His friend Paul Foster later wrote, “Others can talk fast but slowed down it’s poppycock…play Neal at 33 and it’s interesting, voluminous, humorous, often rhyming and intimidatingly encyclopedic in that he was enormously well read and could handle simultaneously eight channels of audio interchange, including items from all radios and televisions he had turned on, random street noise, conversations within earshot and several secret thoughts, it would all enter the fabric, the nap of his rap.” [Robert] Hunter once taped a conversation with Neal and then remarked, “I’d swear that every time I played [it] there would be a different conversation with me on it. He was flying circles about me.” [Bill] Kreutzmann thought of him as a “friendly swarm of bees all over your body that never bite. It was a little scary, but it never hurt – you were only feeling your own feelings.”
-- Dennis McNally, from A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead
I. The Promised Land 1
Promises, sweeping under me like a carpet,
sweeping out in front there, slab after slab,
like little dashes in the pauses between words,
like little fishes in the abysses of thought,
white noise in the chapter & verse of mind.
Can’t be sure, though, if they’re there in advance of thought,
sort of laying in wait, readying their lassoes,
cocking their little noumenal pistols
at the unhooded dogies of apperception –
or else if they’re tossed in as some gross afterthought
like sorry bastards of the Romanovs,
or some media hoax…footprints of the Sasquatch –
scraps of myth designed to cover over the flaws…
Big Bang 2:4.12 (the line’s expunged…
not Deity’s so much as the editor’s work):
On the eighth day the firmament took to shaving…
Mind, I don’t pay much heed to promises –
don’t take ‘em very literally’s what I mean.
Helps one from time to time to mark where they’re at, though.
Just don’t look at ‘em too closely, is all.
That way, they can help ya get where ya need to go –
can help get ya going & help ya get going.
And it’s the notion of having somewhere
to go rather than the specific place itself…
On the other hand, ya can always zoom on in,
microscope-like – right on into what’s said.
It’s the inner-literal of the littoral.
Boy, that sort of thing can make ya halt in your tracks,
even when you’re moving at lightning speed –
paradox modern physics don’t got no name for
(pro’bly does in fact…if so, kindly inform me).
Anyway, I followed their dashy trail,
and they seem to’ve led me right to this very place.
Had to change vehicles once, twice, several times.
Someone who loves me put change in my hand,
and I ended up flying across the last stretch.
Had me a little snooze at 30,000 feet.
Woke up, looked out and saw, printed backwards,
that bilabial voiceless stop of a Promise
looking up at me, reserved & hesitant-like,
from the bottom of that 30,000.
Swing low sweet chariot is all that came to mind,
which I took to whistling as my ears got popping.
That, and the phone I’d soon be looking for.
“This is the promised land calling…the promised land!”
How nice like that to U-serp the imperative
that says ya gotta have someplace to go.
Maybe I could tinker with the response a bit –
that message swerving back around at us from fate…
tell ya we’re fully booked, the gates are closed,
there ain’t no use setting foot in this direction,
so’d better find another one and find one fast…
Yer eyes’d get bugging this way & that,
nothing to chase after apart from your own tail…
let ya decide if there’s another direction
apart from mere directionality,
or if that can even get started without one.
_________________________________________________
1The italicized subsections correspond to the set list performed by the Grateful Dead at Kazar Stadium on May 26, 1973. It is imagined that Cassady’s ghost is evoked as a tangible presence meandering through the stadium, as much via associative meditations on the lyrics of Robert Hunter (and several others) as via the capricious, Puckish footwork on upper partials of the various melodic, harmonic and rhythmic chutes and ladders posed by Jerry’s filigree pickings, Bob’s rarified chord spacings, Phil’s terrestrial, extra-terrestrial and subterranean thumpings, Keith’s responsive tinklings, and Bill’s apperceptive pulsings, meshings and threshings. For Jeff, again, as an afterthought to his 40th birthday.
2Read "Two four point one".
__________________________________________________
II. Deal
That, as it stands, is how ya get yourself begun,
though can’t say as I exactly recall
if there ever was an inaugural moment
or anything like a blinking light flashing “choose”
or cattle-prod placed at my tender parts
to inform me that I wasn’t no jade Buddha
that might suck all-complacent at some cosmic teat
throughout my life’s meager eternity –
no pubic beard I might don to proclaim manhood
as with my staff I pricked the public sphere.
