING DAYS
Joys Sublime Tremendous and undoubtedly we are gone in our vast presences memoirs of distant mirrors at least and at the most there’s an attempt a willingness to fail if nothing else slowly
slowly
a vast gentleness
may your sorrows be deep your mountains steep
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BOXING DAYS
Tour Tokijo the continuing saga of daily recurring restlessness burning uncertainties lapping of time span splicker splatter the former not the latter flattering the stirring of resounding milk spikes on a painted pavement utter curve of your eye on the tower with the weeping wasp crasping some say cheese
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BOXING DAYS
What To Do
BLUE
Dreaming of a white come cloud your branch bees wrapped round my waist as i sink and turn your firm the Canadian geese have returned honking their horns of plenty over by the frozen marsh land your ass lifting from the brazen mattress
i’m dreaming
and enjoying these tremendous fantasies that leave me trembling at airborn knees fork of thigh
spoon your spine
glamorous moons
marvellous
over your shoulder
hold it
hold it Hans hold it in your hand in disrupt paddling waters calm the come which came in the palm of future ways as many as gone bye good to you good to do will my dream come true through to you
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BOXING DAYS
Sandcones Milk People who travel in too far sometimes end up in hospital wards your particular sense of direction i find most peculiar and rather distracting jubilant sky water what’s his loco-motive his driving force the open air the barren path?
With The Rain No Longer In The Driver’s Seat airplanes wet roads froglegs nevertheless you are my princess
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BOXING DAYS
Going To Turtle Island - for Jedediah Koller at 5 Am telling you if there’s not gonna be any milk up there after i get there gonna kill me the turtle and drink it’ blood turtle blood is really good
Cloudius Such was the xtent and state of corruption
was i
myself you when i wrote and you read his wound affected his word be good to see him again my horse fell on me
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BOXING DAYS
Prolific Profiles Eastern friend of your voice in the leaning rain slowly they’d be always
laying down
with waning tonnage camera camera off the wall in which obscure object of my desire do i stand
where do i fall this summer heat
with the lupa woman
to you the names
of trees and honey gravel and what these names could do for you so lost in constant wonder
you stumble
when in fact never lost or wound that easy round your butterfly
nothing found
fingers
taking care of business
indeed
double breasted breath of tongue tip at last change the cover on the algae records i’d love to come over
however
let me check my itinerary
allow me
the litany of this time-table this New York afternoon and still it’s raining campfires at the equator where once there you do what comes naturally the size of what again defined and find a pleasure in speaking 66
you’d wanted once
BOXING DAYS
of complete figures any move made thus
in vague robust
holds within it a confidence which speaks for itself at approximately eleven minutes to twelve and again sometime later during the day.
Buttoni Amazing brevity of some of our dreams if not you
who’d believe
dreams that seem
to drift and to fly past the gates of the heavenly city into the realm of the real and you silent and in some dark scan the lips and eyes to read the emerging subtitles broken glasses
donkeys an open door
stacked final thoughts of stairway potemkin
fire water gushing blood
bone stunned and lone lost to every course but the one never found never lost and last but not least William Butler Yeast!
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BOXING DAYS
Achterham Amsterdam The show has been postponed Perè Ubu rides a donkey around the fountain to coin a phrase
pernod mon amour
in nod we trust
our love on the nod nod we must la bamba
achterham tessel tassel a tisket the blaskets island o Dunquin open sea never completed Sibelious
another journey i presume
drank
vodka? was there wormwood in those forests up North did deer travel in pairs close to the ground
were there pine trees
did the moon move
according to plan how far and how long was there land know here
did they
would they like it now? were there with holes in their heads with taboes in their pockets
did they travel
by air did they fearless
did they walk tall or small or
not at all? can they can can they all? Moulin Rouge je te touche your mouth a fiery pouring 68
BOXING DAYS
locks in the current pockets of the apron wind vista infinitah!
Christmas ’70 29 - two for you, Lew
The bells of the old red brick church sound in the sun filled day it’s christmas and the sun lights through the windows in the roof from a calm snow blue sky we’re in Denmark with the sun in the sky and the bells singing in the winter air
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BOXING DAYS
29 June 1978 The bells (tram of the old brick church ring sun full day its X-mas time you still haven’t been found or turned up somehow miraculously we go on you long gone (bone talk of you in Denmark to myself with the sun lights thru window in the roof calm snow blue sky circling - bells
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BOXING DAYS
All Route Stellama - for Franco Beltrametti If say.... heads are wheels and houses wheels too then wheels are hats with feathers and larger than life’s flowing waters
even
but to be sure it’s not a question of space or stature which moves the bird to song or flies with the mattress and pillow away from the beamers mountain air racoon
smoke curves
the Yuba river
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BOXING DAYS
Cold Store Pilot dogs sleep cheap! hijack hounds howdy mighty pleased to make yr acquaintance my name is Jack i live in the squeeze box uptown you’d know me if you’d see me there
i sleep
in the seat of the Sudan and have this reoccuring tendency to frequently end up in solid line sleazy bars like Rosies in Buffalo and Behold you in the eye of my farmhands filled with storm castles and dream sand of the real world somewhere out there somewhere in the air
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BOXING DAYS
Venice Already i am of glass in venice i feel well in venice i go blind in venice....venice the amsterdam of the south where i’m with pound in venice with baron corvo in venice i am a mann alive in venice i like venice venice is nice i find the antidote to the bite of poisonous animals compounded of many drugs in venice i am of treacle in venice wild beast in venice
i am water-rat in venice an open window
in venice I am on the borderline in venice in the colour bar in venice i am in all the movies ever made in venice in all the books ever written in venice in all the photographs ever taken in venice i am overwhelmed in venice
i am in love in venice
i am a gondolah in venice with venus in venice disposed to revenge in venice i am in the belly of the wind in venice at full speed in venice i am ventriculous in venice
i speak thru my belly in venice
i feel ridiculous in venice
i am veneral desire in venice
i eat vegetables in venice i am unstable in venice a water-horse in venice i am a famous painting in venice i am with peggy sue in venice i am a house float in venice i eat ice cream in venice
i sweat in venice
i am at the best of possible places in venice i am tired of venice venice
i move on from venice
i am out of my mind in
i take venice with me when i go i talk to you in venice i talk to myself in venice i cannot get enough of you venice 73
BOXING DAYS
Natty Dread MONDAY Cincinnati along the railroad tracks Where the Sweet Sugar Ray Express runs Slow and easy past the Friday Night MacDonald and the Van Queens & Kingfishers Who endlessly match their lives to slither Transformations with the occasional hold-up Drive-in Alabama on my windmill mind movies And silver bolts flash spur the cat moment The peacock sterling his only hot seat At the inflammable institude of hard-hat Central Aviation station TUESDAY Black rinds at city limits lemon locations Mellow though gone the one hook and tackle Temple fish Isetan warehouse where you live Your life empty lots Shinjuku Saint Louis Hey Joe brown bomber maniac stomper rattle Your bones the other solar legs at the residence Due to Cinema Sue and resulting fanny flavour On the tongue of the Kid Sid hit him with a siff Baba Boone it’s night daniel they’re drawing The curtains across your wavers like a bell
74
BOXING DAYS
WEDNESDAY The trouble with everybody these days is Endless tides when life could be round as The world and we move in and out your shawl As wings (these things) flap at the draught Shoeless and painless it’s nice live wire and Herbal clean constitution that’s what it is All about be happy wonder what condition my Constitution is in i love Pizza and Olives and Anchovies and Wine and Sunshine! There was A three man suit in here i’m glad he left You’re running along Perth river bank and this Distance grows fonder with room to breath and Flowers in the air for grabs not growing in your Hair that was my house for so long and the sky Floated wave over your forehead it’s true Confession time All we’ve come to know Is that we both love pizza! THURSDAY Want Icecream he yelled at the top of his choice And gloves as he stooped down the frozen stairs To take the hinges of the Four Directions and Section wise divided the Solomon-Scoop into more Or less equal parts inside the premises of the Cinema-scope Museum Polar Bear Jerky he screeched With a twist of Fait-Complis and a taste of flying Companies Brass butter plymouth your lips Tips touch and toss toes pliable apple Columbus Moon career opportunities Knock Knock Knock whose Hand at the neck of the decapitated toy-bug turning
75
BOXING DAYS
FRIDAY Natal speak sky building Rough Rough Through another influence of sound patient In afternoon nap Beep Beep how close to these Rocks you travel when the circulation is trash And Bacon-Georgia snow stormwhips the house To frenzy roads blocked crops broken stay put Catch up write letters perform the services SATURDAY Forever your chains to the rescue pool With eyes swimming knee deep in snow You’d almost (Presque Isles) white doors Base-ball hangings and your evasive That shoots phrases effortlessly no other Way we can come undone but you don’t do you Want to be a maverick to hell with that and Have those boulders removed from the ocean floor To the other shores of the heartland stalking now SUNDAY Deerfield screw machine Products the invention Of the artificial thumb joint (Cincinnati daffodils on the seven hills Bison Burgers
76
BOXING DAYS
Rose The lions are lying down you want me to lie on top of you tiger rose i come in your tank eat from your ears you’re a laughing lizard slide from here to there close after all the years
77
BOXING DAYS
The Brigade Gasse Hooked by the troat we hang nimble finger and golden loose
what you should do
is thumble your nose
get sucked in by a waterhose
are you waiting for the wires to burn for the birds to sing for the birdman to fly? you’re up in the ropes and to god or to somebody’s heaven you wish luna rossa Rosalinda luna locco over marocco touch and go
sun and moon
the sky is glow and you’re finally and it seems
inevitably under the table with the fingerlicking pickings of your choice lowing and howling like old gabby hayes with his bag of monkey moonlit bays and raven sun ra ramona’s i got mercury in sweet oranges
got tricks unspoken
fresh banknotes false hopes a new pope rain on the brain trams in my street glass in my windows like any man yet i’m shattered scattered collected and very well respected paint the town a necklace of inner grace and the eye at rest concrete tar and feathers what are they doing to the weather? brave the storm and the awesome dawn like a heart
the most
perfect of instruments it goes boom boom boom incessantly rising flower of kali float once you got there be pills from now on pills and delicately balanced thrills that will fill your life to come and secure your empty seat behind the locked door when instead you would have liked some more but enough is enough and enough is a rose an overdose clap your hands ladies and gents it’s way past your time and far over the hill chasing the butter and the gun on the wing with it’s silver tip-toe touching and cutting thru the clouds which are so silent which are so breath and whisper of your river hair while 78
BOXING DAYS
the most frightening pencil line you ever seen runs thru your name at the airport with the revolution still roaring at your back there must be a misunderstanding leonard stated i’ll eat my hat if i had a hat to call my own!
Gone Back To It - ‘Hey, thats what I need!’ a translation for Tom Raworth
VERSE PENS
f2,70p:kg
Diepvries pens
FRESH TRIPE Deepfreeze tripe
Hart
3,50pd.
Heart
Paardenvlees
3,75pd.
Horse meat
Kopvlees
1,60pd.
Head meat
Kippenmaagjes
1,90pd.
Chicken stomachs
Rauwe pens
1,25pd.
