The Meaning of Life
Short Stories & Poems
by
Ian C. Dawkins Moore
©Copyright 2010 Ian C. Dawkins Moore
Smashwords Edition
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From
Ian C. Dawkins Moore
2311-7th Avenue, Oakland, CA 94606
For information call
510-465-7487
Email: amazdah3@yahoo.com
Thank you
For taking the time to read ‘The Meaning of Life,’ short stories & poems; my work is not only an attempt to put my thoughts and ideas out into the public domain, but also to encourage all my readers to do the same.
Be well; Ian C. Dawkins Moore
Content:
Starting Out Again
Out of Nowhere
A New Flame
Coming to America
Love Poem
Lakeside Drive
Brotha Lover
Love is a Perfect Imperfection
Noble Work
The Marines
Street Saints
The Poet
This Evening
Life as Spectacle
Pigeon Hole
The Prodigal Father
Young at Eighty
Mellow Fellow
Steve’s Garden
The Meaning of Life
Your Resume
Work I Do
Truth’s Name
Haikus
Dead Secrets
I’m a Writer-holic
Piss Poor Pundits
The Outdoors Man
Man Overboard
Jamaica Farewell
The Haze of Hunger
The Poet Guide
Strength to be Free
Jungle Fever
The Working stiff
Mad-OOF Madness
Debt Ridden
The Equality of Uncertainty
Shame & Blame
What Goes Around, Comes Around
The Cat
My Fate
Walking on Air
Waiting
Timbuktu
I’m Blue Again
The Colony of Hope
The Diplomat
Fake it, ‘til you make it
A Great day
To Know Good
If Only, Maybe
The Road to Ramadan
Island of Peace
When We Become Our Dream
Keep Alive Your Dream
How Good to Center Down
Starting Out Again
I’ve had eighteen-months to cool off my heels
rebound from stress which had me eating nails
I’m back into reading and making sense
the job with the City was really immense
I met many people during my stay
talking and laughing having much great play.
But I’ll sure miss my Guru, Master Earl
his loving heart will be hard to unfurl
for we talked each morning of the heart’s grace
and it helped me deal with the human race.
Now I’m walking hills to test my good health,
determined today to live in great wealth,
for the chance to get paid while writing verse
is better than dealing with those perverse!
Out of Nowhere
Lord Byron Bukowski, and Baudelaire
hung like Einstein and smarter than hares
came into my sleep, from out of nowhere.
They petitioned me to name my dream prayers,
to be open, honest and really true;
what would it take for me to stop being blue?
Travels to Jah; Britannia and Rome,
would be a great start, ‘cause I love to roam;
next, an ambassador working for Green
surrounded by friends improving the scene;
The freedom to write daily is a must
but so is walking and learning a trust
acknowledging that spirit is everywhere
means spirit can come from ‘Out of Nowhere’
A New Flame
Holding my heart I woke to a golden
light flooding my bedroom; my dreamtime had
folded into the starkness of yellow
sunlight; the sensation of grace embraced me.
This new light enveloped my dull thoughts
and fired my heart to greater love bouts.
My heart songs have clanged hollow of late;
fun & joy have been usurped by my fears;
my laughter has been a release from tears;
this last adventure has added some years.
But I’m released now to uncover
the new flame that I have rediscovered;
within my heart is the only one truth
to bring alive and know it as truth.
Coming to America
Ships coming from a distance carry everyone’s dreams ashore. For some they slip in with the eddies of the tides. For others they crash against the rocks of poor fortune. Each brings their new song of freedom, coming to America.
When Eugene first visited New York and stumbled over the stacks of garbage on the corners of Fifth Avenue, he was in awe of such poverty side-by-side with such wealth. Eugene later discovered that the city was going broke; and that New Yorkers were betting on the city’s demise. Years later when Eugene flew into San Francisco he was greeted by quite the opposite spectacle. His wife’s sister picked them up in her 350 SL Mercedes and ferried them through a kaleidoscope of dazzling billboards advertising everything from gambling in sun-baked Reno, to giving humanitarian aid to El Salvador. Eugene was deposited, after a ride across the elegant Bay Bridge, at Lake Merritt, the pride of Oakland’s Afro-American bourgeoisie; he had to pinch himself to believe the opulence was real.
