The Traveling Salesmen Project

Vacaville, California

Monday we arrive at the Sacramento Airport earlier than we usually arrive, and thank god that it is warm and green! We have most of the afternoon to wander the small downtown area of Vacaville. We feel that no trip to Vacaville wouldn't be complete without seeing the "creek walk" as the tourist dept calls it. We imagine the river walks of other towns where four star hotels look over it and there are street musicians, art galaries and fine dining and where even on a slow night there are attractive women strolling. We figure that since it is a creek walk it will be like this but smaller. We walk to downtown and look for it. We find it 25 feet down in what could be more described as a gully with drained coffee snaking down it. The one eating establishment that looks over the drainage is closed.

Disappointed we find the first liquor store and buy a pint each of whiskey. Mmmm Ancient Age goes down easy. The city itself is quite quaint and feels like Santa Barbara's poorer, bastard child. Its 3pm and a few stores are closed already so we decide to go back to the hotel and return in the evening to see if the bars are hopping.

9pm

We walk the few blocks from the hotel to downtown and the bars are pretty much empty and mostly sad old men who have been held down by gravity so long they seem to sink into the ground, or the barstool or the booth.

We decide to walk through the old neighborhood next to downtown proper. The houses are big and Victorian and not subdivided into 20 rat hole apartments like they have been in Salt Lake City. We walk checking out the houses, looking in windows, wondering about the lives that are lived in Vacaville.
There is an extened family walking behind us making it difficult to drink. So we cross the street and take a few plugs; that's when Mykul sees an orange tree in someones back yard. Its been years since I smelled the smell of orange blossoms.

One of my strongest memories was being little living in Mission Viejo CA in a new cookie cutter subdivision, one of the first ones in the middle of a large old orange grove. by March the house was flooded with smell of oranges. I'd like to think if there is a heaven, it smells like that. There are no more orange groves in MV, they all have been raped and cemented over.

Mykul wants an orange or two and so do I. We climb up the 10 foot wall using a chair we borrow from someone's dark porch, Mykul being look out. On the otherside of the wall and butted up next to it, is some garden furniture, it will be an easy escape if we get caught. We look around the yard and do not see a sign of anyone or, a dog, so we drop down.

The tree is well hung with oranges. We each pick one and put it to our noses. The smell is intoxicating especially since we only smell heater dust and winter back at home. We now want all of them! Mykul climbs into the tree and starts throwing oranges down to me. We are trying to be quite, but my shirt is so full I keep missing the ones he is throwing and the oranges start making large thuds on the ground. I tell Mykul that maybe we can't take all of them. It takes a little time to convince him but he finally agrees. I give him most the oranges but put three in my coat pocket. I get on top of the wall and Mykul stands on the garden table handing them to me as I quitely drop them on the grass on the otherside. We are giddy until we hear a slidding door open and hear a woman say, " OK Cindy go out and go potty." Either this woman is an abusive mother or Cindy is dog. (who names a dog Cindy?) Mykul has already processed that it is a dog and drops the oranges at his feet and is on the wall with me instantly. We look and see a Boxer staring right at us. Us and the dog look at eachother for only a split second but it feels much longer, then the chorus of barking and growling joined by a second dog. We jump down and hear the sliding glass door open and hear the voice of a man. We start running as fast as we can and ditch into an alley. I don't like alleys and try to aviod them at all costs. The alley is dark and narrow and doesn't say anything to my intrusions We wait a few minutes trying to catch our breath.

Walking back to Main Street we share one of the oranges that I have in my coat pocket. It is very good. We are looking into the bars to see if there are any women, but just more gravity fallen men. We pass one bar kinda quicky and we think we see a beautiful woman. We walk back only to find it to be a Coors cardboard cut out. Damn!

We end up at TJ's tavern. It turns out to be a decent bar with 20-30 somethings and one resident old man who tells stale and unimagintive stores to the younger kids. When we walk in we notice a skinny girl with a pierced lip, she smiles big as we walk in. We have a few drinks and go out to the back porch to smoke a cigarette. The old man is telling his stories staring at me like he sees something on the inside of me that makes him fearful. The pierced lip girl comes out and I light her cigarette. We start talking, tell her we are traveling salesmen looking for a farmer's daughter." she laughs and says we need to go to Fairfield for that. She's pretty and has a snaggle tooth that I can't stop looking at. I love snaggle teeth. We talk and laugh and......... till the sun comes up.