Raw tripe
epirt waR/snep ewuaR/shcamotsnekcihC/ sejgaamneppiK/ taemdaeH/seelvpoK/taemesroH/seelvnedraaP/traeH/ traH/ epirt ezeerfpeeD/snep seirvpeiD/ EPIRT HSERF/SNEP ESREV
79
BOXING DAYS
Utterly I may look pale drinking my ale but i am a man yes i am! You may not think this funny when you see me eating the cat getting fat Or when i proceed to batter the butler bugger the butter and talk obsolete sceneries and berries into your ear But that’s where i’m at and you won’t get me to stutter or hear me mutter yes mother
yes father
I’d rather be another
80
BOXING DAYS
Plow Dispose of this litter properly don’t dump your kittens in the garbage on my property! nor throw your cans at the leaping cat in the dark where the brush places a hole in dregs of drool you’re everybody’s fool all at once and quite suddenly you strip your body down into the sunset where in that specific location you hold hands with the widow selling the sand
81
BOXING DAYS
Mac Donalds On the old farm bees Swarm
rain thru window-pane
Ducks lie low in puddles swallow Geese with orange beaks flap Their wings in the wind gusts gusto mucho Roaring Rory takes to the breast The hens are at rest The goat at his oats Dermot the Donkey got away again Sheep on the mountain and in the freezer Jacky the Bull the inseminator sticks his arm Up to the shoulder in the sloppy cunt of the holy cow Again there’s love in my heart and flies fly by In front of my eyes beans pop eye eye our life Is like an olive or a daisy in May Eleven cocks of hay we brought in Suse was the best No fork too big no sweep too wide Tireless lass at night-fall the turf fire
82
BOXING DAYS
All Of This In Arabian Vein Harsh valley music to your stark assasin ears Hair on the heart fur under the tongue Swirling sun round your trash fingers Take my breath flat resides in which Middle Eastern Region? Change is absence of horses gear
preparing
The chinese salad crushing cards
years of sunflower
seeds vitamin D dishing out the stuff in mid-air To no-body’s late night business but up your rivers To cross up your rockets to launch up your shoulders And up your shares and rabbits up your air and up Your fucking subways everywhere! And up your etceterara And up your other assorted general bark up your shirt And ties up your 15 rounds and up your drunken Raving luna rossa random destruction and up your stairway To the stars there’s too much no-time you know For the people to know what to do with it and once they find Out what to do with it with all the surplus of no-time They’d only find out from knowing how not to do it and So go on doing it be it as rose may sway the mint And burning sticks tween hills Keep in touch
keep well
stay close
lose what delicate passage lines and radar
Web your photo face seen from a more than considerable closeness To the last of the Liverwurst minorities?
83
BOXING DAYS
There Is there is the housing problem the population problem the economic problem the solvable problem the problem problem all these problems are boring they drag you down they make you feel useless they make you feel like smashing something they make you feel rotten and nasty you feel terrible and there’s nothing gonna move you you feel like crawling underneath the rug among the toeslime the bad blood the vomit and the other general diseases or jumping off the tallest building in the world or from the acropolis or from the cliffs of dover or on the moors or at the office in the kitchen or you buy a ticket to the theatre that catches fire or the plane that goes up in flames you get caught in the understream or lost in the ozone things
you’re in the run of
you’re being run out of
town out of the country out of your mind out of time with a mouthfull of kisses and flies and a million or more hopeless words the social consciousness is a hat full of tricks 84
BOXING DAYS
it can fill your life
like a glove
you wear the shoes pay the dues
Tongue A tongue in the bush is better than a cock on the tower a song between you cheeks is better than honey on the flower the buzzing of the claw is brighter than your Mama’s hot showers the heat at your feet up in the air is light and my lips buried bone in your hair this night is that where you’d want me to bee buzz buzz come came see saw
85
BOXING DAYS
The Do Dah Let’s do the do-dah do the do-dah with us isn’t it nice do the do-dah with your wife it’s a jive do the ra-ra and the rain ram ram the toe jam mama you’re out at heaven your ship is coming in and it’s loaded with lolipops and candy bombs that explode like whale fountains into your brain do the sun ram do the wham bam shake your ass honey take the money and run sunny run the rum rum do the ra ra do the beam pike do the lizard dive here we are there we go do the chi chi
do the ho ho
do the ming ming
do the mingle mangle do the swingle singer do the sewing machine keep it clean do it to-gether hey do it anyway you can 86
BOXING DAYS
and you can do the can can take the lid of the can now do the can can again
For Lewis In Paris Some sleep the best years down the highway there’s nothing doing after the closing of the festival the festival never closes what are those guys smoking on quai one? and these tracks doing in my head
87
BOXING DAYS
Song For Buffalo Buffalo
here we go
Sometimes we’ll go fast Other times we’ll go slow Laying down low These are new places And we’ll find our paces As we deal the cards Art is marvellous as we go along Lend us your ears Give us some of your money To-morrow the sun may be shining And you’ll remember that that’s What we’ve done for you We’ve got no homes And we’re not on the telephone But we stick to-gether Through all kindsa weather So far so good Trees made of wood Wood again from paper And it’s getting later So let’s get on with the show Here’s sergeant hot pepper And indian Bill to provide You with thrills and excitement Chills down your spine Wind thru the pine Lime in your sugar 88
BOXING DAYS
Cigars up your alley Red stars on your brow Buffalo
come and get it now!
English Garden I’m drinking enormous beer in the English garden of München i’m reading poems in the English garden of München i’m under the trees the trees are over me they speak in the wind of Brownie and me where freedom is for the birds who fight for the crumbs spare ribs at noon can’t get back to you too soon the sun is shining in the English garden of München i’m drinking enormous beer i’m here
89
BOXING DAYS
Even Whatever you think it is you cannot do without and got to have it right now or have it out of your total system hold it or better yet
let go
of it and before you know it it’s there out of the air and into your heart’s desire to set your parched double parked soul
on fire
and you wish you were alone
without a home with the sky as your casket
and the willow underneath your holiday in the sun with the buns in the oven and the Billy weep no more at the door long coat over your arm a lovely lady by your side driving deep into the throat of night
90
BOXING DAYS
Saint Louis Gong We’re in the sun driving ground eating some grain in Saint Louis hello well i’ll be damned if it isn’t Miss Mary Lou how do you dew
drop
lakris saké for your warm
kalm aan
when you last stopped off at the Terminal Hotel on this long journey to the end of our various nights deer doctor (evasive kasbah) Louis Ferdinand niets aan de hand what would you have thought or even seen Céline in these deserted spaces these eerie craters rats tole owls gone freight
91
BOXING DAYS
BLOCKS
The transaction was completed First the translation was not Being done he destroyed most Of the transcription the Situation was most Distressing the transport Was being destroyed Being a theorist most of the time he was Soon lost pay more attention to your Translation having deserted the war He was going away they were Singing and dancing most Of the day he lost his dearest Possession first
92
BOXING DAYS
The chair that you saw was For me the boys and girls are ready for the translation all will Be well if you describe it As such be sure to come for the position From there your host was disappointed In you and your friends What would you say if You were there? they transferred me To a new station what is the thing Which she translated for me ? all Of my transfers were disregarded Entirely there are transparent Lights being used there
93
BOXING DAYS
The transport was destroyed the usual Way neither side accomplished Its purpose the other daughter Rejected the purple coat accord him Recognition and transfer The deed it was printed On purple paper Go into the garden and send In more fruit he cannot do More until you see him say That you cannot dance the Exact time he came Is not known the translation Could not be recognized
94
BOXING DAYS
The district most visited Is being destroyed they tried to enlarge It in the usual way the moon Came in time to save Us all the magnitude Of the empire is impressive extract All of the expensive juices Transplant the productive Products interest yourself in Extraordinary things merrily they Came romping over the meadow his Character was obnoxious And disgusting the institute Is probably closed
95
BOXING DAYS
The hydrochloric acid is Here the recluse was inclined To morbidity the principle thing To remember is written here this Particle is to be destroyed at Once the reclamation Of the mines was drastic The principle thing to include Was forgotten I followed my natural Inclination the savage showed An atavistic courage the usefulness Of a storage place Is evident inasmuch as you are Late he will return later
96
BOXING DAYS
New Leather Warm Skies Why
it’s so clear you say
trace it back your face swollen half sleep mountain jou in jest fully dressed but ho every time i think now it must be this you cut my hair it gets so hot in the summer and with my locks still near the rim of the garbage bin how you bin keeping yourself lately sleep a hole in the afternoon i read the music papers laid out on the couch
ouch
get off go away come back bounce another day short circus wham you’re up at the sound of the gong
out fighting and fencing instead of jus dancing
97
BOXING DAYS
Some Fish Walking with Ted and Anne on the Albert Cuyp market in Amsterdam we leave Anne at the post-office I love Anne you know Ted says she’s terrific you’ll be walking along with her like here for example and she’d say great things like; “Look, there is some fish”
For Suze In Apeldoorn drinking tequila at the speed of the ice melting in the glass you’re a lovely woman who calls me my man” we roll in the grass rocking the cradle you’re as light as a breeze and say “bless you” after I sneeze
98
BOXING DAYS
Slide snow falling day after day slowing down the traffic you open the window to take a photograph of the metal cage you’ve made for a situation like this to occur unfortunately you hold it up the wrong way so the sticks fall out the photo becomes another and after you close the window it stops snowing
99
BOXING DAYS
For Erik listening to Satie I ate saté in Scheveningen aan Zee saté is where it’s at Satie had his ear on the sparrow the blind archer closed the windows to his soul lets go of what cannot be held for long so long the saté proofed satisfactory and the whiskey more than delightful we toss the dice break some bread and look for crabs in the waves Satie had a light touch he lived by himself with some sticks and pans I hear he had many friends was liked by the fox who grew his nose for silence and unafraid of water
100
BOXING DAYS
Two For Gerard Malanga PORTRAIT OF KEITH RICHARD It’s only paper but i like it DARTIST There’s no difference like the same difference
The Intensity Is a Midnight Flyer
Shake It Higher
i want you to forget everything i’ve ever told you and everything i may yet have to tell you get your head into a laundry machine opium is good for you the emperor of china is good for you a few pipes a day will keep the doctor away the best apples come from the contaminated countries watch out for the granny smith 101
BOXING DAYS
At Six Even So the Hootch toes curling in upon themselves and the uncut nail in walking seeps blood flow curdles you study the icefloes and cake drifts in the eddycurrents over in Schotland keeping distance from the events at hand laid bare the daily intentions you’ve got to give it to her stepping rambling tartan every shot does not mean the death of a rabbit how easily we could forget the range repetitive at times like these with the merest gesture of irreducible signification frozen canals late night skaters 102
BOXING DAYS
with life more than ever the adventure that it is set out to be from the start
For That Matter While out at sea the tailor as we were approaching the isle miraculously managed to send me the exact measurements of the rhucarp reverie at large hail paul the punk poet reverse all curtsy tepees what in sounded like
103
* This a free sample of extracts from ‘Come Again’ by Harry Hoogstraten (Barncott Press 2015). The complete version is available in print and ebook editions. Full purchasing details are here.
