splat
issue 7 mar./ apr. 2012
art
brown jb st pol daniel ray patrick
ShirrStone Shelter Dolls standard issue machine vol. 2
exploring chicago with film
1
2
copywritten splat art magazine 2011
splatartmagazine.blogspot.com
caution: this is a form of gonzo journalism...they may be typos and other errors of that nature
shirrstone shelter dolls daniel brown exploring chicago with f ilm jb st. pol ray patrick standard issue machine vol. 2
10 30 43 56 74 104
front cover “cheers� by jb st pol 3
ContriButors kerry Trautman Kerry Trautman writes at dawn in Findlay, Ohio. She reads regularly with the Broadway Bards at the Original Sub Shop in downtown Toledo, and is a member of The Toledo Poetry Museum. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals, including The Toledo Review, PoetryLetter, Alimentum, The Coe Review, The Country Mouse, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Think Journal; as well as in the anthologies, Tuesday Nights at Sam and Andy’s Uptown Café (Westron Press, 2001), and Mourning Sickness (Omniarts 2008).
josh meraz
I’m originally from Brawley, CA. I love drawing, painting and short walks on the beach. I am currently a student of graphic design at Kent State University and live no where near a beach
4
Ryan Warner Ryan Warner is an artist, musician, writer, and editor of splat art magazine. He enjoys the creative genius of fine craft beer brewers, his familiy, long daydreaming sessions, and strapping a bag of cameras to his back and spending the day on his bike or longboard following his creative currents.
Michael Kocinski Michael Kocinski was born and raised in Toledo, OH, where he has participated in the poetry community as an open-mic host, event coordinator, performer, tutor and peer editor, and coeditor of the short lived poetry magazine The Cornfed Angel. He recently moved to a small farm in Ida, MI, with his family. Now he lives with several hundred chickens, eight cows, several dozen peach trees, and the skeletons of decommissioned farm machinery. He’s a founding member of the Almeda St. Poetry Co-op and the Toledo Poetry Museum. A few of his poems have found homes in The Mid American Review, The Toledo Review, Bear Creek Haiku, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Rusty Truck.
5
6
Nkp
ws phflph Opening Letter
So it's our 1 year anniversary with this issue...hopefully there will be many more as we grow. i was going to say the snow is melting and spring is coming..things are looking up...but since here int toledo we never really had snow this year i'm not really sure if i should feel lucky for a mild winter or if things are chaning a little too fast and snow is a thing of the past here. anyway, my point was that things are looking up. we have big plans for this year. we are always looking with creative people to work wtih, so if you've got some ideas give us an email. on another note i got to spend some time away with my wife in chicago a few weeks ago...traveling is always a good thing for us. i honestly have never seen dried shark fins in a jar before...or dried out sea urchin for that matter until this trip to chicago's chinatown. i also got to eat dinner at murphy's bleachers, wich is located right behind the bleacher seats of wrigley field...it was pretty cool being a fan of nostalgia baseball. but the art..yes that's what we do...art...yes we have art in this one year anniversary issue..we got beautiful dolls handmade from russia that are incredible, we have fantastic paitings of classic cars, we have a photogapher that does amazing things with film ...some things that your digtal camrea won't let you do...and we have a great interview of one of my favorite poets of all time. if you look to the left of this page you will notice an add i made for a gallery of work that we would love to publish in our magazine. it would be really cool if you would send us submissions, far out man floyd febuary 26, 2012 10:11 listening to jerry garcia band 7
8
9
ShirrStone Shelter Dolls
by ryan warner
10
Sometimes when an art form is done so well it takes on a life of it’s own..a pesonality of it’s own...and after awhile of gazing at it you start to wonder if it is really real or not... if it is trapped inside it’s confinement ..or maybe it’s in it’s own world and we are in the inside. This was the case when I came across these dolls on the internet a few weeks ago. I was never really a fan of dolls before...actually I never really ever thought about dolls. Sure I would see the art toys in the comic book stores and in Juxtapoze Magazine. I have even had my own mother make me handmade monster dolls for a comic book that I haven’t had the time to create yet..but as for real dolls..never a thought...until now. ShirrStone Shelter Dolls come from the brilliant imaginations, and hand, of Olga and Nikolay from St. Petersburgh, Russia. And for once I am at a loss for the words that accurately describe these dolls. They have their own personalities, beauty, abnormalties and fetishes. The sheer beauty of how they are made blows my mind. These dolls take toy art to a whole different level....a level of artistic intricacy that not many can pull off. I’m still not convinced that these dolls are alive on some level. I’d like to thank Olga and Nikolay for not only sharing their work with us, but also for doing this interview in English, which they admit is not their best language. Thank you.
11
What are your names and where do you live?
Olga says: We live in St. Petersburg, Russia. Our names are Olga and Nikolay. We are very proud that we live in such a wonderful place. This city possesses to be creative. Nik tried forces in University of Art, but has not finished an art education. I’m after termination of faculty of a drawing in my town has got education in Saint Petersburg Repin State Academic Institute of Painting Sculpture and Architecture (Academy of Arts). I’m professional art critic and graphic. Nik says: My dear wife Olga has arrived to St.Petersburg to study at Academy of Fine Arts. There on one of shows we met.And for many years can not imagine our life without art.
12
13
How did you get interested in creating dolls?
For a long time we created a static dolls. It was an interesting process, but static and motionless dolls oppress imagination. We wanted to create a “living� doll,with which would like to communicate. And she became a friend and companion in all things. Because of absence of information and appropriate material to create articulated dolls,we had many times to fails and small lesions. This experience has made us stronger and Is more hardy in the process of creating ball jointed dolls. By long experiments has been found suitable material - qualitative liquid epoxy + powder + pigment. Working over properties of this material more than a year, we have received a certain mix answering to all doll needs and approaching for creation jointed dolls. At creation of a material we aspired to quality and properties of porcelain, excepting roughness and fragility. Properties of a material: - not toxic - strong - durable - water-proof - steady against mechanical damages and falling (with careful handling) - pleasant weight in hands - cold and smooth (like a stone) When you take our doll in hands she pleasantly heated and created impression liveliness.
14
15
16
17
18
19
Who and what are your influences and inspirations?
Influence and inspiration is all around us. The nature, dreams, animals, and mysticism, which is always somewhere nearby.) The world is full of half-tones, and we’re trying to catch them and embody. Creating dolls is like writing a painting. The doll is a blank canvas. What are the steps that you go through to create each doll?
Olga says: Doll Making is process long, labour-consuming and simultaneously interesting, magical time. I’m talking about anatomy of dolls, creation of prototype as a whole. If at the beginning will defined image, after doll creating itself. She will be what wants to be. We can only catch the mood of the doll and give it a more precise performance. The birth image of doll starting with an idea that is constantly moving in our heads. We have ours general album for sketches and notes of thoughts in which we alternately write and sketch necessary. This is the tradition. Because sometimes even the most ordinary things cause inspiration and strange associations. For example a bizarre form of clouds, or the delicate pattern on the frozen window. The technical part of work rather tedious and boring, but no less demanding. There need more perseverance, precision and patience. After creating a doll prototype,must be properly make forms of doll’s parts.