The seminar turns out well eventhough I didn't get any sleep.

But finding a farmer's daughter made Vacaville an alright place.

Redding, California

Tuesday Jan 31st 2007

Our next city is Redding, California about 3 hours north of Vacaville. Driving I start talking note of the small towns that we pass:

Yolo,
Zamora
Arbuckle
Willows
Artois
Coming ( a very satisfied town)
Gerber
Proberta
Narnia
Red Bluff
Girvand
Redding

We arrive pretty late, put our bags into the room and look for something open, to quench our thirst. Across the street is a 24 hour Casino. Inside on the right is a bar with about 10 people, mostly hip kids in their Dickey uniformity, but somehow not quite right, like the kid with tattoos a Dickey hat and jacket, regulation facial side burns, but light blue jeans and puffy white skater shoes. Leaning against the bar is a larger woman with an orange dress and red scarf around her neck. She is droaning a slowed down power balad Karaoke version of Whitesnake. We walk further back into the "Casino" looking for the casino. In the back there are about 4 poker tables and two are full. Here to things seem scripted, the two younger men in proscribed goatees smoking cheap cigars, the woman leaning back in a black ill fitting dress showing the obligatory clevage and cheap perfume. Here they are big rollers, sitting in torn fake leather chairs, thread bare tables and dreams of a different life.

We go back to the bar and get a few drinks and the same woman is singing Karaoke. We go to the patio to have a smoke. A thirty something, leather faced but once attractive woman comes out and sits at the table across from us. She comments on our suits and asks what we do. She tells us that jeans would work better in Redding than suits. I notice that her shirt says Misiltoe. I ask her if I am under the misiltoe where do I kiss." She gives us a blank look and then we have to explain her shirt to her. She still doesn't get it. She goes on talking and talking about real estate, and her voice became a frustration of flies buzzing in our ears.

We leave the bar, walking past the same woman singing yet another dirge of some popular hit and walk out into the night air.

Wednesday

During the seminar there is a lot of down time for us as the presenter goes through his sales pitch. I am reading Helene Cixous and amazing writer and feminist theorist.

" We are criminals and we do not know how to express or prove that we are criminals. The problem is, as criminals we were recognized as such, we would have to pay for the crime. Yet if we paid, the crime would disappear and our debt wiped out.

We must keep our crime safe, to avoid the terrible fate of being forgiven."

Helene Cixous

This seminar is larger than usual and it makes it harder to make connections with people. One man says he is a writer and his book is in its tenth printing. I am curious about this book. He tells me that it is a book about financial independence through window washing. Books on window washing sell more than poetry in the US. America, a country not of poets, but of Bankers and Window Washers!

I am also reading Book of Sketches by Keroauc and decide to write one of my own.

Late morning
Red lion

Hotel Parking
Redding, California

Staring at Big Ass
Gas station sign
Orange &
Blue 76.

And the stretched
Out brown line horizon.
Electrical

Tower arms
stretched out
forty feet,

Farther out
Old White
Volcano
Shasta

Stares back.

The seminar ends and Mykul wants to stop by at Chico where he used to live and go to school. Chico is college town and is known as a party school.

In Chico we park and hang out at a locals coffee shop. The town is mostly dead. Mykul finds out that we missed an open mic poetry reading by 30 min, we bow our heads. While we are sitting there, three hybrid hippie/skaters come up to us and start talking. One is dancing on some kind of stilts. They ask Mykul for rolling papers and start rolling a few joints. One of the kid is a magician and starts doing tricks for us.

Mykul has some friends that live near by so go see if we can hook up with them. They have a good time talking about old times and catching up. The guys are smart and we talk and laugh about topics from Korean culture, Poe, Andrew's horrible Texas accent when he tries to speak Japanese. Andrew tells us of a short cut back to Sacramento and we leave about 2 am. Our flight leaves at 6:30am so its another departure day without sleep.