Come Again
105
COME AGAIN
* The following is an extract from the much longer poem ‘Come Again’ which appears in full in the print and ebook editions.
oublier comme une voiture this manner funest bull-dung maladie sonne war auch im krieg nicht zu vers (gras in de foksia) laan la maladresse des tableaux his fortune suspended the pendulous cheek and roll of the burdock immer the everlasting timmerman stress water im restaurant au fin wangle du muurstapel nipple does as chrome lift door merg en veen ears easy at tomcop flute unit lux we stand ieder lichaam lip en limb in catskin mountain du dunk le leering ears dal torseau before sipping remove pits fingerhead in working condition has on hand been stipulated boon eye with karin as compagnion listened to paganini directing the steam-engine thru the vines and onwards over the crag-ground 107
COME AGAIN
of which eye unlike karin was the product maxine drove the mini upto kotex ritter’s ritzy studio to deliver as arranged the orange tuxedo on entering his stately mansion kotex turned away from the entire wall of glass where he’d been looking thru at the near full moon and approaching her with a drink in his hand he profusely thanked her for coming to his relief klag op het strand aan de rand van de spetterende branding slag hoe de doe het haar krulde klippen scharrelen aan de opgang m’n hart was permanent on loan olie in de schaal wasp de haaien niet langer tot wachten geneigd grup troebal water means trouble oublier comme un oiseau in moskou every time this snow and flash-cube blindman’s bluff plunge what quantity and tumultuous roer dillettante mieren camp uncle pays up the rent to the blue shed on molehill staunch the pour watt the hour she said her reed babble warped terms were considered lenient 108
COME AGAIN
the thermos over from leningrad burst and the hot herbal tea spread like ink over the paper statue your mind is made up former tactics employed were fired black clot in the redundancy no-body told you that once you’d put on the boots and worn them for a while that they’d take you to where sooner or later you would have arrived at anyway it’s within this imprecise second where the exact premise can be located and the newfound boundary extended là bas il y a un bébé il s’appele shrim driver dummest hoop of poudrette one lemon he was mine the complete series encased pluizen tegen il piove é le poivre al louvreten stir à votre stearin and other willow this theam the pores of mine immer moat lenses het plukken aan dekens delving excercute baby wetting the apple tier harbouring the buru en de buurvrouw east in mourning’s short and circuit light
carphology
109
COME AGAIN
ikke vleermuis du har god snakke hark the mailman cosi comme sai questa cosa al saloni di sale dove si vende l’amore kop anchi gli cani da diorama nasal as diphthong and tallboy blade im geschäft l’abasama zusammen you can count gather on sound trashing in blood thunder and baconbark play dove gli fungi portrait bonny knuppel in de naafrem cross-eyed daverend da budapest to swallow’s burrow they’d only just met and already he’d briefly felt that he wanted her to agree to start a correspondence with he immediately assured her on her part not a single obligation to respond unless she’d really felt like it she told him she would think it over and that she’d try and let him know during the next rare stamp collectors convention if by that time their mutual interest had not waned or even slightly diminished next door lead down the way-sight wire at peak nine dandling shot colander spray frame and arrow plot foot coming up from tiny 110
COME AGAIN
employed at troy trigger happy our detail crippled destitude dust tube clamorous and kicking enumeration fit to string attached to hooper’s crane mediocre clock and provisions drowned radio ratten join me and johnny in the cardiac compo you held your breath and art in your hands and somehow couldn’t help but feel terribly thrown though everyone had done their utmost to distribute their attention evenly so you’d come away none the smarter the body goes armour and stiff after love’s failure at lurking you have the feeling you’re engaged to something important as the ring slips over the gland and as you wait for the yagé brew to come on in jaguars you are fortunate this seems to be the final stage days of littering stars feathers fly off the hook you turn a page exciting no heathen colcothar no gay lotion for the lothario the pesky pets walk unrestrained underneath the merciless sun will they enter the dwelling 111
COME AGAIN
in heaven at the outset barrel large white awkward women how i love them their haunches witness to their wobble tremorseless red purple and blue pulsar satin in heat and shiver heads home now flankly speaking o shit spermanent waves this tail and roll spread thru a closed system which crules and crows rumba slides in shades flesh que tal hombre watch that blot and how it covers the hands clutched wheel in the crotch of the masked goose-pimpeled model heading for her overcoat and the thanksgiving party over at the house of the art director the rat what riches werde ich auf meinem weg nog tegenkomen hotch what boost en brand papier at the harbour our destino there are many things we never need to know some we will know if only briefly i write you a long letter see your smile still with me here it says that i’m recovering our speculaas er vaak naast hier een korrel daar een hek you’re my taiwan and only you’re my chinese squeeze
112
COME AGAIN
deep-sea knee bends pull away slowly gideon forever my radiant trainer at the rim if the emotion expressed in later age reverts to childhood and from there to green and dream moans the shark the postage with ladder of strumpet measure this attempt at scale force from his eyes begin the rendition at the rendez-vous if so the rooster hits rock shattered glass at last no blame its features on the water daf dildo covered skin like silk enters the scream clair parlor paper queen who with singranular lence breaks the monument to smithers eternitty-gritty klag black and tranded yet no complane surfacing broad women who travel these dust and gravel roads as if they’re never done anything else as if there have never been any other roads to travel like their mothers before them and their mothers before them lifting their hemplines over the puddles carrying their poodles with their perfumed airs and their hair like noodles padam madam in amsterdam padam madam in madurodam the eve is a calling 113
COME AGAIN
blossom up for grabs the word a mention full flung lotus breath taxi cabs red handed in the abet headlines the dicey light is for dancing for polishing the vodka with the janitor run riot and beat hit by the mill and tit with salad this your fish once hooked by the veil nose or dozen there’s no turning back from a well placed burn in burma or jersey when the key no longer weights you can throw the bong away he had a way with animals looting nevertheless the honey from the midhive involving the least possible amount of clumb effort the way of life he’d been looking for without up to now finding no more balls to kick or take on fully in the blistering erupt milkmouth spit dribbling and spilling over the floor mulatto pharma-cycloned star we reason and slay far end 114
COME AGAIN
of the barbacue with radio lewd at the pool dressed and covered in gue come to peal laughter at the faint fringes she skope her legs we twine silent the next day she took my hand and ran o with it i kissed her breast my meditation perfect the horses at bay surveyed the vixen lolling in deep space having the paint applied this is true vraiment we’d placed our beds and she proceeded to cleave the latest visitor to these deserted parts into two no use waiting for the next one to show up he figured now was the time to take his leave counting up to zero and rolling up his sleeves he moved veining ignorance at what in front of his eyes was at any moment about to take place amazed and wide aware of the funky air-load i love you i want you wo ist mein handtuch? non ci sono piÚ gli alberi da primavera sono andati via (comunque partiti) 115
COME AGAIN
da qui al laltre parte della hill die fühlten sich also nicht so ganz ins besonder haben die noch später gesagt aber dann war die sache ja natùrlich schon längst vorbie ook kloten natuurlijk wer reicht hier schliesslich die laken moch mal draus ist es der jenige in schleeswiek is het de schreeuwerik? the rowdy rogue the ritual rumour mongers lovers with perhaps fresh fish spouting as it were between fingers running scorching the stripped flesh an uns an uns
wann nicht und so nicht dann und nur dann
saddled or not les corn de gare de l’orient est et le training d’état étonant verre largo key cassata (puro) con bastansha di pana-mu agapi-mu
abra
tree abresse tendhel 116
COME AGAIN
con eau de vie
viel wasser
tambien
de aarde is een boot en bovendien de laars van de smokkelaar die zich ohne die minste mühe met zucht en such verplaatst rood waar het zucht en wrikt week het dier gebonden in tuin van middag gebak come closer
sagte sie
en haar handen
though i wasn’t a member i can recall visiting the club several times there would be broth and fabulous sandwiches we’d look at the lions stirring from afar so the animal function minds the tube lard mal au bras spavin sour sink your arms pauvre protrudence cast the louse set of tor in mudlight lettuce dans le tirage la demuit prochain mute drop gang (tuchtig) schuw wrap wrap en irgend tender ware perziken en suspicion after herbal after they’d carried it we spread it rausfinden wo giff promptly takes over left handed why cap the vacuum mouth carp djum djum djum djum reinstall ma terrain blu i no longer deal or produce marketable ware 117
COME AGAIN
of course i got to make a living that goes without saying in that maze there are ways to sprout or be in dire lambency remarkable table trags stretch the hun and more lamp certain fresh the cattle taff effect trite klappen festing sweep wrap almaro deerste paal olio da camera abjamo trasmezzo karabancy tertian plot your thighs blinken im schatten we’d set out what to believe of the or the thief turn spit in the slamb i wolk for love head in the ream of rome any day in the searing rubens zolk sulking crumble pout wanton inn this entrail let me yard du yarrow
stake desolate
orbit 4812 tuna whatdju get deeper in bed tiles slice over you in silence even more the frail attainment in a tinted cup white slibree remote placement i’ll take your worth for it it’s telling my trilyum my walleye motor running 118
COME AGAIN
blight turret tied faster than the blush harder to trash they autumn static frame of the bootleg strap spectacle hung loose fenestreau strano seven whip the lawfull water the thing is thinking you can tell by the lights shifting regards fender hard the bone chewed in bare feet ever goes boarding diet worry wrapped in gory volcano pedals gimme on does the solitary bone boondocks bound vellem the rake my compagnion stool planter hatch and hog clutch brake sauce else cup it wolf loafing thru the fodder clover to you my frien carpenter of all nail to nothing donde stich dog-damnit where the roz poach rides a narrow fold the hardcore theater of feet and gull o fantome relation ooo vercha zervjak no doubt
nod out
up air
brand blue or mirth snafu 119
COME AGAIN
pylon bag ferro my nine to the boxes gives no lip to bay popple spinach to the zygodactyl setz dich hinbeer bezra passing oops!
long diffuse the armored vehicle
icicle made to alto là city des anges brother inconsistency exclusive of packing looks back at you ici le dernier pourboîte de vingerhood redbreast tit eh twat have you oh frogment froggebrood kikkerbuff allo ça va surrender to flake je hebt nog een minuut of vier rendier was it zoo she said some honestly retreat plenty slowly the next day bee yourself everything broke bird and marker magico arm in plaster slung from the hip 120
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smoking and queen a flush whirl easier said than actually gone i was sober waiter and victory chasseur who ate with the carillion against twine and dozen napp the giant trite of midnite dual stereo sewers severe blankets of smog the kid possibly hillbilly frock and boyl sprout in close contact sheet melting mued round dadagiotto-in-mobilee woke by the sound of the coke shifting in the pot-boiler ovoid coal loose some yourine fiver to the glue at pool resc vascular nuptial spun fog wrung the slow weeks ago who touches the tree and you piano liananas heap the solo distance becomes sensor beast of familiar fact we move closer to aqua gisting this object en plein dam fur for elise leise the poach let her long chinese vase at foot of the mayhem pole bonnet greased and mokered flight mayo punaise advert fung she went to the no-good room swept land her mouth lit who’s that type banging 121
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his head against the wall lille rapid gurgling cork loss prodding bullectric loben von unten kam das lärm und die tränen im haar spong the rumourous globe tail-piece-a-merdu c’est où et soudain de dis-teric drops nicht gans plötslich Natürlich könnte die tür auch im bauch nicht liver alors she flew with shrewd editor destination not noted hung goal and suspending pest beetjaws flowing down trax stretch belly skin of tower pouring schotel wear you lose some clothes you rain some rafters but first sundae dadels crusanten hill & co. poised fragment gift for the grind d’echo-coladen returned dun yo et l’echidna abrious flood lit sleeps my tow-line lead me to your soupra eight insulated widow plains down easy street where you wipe the mule 122
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out leaning against the balustrade radio goll once more adios amiga black gator at the portal knock with your eye-full dierence of intention stake any number wedge central thrill cutty deviates position needs up from walking next to your shoes into the mine hodier podge hoisting forest a spa hogarth special delivery at dawn awesome or blanket of present farms sweet by the hour at taos send signal flash teeth where teetotum bell fresh green to the stadium at five in teheran and hide hull human pool my numberless moi muy moist donde sta gli stalyoni
da thundhur la chruncha al laternia
occucapo
morph fish preserve tish a task
le left
epoche 123
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salvo grey salt aging lines like these hoarse carmichael replaced staying put putting foot and finger breath slung retart sullivan chemical dan doucement avec les onze bouteilles d’ouzo our truck arrived on the dot
wrap (notch
we bag pack 6 there is no looking this yore bed edwin (some tighten baar greenhorn petrosal flavour to waft my huddle herd cloth 124
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fresh once stripe ceci n’est pas legg dans les port able na carry on tarbicmag nijf we lay scattered mudde and come one more time it’s april and plastered pitch-dark the sable il y a un homme là bas au pays-bas roe pawn le peuk of stub toes in bathen sending a cable and going to the beach and in this going is his own where fear on one finger you lay your hand from gravel rest on my knee and with your thumb you trace gleam i come to you constant as you lift the wait in the lumber matriolic moon crock staals and some palse fass 125
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bleek appears smooth operators stop dad in his tracks bustim up real bad we took his jacket for a pillow he looked terrible most people just watched hold on i told him i was still a boy with a face of cheese-cloth and my fate a destino parfait barfing was nice or at least alright but really doing it even better felt cut o from the condition skin held away between the tops lebens belch flood fanning support the farm and pier after the thing thins links back to the pulse sea here erect stones source of the ferry forteau shining would be the advice lifting the slop from the mattress the thing to do blink steer strut mask from the swirling smooth web naked rose crot male scales folded neatly hold it she balance of royal fire she’d go for the distant bars where we are fast and unrelenting this is how hook tears so much the more 126
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behind china lies the brace circular bend on ending the dispute broken out among the locals approaching closing time what can be lost need not be found if zoo fills this step lunar tub of rock your bonk bayou your bonnet
trod
the novices pass already plane oblique junto pulse stamp open full keeping up under the strain you wanna feel if the water is warm over perk en paal stall my indestructible luggage is set my virtuoso laid in mother and ousted with the oryx zoom farewell uncle i’m heading east flash in the orphan hog on the edge broei with the paddles belted sparkling plug pork at the tal here’s a canandadill will you now get the heating going done with what hay you’ve come 127
there
COME AGAIN
to sell us batwing turned against the cold linnen babe drift and turn .