20
Mix compound in the exact proportions. And fill forms of a mixture. Forms with epoxy to keep at a certain temperature range for several days. It is a guarantee that in future doll was a strong and durable. Further, if there are no problems and scrap, doll parts are processed (drilling, abrasive, fitting of joints), and prepared for painting doll face and body. At the same stage are created various tattoos and decorations. Here in fact the birth of a doll. For better to keep poses, doll’s joints glued layers of leather. The assembly takes place with an elastic cord and hooks made of stainless steel. Completes the process of creating wigs and accessories.
Welcome to our site www. sssdolls.webs.com 21
22
23
Your dolls definitively have strong personality to them and captivating beauty and at times a strangeness or eeriness to them, how do you balance this all out?
Olga says: Yes, this is is partially true. We often hear that our dolls are very real and alive. That is what scares the viewer. But when they take our little girls in hands, instantly fall in love with them. And this for any author will warm heart. I think you’ll agree. Nik says: Our dolls are like people, each with its own character and mood. We on it to impact can’t)
24
25
What are your plans for the future? More dolls? Something different perhaps?
Olga says: We have plans for many different doll’s projects. Some are already in process and wait their successful completion. Creating dolls it is a constant search, as in any kind of art. We don’t want to stop there. We work with form, volume, plasticity line, sculpture doll body. Tell you a secret, is close to completing a doll from new material. Nik says: All same, I want to seriously take up painting, which for some reason a few years does not do it.
26
I think it’s fantastic that you draw inspiration from mysticism, nature, dreams and animals. Do you have any other artists, past or present, that are an influence on you as well?
Olga says: I don’t understand how artist can affect on creativity another artist. Everyone has their own way. Creativity can be only understood or not understood. I can say that I like Old Masters: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder and others. Fascinating work Alfons Mucha. Illustrations of fairytales Ivan Bilibin. Damning of bourgeoisie’s morals art of Édouard Manet. Sculpture of greatest Michelangelo. Nikolay says: I admire work of Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Francis Bacon. Graphics Odilon Redon. Olga added this about the negative photos that appear in this article.
I since early childhood adored to look a photofilm and to examine persons of relatives and friends in an image negative. Where black picture becomes white, and white - black color. It is other light world of a reality. Other reality contrary. Now I often play with photos of our dolls. The interesting moments sometimes turn out. This is my strangephotohobby)
27
28
29
daniel brown by kerry trautman
orange chevy
30
Daniel Brown paints cars. But if you are expecting glossy, glimmering lacquers and chrome, you won’t find them. Brown’s works are diffused, textural celebrations of machines infused with story, nostalgia, and grace. His cars are a part of our lives’ landscapes, a part of our families and our personal histories, tenderly colorful and nearly alive. About how much of your time painting is spent on commissioned work, and how much is begun purely as an original piece?
I would imagine that about half the time I spend in the studio is directed toward commission work. It varies on time of year and what shows I attend. Is your artistic process the same for each? Do you have a harder time sort of “connecting” to a vehicle painted on commission—feeling its story?
My process isn’t intentionally different for commission work. I have long believed that art has to be able to embrace the unexpected. Commission work seems to be harder to do this and as a result tends to be painted “safer” technique wise. It’s rare to find anyone who doesn’t associate a certain person or type of person with a certain car. It can be personal or general. I see a Buick Park Avenue and think of my parents. I see a Mazda Miata and think of a middle-aged balding business man in a suit. I see a lifted F150 and think of a skinny country kid with an over-sized Adam’s apple. These associations with cars are what I enjoy. My first series of paintings that depicted a car was of my ’67 Firebird that I was restoring in college. I look at those paintings and remember my friends that helped me build it. I think of working with my grandfathers tools that have been handed down to me. I think about the satisfaction of hearing the car fire up for the first time in 15 years.
31
When painting a commission, I often get a chance to know a little about who and why it is being done. Depending on the circumstances, I can make a connection and really get excited about why it is being done. When it becomes more than an image of a car, I am more into it.
mid-american 32
hollywood
33
The overall look and mood of each of your paintings seems to be dramatically affected by the weather and the time of day, the amount of daylight at the time of the painting. Do you have a preference? Also, when someone commissions a piece from you, do they specify what sort of ambience they’re looking for?
Night time, artificial light (inside garage), and dusk, are all great lighting choices for paintings. If someone wants a certain ambience, they need to photograph it in that setting. You can’t fake lighting and background. I have tried, and they always look pieced together. I think when someone imagines what the artwork of an auto-enthusiast might look like they would imagine something slick and crisp, something shiny and high-contrast, perhaps. But your cars are not flashy or modern. Instead they are treated the same way more “traditional” subjects of a painting might be treated—a forested mountainside, or a pasture with a dilapidated barn, for instance. It is as though there is a conscious effort to elevate the status of the vehicle from mechanical to fundamental, from hard to soft, from object to creation. Is that something that you are conscious of?
There has been a resurgence of traditional style hot rods and customs. Cars that look like they are straight out of the 50’s and 60’s era of building. These are the types of cars that appeal to me most. I have chosen my medium of subject… now I can move on. For me, painting and technique are what I enjoy. It seemed in college that so many (including me) were trying to complicate things and quite frankly, it made my head hurt most of the time. I decided then to simplify subject. I imagine that this is how the abstract artists felt. I just decided to approach this same non-objective with simplified, overtly objective subject. It’s amazing how many “art” people really can’t get past the idea of subject to see what I am really trying to say through technique.
34
35 chevy coupe
untitled 35
decline
36
devil witch
37
steel life
38
midnight l.a.
39
phoenix hill
40
I recently attended an annual car show in my small town, with hundreds of rare and/or restored cars exhibited, lining Main St. downtown, and all I could really think was, “Ooo, I like the color of that one.” I know nothing about cars. I respected all of the work that had been done, the maintenance, the research for just the right part to complete the look, but never would I imagine them being beautiful—heartbreakingly, warmly beautiful enough to hang a painting of one of those cars in my living room. It’s almost as if those shiny, quirky vehicles that I wandered lazily past are different creatures entirely than the subjects of your paintings. My eye simply does not see what your eye does. So I guess my question is, when does a car become a painting in your mind. When you are, say, at a car show, are you looking at the chrome fenders, the woodgrain dashboards, the headlamps, or instead are you seeing the way the color of one car reflects on the car to its left, or the fingerprints smudged on and near the door handle from curious passers-by? Do you imagine the paint tubes you’d reach for, the brushstrokes you’d use?
I don’t go to many car shows just because they are usually kinda boring. More information about Daniel Brown can be found at his website: http://www. autoexpressionist.com/ or at http://www.marketstudiosnorth.com/ , which also provides information about artist Jennifer Noren, profiled in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Splat.