The drive is down a state road past working orchards. The moon is half full and lights the bare trees. There are patches of fog across the road and in the fields. These feel like the true field of dreams where the dead wander at night hidding behind trees as our headlights come to view. Here they hunt for fading memories of the living, among the roots of bare fruit trees and give off their sad light of longing.

Almost to airport, we can't stay awake so sleep at a rest stop. We wake up two hours later and meet the rest of the team curbside. We land in Salt Lake City and the only thing we can think of is sleep.

OFF THE ROAD: A POEM

This is a rough draft of a poem I jotted down at Chuckles in Salt Lake City, a very empty bar.

Not being on the road
Walking the streets
Looking for anything -

This town is like a
Hand around your
Throat or a knee

In your chest -
Here where
The Great Ones
Hide in rented
Rooms, studios,

One room flats,
Doors baracaded
Against the living
Dead,
The sonambulists,
The mediocre,
The sad
Degenerates
Affraid of
Silences.

The Great Ones,
The Burning ones,
The Mad Ones withdraw
Into movie houses
Or video stores
Or write poems
On the vaulted ceilings
Of their Sistine skulls

Venture only to empty
Bars to drink away
The mediocrity
The empty eyes
The hallow chests

The thinness of the air

Knowing they are
Better than this
They rage over maps
Looking for a sign
Needing more
They dream

Of a
New
Jerusalem -

Elsewhere.

copyright c.a. leibow 2007

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9 Poems of c.a. leibow

El Paso, Texas

Dateline Feburary 6th, 2007 EL PASO, Texas.

Mykul and I have been looking forward to our trip to El Paso, primarily to visit Juarez. A few on our team tell us not to go, because Juarez has the highest murder rate of all border towns. We scoff at their pedestrianess.

El Paso is warm and brown which is appropriate since this is part of the Great American desert. Grass is at a premium which I like, because the city planners weren't obsessed with grass like in Phoenix. It is arid and beautiful.

The seminar doesn't run too long so we were able to leave early; early being around 8pm. We initially plan to go to Juarez the following day and go to the college part of downtown. We look at a map and realize that we can't walk so we find the nearest bus stop and wait. The bus is mostly empty and the last run for Raul who is a 50 something Mexican-American.

Mykul starts talking to him and finds out the college bar area is all the way across town. Mykul, being so close to Mexico can't pass up the opportunity so we ask Raul how to get there. It is a short walk from his last stop. While Mykul is finding out about Raul's family and his connection with El Paso, I am staring out the window watching the neighborhoods pass by. In El Paso, the closer you get to the border the poorer it gets and the more Mexican. We drive by a church sign that tells us, " Jesus can make everything new, even you." I like these catchy evangelist poets and their self-publishing. We come up on a police impound lot and I can see a blood red lighted cross that seem to be floating in the sky, probably the now iconic downtown missions, with JESUS SAVES electrically emblazoned with red or white or blue neon prayers. Now driving past the police station, I notice two smashed police cruisers in the parking lot, its poorly lit, the cruisers are close to totaled. I wonder if the cops can't drive or can't be seen because of some new stealth technology. We get off at the last stop and say goodbye to Raul. So far, everyone in El Paso has been helpful and warm. The bus stops at the famous San Jacinto Plaza.

The San Jacinto Plaza was completed in 1883. J. Fisher Satterwaite, El Paso Parks and Streets Commissioner, can be credited for the transformation of the Plaza from a desolate piece of property to a public square. He had trees planted, fountains built and alligators placed in the pond.

One story claims that the alligators were sent to a local miner from a friend in Louisiana as a joke. The miner then presented the alligators to Mayor C. R. Morehead, who had them placed in the park pond

The alligators were an attraction until they were finally moved to the El Paso Zoo in 1965 after two were stoned to death and another had a spike driven through its left eye. The alligators were returned to the plaza in 1972 for two years only to be removed once more because of vandals. Now a statue stands commemorating them.

For More: The Alligators of El Paso

The plaza is empty and the bars are closing down and it was barely 9PM. And people call SLC a backwater, please. We have a few drinks and start the walk to the border about three blocks away.