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* This a free sample of extracts from ‘Come Again’ by Harry Hoogstraten (Barncott Press 2015). The complete version is available in print and ebook editions. Full purchasing details are here.
LETTERS
Frog Flagrance 14th August, 1986 Dear Ed1, Amsterdam.... I finally went to Paris, after plusieurs instigations from Doc(k)er Julien to arrange for exhibit of paintings, and imagine he stood me up twice! Let the word be out on the deceitful frog! I arrive bag in hand at the place of appointment: an art gallery on the second floor of some majestic residence. A few rooms filled with White Russians in exile. How much more silence to pass thru, how much more cunning to smarten in? Some of the Russians stuffed themselves on olives and sardines and refused to talk about anything but the route the ancient salmon took in the days of salt. Ended up with a Moroccan transvestite who works at Beaubourg, and visits the openings at art galleries to collect stranded foreigners stood up by deceitful frogs. Friendly actually but not my cup of poteen. So why not I figured, because some figuring remains to be done, why not pay a visit to Emile Cioran, the eminent Rumanian skeptic residing in the Rue de l’Odéon. We’d met once, years before at the Maison Descartes ici, I’d sent him books and things and he’d written back. It rained a lot in Paris, in April (one more time, the Count and Ella). The conciërge told me he lived in the attic. Stately, nondescript building, quiet. Knock, knock, knock, we talk a bit through the door, then he opens up and stands all dressed in raincoat, hat and umbrella. I mention Codrescu and the Exquisite Corpse (whatever may be so exquisite about a corpse C. wondered), anyway we connect and he invites me to accompany him for a walk. Perfect. “Many stairs,” I volunteer as we descent. “Sure,” he says, “I like it, gives me some exercise.” I asked if he still suffered from
1 Eddie Woods
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insomnia (reputed not to have slept for 48 years!). “Oh no, hardly much,” he answered, “I do manage to sleep at times, no problem.” As we were going down the stairs! Yes, straight to the heart. The conciërge greeted us as we went out as if we had been going out that door forever. Pleasant drizzle, pleasant but dull like the French. “O, that’s normal,” said C. after I related what had befallen me and why I’d come to Paris to start with. “The French hate everybody. I have no friends among them, everybody I know is from elsewhere.” I also ask (still descending the stairs) if he’d read the piece in the Corpse on him: “Saint Cioran” like Sartre did Genet. No, he hadn’t, probably gets piles of stuff everyday and puts it away. (Three days after this, back in Amsterdam, I turn on the television and see Simone de Beauvoir on Germany. Interesting I think, a documentary: hours later news of her passing. Phew. I got to bed and the next day Genet gone, while all during my long walks in Paris everywhere posters of a young Jean- “Est-il homme, est-il femme, estil un monstre?” Also lingered in Brion’s (Gysin) gateway for a while but in the end didn’t ring his door-bell, passed on without a sound, better leave the dead to do their dying in peace?). So all this is still April in Paris. Told Cioran about the book I’d just finished and taken into the publishers. “Have you got a title yet?” he asked. “No”, (and I skipped a beat) “No, I haven’t. Or rather I have several but none of them seem to fit.” “Well”, he said, ( and he is 75 you know) “Why not call it The Last Monkey, or better yet, The Confessions of the Last Monkey?” (This after our stroll through the Parc du Luxembourg under his umbrella in a drizzle of wet snow and around the corner where all the young look-alikes gather, and after I’d bought him two bottles of mineral water). “Yes, The Confessions of the Last Monkey, in the first person, like in The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Look around you, just look around.” 132
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Here it goes, so it comes again. Around a quarter past five in the afternoon on the 12th of April on the corner of Rue Monsieur Le Prince and Rue Racine, Emile Michel Cioran gave me the title for my book: De Bekentenissen Van De Laatste Aap. Very apt. “Let me know if your publisher likes it and success,” he added in parting for the so manyth time. But I reminded him, “Success is some sort of failure too isn’t it,” quoting him (appealing to general taste). “Yes,” he glundered, “Success is a failure too but it is by far préfèrable to it!” Such cheerful astuteness in the face of it all! As if I had traveled to Paris expressly to receive the title for my tome. “How many pages?” he’d asked, “641,” I had to answer. “Too many, oh far to many - 300 at the most.” Maybe it’ll amount to that when it comes out in February (postponed from October). “I hope your book comes out soon and that’ you’ll be very famous, “ he wrote later, still glad that he gave me the title.. *** 16th June, 1986 Dear Cioran, Don’t know if you bothered to decipher my hand- writ letter to you of the 13th of April. Anyway all goes well, so much the better. The worries I had about my health proofed to be nothing, went thru a series of tests and this morning I was told that I am in fact in a perfect condition! But I didn’t imagine the smarting of the muscles, it was there, from where and where to hither? Oh, they said, probably the irregular living, the booze, the lack of vitamins. Basic stuff. What a relief, onwards Ho ! I keep running into you and still think oft back fondly of our brief encounter. As if i’d only come to Paris to receive from you the title for my book; ”The Confessions Of The Last Monkey” It made good my whole journey, it made up grandly for “the deceitful frog” who stood me up twice. 133
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And my publisher likes it too, that’s what it’s going to be: “De Bekentenissen Van De Laatste Aap” Thank you. It’s very apt, couldn’t be any apter. But running into you; hadn’t been back for a week or de Volkskrant has a review of your; “Exercices d’admiration”. Favourable, the reviewer was in tune. And last week Timon of Athens was on TV. (While the newspaper review was headed; “Un Misanthrope est le moins insupportable”. Io Misanthroponos! And then last Friday the 13th a page long interview with Vonne van der Meer who is a theatre director and just won a prize for a book of short stories. She says that for a while she had in the back of her agenda some lines of yours; “You should only write that which can be whispered into the ear of a drunkard or a dying man.” “That is a harsh (severe) criterion (standard, measure) , but continues Vonne van der Meer, “but maybe you have to remind yourself every now and then of that criterion.” Without, she adds, taking it completely literal, for one doesn’t know exactly what a dying person wants to hear, maybe something like;”Rock a rolle, rock a rolle” or “Sleep my child sleep”. But one has an idea of it.” Am curious and looking forward to your “new aphorisms” as announced in the Exquisite Corpse. How many more monkeys to cross? Ole man river, ughe ughe. I am younger now than I was then, uh, I laugh in the face of solemnity. Mere grit tween my teeth, ha! Ach, vanity all this bearing of the soul. Took it to heart but it was there, a slumbering, who knows. Still, do think you should venture upon a journey to Amsterdam, it’s just a handful of hours on the train. As it is I intend to do a lot of painting, since it seems that I will be enabled to occupy a considerable space which will entail that I’d be spending all of my time for many months to come living and sleeping in studio. Therefore my appartement will be free for you to do as you like. 134
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You’d like it here, Amsterdam is special, every language spoken, every sort of food , many busy and many quiet spaces. You’d get plenty of exercise here, I live on the third floor and the Vondelpark trees I can almost reach. Lots of boats going by in the canal, from canoe’s to make-shift Mississippi type of vessels. You’d like it and nobody will bother you. Just for “un changement d’ario.” ? Verily, verily. So you learn Nederlands and read my tome! No, in earnest please consider un voyage au Nord a la porte d’Amsterdam. If not will you permit me to bring you a copy in October or next February, depending? If it is there to be articulated, do we resort to the mono-mumble ? In the end we all go on, like nobody’s business... Would much like to hear from you... Very best !yours, Harry Hoogstraten *** 22 June, 1986 Dear Harry Hoogstraten , Excuse me of not having been able to decipher your long text of April, thank for the recent letter and the good news about your health and the book. The title is very good and I am proud of having suggested it. It is a surprise to me that my name is not completely unknown in Holland. Only a book of mine is translated so far. Why a new trip to Amsterdam ? I was twice there , I like it, specially the harlots. I was invited to Spain on the end of August- for a public discussion on “Philosophy and Sexuality.” I first accepted, but in the end I declined. Such a matter can’t be dealt with in public and in a foreign language. I hope that the “Bekentenissen” will be published in the next months and that you will become famous. With every best wish yours Cioran 135
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22 May 1985 Amsterdam, Holland. Dear Raymond Carver, This afternoon we met but briefly, in passing, I was one of the people in line at the Bookstore and you were kind enough to sign one of your books. But too fast, no time for talking, I left you two of my postcards and you asked if I was a photographer. Which is only natural. But I write too, and writing is presently my major interest. And with that in mind I found out where you were staying and just now phoned the hotel but you were out. And they added: “checking out tomorrow.” Too fast, no time left, so I write you this letter. Everything happens all at once, I’d only just read all your books (What we talk about... Fires, Cathedral) and was completely taken in, shattered and very impressed. The tremendous casualness of tone, the matter of fact telling of the story, the mysterious matter of daily life, etc. It seems a bit awkward now addressing you thus, in writing, while you are somewhere in town, for I would rather have talked. But, all the same. Maybe just “shop-talk” but nevertheless. Yes Hemingway in there, which were the first books I ever read, in Dutch translation as early as 1957 when I was 16 years of age. So it goes. And what or rather who I missed you mentioning was Richard Brautigan, with the fishing and the “plain-no-nonsense” approach, though Richard spun his yarns more from another brand of delicacy. Richard was in Amsterdam last year February and we spent many fine days together, drinking, talking, walking and making some drawings. Then he left for Japan, and promised to send me the crêpe de Chine undershirts from the Isetan basement store, those shirts are the greatest, no sweat, light as a feather. No news, no shirts. In October 1984 I arrived in Parma, Italy. First thing I hear is Richard, (the boor, the lout, the churl) had gone put a fusil against his temple and pulled the trigger. But really just as the great Ernesto, 136
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whom he adored. He had a right to, but still. He used to get very upset when I wanted to talk about Ernest’s involvement with Hoover’s submarines for the coast of Cuba. He’d get angry and say : “just rumours, Hemingway never took more than some fishing rods and a couple of buckets of bait but he paid the rent himself.” He wouldn’t have anyone put a finger on his Writer, and rightfully so. It doesn’t matter, is off the wall. Yet I wonder as I am wont to, you know the life lived extended into the writing. Or as some say: “leave the self out of it.” But every move one makes, even the “cut-up” or he words pulled from Tzara’s top hat, even those become particular and specific by the moment, by the hand which cast the dice, etc. I took heed of what you mentioned with regard to “experimentation.” Allow me a quote: “A poet has to woo not only his own Muse but also Dame Philology, and for the beginner, the latter is the more important. As a rule, the sign that a beginner has a genuine original talent is that he is more interested in playing with words than in saying something original: his attitude is that of the old lady: “How can I know what I think, till I see what I say?” (E.M Foster). “It’s only later, when he has wooed and won Dame Philology, that he can give his entire devotion to his Muse.” (W.H. Auden, Sel. Essays 1962) or another one: ‘actually, far from revealing a mastery of language, they indicate a certain ignorance of, and lack of feeling for, the real, natural values of languages.” On punes. Max Brod in “Heine, The Artist in Revolt.” A book composed of quotes only, as Walter Benjamin wanted (?) So here I am, after an absence of 14 years (from here) (and back for almost 11) writing in Dutch but my first writing occurred in English, while living in Japan, 1965. Always painted but somehow the writing became more important, Gary Snyder was close, living in Kyoto, we met and he published my first efforts in “Intransit” a magazine run by Bill Thomas from Portland Oregon. Philip Whalen and Lew Welch were great influences, and then while living in Ireland (Co. Kerry, 137