Life didn’t scream out, “Take me by the horns!”
…though it may seem at times I’m dodging a stampede
brought upon me cuz I pulled some uncle’s finger,
while he enjoys his joke and noxious air
around the corner, hoping he won’t have to pay
the funeral expenses if I’m squashed & gored.
Sometimes I fancy I’m taking a peek
under the curtain into destiny’s backstage.
Surprises him like hell to know I know he’s there,
tugging at the strings. “Hey Unc, over here!”
Like me, he worries only a minute or so,
then it’s back to cards with everyone else’s unc.
His unease merely loses him his hand,
and he forgets my face sure as I forget his,
though he’s still gotta tug at the strings now & then
if he’s not to lose his place at table.
I’m keeping him busy, ain’t giving him no slack,
though sure as certain I can’t stretch the lines too taut.
It’s not his task to see that they don’t break –
a fact of which he reminds me now & again
by tugging extra long, extra hard, extra sharp –
his way of letting on I gotta rest,
give him time so’s he can win a couple of rounds.
An unspoken deal we have, me & my uncle,
conveyed via that occasional wink
through the floorboards. He tells me to keep within sight,
I coaxes him to deal a slower, surer hand –
though what’s in the stakes for me I don’t know.
Could be they don’t play for no more than sticks of gum,
or the cards are all faceless & the game’s a rooozzzz…
Here the stakes are set when ya choose to go,
and it just seems remaining’d make ‘em higher.
At that time, ya never knowed ya was remaining.
But ya got stakes now. They’re up, down, up, down,
and ya can’t tell if they’re changing with the tempo.
That’s why my score reads indecido rubato –
“variable indecision,” that is.
They got me guessing. Likewise, I keep them guessing.
That don’t vary. It won’t vary, let me tell ya,
until all variability ends…
either then, or when Unc’s rope breaks or strangles me.
III. Jack Straw
What was it ya done in life? “Speech. I spoke with folks.”
Pause. Nervous silence. And what besides that?
“Not much. I spoke & then I spoke then spoke some more.
There was a bit of walking, a bit of sitting
around waiting for something to happen,
a ton of eye-shutting interspersed with dreaming –
then there was the attending to bodily needs
(most embarrassing part, as ya might guess).
But beyond that it was speaking – mostly speaking.
Nah, ya couldn’t do much at all without speaking,
though with it ya’d do a lot of nothing
in the very same breath – there’s no denying that.”
More silence. “Ya got anything like a punch-line
to punctuate my surly brevity
of an attempt to say what in life was human?”
Another pause. Well…I’d like to try it myself
sometime, if I’m ever given the chance.
Beats the boredom that comes with not saying nothing.
“Yeah, well doesn’t it at that! Does for me, at least.”
Little dialogue that runs through my head
as the vigil I keep begins to pillow-fade.
It ain’t my aforementioned uncle, I don’t think.
An incarnation of something duller –
sorry fella I conversed with on a train once.
On a seven-month dodge from more than just the law.
Don’t know why he deemed it fit to confide
his woe to myself – whether I looked trustworthy
in particular or whether I just happened
to be there, with him in need of an ear…
I’m not sure. Anyway, he had killed his buddy,
who in turn had killed a watchman while robbing him.
He must have been a scoundrel & a half.
You shoulda seen the expression the poor guy had.
He was obviously at the end of his line.
No way to describe it besides forlorn.
Must have been a sweet little chunk, a sweet little
angelic chunk of cherubic kid at one point,
but life had divested him of all that.
How he’d got wrapped up with the other, I don’t know.
One of those situations in which you’re thinking,
one last misdeed to tidy up the rest,
ravel ‘em all up into pretty little bows
and make ‘em look like a bag of party favors –
innocent pranks that’ll do no further
evil than singe your sideburns if ya bend too close.
They was on their way to robbing a bank, maybe –
I can’t remember the story in full.
They wasn’t in no particular need, even,
and his idiot cohort had to go ahead
and ruin it all as if on a dare.
The train was readying to pull into Tucson.
They was rested, the plan had been jawed and rehearsed.
He was looking forward to settling up
accounts, establishing life on a new footing,
then the other one springs on him this little piece
of information. Right there he felt snap
the line between slender hope and full-on despair.
Didn’t say nothing at all to his companion,
just stared at the ground ‘twixt his open legs,
reading his zodiac in the scraps of sawdust.