The main artery to Juarez looks like Juarez; all the signs in Spanish, and Mexican pop culture images everywhere. The streets are mostly deserted and a little dark. Just before the border there is graffiti painted on the wall, a large white box with a blue cross in the middle, below it in Spanish is written,

Dedicado a todas las mujeres y ninos victimas de la violencia el abuso y extradicion.

We walk up to the beginning of bridge that leads into Mexico. You can tell you are close, even before you are there because of the appearance Concertina Wire, double circles of razor wire that are stretched out like a Concertina - an accordion like instrument. There is something wrong calling the razor, flesh tearing machines after a musical instrument that is famous for polka music. Listen to this file and imagine a poor Mexican illegal getting caught in it.

zip zip polka

Fellni would appreciate the irony.

We enter Mexico for 35 cents. We now can see into Mexico and on the side of the river retaining wall is graffiti of all kinds, mostly anti-American. It is the poor and disenfranchised version of the middle finger to the rich gringos in the North.

Walking into Mexico, like every Mexican border town, we are assaulted with, " Taxi? Taxi? Girl? Young Girl?" We tell them no thank you and walk. We notice the first bar in Mexico but don't stop, deciding to make it the last bar in Mexico as we leave.

We wander down the main street for a while, even here most things are closed, but at least there are people on the street. Mykul wants to get off the main street and we walk over to the next one. We walk a block or two and turn a corner and there in front of us is the bull fight ring. We both sigh. Brutal in its violence, lovely in its divine drama - the beauty in the bulls futile but courageous attempt to live! A stacked deck against it... but it fights to the end, closer to real life than any reality show.

Tonight it is empty and dark but we can still hear the cheering crowds and the smell of blood and roses.

Walking back to the main street, we pass a few local prostitutes. These are hall of famers, once beautiful woman, once a little baby in a mother's arms looking over the garden, now old and hollow, offering themselves for $25. We walk past as they throw desperate kisses our way. We see their pimps on the corner, Mykul notices that they are barely 18 years old. We pass them and they are polite with smiles of death. Here are the children of Juarez, selling grandmothers for food and a new pair of boots. The economics of desperation and being so close to abundance of America, that mocks them everyday.

We are hungry and need some tequila so we stop at a restaurant. The waiter is gracious and warm and brings us two shots, then two more. I notice on the menu, that they have baby goats head. I am not a big meat eater but I eat meat. I decide that I am going to order it to defamiliarized myself from the sterilized, mass produce meat that I eat at home, to see the death of eating an animal.

The head comes, it is a fleshy skull of a baby goat. I eat meat, so I embrace it. The taste is good, though the meat is sparse. I want to taste the tongue. I take my knife and fork, hold the tongue back at the base and cut. Part of me is creeped out, not by the thought of eating a goats tongue, it's meat, but the removing it from the goats mouth to eat it is so foreign. At this table in Juarez, there is nothing that separates me from the fact that I am eating from a goat's head. I am surprised to find the tongue is the best tasting part.

The locals love the baby goat head not so much for the meat, but the brain and the eyes. The brain is a local favorite and the skull is cracked open so that the diner can access the brains. I don't know if I can eat it, until Mykul takes the fork and puts some in his mouth. " It tastes like liver." I take a bite, "You're right." We agree that we don't appreciate liver and therefore, not goat's brain either. I cannot bring myself to eat the eyes, Mykul being more gastronomically daring having lived in Korea for years, takes a bite, and his face changes to and unpleasant expression of " What is in my mouth!" He quickly washes it down with a margarita. " Yea, the eyeball not so much."

I talk to the waiter in my broken Spanish and find out that he has three children, 14, 11 and 4. He has been working 13 hours, His face is warm and open and kind. We are the last diners and tell him we are leaving so he can go and be home with his family. He smiles a big smile and says, "Gracias," We walk out 4 shots and two giant margaritas happier.