41
42
exploring chicago with film
by floyd
marilyn monroe
43
I recently had a chance to explore Chicago again for a very short while a few weeks ago. We were only there for two days so I didn’t have enough time to do the city up right like I really want to. I have that planned for this summer. But this trip was pretty cool. The weather was somewhat sunny at times for a Mid-America winter and it actually was pretty mild out considering the fact the we were on the coast of Lake Michigan in February. The winter always freaks me out a bit about bringing my expensive dslr camera with me when I know I’m going to be on foot for many hours. One thing is I’m afraid of it getting too cold and some small part breaking in it. Then it would cost me a small fortune to get it fixed....too risky for a broke artist. It is also too big and heavy to fit in my coat where it could stay fairly warm when it’s not in use. However I found that my La Sardina camera, my Holga 120N, and my Lomography Fisheye No. 2 would all fit in my winter coat pockets very easy. So when it came time to hit the streets for our excurssions around the city, the La Sardina and the Fisheye are what came with me in my coat, along with a few rolls of cheap 35mm film.
44
rollin� around the city
45
view from the 36th 46
numbers to get around 47
sweet bike bags
I like the stripped down feel...the lack of buttons of the fiilm cameras.... 48
by providing some sort of lack of control there is joy and adventure again in my work
bigger than i 49
sometimes simplicity allows you to see
simplicity 50
urinals at murphy’s bleachers
51
52
window shopping in a foreign city 53
54
55
jb st pol
by ryan warner
walk on the clouds
56
Sometimes I tink that in this day in age of photography people get too caught up in technology. Photography has always been an expensive art form. Having to buy film, cameras, developing chemicals, and lots and lots of paper. But now we focus on very high priced editing programs, expensive dslr cameras, lenses that go on them, and then the constant urge to upgrade to the newest technology... which costs even more money. It seems like a never ending cycle. Novice photographers sometimes feel that they always have to have better and newer equipement to compete in the photography world. If you check out the Lomography society at http://www.lomography. com/, you will find an enormous amout of people, from all over the world, that are still shooting with manual cameras, some that don’t even take batteries, and with this stuff that you don’t hear much about called film. One of my favorite stars from this Lomography society is a brilliant photographer....who did used to shoot in digital...Jb St. Pol, or jeabzz, as he is known to the Lomography world. Jb was a featured artist on the Lomography site recently...actually right after I asked him to do this interview for me, which was nice because, he not only deserves it, but it also let me know a bit about him before we did this interview. LIke the simple fact that in France, where he used to reside before moving to New York just recently, he used to go out and shoot with a group of photographers around the city. Most photographers I know are pretty solitary when it comes to shooting, so this excited me. It reminded me of a street art group. Is the younger generation tearing down traditional walls of photography? Probably yes. Things do change and it’s about time the photography world changes just like the rest of the world. I hope the rest of the photography community finally sees that with a good eye and talent you don’t need a thousand dollar camera to make expressionate art that moves people, like Jb is doing.
57
diana carnival
58
What got you into shooting film and with Lomo cameras? Do you shoot digital as well?
I can’t really explain why I love so much analogue photography. Probably because when I studied photography at university it was with analogue cameras. I love shooting films, the feeling of putting a film inside a camera, the sound of the shutter. I also love to be surprised when I get a roll back from the lab, the excitement of discovering the unexpected results Lomo cameras offer a lot of possibilities due to its many defaults. There is something really authentic with those toy cameras! I used to shoot digital, but in the last 4 years I’m shooting only with film. It’s more challenging but with practice and some skill, you can easily control your results to obtain what you are looking for. You have a photo group that you are part of called Les Parisiens, this kind of reminds me of a graffiti group in a way, where members of the group work on projects together. Can you tell us first what the name means and second how this groups works?
Well, the name “les parisiens” doesn’t really mean a lot, we picked it because we were all from Paris. We created this group just for fun with other four lomo-addicts from Paris (guiguiste,adbigmilk,fabyen and remiboiteux). It was a way to share our work and to create a collaborative projects with people in the lomo community. We developed many different projects with “les parisiens”. Most of the time we were asking members of the community to suggest a theme to shoot. For exemple, one of our themes was “shapes of temptation.” Paramir, a lomographer from Nederland suggested this, so we shot around this theme, and then we did a film swap roll with him. Here are the results : http://www.lomography.com/homes/les_parisiens/ albums/1645983-shapes-of-temptation-theme-double-with-paramir
59
http://jeabzz.darqr
60
room.com/gallery
trou normand
61
Most of our projects were done in collaboration with other members of the community from a different country. Another type of project we did was to share one of our cameras with one roll inside, with each of us shooting 7 shots. What was really interesting was observing how we could easily know who shot each shot due to our really personal style. In your article of lomography magazine, which you were honored to be featured as Lomoguru of the Week, you mention film swaps and rumbles...what are these?
Film swaps is an important part of the lomography community. It consists of shooting a roll of film and then rewinding it and sending it to another lomo friend who will shoot it all over again. This way, you can easily have great collaboration with a friend on the other side of the earth. Most of my film swaps were made in a random way, meaning, I didn’t know what my double partner had shot on the first layer. But sometimes you can decide on a theme with your partner: for example, he can shoot only portraits and you only landscapes. This allows to better control your results. The rumbles are small competitions organized by the lomographic society international. (LSI) It’s a way to win some piggies (coupons to buy stuff at the LSI online store) and to win some respect from the other members of the community ;) Occasionally, some rumbles are for trips around the world or other more interesting prizes…. Most photographers that I know here in the United States seem to prefer to shoot alone, but again much like graffiti artists, you mention in your lomo interview that you have met up with many other lomographers and go out shooting together and have a good time in each other’s travels. I really think that by doing work like this you’re taking photography to another level and in a way taking a lot of the “stuffiness” out of photography and making it more interesting and evolving it. What are your thoughts on this?
62
turnpike
63
pinhole lady
souls keeper
64
black way
65
Yeah indeed, doing lomowalks, which means to walk and to shoot with friends, is a good way to share some techniques and skills with others lomo friends. And that makes shooting a lot more fun! :D So, while most of us do prefer to shoot alone to develop our personal style, by doing lomowalks, you have an opportunity to share your passion with friends and have a good time. What is lomography?
First of all, lomography is a brand, which develops lot of toy cameras. For me, the most important part of lomography resides in its community of analogue photographers. It’s a great community, where everybody shares tips and you can really get great advice and improve a lot your photographic skills. It’s also a very open community where members write article about cameras, accessories and films. You can really find lot of information about analogue photography through this website as well as meet other people with who to develop projects. What are the cameras that you have and what are your favorites to shoot with?
Well, with the years, I’ve collected lots of cameras! I think my favorites are the Nikon fm2, the lomo lc-a+ and the Holga WPC. The Fm2 is a classic analogue camera, I love it because it is an excellent SLR that offers you the possibility to easily make multiple exposures, it can go up to 1/4000 speed and it’s a great camera if you mount beautiful lenses on it. The lc-a+ is one of my favorites, too. You can mount lot of accessories (splitzer, tunnel vision lens, macro lens attachment, etc) which offers you many creative possibilities. The Holga WPC is a wide pinhole camera from Holga. It’s uses medium format films (120) and for the pinhole lovers such as myself, it’s just one of the best pinhole cameras!
66
double sea
flying nemo
67
sharon sicily
You tend to do a lot of multiple exposures in your work. how does this work? Do you have ideas in your head of what you want to do in advance when it comes to doing stuff like this?