It was real. The Afro-American community of Oakland, California, is probably one of the richest black communities in the world. The skyline houses that look down from the redwood hills of the East Bay are not the exclusive preserves of whites, as is often the case in many neo-colonial lands. The sun-drenched Mediterranean climate is host to one of the most diverse communities in America. Yet beyond the mortar and bricks of their homes, Afro-Americans own very little of the wealth of this fertile region.
On his arrival in Oakland, California Eugene learned how the city was scorned by San Francisco, the city across the bay, as all cities inhabited by people of color in the white world are scorned. Oakland’s population used to be over 60% Afro-American, but it has now shrunk to below 45%. Yet the racist tag has stuck and Oakland continues to be subjected to innuendoes of second-class citizenship. This abuse only served to highlight the cruel irony of history; that Oakland was the celebrated start of the Trans-Continental railway which was built to bring Easterners to the gold of the Sierra Mountains. But the fame of the whoring town of ‘Frisco had spread too wide for the truth to be known - that San Francisco was just a stop-over place for far more rewarding adventures.
It was not, however, until Eugene began to work with Americans that he got to see the people behind their veils. Stripped of a reason to care, people often don’t; settled people are addicted to their immediate gratifications and interest in and about others become disturbingly absent. The public persona of Americans being the embodiment of the perfect lifestyle, is a veneer which fools nobody least of all someone new to the country eager to dig beneath the surface with every question. American lifestyles are so tied to credit and debit and the obsession with crime, that to come to America is to feast on dreams of fabled opportunities and harsh demoralizing realities.
Eugene’s first encounter with Americana came after he pounded the streets for a month, looking for a comparable position as an Engineer which he’d held in London; Eugene was told by an agency interviewer in no uncertain terms, that ‘as a black man he could not hope to get a position that would allow for vertical mobility. Eugene could only hope for lateral movement!’
American racism strikes foreigners with such bold frankness that on first impressions it comes as a relief from the hypocrisy of the British class system. Yet the acceptance of conflicts between racial groups in America is so prevalent and reveals an attitude of such bitterness, that it chokes every fiber of the nation’s structure. All sides tug, push and pull for a louder voice to express their mutual detachment. Short of Civil War, nowhere in the world is bitterness for one’s fellow citizens such a basic part of the psyche of the nation, as it is in America. Most startlingly, it is a bitterness that believes it’s the most victimized in the world. Trying to explain the 1000 year-old war between the Scottish and the English, to an Afro-American, is to be reduced to redundancy. Afro-America prides itself on being history’s biggest victims, as if no other group black or white could possibly have suffered so much!
Eugene was finally saved from the grip of this all consuming form of racism by the guiding hand of patronage; in the land of the brave and the free it’s not what you know but who you know! A cousin of his wife just happened to be on the local school board. He found Eugene a job as a janitor at a junior college where Eugene eventually worked for four years. In the course of his apprenticeship Eugene was exposed to American supervisors who took more than two years to summon the verve to have a conversation with him beyond, “What’s ‘appen’”.
It took him sometime to realize that as a black Englishman Eugene frustrated the majority of Americans who he met, because he didn’t fit into a neat box, i.e., White, Black, and Asian, Hispanic or Other. It reminded Eugene of when he first filled out a visa form to come to the US; Eugene had to grapple with questions that asked him what his grandparent’s ancestry and religion were? Whether Eugene or any of his distant relatives had committed a crime for which they weren’t convicted! And what was his race? Eugene resisted these attempts to be made into a racist, as long as he could, but finally was encourage and impelled by the government bureaucracy of American to view myself in this one-dimensional form.
Try as Eugene might, however, his accent set him apart and his attitude really seemed to upset his supervisors so much so that they were always finding ways to mess with him. In social interactions too, his accent (or American accents reacting to his English English?) drew attention. As a result Eugene was subjected to a wide range of responses ranging from people staring at him - mouth opened in disbelief, followed by them storming out of the room muttering “who is that nigger?” to women approaching him and asking him to “just say som’thang”. The former Eugene lost no sleep over. The latter Eugene learned to live with.