We wander back to the border and we see across the street a bar opening that looks like a cave opening with a sheet as a door. The light from the bar is red and entices us. We step down the steps into El Grupo an artificial cavern of stalagmites, grime and smoke. Performing is Kevin, the King of 80's pop an expat who looks more like an American woodshop teacher than the King of the 80's. Kevin and the bartender are the only ones in the bar. Mykul and I want to transplant the bar with Kevin and the barkeep to SLC and make a mint. We start walking out and Kevin asks where we are going. Kevin wants to play for someone beside Juan.

We are starting to really feel the Tequila but decide to stop at the last bar in Juarez. We walk in and there is a young man sitting at the bar and a 60 something bartender cleaning up. The bar is closing down. We start talking to the young man and we tell him that we are poets. We start talking about Latin American poets and North American poets, this interests the bartender. He asks me who are my favorite Latin poets and I tell him it is Neruda, Vallejo and Hiudobro. He tells us that Neruda is to obvious at times and not as sublime as Borges, Borges is the best poet in the world. The bartender is very articulate and we continue talking. Octavio, the young man, also is articulate and together we talk for almost an hour. We learn about a Mexican poet that they loved, Alfonso Reyes,

"Mexico is at once a world of mystery and clarity: in her landscape, mystery in the souls of he people."

and

"I was another, being myself;
I was he who wanted to leave.
To return is to cry. I do not repent of this wide world.
It is not I who return,
But my shackled feet."

And we learned of a revisionist Spanish arabist, Miguel Asin Palaces who hypothesis that Dante used the writings of Ibn al-Arabi to compose The Divine Comedy

We finish our beers while the bartender finishes cleaning up. We say good night and left the last bar in Juarez, a town known for its murder rate, intellectually feed.

It is true that Mexico is a mystery and so are her people; passionate, loving, magical, desperate and violent.

In other words, alive.

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Post Script

Colorado Springs Is a mid size city that has the personality of a dry pancake.  The seminars are good and the people we meet at the seminar are nice and interesting people, but once we leave the hotel and go downtwon, we realize what a backwater Colorado Springs actually is.  As most of you know, I do not like Salt Lake City, yet as I travel, I have a greater respect for it, especially when it comes to drinking.  The past three states we have been in, the bars all close down before 10PM or are not even open until Thursday.  At least in SLC you can find somewhere to hang your cane and have a drink or two and have an OK conversation or at least meet some crazy who can entertain you for awhile. 

We take the hotel shuttle to the other side of I 25 where downtown is located, our shuttle driver is a vietnam vet named Charlie.  Charlie is in his early 60's still working even after retiring from 23 years in the Air Force.  A thin man with graying hair and a thin mustache, he reminds me of my grandfather. 

My grandfather would drive the 70+ miles to Colorado Springs from Denver, in his black 42' Buick to sell Electrolux vacuum cleaners.  There are some old houses next to the hotel and I can imagine my grandfather knock on the doors showing the women of the house the benefits of the Electrolux's powerful sucking. 

We want to go to the "smallest bar in the world,"  as the brochure calls it, but it is closed at 9PM so is Club Blue right next door.  I ask a few people walking down the street, " Where can a I get a drink?"  they say they don't know, they are Christians.  Finally we find an Irish Pub and walk in.  By now Matt and Mykul are a two sheets to the wind coming up to three and four.  We sit at the bar and the bartender asks what we want.  The bartender is a very skinny tattooed kid with one fucked up eye, its more than a lazy eye, kind of like an eye afraid of seeing the things it has seen and is trying to crawl back inside the kids head.

The bar is having some kind of quiz night, which is appropriate for an Irish pub, but the questions?

"  Who was the Principal in Saved by the Bell?"

" Who was the last runner up in "American Idol?"

Matt protests telling the bartender that this is a bunch of shit.  The bartender's eye crawls further back in the kid's head.  "You can be kicked out"  "No bother, no respectful Irish man would put up with this drivel!"  Matt is swedish, but never mind. 