Hehe indeed, I love multiple exposures. There is several ways to make multiple exposures. As I explained before, you can do it with a friend through a film swap or you can do it all by yourself. With experience, you can easily predict the results of multiple exposures. Some cameras, like the lc-a+, allows you just to shoot one shot after the other without advancing the film, creating multiple exposures on a single shot. You just have to be careful to not overexpose your first layer. One technique to not overexpose your film, is to shoot a 100 iso roll at 200 iso if you want to make a double exposure. And you can too shoot it at 400 if you would love to make a triple etc. If you don’t have a camera that allows you to do multiple exposures, shoot your film, re-wind it leaving a bit of film outside of the canister and then load it again and shoot!
68
sea portrait
You can also make double exposure by using some accessories like the splitzer for the lc-a+. It divides your shot in several parts, and in each shot you expose one of the parts, which is really useful to create spectacular images. Most of the times, when you get used to doing multiple exposures by yourself, you succeed in obtaining the results you had in your head or you won’t be too far from them. But sometime you’ll have really stunning and unexpected results. That’s what I love in analogue photography: to be surprised! :D
69
levitation
upside down cherry 70
71
72
73
ray patrick
by micahel kocinski Chasing the Ting photography by ryan warner with “Big Daddy” Ray Gene Patrick
74
*The poems included in this interview can be found in Ray’s chapbooks, which are currently out of print but I imagine arrangements could be made with Ray if you’d like a copy of one. I know I have several copies of each I could send to an interested party. Covert Press collected a few of Ray’s poems in a chapbook called “On the Road Again (Selected Poems). You can order that from Michael Grover; contact him at www.covertpress.com. The poem “New Residence Inn” first appeared in the Polk County Poetry Association’s annual poetry anthology. I’ll have the relvant information on our blog, as the release date and copywrite info are at the moment in the clutter of my poetry room! This, this is really hard to do. I am not a journalist, I’m a journaler. I keep a regular journal and have done so for something like 15 years. In that time I’ve probably written about my friend, and the poet featured in this article/interview, Ray Patrick, several hundred times. I met him at a little, unusual restaurant called Sam ‘n Andy’s Uptown Cafe, where he hosted an open mic night on alternate Tuesdays. I was 22, maybe, and honestly I don’t even remember how I got there the first time I went to read and hear poetry. I had been there once or twice before, because a group of poets I workshopped with moved our meetings there on the Tuesdays alternate to the reading. But this reading, woh. It was a revelation to me. I met Ray, and several other poets with whom I am still friends today. Here’s what I remember about those days. Ray wore lots of denim, still does. And t shirts adorned with wolves and dream-catchers, and other Native American motifs, and black clothes, and a hand-made beret a lady friend knit for him, he wore that a lot, he called it his poet hat. Now it’s my poet hat.Ray wore turquoise rings in those days. I don’t think he wears them anymore. He always carried a satchel or a briefcase, something he found second-hand, and it was full of poems, bottles of wine or beer, disposable cups, photographs, and things, gifts for someone. He had us all in his mind, and gave many of us tokens of admiration he found while rummaging through 75
second-hand shops and his own belongings. He had a vast collection of stuff: magic rocks, books, oils he used for massage and other things, posters, post cards, vintage clothes, funny hats, plants, lighters--odds and ends like that filled his life and briefcase, and he made gifts out of it all. Every time I see him today, he has a small token to give, something he thought I might like or thinks I could use. There’s more to him than that, of course, and I’ll get into it all eventually. But the thing is, I mentioned that this was hard, and what I meant is this: I’m not a journalist, I write poems. In poems, memory doesn’t have to be reliable. It wavers, it blends the facts, it skips narrative beats. In journalism it’s a bit different and I’m struggling to remember all the details of this man I love and our long, very happy friendship.I want to get it right because I didn’t do an interview with Ray like I’ve done with the previous poets. I sat down with Ray and we talked, for two hours, and I recorded most of that talk with a little hand-held tape recorder. Now I have to listen and listen, take notes, listen more, etc. Here you’ll find references to other poets in town, some I’ve interviewed or mentioned before. You’ll learn about a few important locations, like Sam ‘n Andy’s, Brewed Awakenings, and Noble Thought, which were all coffee shops where poetry was featured here in Toledo. Any Wednesday was a monthly get together at Ray’s home where tournig musicians,mostly jazz and folk artists, could hang out, jam with local musicians, unwind and relax. It’s going on today, still the forst Wednesday each month. It’s a little lower key now, but still fun., You should also know this: Ray is a real outlaw poet. In this life he has been a yoga instructor, a soldier, a pimp, a drug dealer, a taxi cab driver, a father, made friends with blacks and gays when such a thing didn’t win one any awards. He can read palms and auras. He makes beautiful ceramic pots. He paints, draws, and writes poems. In deep meditation he discovered what his past lives were like. He married several times. What follows is an interview that is by turns tender,
76
vulgar, warm, blasphemous, sacred, sexual, and sometimes bombastic and willfully antagonistic. If you have dearly held religous beliefs, be prepared. If you’re sensitive about sex, be prepared. There’s a lot of talk about both here. Ray was an enthusiastic meditator and skirt chaser. All roads of conversation lead back to God, or as Ray affectionately and crudely puts it, pussy. Ray pursued meditation until he saw the “White Light”, and he pursued women, and sex-love with the same vigor. In fact, it might be fair to say that God and sex are the same thing to Ray. Find out for yourself... Our interview takes place in a local coffee shop where Ray and I have previously spent many hours together. We begin and Ray notices what a piece of crap my hand-held tape recorder is. RAY: I’ve got one of those I never use, would you like to have it? MIKE: Sure. RAY: Remind me when we go out, you can have the damn thing ‘cause I never use it. MIKE:: I’m going to have to start taking this in the car with me, ‘cause I write poems in my head on my drive home every night. So anyway, the TING? RAY :Okay. The TING (Ray is referring to a short collection of his original poems called TING) is of course spiritual poetry, and I deliberately, but then I, I went back and re-read it and it I thought “You still got some sexual things in it”. That was ‘cause I still, that was my trip, my road trip. MIKE: So don’t you think, I mean, that stuff has to be there if the poem’s going to be authentic. If it’s going to be real you can’t deny, you can’t lie. If you lie to the poem then you lie to yourself, to the people reading it, you know? RAY: Mmm, right. Well, the challenge to me is, and I’ve done this, quite often and I know I can do it, is to step outside myself and write about the political people, or God, not in reference to me but still its in reference to me because that’s how I perceive them. And,
77
And, uh... MIKE :I read an article this morning that calls what you’re talking about, well, your poems are narrative, they’re... RAY: They’re stories, right. MIKE: One of the things you do in a lot of them, not all of them, of course, not every single one is a perfect piece of art... RAY: No, absolutely not... MIKE:...but you’re able to maintain a kind of intimate distance, you know, where the poet and the voice in the poem are the same thing, but one isn’t speaking for the other.You’re close enough to put the facts in place, but far enough away for an emotional base for a reader to settle into. RAY: Well, some of my favortie poems that I’ve written, that I think are good, are my Haiku. MIKE: Yeah, your Haiku are lovley. RAY: Yeah, those are the few poems I’ve been at least satisfied with. Because, ah, because like this one (Ray recites from memory) There goes that old frog, every time I forget about him he sings to his love ,,,you know, broken hearts, mating time. MIKE: Broken hearts, that’s the other thing about your poems you talk about... RAY Love? MIKE: ...being a sexual...being, writing sex poems, and being vulgar sometimes, and you can be that, too... RAY: But see, like the women, when I read that poem for those who know me, about having oral sex with the deaf mute with the rubber arm, they all went “Eeew!”, but I thought it was beautiful ‘cause I did do it, and she loved it...
poem for those who know me
78
(pussi #5) the deaf virginal mute with rubber left arm ...yes I did! &stroked the rubber arm sensuously as she groaned in deaf mute moan.