Not the reaction the hopeless little braggart
had expected. Too dumb to know, likely.
Wasn’t given much time to derive anything
like moral instruction from his buddy’s silence,
for within hours he was vulture’s fair game.
Couldn’t reckon if my friend had thought through it first
or did the deed in a sudden excess of rage.
One of those decisions that comes to ya
and ya work out its prehistory later on.
Didn’t seem to have no particular regret
for having put this jackanapes to death.
It was far more of a generalized dolor
extending back through the brambles of memory
to an outset he’d almost given up
as the misrecalled Eden of all that’d been.
Say again to me what was it ya done in life?
“Well…I done changed my mind since last we spoke.
In addition to speaking there was a good bit
of lis’ning – and lis’ning not only to others
but to the thoughts that run through your own head
as well. There’s a point at which lis’ning rolls over
into speech. I like to call it overhearing.
Your speech assumes or takes up what ya hear.
Then it’s a matter of keeping ahold of it.
It can sorta become a lifetime commitment.
Not a bad thing to commit oneself to.
It’s kept me clear outa trouble…for the most part.”
IV. Tennessee Jed
Poor bastard. He was just trying to get on home –
the same as we’re all doing, more or less.
Wonder what sorta promises he had rolling
in front of him, keeping him going gerbil-like
‘til he ‘bout thought he could nip his own tail.
Yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do – swallow our tails.
Manage that, you’ll undergo metamorphosis
into an omni-sufficient being
capable of eternally transforming waste
into nutrition & so never exhausting
the initial supply on which you’re fed –
no filth, no aging, no entropy, erotic
needs self-supplied as well, as in some Platonic
hallucination with matching organs
at myoochully accessible opposing poles
(ingress at A for egressing B & so forth),
and the few simple actions that go on
noted only at the end of each period
with an increasingly obvious emphasis
on flowing triples over stomping twos,
all byproducts of Doing thrown into the middle,
like Whitman on the east-end his verbs supplying,
not so much for the reader’s divining
as for the self-satisfaction of ensuring
that the bit of movement forever keeps churning
the sensuous meat of Omnibeing
in a transport of ecstasy ever-enduring
the juicy titillations of constant slurping
the unctuous syrups of enjoying
undulations that never find themselves ending
whatever begins in remembered beginning
like Whitman his I-N-G’s supplying
as much for his as for his reader’s divining
as to the self-satisfaction of ensuring
whatever it is that keeps on churning
or Neal discovering himself discovering
the loop he’s in AND…would like now to get out of
as it’s NAW-zee-us and vertiginous,
not being himself this omni-sufficient beast
produced in the interstices of A & B
(thought A & thought B, that is, Gentlemen).
But that’s what they keep telling ya – to go on home.
And promises promise it’ll all be easy.
Now go on home, your mother’s calling U…
For lotsa people, home is a capital’d place.
Simpler folks are always being told where to go.
“Go catch the first train back to Frisco, Kid.”
“Ya shouldn’t of up and left Puxatawney, Phil.”
“You’re well-remembered here in Calamity, Jane.”
“Who exhumed your hind out of Peking, Man?”
“Your presence is requested back in Memphis, Slim.”
“Without ya it’s a leaner Minnesota, Fats.”
“Ya better head back to Tennessee, Jed.”
See how folks are named for places they can’t get to –
tags for where their corpses are to be removed to
in the event of corpsification,
the bearer to be paid upon delivery…
the bearer of the corpse, that’s to say – not the tag.
Who bears the corpse or who may bear the corpse
is a question I’m happy to leave out for now,
but consider your appellation a receipt
that’ll get someone something in Frisco,
Puxatawney, Calamity or Tennessee.
I’m sure there’s a visual joke in there somewhere…
Line up the capitals, rearrange ‘em,
throw in a palate-full of appropriate vowels,
and you’ll have the EAR-oh-COY-in half-translation
of the Yiddish for memento more-ee,
which uttered, the next minute a skull & bones’ll
emerge in the penumbra of your self-central
vision just off-target of your third eye…
either that or the third eye should be imagined
as not absolutely smack-dab in the center.
“There ain’t no exact center, Neal darlin’,”
some multi-joweled Fruit Loop of an Auntie ca-ROOONNZ…
“Leastways we ain’t never been able to find one.”
Little would ya suspect she’s referring
to home – the one all these promises refer to.