We leave the bar and walk down a few blocks to a want-to-be dive bar.  The bar is mostly empty and I sit at the counter and Matt buys us two rounds.  The bartender, a non-descript fat twenty something kid with a tattoo of Alan Alda's face on his neck, tells me that where I am sitting, belongs to someone.  I tell him OK I'll move when they get back.  He says it again and I say, "When they get back."  He thinks I am staring him down, but its the tattoo I am staring at wondering what he was thinking, and it kinda freaks me out because it looks like Hawkeye is being born from his neck like some Greek god. The people in the bar are drinking and talking about nothing....I feel like I am in a Charlie Brown episode and stuck with the adults.  Mykul and I are very out going and we try to start up a conversation, but we get nothing out of them,

we can hear the fan of the heater kicking in, our cue to go elsewhere.

We call Charlie and he comes and picks us up,  He likes us and says that there is a descent dive bar near the hotel called, Bennies.    We walk in and there is an open mic going on.  We are all so drunk, because of our disappointment, but I still want to recite some poetry.  I put my name down on the list and wait.  This bar is a descent bar, with twenty -thirty somethings sitting around listening, these are people literally on the otherside of the railroad tracks and we feel home here.  Mykul is sitting on a bench seeing if the can remember one of his poems, he looks at me and says, "its no use, I am too drunk."  Finally its my turn to read.

Here is the Hotel Cavalier with its Orange neon sign sending Morse code to the malnurished, those hungering even for the imitation of love.........

The crowd is expecting some kind of hip hop or slam shit....

......she walks past me, caresses my cheek with prosthetic hook.  Love is more or less abstract......

I am looking for the words inside my swimming head, picking them out, only missing a few that rush by on too much whiskey.  At the same time I look over at Matt and his is crying in his hat.   I think to myself,  " This is a good poem, but not that good."   The crowd is polite and I finish and walk over to Matt.  The bartender is concerned,  "Are you OK kid?"  " My grandma just died."  We sat there with our arm around him as he told us of her hard life and how he loved her.  We did some shots in her memory even poured some on the ground for her to drink... and then stumbled the few blocks to the hotel.

We stop at the 7-11 to get some Gatoraide.  The girl working the late shift is pretty, well she's pretty fat and not very attractive.  I think of Valentine's day and wonder if she has a Valentine.  I buy some flowers and as we are leaving I give them to her.  " Will you be my Valentine."  she smiles and tells me that I made her night.  Her smile is very warm, I wink at her and leave.

We get back to the room and Matt is a mess, we do what we can to comfort him.  Finally he passes out on the floor.  I sit in the bed and start remembering the deaths in my family.  I think how lucky I have been to be able to know them, that they shared part of their lives with me.  Toast them and pour some whiskey on the carpet.

Coming back to SLC, I tell the city that I hate, that I don't hate her so much, that I need to leave, but its me.... not her.  She laughs a little laugh from the sewer grate that I am passing.  We agree to appreciate eachother more and to stay friends.

Down Time: Writing Poems

Cathedral of The Madeline

Salt Lake City

,

UT

  December, 2006

Empty church-

Except for a

Homeless man

Slouched, passed out

In a pew.

I stare at the crucifix-

Jesus too, slouching on his

Cross from the weight

Of so many prayers.

Jesus with all his

Baggage

Leaving

On a trip.

Maybe

To some deserted island

Without telephones,

Or some quiet corner

Of

Mount

Olympus

Where retired Zeus

Sleeps his days away

Under the swaying

Boughs of a cypress tree.

Understanding,

I walk to the mural

Of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Kneel before her

And pray

Pray the wounded prayer

Of an unbeliever.

The church is silent

Except for the muted

Tapping of tears falling

On the blue thread bare

Velvet of the altar.

I look down expecting

To see roses

But only small deficient

Circles looking like little

Broken hearts.

Adam and Eve and The Apple

Adam is walking the garden

While Eve is admiring the

Tree Of the Knowledge

Of Good and Evil

She bends over naked

to pick up the fruit

Fallen to the ground.

Adam notices the round

Apple of her ass.  Is

Filled with a heat

He has not yet named.

At that moment, he names

The fig.  He walks up to her and

Puts his finger inside

Her.  She moans but

There is no word for

Moan yet.  Eve takes

The fruit and puts it

To her mouth

The wet red juice of the fruit

Covers her lips, it is sweet

And hot and makes her

Lips swell.  At that moment

Adam  creates the word, Desire.