RAY: ...that was her first orgasm. MIKE: I guess if you do that too much it becomes a joke. Like, there’s something about Bukowski for me, where you have to read a whole book of poems to find a couple that make you... RAY: Stand up and listen? MIKE:...but for the most part, it’s like you reached a point where you wanted to entertain people with dirty poems and it sort of made a fake persona. RAY: Yeah, yeah, I... MIKE:They just filled in the blanks... RAY: ...well they liked it because I made them laugh. And that’s what I like, I like making people laugh. Now, if I really, if you would say to me “Ray, what is it you would really like to be in your life?”, and I was thinking about it when I was younger and I just didn’t do it, a ventriloquist, with a dummy. He would have done the poetry! MIKE: (laughing) Yeah, yeah! RAY: Yeah, that’s what I wanted to do more than anything else. ‘Cause I used to do it with a sock when I was a kid. MIKE: A ventriloquist, huh? RAY: Mmmhmm, that’s what I really wanted to be in life. So poetry is like a form of ventriloquism! (Ray’s laughing. He laughs throughout this interview, mostly at himself,) MIKE: Poetry is a form of ventriloquism, but your past is speaking through you right now. You’re on a little stool and your past has its hand the back of your head and it’s forming the words you’re saying. RAY: Yeah, because I was in antiques I was going to become a, um, I had two lesbian auctioneers up in Michigan they said they would take me under their wings and school me in being an auctioneer. I said, well if I’m going to do that I want to be a ventriloquist, so I could put “Colonel Booboo” up here and say (he garbles some fake auctioneer fast-talk). 79
MIKE: I can see it, Ray, I don’t know why you didn’t do that.I feel like, I’ve known you for fourteen years, I think. Close to it. RAY: Well, it’s been that long since Sam ‘n Andy’s. MIKE: And it’s probably the first time I’ve heard you say you want to be a ventriloquist. And we’ve talked for years and years, hours and hours, right? So I feel like that’s something, that surprising moment with you, that’s what your poems are like, too. Here’s this poem in this anthology, about being in the inner city on one side, and watching the wealthy pass by on the other, and you think it’s going to be about stratification, or something... RAY: Social modes, and the cement... MIKE: ...or about what the poor folks are doing tonight, but then Paul Desmond’s on the radio and you don’t know if Paul Desmond’s dead or alive and that’s what trips you up. It becomes, it’s not a social commentary at all, not really... RAY: And the fish really weren’t biting either (chuckles) New Residence Inn reflections around midnight shimmer silver moonspikes across this bay on the far side stands the new residence inn american flagpole breezing over concrete bedrooms of sleeping social molds and i on this side fishing pole hopefully baited groping for the last three beers of two six packs as my confiscated radio (a grudging gift of a $17.00 attempted cab beat), playing on its two-way four speaker system tampa’s all night jazz station. a lonely trumpet riffs a smooth golden bass sax responds i hymn along
80
& wait for my fish to bite that special dream fish. the song softens out...ends a universal radio voice announces: “chet baker on trumpet, paul desmond on sax playing ‘journey to alturaus’ the last recording desmond ever made.” what?...desmond?...last recording? desmond dead...? or had he just stopped playing? GOOD GOD! ...the fish weren’t biting either!
MIKE:...and that’s what everything, all your poems, all your stories, all, your whole life, is like this, might look like being distracted to someone else, but it’s really like moving on to the next thing before you make the expected move, do the expected thing. It’s what the poems are like. RAY: Well I, I’m pretty sure I was ADD when I was little. Probably still am, but ah, I can handle it now, ‘cause I look at it and well, let’s use it, and I let it use me. And I have this theory, of course, that my brain pathways got fucked-up when I drowned, because none of my sisters have that problem. That could’ve had an effect. And Now and now it’s this miserable barrier because I’ve lived outside of my inside trying to run from this influence of darkness this misery where did the Gods or Goddesses go? I bet they left at 5 yrs old when I drowned myself Sioto River fell in dead they said but I arose from a coma in 3 days resurrection back from the dead they said
81
never the same but a new awareness of dark that nightness all life searching high on beer, yoga poetry prayer pussy & drugs where is that blissful light? unstable searches arch my back bent now my time has come to accept some sort of God just to play the odds & get my soul’s bet on the line.
RAY: But, ah, you know, what really pains me now is, though, my belief in my form of God, the spiritual, the White Light, and the, um, all the spirit guides I had and this business, I thought, well that’s the same god-damned thing as the Catholic religion, I’m forming all this structure, believing in something I don’t believe in. And that threw me for a loop because I enjoyed talking to my wolf and bear, and Alfred, (Ray’s ‘spirit guides’) but it was just, it’s no different from that preacher that said God had taken him to Heaven three times. And I thought, the hard thing was I questioned myself, did I slow my heart down so low that I got a big shot of adrenaline and that’s the reason I felt so good and saw this White Light? I wanted to ask Satch (a guru Ray befriended) that but I never got to ask him. But yet the structure of going there, going through the White Light, the structure itself and it took me months to get there, your heart beat is like before the White Light starts coming, ONE...TWO...THREE... (Ray counts out slowly, snapping on the beat), yeah, and you just, you can’t even tell if the Universe is out here or if your whole body is the Universe. And I enjoyed that sensation, ‘cause it made me realize how brief life really is...
82
MIKE: I imagine it would do that. RAY:...yeah, and, ah, what was it, that Royal Yoga, if you ever get a chance to find that book, it was written a couple thousand years ago. Very, very simple, 38 pps. I gave away my copy and I couldn’t find anymore. When I went to D.C. I went to the Library of Congress and I got a copy there and I copied it on the copy machine. (Laughter) Because like I say, every line in the book is worth meditative reflection for weeks. Like I told you before, the very first line: “Attachment is the cause of all suffering.” And that’s true. I took weeks thinking about that. MIKE: I feel like I want to keep bringing you back to the poetry...but I feel like... RAY: That is my poetry. My life is a poem. MIKE: I was going to say, that is your poetry. Your poems are about... RAY: Spiritual... MIKE:...holding on too tight and letting go, over and over and over again, your own, you doing it, other people doing it, politicians, religious leaders doing it. That meditation is ongoing for you, I think.. RAY: Oh yeah, I still do... MIKE: ...attachment is... RAY: ...the cause of all suffering. MIKE: I would also say that your life at this age is reflective of that, too. How many things have you given to me that you don’t want anymore? That you need to unclutter your space. You’re always giving it away, giving it away. RAY: That’s when I have, I have a big poetry reading I’m going to, and I’m going to bring a whole bunch of the books with me and put ‘em out and let people take whatever they want. RAY What was it I was reading, was it in the, uh, The Laughing Jesus, can’t remember but anyway...come on, Patrick...the Virgin Birth, and on the cross, dead and rising again in three days, happened in four other religions before Christianity, the same thing. Now, here’s what I like... MIKE All in the same neighborhood.