After these teething times of acculturation, a process that everyone goes through in learning another culture, Eugene was swept up by the vibrancy of Afro-American life in Oakland. The bubbly familiarity of Afro-American life is an intoxicant to the newcomer. Particularly when that newcomer has come from a European tradition that considers any display of emotions to be ‘uncivilized’. For a Black man who had lived in isolation and cultural persecution in England, America represented a land flowing with milk and honey. Just the fact of seeing prosperous black people strolling the streets was enough to get the heart pumping with pride and self-worth. The daily acknowledgment of Afro-Americans for each other on the streets, introduced Eugene to a ‘brotherhood’ he’d not known before. The encouraging expressions of warmth in the language instilled an emotional bond that resurrected his wounded soul. It seems to Eugene that the Afro-American world of the East Bay was just a kiss away from paradise.
Yet as a Black individual who has traveled and lived in other Black countries, Eugene’s assimilation into Afro-America was most difficult. Firstly, because it seems to him that Afro-America binds all people of color to its knee-jerk reaction for survival, without necessarily knowing what is the best way to survive. And secondly, Afro-America is inflexible to alternative solutions aimed at doing more than just surviving. For example, throughout the world the people of color understand they are the victims of a discrimination acted out on them. It is understood that those who do the discriminating (The Man, The whites, Them, etc.) are robbed of the one thing they seek to take from us - their humanity. When we play their game of hate and bitterness, we deliver up to them that which they seek, and ensure our own slavery. Thus when Afro-Americans use derogatory words to describe each other, they are not inventing a unique cultural language; rather they are propagating the language of slavery. Nothing disgusts a foreign black more than to hear an Afro-American refer to himself and his kinsmen as a ‘nigger’. This is no solution. Rather it is a papering over of the hurt of humiliation; a sublimated denial of the self as a deserving feeling human being. It is also not a solution when intelligent Afro-Americans mimic Ghettoize to impress their friends as to just how ‘Street Black’ they are. It seemed to Eugene that respect and love for oneself has to be the number one priority for any people. For a people who have been enslaved both physically and mentally, respect and love must be approached as a religious commitment.
Eugene found it difficult settling into America because he made the mistake of thinking America would be just like Britain, “people speak English, don’t they?” However, beyond the surface similarities the nations are very different. For example, the educational system in Britain, perhaps because of its elitist program of directing students into academic or vocational courses from an early age, instills a deep reverence for knowledge in its students. In his own case, Eugene was a complete failure in school and spent the latter part of his teens erasing the humiliating experience from his memory. Nevertheless, as Eugene matured and went in search of his own character and purpose, he dipped back into the basics which had been etched into his soul; the basic belief that truth and knowledge would make him free and required his active involvement to guarantee it. In America education seems to be just another option among many, not necessarily central to an individual’s advancement. The Government’s reluctance to plan for a definite standard of intelligence for its schools, clashes with the so-called ‘free market’ concept and a history of duplicity and enslavement. The result, consequently, is the promotion of the few over the many. With those who can grab the most being the arbiters of rightness and taste.
For a foreigner America’s unique culture defies traditional society norms. While most countries are united by the sameness of their people, ideas, religions and character, America defines itself and is defined by others, by its diversity. The Anglo-Saxons may still control the corridors of power in America, but the pulse of the nation is in it’s streets of explosive ethnic diversity. It’s like a nation that’s reaching for the sky, just to surrender.
Coming to America the voyager is suspended between the dream of freedom and the reality of slavery; a freedom that offers credit to include everyone in the scheme of things, and a slavery that compels conformity to debt. America is a freedom whose passion is out of control, but its very confusion is the catalyst which sparks great adventures. America is an emotion that claims objectivity, believing hopelessly in the theoretical rights of man. Yet as the real world of finite resources encroach on America’s glut of power, it will only be America’s resilience to change that promises it a special place in the world of the future.
Love Poem
It’s ten in the morning and I’m floating
inside Love’s exhausted embraces.
Time has stopped still; I’m drenched in roses and
the sweet mellow murmurs of timelessness.
The fragrance of my lover unpeels me,
unwrapping my layers so lovingly.
So we stay in bed all morning – so what!
The world moves on in its chaos – so what!
So we kiss the work-world goodbye – so what!
And care only for our love match – so what!
Yet this is my day to be with the arts
a day to avoid computers and parts,
so I remind myself that love is art,
and remain in bed where the loving starts.
Lakeside Drive
Walking along, her breasts bobble in air,
pulled by a small dog, her man in arrears
her athletic stride pushes waters aside;
she is determined, proud with a great behind.