And partakes. 

He enters her and Eve

Is open.  They move

Like the waters of

Eden

Surge, a word Adam has

Created.  “I surge with you.”

Eve moans.

And the voice of the lord

Is walking in the garden

And Adam and Eve

Hide.

Hide behind a hedge

Of Roses

The voice of God calls

Out and Adam sitting

Behind a Rose bush

Of thorns and buds

Thinks up a new word

And says to Eve,

“We’re caught.”

The End of Days

Jesus, Mohammed and Juno

Are sitting in a diner when —

(No, these are not

The first lines

Of joke.)

One more time…………….

Jesus, Mohammed and Juno

Are sitting in a dark

Smokey diner on

Hollywood

And Vine before

All the non- smoking

Laws were passed.

Juno is chain smoking

To stay awake.  He

Can’t remember what

They are talking about,

The waters of Lethe

Still ringing in his ears.

“Stay with me, Juno,”

says Mohammed  “Yea” says

Jesus.   

“What are we going to do

about this?”  Juno has

fallen asleep in his

Soup De Jour.  “ Jesus

Christ! Juno, no wonder

The Greek gods were

Sent to pasture.  Sorry

Jesus no offense.”  “None

Taken.”

The tired waitress refills

Their coffee and they

Bless the Aztec gods.

Juno fumbles to light

Another cigarette as

they plan the coming

All Out Clearance Sale of Planet Earth

“ Everything Must Go”

They pour over maps

Spread out over the starry sky

Of a Formica table

Making lists

Like Nazi’s in

Pre War

Germany

.

A Traveling Salesman That Hates Black Soft Top Jeep Wranglers

I hate all black soft

Top jeep wranglers. 

Whether I am in

North Carolina

Florida

California

Texas

Georgia

Or

North Carolina

again.

Or

Washington

,

Idaho

Montana

West Virginia

And

Tennessee

I hate all black

Jeep Wranglers

Equally.  Even

The one’s on TV

Or a brief drive

By in a movie.   

Standing on

A dirt frontage

Road a thousand

Miles away,

Minding my own

Business – filled

With thoughts of

The day

A black soft top

Jeep wrangler drives

By and in an instant

I am with you

Driving down I 15

On our way to Maui

On our way to the end.

Augusta, Georgia

Leaving was an ordeal.  Since I ride a motorcycle I ride the bus during the winter.  It is Presidents day and I forgot, so the buses are not running like they are supposed to be.  The weatherman says that it is 36 degrees and I look out the window and it has stopped snowing, so I decide to walk the 14 Salt Lake blocks to the stop that leads to the airport.  It's 5:30AM.

The first 10 minutes of the walk are OK and then everything changes, like being in love with a younger woman.  The temperature drops 10 degrees and it starts snow, really snowing.  The snow is wet and my shoes are sloshing with freezing water.  I am wearing a green 50's style jacket and I look like a sugar coated green bean. 

I cut across a large parking lot to make it to the bus stop on time.  The wind has picked up and I feel like Amundsen crossing the Antarctic.  The bus is not coming for another hour and I will miss the flight.  I call for a ride.  I wait an hour in the cold walking to keep warm.  On the plane my feet and hands are tingling with sharp pins till they warm up.

Augusta, the de -facto home of James Brown.  We are staying at a hotel three blocks from where he shined shoes when he was 5 years old and a few blocks from a statue of him that was by buried four feet of flowers, pictures and letters when he died.  The convention center in town was where his funeral was held. 

The seminar is the worst we have ever done, not one person bought anything.  But the city is calling us.  On the corner of Eighth and McComrick is a sad blue horse standing on a balcony.  Srange but true.  I am talking to the hotel manager and she tells me about the Spirit Ple dust down the street.  This is a pole that slaves where chained to when they were being auctioned off.  She tells me how people( read White) have tried to tear it down.  One man chained the pole to his truck and as he tried to pull it down had a heart attack and died on the spot.  "I don't believe in evil spirits" she says.  I look at her and say, "Who said they are evil, I think they are the guardian spirits of memory."  She looks at me with a barely hidden disdain.

