Stories and Poems from Close To Home edited by Floyd Salas

Excerpt from "Dead Lion or Live Dog The Artist in American Society Some Reflections on the Suicide of Richard Brautigan" by Foyd Salas (Copyright 1985 Floyd Salas)

Richard, the Hans Christian Anderson of America, had lost his naivete through self-indulgence like many of the jaded rich. Al Young called him world weary---no matter what his family roots were, bastard son of a millworker or not. Money can give an artist, or anybody, too much independence, too much freedom. A person's got to keep giving to the society that gave to them. They've got to think of someone else besides themselves. The more talented they are, the more they should give. I used to buy Richard's Xeroxed poems because I liked him and he was a poet and needed the money. Soon, I couldn't afford to buy Richard a drink and he could get drunk in an expensive North Beach hangout every night, and he often did. It ruined his health. He must have woken up filled with despair in the mornings like any person who drinks too much.      Man's got to give, to the society that gave to him. He or she 's got to think about someone else besides themselves. It really comes down to purity. It's in the giving through spiritual communication with people that you really live, not the getting. Richard became selfish and cut off, precious like too many and I might say, most, successful writers, meaning those who have achieved fame and fortune.      Snobbishness killed Brautigan. He became a dead soul, unable to self-generate love anymore, after the blessings of youth were gone, love which comes from giving not getting. In the end the bell tolls for all of us, but let's heed the sound of Richard's death knell. It rings particularly for us writers. The Politics of Poetry by Floyd Salas Dedicated to Norman Mailer After a while they disconnected the wire from my finger and connected it to my ear. They immediately gave a high dose of electricity My whole body shook in a terrible way My front teeth started breaking At the same time my torturers would hold a mirror to my face and say: 'Look what is happening to your lovely green eyes Soon you will not be able to see at all You will lose your mind You see you have already started bleeding in your mouth Torture tactics in Turkey an urgent appeal on behalf of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims now suffering the tortures of the damned Amnesty International USA But there is more to torture than the cell There is a different kind of Hell Secret hush of the police sighing over the snail trails of bookworms sticking to the leaves of the library Those fakes in pipe and tweeds just as hard as the street dudes only wearing a sheepskin over the weeds or the lines of your smiling face the sense of the lie behind your grinning teeth Take them out and dip them in a glass swimming with solvent murky clouds of lime that will dissolve them in time Dark sores on the calcium Can't you see it? Think of never being able to say a word for fear it will be heard and transmuted and computed and filed in the appropriate place deep underground with leaden walls to shrink your balls catch even your cocktail chatter or the privacy of your bedroom where you grimace at the mirror and cry in your secret heart Caught in the web gossamer traces of it brush your face when you enter a doorway whispers that still hang in the air faint fluttering of skirts and hum of static the pretty girls with robes on beckoning beckoning You like the animal come home from the hunt in a heat the battle fought needing love and the musky smell of sex carrying your offering wrapped in puffs of cotton with a red silk ribbon and a bow the selfish beast caged down inside and the angel let loose with beating wings so hard it makes you thirst. Cushion the force of my lust with your lips the surge up the middle the love like bone holding my head up and my dick But she doesn't love you Secret Agent of the Police State set out to warm your heart Listen There is more to torture than the coffin of the cell of that Hell There is more to torture than the blow the kick in the nuts the knee in the groin the smash in the face the broken nose the blood in the pee the stiff bones and the puffing muscles the cattle prod and the bottle up the snatch Dear Norman how would you like to wake up in your own windowless room with your heart's blood wetting the bed around you? the mattress seeping through to the springs with your guts? blank wall above you? stone brick around you? sunk in a concrete hole to keep the worms out? with only the dampness to decompose you? skin a dull yellow in the cold air? Waxy odor The Ghoul has a painted face With powder and rouge like an actor he lays in the bed without flowers without sniffling mothers and suffering fathers with hands on their hearts Without family the poet lies The Holy Days click by Soon his time will be up Fold him into a drawer some marks of his name and number the day he died just his scratch on the wall and the unread poem under the bed There is more to torture than a cell There is a worse kind of Hell Still brown horse shivers his glossy sides! twitches his mane! swishes his tail! Look! I can see my shadow! It gathers at my feet! moves when I do! jumps! steps! stops! trots a little! turns with me! as if my toe were the axis of the sun! and all things good! and all things fun! turned with it!