83
RAY: ...yeah, and here’s what I like, a monk, or priest, actually, in about 700 a.d. wrote that the devil created these four other religions so you wouldn’t believe in Jesus. I mean, these guys... MIKE: I met a guy on the train when I went out West, to Lake Tahoe, he believed that God planted the fossils so we wouldn’t... RAY: Well, yeah... MIKE: ...to trick us. RAY: They have to have an excuse for that, I mean an explanation. RAY: When I asked you to take over [The Sam ‘n Andy’s open mic night] you said “You think I can do it?” and I said “I know you can.” MIKE: I can’t seem to make anything work these days. (Laughter) RAY: Well, one, I knew you were an exceptional poet, and a good teacher, and I also knew that a lot of girls were following you, so that was a win-win situation! (Laughter from Ray) MIKE: Maybe I can’t pull off a poetry reading anymore because I don’t have girls following me around these days. RAY: That might be it! MIKE: Maybe that’s what it is. I don’t know. I really would love to find a place to start another open mic. RAY: Yeah, yeah, I would like an...it’s like that one poem I like, “... never doubt love for one second, even if it only lasts for one.” MIKE: That’s right, that’s right. Because, hold on, even after Sam ‘n Andy’s shut down, Brewed Awakenings hosted an open mic for a long time. RAY: Brewed Awakenings? MIKE: When John [Swaile] hosted Brewed... RAY Oh, yeah, that lasted for a long time... MIKE And then Caroline [Gauger] and Nicki [Norman] had something going at the Collingwood... RAY Oh, that lasted for years... MIKE ...but they let it get out of hand...(laughter from both of us) RAY...they didn’t, they were entertaining, standing on their heads, you know? That had its own form. And they had some good poets come through there. And I used to enjoy enjoy the structure in a way that it was like a bunch of mad people coming together, which we 84
were. MIKE It was crazy. It must have been like Any Wednesday in a way. RAY Any Wednesday was quite different... MIKE Okay RAY ...in my basement, I had a couch down there and everybody could go down and smolke joints. Except there was a couple things that pissed me off I found out later. Editor’s note: At several points throughout this interview Ray and I digressed into conversation not at all related to the questions I was asking him. At this point in our conversation we started talking about our children, and though it was a lovely chat and I can’t wait to share it with my son someday, it went wild for a spell and touched on some deeply personal things that I’m not at liberty to recount in the body of this interview, which is why we’ll go from discussing Any Wednesday with no conclusion to this next topic of discussion... MIKE: Everything’s a hustle, isn’t it? RAY: Everything is a hustle, even, even goodness. In my favorite poem a Haiku,... Sad Mozart music drifts among full moon nightshade. Two alley dogs howl.
I can just see it, I can see that picture right in my head. “Full moon nightshade”, nightshade is, of course, poison. A full moon, look at all the stories about a full moon. And two alley dogs, no home, sadness, that one poem does a whole lot of shit to my head. MIKE: And that’s one you wrote? RAY: Oh, yeah. Um , and of course it has the time of the season, which is the challenge. MIKE: That’s right, that’s the hard challenge of Haiku, is to get those seasonal cues in there. RAY: To me, that’s not hard. ‘Cause, you know, what are you doing, really? Like, like...
85
Newborn copperhead, I turn over this sun rock and there we both are.
...there’s the seasonal image in there, the newborn copperhead; it’s Spring. And the frog thing, mating season. Yeah, I love... MIKE: Mating season... RAY: ...in fact I have quite a few of those, I have one written by Japanese children, a book of Haiku. MIKE: Oh, I bet that’s lovely. RAY: You can have that if you want. Just remind me. You could let your son have it and read it when he’s older. It was written by children. Very interesting., Of course there’s different forms of Haiku, but I still like the traditional, the three lines, 5, 7, 5 syllable breakdown. Then I have another of the top Japanese Haiku masters... MIKE: I have one of those, too. I got really into Haiku because of Swaile. John loved writing Haiku, he excelled. RAY: He was, uhm, that one structure that he liked, I’ll think of it in a minute. It was a challenging form. I looked it up to write it but I don’t think I have the patience for it. MIKE: John liked formal poems, he liked writing formal poetry. He was good with forms the way you’re good at story telling. RAY: You know what he said to me one time, he says “Ray when he meets a young girl, he looks at her hand and says something, and reaches back here on her shoulder and presses down on it, and after that she sticks to him like glue”. (Laughing) The trick to that it, you don’t talk about yourself, you talk about them. MIKE: So, your dad was a barber? RAY: Aah, well, they owned a farm. MIKE: The whole family did? RAY: The Patricks, my great-great grandfather was a doctor, and he owned thousands of acres in Kentucky and he sold it, but he kept the mineral rights. And if I hadn’t been so lazy in my life, about forty, fifty years hey’ve been pumping oil off there, and none of our family’s getting any of it. My daughter says “Well you gotta get that I want to be rich!” I tell her, “You go fight it.” 86
MIKE: Fred (my employer; Ray sometimes stops in at the restaurant where I work and my boss is very patient with our meandering conversation) asked me about you the other day when you were visiting. He said, he wanted to know if you were a poet, too, and if you were any good. So I said yeah, you wrote, and yeah, you’re pretty good, one of the best guys in town. I said yeah, Ray’s one of those guys who can do anything he wants and doesn’t want to do anything at all. (Ray laughs) MIKE: It’s kind of true. RAY: I get bored quick. MIKE: You fall into stuff, fall out of stuff, leave stuff behind you. RAY: Yeah, I always wondered...once I figured something out it’d become boring. I figured it out up here (points to his head). The only one that hasn’t become boring with me is that God shit. I saw a bumper sticker, it said, ah, let’s see...”God doesn’t believe in YOU, atheists”. (Laughter) But you know, when I look at these people, they’re all walking around in these elaborate clothes, and jewelry, and gold, gold, gold, waving it in the air. Now I told you that story about where they scared the, my Baptist relatives scared the shit out of me, literally. MIKE: Maybe you did. RAY: Well, you would have remembered it. MIKE: I don’t know if I do. I remember a story about you cursing God out, going up on the mountain and cursing God out. RAY: Yeah, that was it. ‘Course, my dad was getting his mail and shut his thumb in the box, and said “god damn it!”. I didn’t know what it meant. I thought it was neat. That’s what I said in front of my relatives and they snatched my ass up and shook me and said, “Ray Gene you’re going to Hell and burn at the stake for eternity!” Didn’t know what eternity was, but I knew what burning was! Shook me again, shook the shit out of me literally. I shit my pants. “And if you even think it then you’ll burn at the stake forever!” Now I knew what an eternity was. So I was walking around the next couple weeks having a nervous breakdown, “Don’t think it, don’t think it!” That’s when I got pissed at God and everybody. MIKE: I remember this story, I remember how they told you you’d 87
88
89
burn in Hell forever... RAY: What a threat for a five year old. MIKE: That’s a terrible thing to do to somebody. RAY: Well, they’re still doing it! The thing is, each religion has its own imprint that they believe the other’s is wrong. Now, that’s where they make their huge mistake. I know that Satch, when I went to see him there in Yogaville, and I love that building about four-stories high in the shape of a lotus blossom. And the whole first floor was the lobby, and the second floor just went up. In the center they had this big, oh about 8 feet in diameter, looked like clear plastic tube, went all the way to the roof, to the center of the lotus, and going up through it were little gold lights, and then the lights went down the lotus and landed on little podiums that had different religions on them, all the world’s religions. He was making a statement, see? God created all the religions. MIKE: We talk about that a lot. I don’t think God discriminates; God isn’t a bigot, right? Aren’t those things we came up with on our own? RAY: God doesn’t discriminate. No, He doesn’t. If there is a God, and I personally don’t believe in any form Man created...it’s said, like, God created Man in his own image, and Man returned the favor and did the same. (Laughter) MIKE: So, I want to ask you some questions I’ve been thinking about. RAY Go ahead. MIKE: So your family’s full of story tellers, and snake charmers, and all that crazy stuff. RAY Yeah, a lot of alcoholics and ministers... MIKE: So, I mean... RAY: ...I’m related to Jesse James... MIKE: ...it’s inevitable that one of you guys is going to write poems. I mean, isn’t it? RAY I think I’m the only one. MIKE How old were you when you wrote one, or read one, or someone gave one to you? Was it [poetry] a part of your life? RAY Well the first two I vividly remember was I think I was in the seventh grade. 90
Took off my dress my panties I let fall, I stood there like Venus, the fairest of all.