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where Lindbergh flew in, and over to Paris) Jim Koller published some in his Coyote’s Journal. Especially the writing of Jim Koller struck me as solid. Not a word too many, no tricks, no grand Buddhistical reverberations. Just the rhythm of the life being lived. The pulse of “backcountry.” Tons of it, I stayed real close to all of that for a long time. Snyder holding out in the manzzanitah bushes surrounding his Kitkitdizzi, Welch given himself to the great circling Bird, to the air, (leaving the description of his Blue Volkswagen bus at the foot of the mountains to Aram Saroyan). Whalen writing well as ever but lumbered by Tassajara dough. And Koller over in Georgetown going strong, in touch with the caw of the jackdaw, the flight of the Canadian geese, their hooting, their flight-patterns, Jim goes on, he spells out the silence between the nervous sigh of the Billy goat and the lingering droplet at the end of a pair of Long-John Woolies. Also there Bukowski (in line with Genet, Miller, Celine, the blue in bravery and mucho lip-ranting, but in the end too solemn and predictable, too much of it and too much all the same). Ed Dorn was an influence and an inspiration, “Gunslinger” a finely honed exemplary work, Ed put me onto the writing of E.M Cioren, the Rumanian sceptic exiled in Paris, to his sense of the absolute, the absurd, as does Ionesco, thus Codrescu. And others: Ted “Terrific” Berrigan. Tom Raworth in Cambridge. Lyn Heijinian in Berkeley. Just called the Pulitzer again, thought how strange here I am writing a letter to a man I’ve only met for a few seconds, in passing. How much better it would be to talk, so why not call again, it’s eleven fifteen, not too late., this time I be so bold as to leave notice of my attempts at reaching you, too fast, too late, I could have stayed on in the bookshop, I could have lingered. Oh well, as well may be. To the writing of it: so all these many years writing done in a tongue not my mother’s. Some say that it cannot be done, you know, write a work of importance in a foreign tongue. 138
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But for some: Conrad, Beckett, Nabokov, Cioran, Hollo, the Italian poems of Joyce, on the sly? Well, I’d say, it depends. In comes: dependancy. Joyce for years comfortably able to devote himself to his U thanks to secret patronage (which was withdrawn after first chapters of FinniW, as Lowry had the greatest problems with his “follow-up”, the publisher just gave up on him) or Robert Musil who had the nerve to stay put for a mere 30 years, a sense of quality rather than fast turnover product due to expectation. Have in the past last few days read Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowics and about a week ago his Kosmos. Most intriguing works of writing, such as “the Modern”, “the Young and the Old”, the way the mind weaves its own trap, the repetitions, the repetitions which work like prayer beads, the low key monotony, there where the personal sails into reverie. The sound of the stones waiting underneath the ground. The becoming in the glance of another. Have winged words thus flown? Have feather, will travel. Travel I did, from North to South, from East to West. Picked cranberries with Blacks and PortoRicans under Tony Colasurdo in Hammington N.J. Stowed snow with the Ainus in a department store in Kobe. And then it is Amsterdam, my roots, my house of Oranges, my tongue, the body of language! Not the wind, not the banner. Not the many bridges, the splendid canals. But yes all of it, and now I have taken it upon myself to compose a work of prose. So since I am of age and raised here it is only since 4 years that I write in Dutch. Had to start from scratch, had to turn everything inside out, backwards and forwards. And still trouble with spelling, catching up as it comes, but mostly considering my take on the available vocabulary as an advantage. But how could I after the Irish poems write anything in Amsterdam? So my next will have the scope of that. For after all the “dryness” of Buster Keaton is only skin-deep, the skin of the painting, the trade, the tom-tom, but then it is a question of balance, “he who sees doesn’t hear?” 139
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Well, anyway all I wanted to say is: it’s been a pleasure! I thought of leaving you a book too, but better not, you’re travelling. If you like I’ll send it by mail. We could exchange, books, notes, mythology’s? Very Best! Harry Hoogstraten *** Hotel Pulitzer Amsterdam 5/24/85 Dear HarryThis is being written in greatest haste - we are just trying to leave for the airport. But I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your wonderful letter, and the kind words of praise for my stories. Thank you. I, too , wish we could have talked longer. I like it here and I want to come back and stay longer. I am thinking about next spring AB will be publishing a new collection of stories then , and in the fall (1986) they will be doing a book of poems. I had a fine time here in Amsterdam, Though just not a long enough stay. I wish you well in your own work, and will keep your letter near at hand and answer more fully when I’m back in the States and recovered from this trip. We leave for Ireland in a couple of hours. This is with my greatest good wishes and very best Regards Ray Carver.
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Meet My Maker The Homemade Captivator Charles came by last night, pulled out his Atlas and handed me the poster of this evening’s reading. My name isn’t on it, but I agreed to come anyway and read some of my amazing stuff. Good evening. But the reason I am really here is that I hope to get laid. Let me tell you: I’ve been in a most confusing state of utter horniness for weeks. It’s just fucking unbelievable: here I am in the power of my years and I don’t manage to get laid at all! I decided to come and participate because I feel it’s time for me to come again. I am beyond shame. Okay, I’ll be straight and blunt about it: if there are any women in the room who want to go to bed with me I’ll be thankful and promise to fuck them until their ears fall off. As a matter of speaking, that is. I haven’t got an exceptionally large cock but surprisingly enough it has been known to stay up for three days in a row. It got to the point where I went to bed and my cock stayed up! No kidding, it was that bad. Would I lie to you just to get laid? I am very fond of deep-throat sucking, buggering, drinking horribly expensive champagne all day long and urinating upon each other. Mind you I’ve never done the latter but I think it would be great fun. I’ve tried a few times sleeping with boys, but sorry guys, it’s not my style. I sat up naked for a whole night with a Japanese teenager in a dump in Nagoya and all he wanted to do was sit with his arm wrapped round my shoulder and look into the mirror. I slept with Allen Ginsburg once in Daan’s house in Schiedam. Nothing happened, we just stirred around and in the end huddled together a bit, each of us within the cocoon of his own reckless transparency. No, definitely: I’ve had it with men. They are too much. Too much like me. It’s just awkward. I’m really crazy about women. I like the way they fit so well. 141
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The way they look at you. Some sense of female strut which captivates me completely. I’m not the dominating type, but I know what I like. So come on all you girls, lets get it on! Here’s your chance to lay some ass and pussy on one of Mokum’s truly original poets. Come gather all you delicious baby’s give me some tongue and I’ll promise you nothing less than the glittering stars in all their heated splendour. Let me know, give me a wink, pass me a note. But please not all at once for I too am only human even though the glory of heaven lodges and runs havoc within my enormously versatile brain which I have only just begun to graze. I tell you: I like all sorts of girls. I like girls with bottoms firm as the young fox. I like big girls with hair between their toes and pimples on their enormously broad asses. Sure it’s a man’s world honey but I am crazy about the girl who delivers the newspaper with her thumb up her nostril while she leans over to sweetly jerk off the stupid lapdog of my aunt’s nanny. I am very fond of goose pimples on the belly, very fond of sweat-puddles in the crook of a golden arm languidly stretched across the pillow stuffed with feathers. I love all her perfumes and treasure the intimacies of limbs entangled and touching. The long hours bouncing like a yo-yo between her perfect breasts I guard with the utmost sincerity. Such terrific moments of ecstasy are not easily thrown hither with the froth. Why beat about the bush: I like pussy! I am a woman’s man. I worked in a hospital for a year without once getting excited about the stiffs I had to lay out upon the cold slab. I assisted in labour twice and was once permitted to cut the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors. I’ll lick out your navel if you like. It’s the astronaut which stirs and tosses around inside of me. I enjoy seafood such as oysters and the slimy eggs of the wondrous salmon gone dizzy from the hardware. When the 142
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weeping waves of the moon enter her body I’ll be man enough to take the thread between the skin of my teeth in my bill and pull out the tampon slowly. Little Red Riding Hood has tried in vain to hide her version of the “Menstruation Blues” from me. But I won’t tell anybody. I am well read. I am filled with fascinating facts, some fuzz and lotsa fantasies. I sat with Diogenes among the wild pigs. I ran alongside Herakleitos to record the pearls which dropped from his mug one after the other like leaping particles of wishful manure throned on bliss flushed with joy. Herakleitos said: “All beasts are driven to pasture.” Furthermore he said: “ The psyche lusts to be wet (and die).” But let us not bypass Diogenes: To a woman who had flopped down before an altar with her butt in the air I remarked in passing that the god was also behind her. Not bad, eh, for such an old fucker! I also like this one again by Diogenes of Sinope: “You can no more improve yourself by sacrificing at the altar than you can correct your grammer.” Maybe just smartass-jive but deadly accurate. That’s it, time to read some poems. But don’t forget all you lovely girls, beautiful ladies and fine woman out there: I am here and I am ready to promote the state of succulence! I also paint and take pictures.
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Tunesia. A Mercedes Benz. A Night on the Town in Her Beautiful Landaulet. A House with many Rooms and a Fence and in every Room a Bed. Plates of Silver and Food. I feast all night longing for sleep in the vale. Testudinarious sofa for Tet Rad. It will come to you from the shade from the saddle from the mouth of a golden trout. O to guddle with the guitarfish to tread water with the wahoo to ride with the hippocampus to skate with the butterfly to blaze with the barracuda to stalk the lamprey with the oquassa to tope with barn door sucker O to be all fizz flash & fission !
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* This a free sample of extracts from ‘Come Again’ by Harry Hoogstraten (Barncott Press 2015). The complete version is available in print and ebook editions. Full purchasing details are here.
AKIMBO
Tiny Turkeys Lapping Muddy Water Saturday night is just fine with me. I’m ready. I’m wearing my dancing shoes and I’m off to the ball! Now, wait a minute: I’m invited! I know somebody at the door. I know a man who plays in the band once a week. I’m a friend of the guy who puts up his paintings every fortnight. I used to come here daily. I’ve lived here for years. I’m on excellent speaking terms with the woman who for a whole decade attended your toilets and with unfaltering dedication licked out the ass-trays at your Sugarbowl. I chewed upon the black knickers of the big-eyed girl selling popcorn until she fell asleep from sheer ecstasy. I once bit off the ear of one of your disc jockeys but I didn’t spit it out. No Mam, I didn’t, I sewed that bit-off left ear right back on! What a night. Everybody wrapped-up in their fancy membership cards. I should have brought along my Mojo after all, The sight of her, all in chains at the end of a purple rope, would have split their pants.
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Some Room Into This Air All night they dance. Close to the grid. Nobody knows their secret. Figures of a stunning beauty. Like an act of nature. One night in the shade I figured that the key to their secret lay in the fact that they made up the steps as they went along. That was the dance I most wanted to learn. By the light of the moon I looked for teachings long lost. Some spoke of motion and the idea of fear. They said I had to listen harder. To put my ear closer to the rails. Others spoke of flight. Of get-away cars and bridges burning like cards. Of huge airplanes crashing and crumbling like pieces of paper. The dance is all. I venture: shoes in hand. That’s what the dance is for.