Ha! Here’s a little trinket of a trope for ya:
I ain’t goin’ home. Ahm already home.
“I ain’t goin’ home cuz ahm home enough fer me!”
And make sure ya get the accents right on that one:
‘AIN’T goin’ HOME…ahm HOME eNUFF fer ME.”
Just don’t try & make me your home, is my advice.
Not to seem all cold & inhospitable, but…
Movie in my head, playing reel to reel:
“Ya’d better haul your ass back to Cassady, Neal!”
V. The Race Is On
“Sing in me, Muse, of the land of all promises.”
No…sing in me of the Land of Promise.
Not quite the same thing, is it? One into many.
Modernity, take two (or two hundred & two),
careening into refurbished time-space.
Big P hiccups into a bunch of little p’s.
Oceans flow backwards into their rivers,
Creation unravels from Zohar to Alpha,
Apocalypse pages back into Genesis,
John of P. kisses up to the Yahwist.
See the stone slabs rising out of the firmament,
nearly breaking Charlton Heston’s slim proboscis,
the Dark Continent’s jungly CREE-uh-chores
backing off the planks into subsiding waters,
Deity numbering back from seven to one,
the very first word – “In” – read backwards – “Ni,”
then ya get white noise, a few inner-DUCK-tery
credits just for specialists & CON-yuh-(now)-Sirs,
then press a button & it reads itself
awry from “Ni” – that’s “you” in Mandarin Chinese.
Godhood transpires again in the second person,
the Commandments take on a new color
as “you” is superadded to ‘em one-by-one,
as my Chinese friends explain goes on in their tongue.
(They don’t consider it SOO-per-FLEW-us
and are more likely to remove the first person
where it’s understood & even sometimes when not.
Their language is more SOO-per-ee-GO-ick
than ours, is the conclusion I’m keen on drawing,
while their egos ain’t so apt to get in the way
with the “I” riding shotgun and all that.)
But it’s like an atom bomb went off in Big P
and the shardic small p’s went emanating out
from that unlocalizable centrum.
At first Mother P is entirely forgotten,
and the event can’t be seen through the horizon.
Each one wants his or her own private Thing,
which seems unrelated to all the other things,
although they’re simply like-members in a series –
p1, p2, p3, etc.
But sooner or later, heads up, Big P returns
as a monstrous phantom of the collective “duhhh…”
small p’s flying like nails to a magnet,
though the magnet has no substantiality
but is simply the untheorized resultant
social science as yet has no term for,
and when the academies, news crews and Satan
finally manage to get their Graeco-Latin
cognates together it’s yesterday’s bunk
in unread Reader’s Digests stacked next to the can,
piss-yellowing & keeping porcelain company.
Yeah, that’s about what these kids are doing,
with their cannabis-muddled to-ing & fro-ing.
Wacky weed. It used to be a bore-zhwah no-no –
nature that colored Delta bluesmen smoked.
Now rednecks who use the small-n word for Negro
are apt as any to have a pouch of the stuff
and don’t account it LI-ber-ALL-at-TEA
(let’s ALL sit down in FREEDOM to a puff of TEA),
add the gumption of smoking it to their 3G’s
(g for God g for guns & g for guts)
and mistreat the Mayberry potheads down the street
(remember it’s teenagers I’m talking about)
when they hear ‘em yapping on about Marx,
Huxley, Zarathustra…whatever they’re reading
as they make their way home from pie-Anna lessons.
Well, it’s both types, with & without their weed,
who gravitate to this insubstantial magnet,
half of ‘em toting along copies of that book
which tells the tale of that alter-ego
I been dodging for going on a decade now.
Whoosh! they go in their projectile trajectories.
They got it all wrong. Maybe Jack did too.
The true journey’s along such routes as are spoken,
and speech & the thought it enacts move in circles.
Not concentric Emersonian ones,
mind ya. A bit closer to a helix, maybe,
but flattened. Yup – a helix flattened on a plane.
So ya get nodes & loops & nodes & loops.
Now if the kids exhibited any wiz-dumb
they’d take the blue routes rather than beelining it
to Godhead in their diminutive p’s.
I’m trying to set an example. Neal, Mach Two.
The race is on. They know cock-sure where they’re going.
When they get there, will they know their way back?
“No direction home!” wails the ‘lectric Man of Rooms.
- to be continued -
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