The team is down, I don't really care, the only thing I want to do is explore Augusta.  We finally leave at about 8:30PM.

We walk down eighth street and pass a few strip clubs, I am not  in the mood and suggest that we look for a good local bar.  We ask a guy on the street and he tells us about a local basement bar that white guys will like.  We walk in and a young guy is playing guitar and singing Jim Croce, " Bad bad Leroy brown."  There is a table of very gay men giving a birthday bash for their straight girlfriend.  The bar is mostly empty, otherwise but the beer is cheap.  We stay awhile.  The highlight of the bar is the men's restroom.  It hasn't been updated for 50 years and it feels like a time machine. I think of all the men taking a leak after too much beer, and all the things they were running from by drinking, the broken dreams, the lost loves or even the celebrations of birthdays, births and marriages.

We walk back towards the hotel and we want something different.  Matt says we should at least check out a strip club.  We decide to stop at the Discotheque Lounge. Under the 60's something neon sign it says "girls girls girls."  We walk in and pay the cover.  The club is mostly empty and very attractive early twenties girl comes and talks to us.  She is tiny and though not my type beautiful.  I don't like strip clubs for the most part, all the women ridden hard and put away wet, sad and dark, and something I have a moral conundrum with, but the women here don't have the same feeling, their faces are open and look healthy.  Matt and I talk to Bunny. Bunny is very sexy but not very bright.  We talk about her job and are maybe too inquisitive about it, but she wants $20 for a table dance and will put up with us for the few extra dollars.  Its a financial mis-step on her part but she opens up to Matt and they talk as a new girl starts dancing on stage.  She is physically perfect

Black hair, blue-green eyes, long waist and long legs.  I sit at the stage and put a few dollars up.  I am reading Chris Abani's The Flaming Virgin and in one scene he describes the smell of strippers, like they all buy the same lotion from Victoria Secret.  She is dancing in front of me and tells me to stand.  She takes off my hat and glasses and puts my face between her breasts.  The smell...intoxicating and expected.  She looks at me as she walks off stage and smiles.

The next girl comes to dance and she too is physically perfect, more curvy than the last girl.  This girl's face is not as open as the last, she is more reserved, less comfortable.  I am a man of contradictions.  I watch her, there are tears in my eyes, I am not sure why I am crying.  She probably thinks that I am some freak.  Maybe I am.  I want to posses her sexually, want to save her, want her to save me from.... I don't know what.     She finishes dancing and disappears.  I don't blame her.

My first stripper comes out, we talk.  She tells me 20 for a table dance.  We walk over to the table and I give her 20, tell her she doesn't have to dance.  She says that she has to, "house rules:".  She dances for me and I get lost in the curve of her right side, the changing movement of back.

She finishes and sits next to me and we talk.  I tell her that I am a poet and she tells me that she loves E.A. Poe, especially "The Tell Tale Heart"  We talk about her mother, the club, her boyfriend.  She asks me to recite a poem to her.   The club is loud so I put my mouth to her ear.  I can feel my lips against her ear, the heat of my breath.  I recite, The Hotel Cavalier and The Green Chair  I look at her when I am finished and there are tears in her eyes. 

We talk about her job and her boyfriend, how he read her diary and confessed but realized how much she loved him.    I told her its hard for a man to love a woman who is a stripper and it has nothing to do with her.  She understands, tells me how her man brushes the hair away from her face every morning and kisses her goodbye on his way to work.   "I usually pretend I am asleep and rarely say anything but I love it."  I tell her to tell him,  I  tell her how I have done that, no matter where the relationship was, and how I would have loved to have been more appreciated.    She tells me I am right.  I tell her to go home tonight and hold him, feel his breath, the rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of his body, smell him and feel nothing but gratitude, then tell him how grateful you are that he is in your life and you appreciate how he loves you."  She is smiling and crying and tells me she will."   We talk about other things and say goodbye.  She gives me gentle kiss on the check and tells me thank you. 

Matt and I walk out into the night.  It has cooled down.  We walk the empty streets not saying much.  Finally we go back to the Hotel and sleep peacefully.