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The Journeyman’s Mechanism of All-Round Chronology The perfect exactitude of my thoughts in this dumb chickentown does not fucking correspond with my present immaculate condition. The rich, as dumb as they come, as smart as they are: they welcome the poor! It’s late at night, that is to say “I think” it’s late at night. I don’t know. All of my 66 clocks one evening at 10 past 10 threw up their 132 hands, dropped their 792 numbers from their fast melting faces and stalked haughtily out of the ring. It’s late, I know because I closed the curtains hours ago. The radio is in a perfect mess, broke the antenna because I responded in an overheated manner to some unspecified static. Anyway, to be sure: I’ve had it with this bashful locality. The other night all aflush I wrote: “I’ve decided to hate them because they’ve stopped loving me.” Now I wonder and worry at the sound of such hard and rather reckless yes almost impetuous language. It seems a waste. Too much honour. As I get older I complain more & more each day, like the wind. I started to mumble and began to utter series of complete absurdities. The Russians, my informers tell me, have nothing on me. Nothing at all. They also tell me that the American couple who showed up late at the vernissage blushed dreadfully after they read of my “crocodile-with-the-bouncing-balls” act. You’ve no idea: they even tried to translate me! Who needs clocks these days, who needs clocks when you can have the time of day just by keeping a close watch!? 149
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Eligible Subject Matter In Response to the Chain letter 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.
Chimere’s & Harbingers Lucid Side-Bands Factitious Argot Rivers & Tiny Nuances Unsettling Outlooks Halfway Diagrams Outer Braidings Topper Wavelengths Relay Bases Active Antennae Major Concerns Intricate Devices Local Inheritancy’s East of Moscou Orbits Several Origins Unquestionable Matter Constant Noise Overhead Alternations Spark Transmitters Instruments of Rain Wayzgeese Umbrageous Cormorants Chains of Circumstance Fissions of Gamma Ululations & Owls Rancid Duck Butter Haywire Premonitions Reverse Histories Planet Stricken Aliens Minute References Imponderabilia Gelastic Antidotes
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Calme Bloc Ici-bas Chu D’un Désastre Obscur.
1.)
The room was rather dim her hair
(.6
2.)
So lighte she asked him pointing
(.5
3.)
To the old cream to rub some in
(.7
4.)
And he pur king broke in a sweat
(.7
5.)
Oh off my comet my throne undone
(.6
6.)
For you my queen visibly a dream
(.6
7.)
He screamed turning to the green
(.5
8.)
Screen are we where we appear to
(.6
9.)
Be oh honey cash and diamond lil
(.6
10.)
Allow me to fill you with manglu
(.6
11.)
Come on my king I pray thee stop
(.7
12.)
Groveling and start thy shovingk
(.4
13.)
Oh majesty yr roving pout and ug
(.6
14.)
Your beautific leisure thus grab
(.4
15.)
My guatemalien deep space vistor
(.4
16.)
Thy lips then burried halo logic
(.5
17.)
In the doplar lapsus red so blue
(.6
18.)
Which recount the cord not bound
(.5
19.)
For them nukes with their pluton
(.5
20.)
And their millstone skeleton neg
(.4
21.)
Ach never matter be welcome come
(.5
22.)
That close to sense of my measur
(.6
23.)
Ere whatt the sliding and sheltr
(.5
24.)
My mindful windbag curves ouzel
(.4
25.)
Yup chat my tar and meadow trier
(.6
26.)
Zing and re joice the moment lite
(.5
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Helden Held up for hours by a messyderailment of a mile long mule train jam packed with veterans from the Great-Hero-Conserve-Factory works wearing maraschino cherry nosecaps, frostbitten hardhats and their eyeballs glazed from years of dull wittingly gazing into the hot boiling ovens and the churning mills filled with maple and mull. Their blood thick as treacle. Toothless, their gums softer than a marshmallow. Their skin translucent like the sheen of caramel on the tongue. Shine of apple juice on the lips of a peroxidiced dead ringer trapped in the luxuria of coma. The pores crave for sugar, worse than heroin. Die Helden helplessly thrown by the savage rush of castercloy laced with betaphenethylamine. The blue derms burning like a bitch in heat.
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On arrival at the Plant we were met by the lefthand trustee of the managing-director: Cane Mousse. He’d been expecting us. I introduced Anita (La Vita Cosi Dolce) who had agreed to tag along and act as my spouse. The decoy worked. The duck fell for it and after the usual small and sweet-talk we proceeded to Mousse’s office. Cane Mousse funked with both of us informally and I noticed again the devastating effect Anita had on small men at the head of large corporations. Men who had come to sit in chairs like thrones and on close scrutiny were dwarfed by their faces. Who hung on like flotsam, who leaned back with imbecile aplomp and were propped-up on satin pillows the crude colour of festulated liver gone dingy twice over. I left the core of the rap to Anita, that’s what I’d hired her for.
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She sure knew how to butter-up the sucker, how to spread the table, how to lay out the cutlery. Just so you’d know. Dangling her long legs like an ostrich running from a tornado lofted fedora filled with hard-as-a-rock-boiled eggs. Anita was all ice, dooi en dooier, all a-thaw and yolkbrim. Her head held high like a route paved with diamonds. The perfect whelp: my cub set sail. I’d run into her again by chance. On one of those odd days off. We’d been on a more or less mean sort of noddingfoot acquaintanceship for years. Shuffling in and out of halfway houses like stray cards in a deck without a captain without ever asking each other so much as the time of day.
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We’d lived outside of all that crap and knew how to talk without saying a word. Until suddenly one late afternoon on a hot summer day I close collisioned with her measly shadow in a subsoilian bar where a bunch of rowdy locals were busy pumping out her stomach with a ruffshot funnel while a lobotomized excarneval prince was frying-up-loud the fetid lamenting residue of her enematic secretion. When she came to I got her a hot grog and after she caught her breath she laid her head in my lap like a puppy. Wrapped her lush lips tight and firmly around my shaft like a babe of the woods. I don’t know why but somehow she made me feel like a new version of a young Vladimir Nabokov and I stood erect and felt all a-sudden how my eyebrows outgrew their latticework.
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And assumed the shape of some brand new stone masonry. Sweet Sue, I melted into her mouth like a Gletsjer Adrift and Tossing. Leave it to Anita to make all the shifts. All the animals in my glass menagerie grew bellbottom feet like elephant stands for parasols from standing in one place for too long without moving. Glass is not unlike a river of ice. The firework brushes shoulders with the crescendo-casccadesque of fearless floes. She flooded me. In the logbook I kept at the time I recorded the occurrence as: “on the killing floor the equinine creature flogs the stud to utter sillyness.� I wanted Anita to row the boat but the shore kept receding she said.
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At the end of the afternoon I found myself master, minister and prime-pimp of a colossal mammalian earth mother-whore with a brain like a laser who’d deep-throated me like a long lost lizard-squid. At last I’d come to rule over a vast singular body of shrewd yet bitter cellular composte. Her molass was exemplatory and pronounced stetopygical. Don’t call us we’ll write you they’d say but we wouldn’t listen. We’d been hogwashed once before. All of the above unique characteristics composed our ad-hoc alliance. The combination proofed a stroke of luck. Together, the two of us, began to bask in our respective invincibility. Not a moment to loose, not a second to waste. High time to rephrase the droll babble of the Utopian foreskin fathers. To come forth and rise and shine anew from the dross and the drove.
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Concordancymbalo It was on the last day of my stay at the legendary Hippodrome of Wymbritseradeeltrog, that pre-fabulous edifice so deserving of Frezian Prud, as I was leaving the luxued chambers I’d tenanted that Cane Mousse tried to surprise me into dropping the reigns I had with risk to my life just taken from the frazzled saddlebag laid across my camel’s behind. His very presence was at odds with the entire enclave. The more so since he’d let everybody who wanted to hear it know that he’d be out of town for at least 6 weeks. He’d told me as much on arrival after I’d checked in, now almost 24 days ago. “What do you want Mousse” is what I wanted to ask in my most casual manner but said instead: “What’s up Cane” and I managed to make it sound not like a question. The seclusion I’d practiced was paying off at last. “Nothing much” the Mousse answered as he moved in close to shake hands.
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I could see he was studying me fast. He looked distressed as only a man who time and again missed every train on every platform will look. Bollixed up like he’d just climbed out of the wrong side of a can of worms all together. The obvious non-bewilderment playing me parts must have further reduced the old rapscallion to a Perplexitas Nonplus Excellente! Such a thin veneer between true compassion and the rejoicing in another’s mishaps. Nevertheless faced with the crudeness of a nurd like Cane I kept my perturbo on pilot. You could never tell with a guy like that. The shade of the hovel he came from still clung beneath the brim of his good-citizen hat. I’d known from the start that some waiting had to be done but I couldn’t have known the waiting wasn’t for that long. I put the set of reigns back in the saddlebag laid across my dazzled camel’s behind.
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Meanwhile Cane up to his old tricks had gone off on a rumpus in search of Miss Betty She Mozzle and her informal companion since adolescence our braw Brou HaHa Foofaraw. He’d apparently hacked in onto some prime quality dope and reckoned that the Stray Dromeo’s were the ones who kept a finger on the pulse of the Plus-Fours who were next in line to the Great Scats of Volendam. It was a joke of course as so many of the rumours leaking from the vine. A couple of local boys he’d run into during a visit to NewYork. Next thing he knew (something so akin) they went out fishing every Saturday and Sunday until very late in the afternoon. When it rained they were quick to go for cover underneath the nearby bridges of the railroad. They waited out the rain there and went on fishing. They always rented the rowing boat from the same farmer.
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They never saw the farmer in the morning when they stepped into the boat. The farmer had a lot of other land to attend to. Land that stretched towards the horizon at the far end of the rail road tracks. When they had done with the fishing and rowing they’d leave what they owned him on the table inside of the door to the kitchen where at other times they’d drank black coffee with the farmer’s lovely daughters.
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I was Ever To ... The first foot I was here to set upon your fabled shores was not one of the two that bore me thus far a drift. It was the other foot, the other foot of a cobbler who couldn’t stick to his last. When finally the mould was cast the vessel we’d boarded only six weeks earlier pulled way from the quay and left me halfway the gangplank with 2 right feet to my left and 2 left feet at deadcenter. This tore up the cobbler. He swore he could always tell a good chef by the look of his cover. As I stumbled to and fro on the plank and was about to comment upon the abrupt departure of the tanker, he swung out at me, hitting me on the side of the face. I turned around and kicked back hard. The balance blown. We ended in the water where we became friends fast to save either one of us from drowning.
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No sooner ashore he wanted my shoes. They were all wet. He offered me 600 florenen flat and the address of a first class whorehouse, the best this side of our pothole. I took the money, gave him the wet shoes and as I walked away barefoot I memorised the address, tore up the note on which it was written (a faded Fax from the Monumental Diary Den) and pulling down my hinged Perspex, folding the cloth I hailed a taxi driven by an old flame named Mary Extraordinary. Mary hadn’t changed much, not a hell of a lot, still as stunning as ever. Never one much to talk she drove me straight to the address I’d barely begun to memorize. Turns out she knows it by heart. It wasn’t easy to look at her directly. Although still remarkably beautiful the wreckage of a life dedicated to dredging faltering salesman from the harbour had left its traces.
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Something hard and green around the eyes. Her glance had turned many a good man to stone. Her stare could make one stutter. It had been twenty years but I could see by the way she looked away that when it came to hauling ass she’d still beat any of the meretrixen this side of the din. She’d always reminded me. What good are far away friends if you don’t get to see them every now and then? If you can’t poke fun at them. Have some critters? As we drove on she would bat an eyeful at the traffic lights. An eyeful or two will do. The lidded brows gave her a hooded appearance near to a constant frown. Nuff to bluff the bleedin horse’s blinkers rite off the earth’s face. The second time I set sail from the cove I carried a suitcase with 23 pair of shoes in it.
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I’d absconded with them for a good reason. Every time one pair would be completely dry I’d toss them overboard. As the tanker passed the City of Cork I looked around to see three large overdressed locals in a motorized coracle, fishing up the first eleven pair of shoes, six pair had sunk, the others were still bobbing. Swift as I could I threw the sail. With them on my tail I’d be bushed by noon.
