May 12-18, 2014: Eric Evans and Steve De France

This Is Where I Was Going To Write About A Camus Quote

This is where I was going to write
about a Camus quote that my friend
Patti shared with me years ago.

This is where I was going to wax
about Camus’ endless frustration
with asking more of others than
they could possibly give, of the final
realization that it is reciprocal,
that we disappoint them as often
as the fail us.

This is where Elliott Smith enters the picture.

This is where I’m listening to
Roman Candle and its whispers of
tongueless talkers and jaywalkers,
already hearing XO in my head, already
knowing where my soundtracked
day is heading.

This is where Elliott’s friends
recollect about Portland in the ‘90s,
about bars I know and bands I saw,
where I recollect about sharing the
city with him but never once catching
a show, never once paying the
cover charge and singing along.

This is where I assumed that I’d see him
the next time around.

This is where I acknowledge that next
time never came.

And this is where I finally make
my way back to Camus and his
consternation with you and me,
and we with him and us with they
and they with them, about
at last recognizing the futility of
two-ton expectations bound to
the stubborn confines of a
twenty-pound box.

Preface to the Avenue of Souls

For Shaula

Before the last black crow struggles
on its creaking wings,
gliding across a green canopy of trees
to hastily clatter down on sharp talons,
clicking across ancient tombstones.

Before
falling evening—solemn as any soldier
going into battle, settles down
to wait for the striding of the dark.
Before the evening sun
squints out of sight at the far horizon
& a few grey clouds hover like
tattered hawks over a new kill.

Before
steamy wet & antique streets
in New Orleans gather the shameless,
homeless & heartless into a single beating
reptile heart & folds them
into nervous sleep and into the consciousness
of the long hot smells of the Mississippi night.
Before
the last bitter word
falls
from the last argument,
& the needle falls from the trembling hand.
Before suicide, revenge
& murder settle
over the peeling paint of window sills
in the meanest rooming houses
and in the rich man’s mansion
on Saint Charles Street.

Before
my hand carves
words on this paper,
& before
my heart tells me it isn’t worth doing,
before my mind starts
pulling funerary cars
for my dying spirit.
Before
you step on
or have your dreams
stepped on,
and
before
you mutter
into the growing night
that you believe
in nothing.

Not even
this gathering night.

Before
you swear to me
love
is the last hope of the desperate;
before
you tell me
about the hole in the ground
where they toss our bones
before
forever.

Before
you tell me the little guy
is the world’s sucker—
and before you sing
to me of Wall Street
and international commerce
and how it
demeans and enslaves
us all.

Before
you tell me how
noble
you are.
How you’d set this
raving world right
with a benign
fiat
that would make all our sorrows
as soft
as kittens’ tongues
in ivory milk.
Before
you paint a picture,
tell a story,
write a poem,
carve a rock,
pray to gods,
or raise hope in
willing flesh.
Before
these things are done,
take my hand.
Tell me
the biggest fear
you have ever known
that you still know…
And after
all this is said
and after all this is between us,

let us sit quietly

on what solid ground
there is, and agree
that none of our lives
are what we thought
they should be,
hoped they might be.
Before
the night gets
too thick to breathe,
or too dark to dream in,
before all this
let’s think of ourselves
as the last of the
rational beings.
And as we sit here
on the Avenue of Souls,
outside of Mexico City,
tentatively waiting for a
celestial translator
to interpret the garbles messages
spoken to us by the orderings of this night.

Give me your hand—it trembles so
and before we sleep, let’s just say,
it’s getting very dark now.