A River of Angels
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...."Howl by Allen Ginsberg
And with the moon waning, Coyote looks up, speaks from his East LA barrio
as the sun fills the mountain pass, spills out across the gray smoked city turning brown.
Coyote moves on, goes down to Santa Monica, looks out across the sand, the sea,
speaks to the dreams that set sail, the lost hopes drifting out and away.
Coyote, Coyote, they call, help us, we got lost, the free
way ended too soon, this isn't the El, this isn't the Santa Fe terminal, where are we?
Where are we going? Where is the Greyhound line?
Coyote has no answer and lopes north to Big Sur,
takes a sauna with golden bodies hefted, measured to just the right turn.
Coyote chats, they quiz him, towel him off, pack a picnic
but Coyote draws away, heads north again, finds The Bay,
sidles down London nights on the Hill, finds Jack and Allen have left town,
that there are no fast nights of poets and naked drunks dancing.
There are only the drunks, some naked, some dancing, some yelling verse
but there will be no Vancouver crowd this weekend, they have finals,
they have jobs in bookstores on the weekend, they have women
and these women require cash and sense.
Coyote strikes out for Seattle, settles beside the grave of Carver out on the peninsula,
dreams, shakes, draws deep breaths of clear-cut forest desert and wonders where Owl
lives now, which patchwork corrugated congolium condo is Owl's, which box, which square
shaped solid as ice in hell, what a view when there's no rain, tough skinned tent is Owl's.
But Owl isn't in the phonebook and he doesn't screech any more down in the flower stalls
and Coyote doesn't have fare funds for the fowl weather forest cab service limo
so he calls it a day, goes out, finds the wharf, the night life, the scene, the cool stuff happening.
But it doesn't happen like with Jack and Allen, there's no Paterson pattern, there's no edge,
no squeal of tires on the curve at cliff's edge that says wow - we've been living,
we've been close to dying - which is the same thing. Coyote cries as the pale ghost
hitches rides, heads east. Man! Heads East?! Where Coyote knows there is only old chemical plants
leaking, and farms insecticided to barren squally dust and rivers that burn.
South, in Mexico City, rich school kids stay inside, drink their filtered air,
wash lead free crayons in distilled water while otros ninos vive de milagro play
with birds falling from dead trees. Aztec captives were sacrificed with quick dignity.
But now,
now there is desert with air conditioned springs filled with imported palms,
there are rivers of pesticided salt water dribbling down the right pant leg of America,
there are condos rising where the water wasn't but is now a promise,
water strawed out of desolate land that sinks, that cracks and crumbles.
Coyote visits with Hawk and Spider, they consider.
Coyote speaks with Badger and West Wind, but they shrug, without a sound they move away,
without a thought about where this will all lead, or where they can truly hide,
save their skin. Coyote has covered seashore and mountain, he's crossed desert and prairie
to find only ever larger malls filled with the same stores, each claiming to have more,
claiming to be cheaper, sexier, quicker and he thinks of Hollywood and Vine.
He heads for a coast where the tricks are clear, the land moves, all by itself, and nobody,
nobody seems to care. Coyote returns to the gray smoked city turning brown and calls
on his brother Snake. Como esta mi amigo? Snake smiles smug.
You have no idea do you? There is no doubt, no wish, no hope in that tongue flicked!
Remember though, ignorance never settles a question, there are too many strands left loose
and poetry, the immigrant, lifts truth out of fact, out of fiction, out of time.
Glide past an ocean of infinite pounding and simple quaking
and you will still be in your skin, you will still be footless and with thumbs that oppose nothing.
And with the moon waning, Coyote looks up, speaks from his East LA barrio
as the sun fills the mountain pass, spills out across the city.
The stars used to shine here, he thinks, there used to be rivers beside quiet woods,
there used to be fish you could eat, there used to be deer, bear, skunk and turkey.
The moon sets. The haze clears. The air blossoms with wily auras.
The sun shifts and the city fills with tribal sounds gone mechanical.
Coyote sits in a park, watches the cacophony choir assemble.
This song, he thinks, is slowing. This song is, day by day, becoming slower,
a natural pulse, one the stars still remember, still dance to.
There is now. There is no past, there is no future.
Aqui es la cuidad de los angeles
where Coyote calls, where the moon calls
as these fish swim out,
and we know our way home.
We smell it, we taste it, it is here.
There is no other place than this salt swallowed river of fear
that dries out, blanches as we dance here on the river,
en del rio de los angeles.
RD Savage© 1994 by RD Savage05/22/94Published in Color Wheel - 4/95
06/14/94