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Waterford Woke chilled to the bone sometime around nine this morn, looked out but view blocked by frosty flowers all over covering the pane. Twenty degrees below zero due soon drifting over from far Russia. O Great Mother. Now a-sitting with Multilayered clothes, will do. On Glass: Perplexed I looked through the glass at the sheer brittleness of the tiny yet perfect animals in the menagerie. Kate swung at the intruder with a detached arm of a piece of Hepplewhite furniture. Spencer had a minor nosebleed but he burned through the liver coloured cloth given him by Frieda the Red Baroness who just descended from the dumbwaiter in the shape of a bashful Phoenix. Casta Diva lifts the cup of plenty, picks up the horn and hears how Ari concludes another deal with Joseph K. The splendid gems litter the desk where a laser powered alarm-clock tells the time. It’s ten past ten as always. Tommy enters with in tow Roger D. the one with the most magnificent stutter of his generation. First he was blinded by the light, now he can see from here to there. Many milestones later the girls who scale the ladders enter, they are introduced by Aporpheus: Yma Sumac, Billie Holiday (In the Sun), Miss Mary Broken English, Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi. They make a stunning entrance wearing wigs of steel blue grass carrying tin drums filled with silver sand and decorated with intricate designs painted by glaucomas dwarfs who toss soft boiled eggs at the faithless collectors of shellshocked ostriches. Nick Lowelands casts an icy glance at Anna locked in wood of many hues.
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The Robber Sole Symphony I was in the garden that morning in May putting the spuds away in the pit to ward off the bleedin blight when I heard the phone ring inside the shed and as I went in to answer it I noticed the dog at the foot of the door started to stir in her sleep. I let the phone ring two more times so I could catch my breath. It was Duke: how’re you doing man, swell, listen Bud he said I was wondering if you could come over to the club tonight to fill in for Sahib who just called to say he’s not feeling too good and we’d better go on do the gig without him, what you say man? Fine with me duke, count me in, just got my horn out of hock a couple of days ago and I’m feeling great, right on top of it, what time are we on? Around one but better check in round ‘bout midnight to get reacquainted with the other dudes and acclimatize to the stupefying heat of the place. Will do Duke, I’m your man. when I stepped outside again the dog had gone. I picked up the spade and did some more digging until the sun slid over the wall of the garden and fell into the arms of some littering bullfrogs in the pond I was glad to be alive and washing the topsoil from my arms and legs I thought of Count Tolstoy stomping around in his boots in winter’s cold and terrifying heart. Also I caught a brief glimpse of Betty Gill while her father Eric was busy toying with the succulent lips of her eye-filling muff until she came moaning softly. As the whey ran down the fingers of his masterprinter’s hands he studied the effect on the anus of Betty who had just turned sixteen. Gill reported in his diary (July 1921, his wife Mary was out shopping for squid and a bar of ebony to fashion the new dildo Eric had promised her ): “Why should it” (the anus), he asked contract during orgasm, and why should a woman’s do the same as a man’s?” But I digress. The dog had returned looking a sorry sight, more stray than ever, I didn’t know what to do about her, she looked so frail and forlorn, I wondered about her life as a puppy. I went into the house proper, shed my loden and kicked the Wellingtons into the 167
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bottom of the armoire. changed into the tux fresh in from the cleaners. They’d done it up good, taken the edge of the sheen from the trouser’s seat. Removed the gum with a tiny spear from the Mint from underneath the soles of the patent leather pair of chopped-off buskins lending height and bearing witness to ancient saxophonist in tragic times such as these. Combed my hair, shirt bow tie socks the lot I was ready, called a taxi and on the way out with my beloved sax I pocketed a box of firstclass reeds. The taxi pulled up at the kerb and I got in the backseat with the sax safe in its bomb and pestilent-proof case next to me. All dighted and temporarily free from fear I sat back and relaxed as the taxi ducted in & out of the traffic. Tuesday night in near-town Houston. We move along Main past the Rothko Chapel towards West Gray and the Holiday Inn and clock in at the Ambassador at twelve over midnight sharp. “Mums Jazzplace” is tenanted to the basement (an erenow cyclone cellar built by a space wrecked survivor of the Samoah Butblurr Vanguard Zond). Valet parking, Lunch, Dinner, Bar, Telephone 713/659-1004. The drive had been uneventful and I’d dozed off lightly for even Homer sometimes nods when shortly after the Black Zone we passed the Rothko Chapel and soon after a giant Marlboro Billboard loomed into view and the driver who’d been silent thus far began to gesticulate wildly and saw the air cursing at the top of his voice in Russian! I sat up pronto and asked for a translation. Turns out the dude used to drive Mark Rothko from the chapel to & fro, ran his errands, took care of his brushes, hung out and got drunk with him and is outraged at the way the jackals of Marlboro ripped off the estate of the painter after his suicide at five o’clock in the afternoon in his New York Bowery street Studio. The Bunker. Every time he sees one of their billboards he goes crazy like a bull. The bill boards make him ill and one day he will stop smoking all together. Morton Feldman became a friend and when the Dalai Lama hit town he’d watched the ceremony on television with the night porter at the 168
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Holiday Inn. There was a Marco Polo Chicken Menu card on top of the television set. There is no satisfaction to begot. But for the dogs. The petra’s, hungry ghosts prowl the streets of the city. Predators turn gruesome tricks into profit. dig it: dididigital! Between the city of Muff and the Mummy of the opera lies Baron von Münchhausen with the Mug of the Mullay Dough. To speak unrestrained of digression and duffel coat. And there is Doug and Dick is with him and there goes Roy with Charlie flying again. And isn’t that over yonder Bud and Buttercup? Doug welcomes me with a glass in his hand, take five, give hug to Saint Huck, put the mouth to the utter dug, the upper volta of Bombay and Peking-duck-You-Sucker. O lion hearted price of liberty be it eternal vigilance! To keep on searching for a heart of gold in these barren climes. To weather the rogues and robbers. “Fehér digged his own grave?” In honour of 1936 and not an “archäism?” Doug Watkins weaves his lines on his bass all alone. Mums a fine place to be on a Tuesday, September 18th, nineteen seventy nine with The Angel Sucheras Band until one and then it’s up to us, we’re the Pegasus Relay Rangers. I check my notations: The Duke finds but little comfort in the dugout. I see Doug come thru the Dutch door, is that Ringolevio Emmett F. Grogan with his Diggers snooping around backstage with their bootybags? Can you dig “gründlich?” 169
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Who needs clocks these days, who needs clocks when you can have the time of day just by keeping a close watch. For an extra ton I’ll make of that “swatch”. Why even Lou Reed sits clipped with a Suntory whiskey in the box, wouldn’t you for 50 big ones? Dick dug the mug, he took one shot at it, bought two others identical to the shot one, put them upon the shelf, no more shopping to-day. That would be a fine close of the hunting season for bargains but there’s more mug to consider. Marcel The Champ saw this early: “Wanted” was all he wrote. Isn’t that all we want, to receive never ending love and to give in return? The Count goes on, the beat sits in my feet. The Duke plays piano. Ivory and Ebony. Madame Indigo regrets she likes your favours very well. I will walk One More Time to April in Paris with Ella and Basie by the light of my Lucky Star. I was a young boy in the fifties but I’m older now, such a shame for “youth is wasted on the young.” Waste not want not. The old clichés, “the armature of the absolute.” Lord Kelvin in a soapbubble en Vadertje Ube avec son vélo. Gris Gris. Aristocracy in rhythm. Rhapsody in blue. These Song lines dreaming for you....
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Still On A Perennial Printing History In the summer of 1968 Fred Jordan of Grove Press, New York City sent me a contract for “3 People in Fuck in a Hot 4 Tatami Room at 5 in the Morning.” It was a 2 page affair and the terms were generous so before my auscultationary system, rising to a pitch, could get the better of me: I plucked a feather (I was living in Ireland at the time) from a goose’s bum and quilled to bits I signed the contract and sent it back without delay. The Evergreen Review was at the top of my list. The best magazine money could buy. I’d started writing in 1966 while living in Japan and here I was only 2 years later living in Ireland the first Dutch poet (who hadn’t written anything in Dutch at all) about to be published in Evergreen! A few days later I was to celebrate this good news at a reading in Dublin where I gave a loud and joyful rendition of the poem. The audience was baffled and mesmerized by the obvious bravuro of the piece, but with a copy of the Evergreen contract in my pocket I figured I couldn’t go wrong. It had been a good day all along. I’d come up to Dublin from Kerry to collect my copies of “Icarus”, the poetry magazine published by Trinity college. The editors had given me a generous spread in their latest issue and invited me to the reading. In the afternoon I’d run into a kid at Trinity. The lawns had just been mowed and the lovely fresh green grass was all over. The kid was about 12 and run away form hus itinerant family who’d threatened to stall him with the pots and kettles at the Last Blasted Abbey on the Blaskets. It was either that or join the circus at the annual Puck Fair. So the kid ran. When he saw me jamming my pockets with the grass he came up and asked what I was doing. I told him: “I’m filling my pockets with 171
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grass,” I said: “feel, look how good it smells.” He followed my example, sometimes it’s best not to ask too many things. Before long our pockets were filled up with the sweet new-mown stuff and thus graminaceously loaded we headed up Grafton Street towards the Duke and the Bailey where Brian sat at his stout with Gabby and Phil Lynott stood with Gary Moore at Bloom’s Ecclestreet Door. “Hey, Phil, man you want some grass, what you say Gary, how about you Brian, how yr doing Gab?!” We threw the stuff over them, showered them with it. Everybody happy, more drinks. And so on to McDaids in Harry Street. “Don’t harry me,” said the kid. At O’Donoghue’s we were welcomed by Rock Brynner and his stage manager Peter who were in town to do an adaption of Jean Cocteau’s play: “Opium.” Rock’s father Yul had been a friend of Cocteau and Rock had met the Great man several times when he was young. To do a play from the haunting fragmentary jottings which comprised “Opium” had been one of his most fervent wishes. We wished them luck, (“one has to mention the names” wrote Milosz) gave them some grass and settled in at Toner’s. Not for long. The kid got restless, said goodbye and left. Enough tomfoolery for a day. Enough to last one for a life-time? It’s all true, whatever I may do. The poem never appeared in print, the magazine folded, (nobody in Ireland had ever heard of Evergreen, none were ever seen). Every now and then I wrote to New York to ask if it was still on. They always wrote back saying” It is still on.” Amsterdam 26 Februari 1990
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En Route Just about 50 years ago I was 21 years old, it was 1962 and I was in India in Benares. One afternoon I saw this Western looking guy with a pair of sandals under his arm and I walked up to him and asked him “Hey are you Peter Orlovsky?” and he said “Yes I am, let’s have some tea over there in the marketplace.” We spent the afternoon drinking tea and talking. Peter gave money to every beggar who asked him for some, told me he’d stayed on after Allen (Ginsberg) had left for Japan (to meet up with Gary Snyder, (who I was to meet also later on) to study some more with his tabla teacher. Before saying “bye bye see you “ he gave me a route to take in Bombay where if I wanted to, and I did, I could smoke some good opium (just to the right by the Bengal Army barracks, up to the Fire engine station, thru the alley, left of the bamboo shop).So there, after Madras, Colombo, Singapore, Kuala Lumper and Hong Kong, I arrived in Yokohama. Time passed and I found myself in Berkeley, California on Dwight way, just off Telegraph seeing Super Spade every day, Jerry Rubin, Bruce Conner, the Dead & Co and one night in San Francisco I sneaked into the Fillmore late (no money to buy a ticket) after a Lenny Bruce show (with Zappa & The Mothers (25th of June 1966) and seeing Ginsberg talking to Bruce I was old and bold and weathered enough to go up to them to ask Allen Gee if maybe Peter was around, “No” he says, Peter he in New York. Alright anyway already, contact established, Lenny he don’t mind much I busted in, I could see that, he smiles so sweetly. Then just about 40 days later, first time in New York I got in early for Lenny Bruce’s funeral, he die he did, a gathering in the Judson Memorial Church on Saint Marks, Master of ceremony: Paul Krassner, poems and music by many, Ed Sanders and the Fugs did their Group Grope, Allen there, Tony Scott and to great cheers and hoots: a heckler just like in a Bruce 173