(Ray recites two other poems, dirty jingles like this one, which did not record clearly) MIKE: Where did you learn these? RAY: I found it in my buddy’s parent’s drawers, we had a party over there and we were going through them. We found two of them, these books with dirty rhymes and things.. Another thing, there was a song. I forgot it now. But that rhythm, I started writing poems in the eighth grade. That’s when I got in trouble for one I wrote that they didn’t understand. ‘Cause I had “...and he spanked me till I had to, we?” That was a line in it. My teacher’s face got red, the whole class laughed and I got paddled. MIKE: Paddled for writing poems. (Laughter) RAY: Mmmhmm. What pissed me off is my parents were never behind anything I did, they never, if I showed them something it didn’t mean anything. I just disengaged. MIKE: So they weren’t giving you poems, things to read? RAY: No. I was a reader in grade school, in fact I got in trouble reading. Between the sixth and eighth grade I read every fairy tale book the library had downtown. And I read things like Gunga Din, and Brideshead Revisited, which I loved. MIKE: That must be a keystone thing for people who end up writing poems; I remember doing that too, finding fairy tales at the library. The big Time-Life books that had all the fairy tales of the world, and sometimes they’d show you the fairy tales that were similar, like all the Sleeping Beauty type stories from all over. I just loved those, and read them and read them. RAY: I read one when I was in the Marshall Islands, when I was in the H-Bomb test. And one of the guys aboard there, an older guy, collected fairy tale stories, and we were there for like six, seven months, didn’t
91
have anything to do, he loaned his books to me. He had one called She. I never really get too blown away with stories unless I’m personally involved, most of the time I just, mentally I see it, I appreciate it. But this one shook me up so bad my sense of reality mixed up. And it had to do with, like, here’s God, but over here is a parallel universe run by She. MIKE: And you were in the Navy? Illegally, right? RAY: No, the day I turned seventeen I had my mom sign me up. MIKE: Okay, because I always had it in my head... RAY: No, I couldn’t go to school ‘cause my dad went crazy, mentally unwell. I couldn’t figure out why he went crazy. Of course, he was an alcoholic, but, I think what happened is my dad had a little, a small barber shop and he loved it. Right across from his chair, on the wall, don’t know where the fuck he got it but it was a pair of Texas longhorns, like seven feet wide. But my mother, she never went to the eighth grade but she put herself through beauty college, and she’d even spell words at night, in her sleep, she was so determined. But what she did is, here’s my dad’s barber shop, and she put a partition here and put her beauty shop right there so she could hear every word he said and comment on it. And all the sudden it changed his whole life, and I think he went crazy on that, I think that’s why he had his nervous breakdown. She controlled the whole thing. I come in one time, and my mom she was working on a woman’s hair and she says, “Ray Gene, what’d I find in your pocket?”, and I said, “What?” I’m trying to remember, see? And the ladies they all start laughing, then I remember I had a pack of rubbers in there and it was like, seventh grade, she caught me red-handed! Got my ass out of there quick! (Laughter) MIKE: Reading and sex, getting you in trouble. Sex and poetry, getting Ray in trouble. RAY: Actually the first time I got laid, for a second I thought, is this all? What’s everybody raising so much hell about?
92
sixth grade sex in the sixth grade we tried to fuck our communal dog once but she growled & bit Ralph (I let Ralph go first because I was a recent fallen Church of God member & still had hard burn you at the stake fears) but it was destiny trying to pump Smoky we were influenced ‘cause we had just watched a beautiful girl screw a German Shepherd as we hid in secret excitement thick Ohio River bulrushes ...Ralph wasn’t really beautiful & maybe that’s why Smoky bit him.
RAY: It didn’t feel all that good, I didn’t think. Well, I had a little peepee, maybe that, I don’t know, if I’d had a gargantuan one, maybe that would have been... MIKE: Who knows? (Laughter) RAY: So, what else did you want to know? MIKE: I don’t really want to know...okay, so I asked you when it was you read your first poem, and you said seventh grade, and it was like, dirty limericks. RAY: My mom went and threw all my poetry away... MIKE: So wait, you were, she threw away the poetry you wrote, or the poems you had to read? RAY: The poetry I wrote... MIKE: And you were writing? In seventh and eighth grade? RAY: I don’t even remember them now, what they were about.