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sketch, Hallelujah and Amen. Going out I saw Orlovsky wearing a Jain mask, washing down a Camper-bus with lotsa foam and boiling water, going fast and crazy like a diamond cleaning dervish. I said “Hello Peter, how ye doing?” He just fine and splendid. Again many years on, say around 1973, this time we’re in Ro Town Ollanda and Sir Allen G. is on the Poetry International list, he had broken a leg, leg in plaster, he upon a crutch or two. I am glad to see him and talk a lot, he ask me “Hey, you wanna sleep with me?” I say “Yeah sure, but I am no gay you know.” He no mind me neither, brotherly love: here’s what I wrote much later: “I slept with Allen Ginsberg once in Daan’s house in Schiedam. Nothing happened: we just stirred around and in the end huddled together a bit, each of use within the cocoon of his own reckless transparency. No definitely: I’ve had it with men. They’re too much. Too much like me. It’s just awkward.” (from “Meet My Maker The Homemade Captivator” (page 242), first published in Andrei Codrescu’s ‘Exquisite Corpse’, Baton Rouge, 1986). Now there you go, this is quite a leap (yup “leaping poetry, see Bly). Almost there I think, gotta be brief. So deska, we’re again in New York, the year 1977. I’m touring America together with James Koller and Franco Beltrametti (later to be joined by Jim’s wife Peggy, their two little children, a dog and from China and Zürich, the abominable Giovanni Blumer). We did a reading at Saint Marks Church on the Bowery (invited by Ron Padget), we slept at Allen’s apartment nearby, he sat front row, making a lot of noise, clearly enjoying himself. We visited with Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley, Jim Brody, Harris Schiff + many others too many to mention. I read my Japansese orgy poem (page 14) and in Dutch my poem about the seagulls, this one for Peter Stuyvesandt whose bones were interred underneath the church (“Dutch Rook”, page 86). I stomped and pounded the ground with my boots (not too long after that we heard the church had burst into flames and burnt down, was it the wrath of 174
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the wicked colonizer? There’s no telling now, I better shut it). On and on came 1978, I’m once more in San Francisco, this time with my true love Suzanne. We are at the Mabuhay Gardens for a concert by Jim Carroll with his new band (who before were called “Amsterdam”, the guitar player had worked at the Melkweg). Jim’s first album “Catholic Boy” was out and he was jubilating, Allen there too, always been a big fan of Jim, as was Kerouac. Lewis MacAdams, Suze and I walked outside and Suze said “ Look, isn’t that Herman Brood, over there by the lamppost, sweaty and sloughing, his make up running.” And it was; he was touring with the Kinks and after his concert was looking around for something to do. We took off with a guy called Dan in a big white Cadillac. Dan was the chauffeur for an old lady who had been the mistress of Charlie Chaplin. We drove around all night looking for kicks, ending up at Jim’s place with Dan and friends. Then it’s ’79, we got our ‘One World Poetry Festival’ here in Amsterdam and many poets come all the time, so also Peter and Allen and Stephen and of course we get on the bus and tour. We do Eindhoven, Apeldoorn, Gent, Brussels, joined by Gregorius Corso along the way. And oh my lord, most of them dead and gone now. I am filled with grief and sorrow and old as hell as well, what pray, but don’t tell me, awaits me as yet. It flies, believe me, it does, thus far this thing called Time has been on my side, but to conclude; here’s a quote by Eubie Blake (given to me by Steve Lacy in the Bologna Foothills): “If I had known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself.” Blake was 98 years when he said so and went on to become a clean 100. That would be fine with me, a clean loo will do. Eubie Blake also wrote the wonderful “I’m Just Wild About Harry”. So who knows, it may be written. Harry Hoogstraten
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Closing Time Beltrametti ? Yeah, I knew him. Franco and me, we go back almost 30 years. We travelled. We went all over the place. We took trains boats buses planes Tokyo / Yokohama / Luxembourg / Amsterdam / Volendam / Haarlem / Utrecht / Rotterdam / Maastricht / Zürich / München / Biasca / Riva / Locarno / Lugano / Venice / Bologna / Parma / Santa Maria Codifiume / Milano / New York City / Georgetown / Orono / Fort Kent / Five Islands / Boston / Buffalo / Saint Louis / Cincinnati / San Francisco / Bolinas / Orgeon / Venice / Venice again. Travel we did. All over the place. Franco Beltrametti, he was my friend. I liked him very much. Why don’t you all go home now.
Amsterdam 9-12-1995
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Reviews International Poetry Reading (by Ted Berrigan) A packed house of over 300 people responded enthusiastically with much applause and noisy shouts of approval to this season’s only truly international poetry reading last night at St. Marks Church in the Bowery, home of the New York City’s important ‘St Marks Poetry Project’. Included in the crowd were many of New York City’s younger poets, as well as a contingent of their older and more famous colleagues, headed by the beaming presence of Allan Ginsberg, who seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. The three poets who read were Harry Hoogstraten, from Amsterdam, who writes in both Dutch and English, Franco Beltrametti, who is Italian-Swiss, and who writes in both Italian and English, and they were joined by the American poet Jim Koller, who lives in Maine, and whose poems show the strong influence of Japanese poetry. Most of the noisy shouts, primarily of approval, with an occasional dissenter, occurred in Mr Hoogstraten’s set, the first of the evening. He began his reading with a set of poems in Dutch, and although most of the audience did not understand the contents, the strong and long rhythmic lines, with their repetition of sounds made the quality of the poems obvious. The Dutch language seemed particularly beautiful, and also fitting in the Church where the bones of Peter Stuyvesant are interred. Mr. Hoogstraten then read a long selection of poems in English, a few of which were his own translations of poems he had read in Dutch, and the rest being poems he had written in English. Harry reads his poetry with great joy, sometimes almost chanting, sometimes in machine-gun bursts of lines out of which he would often break into a quiet and lyrical passage. He made his politics, his pleasures and his loves and dislikes brilliantly obvious, and most of 177
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the audience were delighted to respond to such an electrifying performance. A feminist objection or two was heard when Mr Hoogstraten made all too clear (to the objectors) his absolute delight in womanhood. Perhaps one or two of his audience differed somewhat with him on the proper definition of womanhood, but as he was not at all “defining” anything, but simply singing what were quite actually very traditional ecstatic love poems, protestation seemed a bit quaint. In contrast to Mr Hoogstraten, Franco Beltrametti read his poems very quietly, almost but not quite inaudibly. Curiously the effect of having to strain to hear only added to the immense charm of Mr. Beltrametti’s mostly fairly short poems. He too read in his own language and in English, sometimes translations of his own Italian poems, and many poems written in English, and recently. At his best Mr Beltrametti writes beautiful poems, filled with sensations and made from clearly felt emotions. He is passionate in his own very specific manner about nature, about friendship, about love, and about children. To hear him was a great pleasure. Jim Koller finished the evening with a selection of his own terse, almost severe poems, many about living in Maine in winter, with the water frozen, snow on the ground, and bear tracks on the path where he walked with his son. Jim Koller brings the intensity of the Haiku, with its graceful and careful word selections, a proud and almost fierce sense of his own personal knowledge of human solitude. Each word in each of his poems stands out clear and exact. The audience, obviously impressed with Mr Koller’s stance and his integrity, applauded the poem warmly, and then applauded long and loud as each poet read one poem as encore. The evening was a success, even more so than most, in a place where fine readings are the rule rather than the exception. Ted, Berrigan, 29-30 March ’78/
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The OracularPalette Ready Made (by Ira Cohen) “Protect the flame because if it is not protected it will be blown out by the wind before we know it.� Wilhelm Lehmbruck via Joseph Beuys who spoke it a few days before his death in January 1986. Trying to write about the art of Harry Hoogstraten is a tall order after the many layered experience of entering his world as a cosmic installation some two years ago in what was soon to be destroyed space the size of an airplane hanger somewhere on the edge of Amsterdam between Mythology Avenue & Dream Street. The accumulation of a lifetime made by a collector of what others would throw away, the gilded detritus of our own civilization made into a future hallucination or museum. A memory of rain falling through the roof brushing the mind with the rust of time in the lapse of thought. Live birds in the eaves of imagination made real by a masterful juxtapositions in the blurred mirror of a water-stained sensibility studded with paintings, assemblages, modern echoes of Lascaux painted on brick walls by the ghost of Ensor. Nothing cosmetic here, no careerist crap but experience rendered from the deepest recesses of an integral fantasy, a theatre which challenges complacency & encourages collaboration. I remember leaving by way of a shaky ladder which was placed against the outer face of a space dedicated to the collective memory on the verge of demolition. It was here that I discovered the renewal of love through the work of Harry Highstreet. This is the gift & this is the power. Nothing really changes. Blood is still red & the flame is still gold. Maybe in another million years a new star will rise. A special thank you to Marina Van der Heijden who opened the door. Ira Cohen, NYC Aug 8, 2002. 179
About the Author
Harry Hoogstraten is a Dutch poet and artist who has been a prominent figure in the European spoken word scene and has performed with the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. He was one of the founding organisers of the One World Poetry Festival in Amsterdam. His visual works have been exhibited in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Paris, Mßnster, Venice, Singapore and Tokyo. 181
Acknowledgements Some of the writing in this collection first appeared in the following publications and I want to thank the editors for their support and interest in my work: Intransit (Portland, Oregon, ed. Bill Thomas & Gary Snyder). Workshop (London, ed. Norman Hidden). The Anthology of Little Magazine Poets (Asylum Publications, ed. Tony Dash), Concentrate (ed. Michael Butterworth), Say It Out Loud, (London), The Sunday Times (London, ed. Hunter Davis), International Times (London, ed. Bill Levy), Yahabibi (London, ed. Spike Hawkins), Rolling Stone (S.F. ed. Charles Perry), The East Village Other (New York), Coyote’s Journal, (Maine, ed. James Koller), Dutch Song (Androgyne Press, S.F, ed. Ronald Sauer), Icarus (Trinity College, Dublin), Broadsheet (Dublin, ed Hayden Murphy), The Kerry Man Newspaper (Tralee, Co. Kerry, Ireland), Zebra (ed. Diane Ozon & Hugo Kaagman, Amsterdam). Frog Flagrance in Rolling Stock (University of Colorado, Boulder, Co. ed. Jennifer Dunbar & Edward Dorn) Letter to Raymond Carver in SC (Feb 1986, ed. Theo Niekus, Amsterdam). Meet My Maker The Homemade Captivator in Exquisite Corpse (Jan-April 1986, ed. Andrei Codrescu, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA). Helden and some of “Lars, Maggie and The Voyage (from Come Again) in “WORC’s” (zur Melkerei, Germany and San Antonio, Texas, ed. Ralph La Charity, 1987, ’88, ’89).
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Also by Harry Hoogstraten From the Field, 1968. Boxing Days: Poems and Visuals, 1975 - 1979. Onze ramen op het Oosten, 1978. Kiekjes, Fort van Sjakoo, 1978. Andiamo: Poems Great Raven Press, 1978. False Start. A Book of Typos, 1978. The P 78 Anthology (Ed), 1978. Sloow Tapes (recordings of readings on cassette tape): Allen Ginsberg/Peter Orlovsky/Steven Taylor/Harry Hoogstraten De Leeuwerik), 1979. Honderd Paar Schoenen Op De Treeplank Van De Papieren Planeet Hensen En Wat Winterboek, 1980. Lipwoofer Lugs Qalib, 1981. Dantes Folio & De Voltameter, 1983. Akimbo!, 1990. The Organ Works of JohannSebastian Bach, 1994. The Confessions of the Last Monkey, Cold Turkey Press, 2012. Battling Siki, Sloow Tapes, 2013. Back In No Time. Brion Gysin Interview (Schiphol Airport, 1981) + ‘The Master Musicians of Joujouka’ (recorded live in France), Sloow Tapes, 2014.
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* This a free sample of extracts from ‘Come Again’ by Harry Hoogstraten (Barncott Press 2015). The complete version is available in print and ebook editions. Full purchasing details are here.
BARNCOTT PRESS www.barncottpress.com