93
MIKE:...but you were writing that early? And what motivated you? RAY: Women have always motivated me. Fishing. Or going up in the hills... MIKE: But did you just start writing and knew you had a poem, or did you read something that made you want... RAY: I just, I just...to me it was poetry. I didn’t read about...structure or anything like that. MIKE: But did you read poems? In the library with the fairy tales were you reading... RAY: Mostly fairy tales. I guess that’s why a lot of my poems are story poems. But when she did that I stayed away from poetry, and the weird thing was I stayed away from it for years, then we opened that Noble Thought coffee-house in the ‘60’s, we started on the stage reading the ‘60’s poets, you know, I got intrigued by a lot of them but I don’t even remember their names now. You’d know their names ‘cause they’re famous. “Last summer’s screen doors.” That’s a line I remember. ‘Cause I can’t remember. But I’d go there, I’d try to write, I’d try to get my writing back and the first poem I wrote I thought “This sucks!” and I threw it away. MIKE: You threw a lot of shit away, Ray. RAY: Yep. Well, I realized I was plagiarizing a little bit, I thought, “That’s not me.” And then, believe it or not, over here in, there was a professor at the University of Toledo, I forgot his name now, Peter Van Schaik (another Toledo poet, who’s been writing and reading in Toledo for years and years) took me to a poetry reading at his house; then they had another poetry reading over near the Anthony Wayne Trail. I brought three poems. I read them and that was my jump start. And I read a lot of the ‘60’s poets and I was laughing about On the Road because the similarities between what he wrote about and whatever, well, it was I what I did! Gettin’ stoned and driving all over the United States and Mexico, all of the time...well, I wouldn’t go to Mexico now. I remember that one time I was going through the mountains I saw there was a party going on. I knew a little about customs and I stopped, a guy comes walking up and I asked if he knew English. He 94
did, so I said, “What’s going on?” He says oh, there’s a weding in the village. So I asked if I could go congratualte his grandmother. He said yes, so I walked up to the matriarch sitting in that big chair, gave her congratulations, and of course she invited us to the wedding and we had a good time! (Laughter) That kid, I just wish I had the wherewithal to finish the stories in my head, from my life. MIKE: So how do you think all this life you’ve had, all these adventures, wild times... RAY: I think, I wish I would have picked something and completed it. The only thing I come close to completing, the only thing I completed, was meditation. I went through the White Light. I consider that a completed effort. MIKE: There’s like, four volumes of poetry you’ve written and collected. Are saying you haven’t written the poem yet? RAY: What’s that? MIKE: You haven’t written the poem that makes you feel like you’ve completed poetry, that you’ve done something? RAY: No. Ah, I’m extremely sensitive, and it’s hard for me to take praise. Just like when you told me that guy asked if I was a poet and you said one of the best in town. I thought well I’ve never heard that, and in fact I think, I was thinking I wrote too many sexual poems, but I did that just to amuse people. MIKE: I think that indidcates your skill, though. You didn’t just write sex poems, you didn’t just say dirty words in a sequence of line breaks, you still made a poem, you still made an artifact. RAY: There were meanings underneath all that. MIKE: Exactly. You didn’t just get up there and report on a conquest or adventure. You still made a poem. RAY: And then I was always, I hate to say this, but some of the poetry that is written by super educated people I find very boring. It’s the structure. It’s easy to read and I can see what they’re talking about. I would never enter any of poems in their school things, the journals or what have you, even though I read, one time I was asked 95
to read at the University of Florida. I read there which was 150 miles from Tampa, where I was living and writing at the time. MIKE: That’s a hell of an invitation. RAY: Yeah. Uh-huh. In Tampa I had a real good thing going. I knew a girl there, Holly Day. Her parents were hippies and she was in a skateboard gang. She got a scholarship in Tampa, which was in an expensive school... MIKE: So what makes you feel...one of the poems I love the most, I think it’s called Chasing the Ting. What is it about the poems, where you haven’t... RAY: There’s a couple that I like... MIKE: ...you haven’t reached the Ting yet. Chasing the Ting only 5 & ½ yrs old first birthday party at her house nine of us short pants & skirts white cotton panty peeks as we sat in a circle a Homers mike bottle in the center our mothers giggling as they said “spin the bottle” to the dimpled blond birthday girl w/ flashing blue laughing eyes “u have to kiss whoever it points to” more mother giggles i was puzzled sweat/kiss how? mother cheek-type kiss was all i knew her perfect little hand came down on the bottle & with a low laugh spun this karmic string i watched hypnotically at the spins 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times around to slow stop it was pointed at me! i sat transfixed & stupid
96
what seemed slow motion she came laughing eyes on hands & knees across the circle stopped in front of me nose to nose i could smell her warm sweet candy breath i was still in stupid mode breathing gulp hard her cherry full lips came tro mine landed gently wet & warm on transfixed recieving lips a hot feel good rushed through my body my eyes me heart my soul/ a heat started at the base of my spine ran forward to privatre parts warm/hot/feel good first lip kiss tingle didn’t know that I would chase that warm temptress tingle for the rest of my days my lower lip trembled as she pulled back looking into my eyes with laughter/joy & defiance I’ve loved all of her since looked for her in a thousand eyes 10, 000 kisses and a hundred lovers always chasing that first wet warm/hot tingle
...like, the Ting poem I like. And that Cafe Mocha and Coffee House Muse, I wrote that right in here (the coffee shop where we’re having this conversation). MIKE: And the poem in this anthology (where the New Residence Inn was printed), all of your poems from the Tampa days remind me of the best of Bob Philips’ poems, or the best of Bukowski, where you’re someplace identifiable and htere’s a mysterious relationship... RAY: There’s religion, there’s spirituality in them. MIKE: It’s present, it’s a way of arranging the words. RAY: It’s my life. I said that already, man, my life is a poem. I’m still chasing the Ting. I’ll do that ‘til I die, I guess. 97
Stretching Haiku pumpkin apples fell woodsmoke & applebutter memories of her her chair stands empty hoofprints crush the pumpkin frost death rides a dark horse when I’m afraid I reach for Gods when I’m lonely I reach for love when I’m content I stop reaching in each year’s approach the twilight becomes more important I have travelled many roads my body has aged in teh wind but my mind still stands overlooking that warm day when I was five I haven’t lost a new love nor is my dream yet dead still loneliness creeps like snails through my head love slinked in onesided cloaked in a theif’s coat then left again wrapped in your illusion’s face I never knew the last time we made love that it was I have been paying costly rent on this borrowed body
98
Cafe Mocha & Coffee House Muse the incessant chattering of a Sunday High Collar Priest rings harsh on my mocha coffee ear his church has let/mine starts this page a head heads inside, search of self looks for completion/images shift guided thought muse I call poetry, today a poet? who am I these words make on off-white bond twenty weight? ink marks sad down like melancholy walks it is lonely today/ I look up and behind coffee priest eyes stalk a ripened beauty I want to know her she slips down to poem page my line loses her form an exit door closes love lost again perhaps/ I have been wearing poets cloth a long entangled time demanding muse mistress veiled within this cryptic soul/ existence & measure slide into eternity/ life so ephemeral understanding so transitory years have passed quicker than these seized errant minutes my poem consumes me holds down hard explains not this earth-breath-spirit life behind now longer than life in front (tears well as tears will) I feel need of new spring to lean against ancient oak cheek pressed prayer on aromatic healing bark to merge! to merge! with birdsong, beesong & new blossom spell
99
I shall wear tattered pale green polo soft white cotton drawstring pants with allegory holes I shall curl my naked toes deep down into the moist ground in blissful caress below rapture! oh, rapture! I segment/ I pause/ I surrender I become a poem/ this poem
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
I thank my family and friends for making this one year anniversary possible
115
116
117
This is a Random Dharma Jazz Production
*All works published are reproduced with permission of the artist. Artist retains all copyrights to the artwork and the image will not be reproduced or used in any other format. 118
LISTEN TO YOUR OWN
MIND 119
120