The lakeside walkers are elegant & preen
the art is to stretch and also to be seen.
Oakland attracts many different physiques,
the bulbous breasted, the Negroid supreme.
The thin Hamatics with their angular schemes,
and tall Anglos who manufacture dreams.
And it’s the bright sun’s warmth that shines on all,
this small part of earth where waters are full;
promising better days for those who strive,
to enjoy their striding on Lakeside drive.
Brotha Lover
He hot red black pants hugging thin hips.
She all cool blue shirt filling tight hot lips.
He wide threads shirt stretched with nose wide open.
She small sensual bold breasts heart wide open.
They cruise stop hug walk fondle love lakeside
I sit drink view young love on my backside.
Love is a Perfect Imperfection
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times, it was his best decision, and it was his biggest mistake. It was fantastic. It was unreal. It was something he'd always dreamed of, it was a great unknowing. It was a twentieth-first century marriage, the perfect imperfection.
Zachariah met his wife-to-be two days after he arrived in California from Jamaica. A week later they were married, and two days later he was back in Kingston running his business and waiting for his wife to join him there. They have an expression for this kind of impulsiveness in Jamaica; ‘he’s Too-Tool-Bay-Boy,’ which means that the woman has possessed the boy's precious fluids. This was certainly the case with Zachariah. He was besotted with the lady. Even now after five years of separation Zachariah didn't regret having acted on his feelings. He was in love, and his wife was the most beautiful, most intelligent black woman he'd ever met.
Zachariah sometimes thought, when looking back on the breakdown of his marriage, it was easy to blame the other or himself. If only he’d raised the toilet seat after use, or maybe he should have capped the toothpaste.... He accepted that we are all looking for some definitive explanation to resurrect our aching egos, and heal the hurt of disillusionment. But the truth is often less oblivious and blameless. Zachariah remembered what his father had said about love and marriage when he had asked him. “Love is de most irrational of emotions." His Jamaican father blurted out in incredulous disbelief at his son question. "Lemme tell you what George Bernard Shaw, de socialist Irish writer said about marriage ‘When two peoples are under de influence of de most violent, most insane, most delusive and most transient of passions, dey are required to swear dat dey will remain in dat excited, abnormal and exhausting condition continuously 'til death do they part!’ I ask you what kinda foolishness is dat? Eh!”
“But isn't marriage the most important commitment that I will make in my life,” wailed Zachariah. “Marriage like hangings are determined by fate!” retorted his father with a loud laugh, “just pray that it's not too drawn out!”
Throughout school Zachariah heard only giggles and profanities for answers to his searching questions about love and happiness. It seemed that society had no way of training him for this responsibility of a lifetime. The vision of what a good marriage is was rarely discussed, and every day he was faced with reports in the news papers of the misunderstandings that abound between married couples.
And then one day she was there, a vision of perfect womanhood with her eyes and ears focused on him. The other half of his lost self; a Madonna to nurture his children; a partner to push when he pulled, a princess to walk with her prince, gliding together through a sparkling tapestry of childhood fantasy; never thinking of tomorrow and its harsh decisions that must be made today. The dream was caught up with the intimacy of passion and energy, and it presented them with a warm future. Marriage was natural. Marriage was right. Marriage was what one is supposed to do!
Zachariah could not see into the unseen and the unsaid, he failed to understand the true texture and character of himself and his wife-to-be. What were their priorities? How would they handle role playing? How prepared were they for compromise? What about children? What about money? How comfortable did they feel with sexual intimacy? These and many necessities Zachariah failed to form questions for. Zachariah found out the hard way, that love and happiness takes a great deal of effort, compromise, dedication and openness as well as love.
Earlier, during Zachariah's initial separation from his wife, when he was getting his visa and work permit to go to America, they wrote daily confessing their love to each other, and theirs would be the perfect marriage. They committed their undying love to each other in passionate romantic prose determined from the outset to cast aside the dragons of jealousy and the claws of competition. And when they finally did get together after six months apart, they rekindled their love for the same interests; walks in the country, jogging, and traveling, reading and discussing politics. Neither of them was money hungry; they ate well, dressed well, threw lovely parties and were the envy of their friends because of their outward display of compatibility.
Yet the confident cigar-smoking Jamaican hid a deep insecurity, and the vivacious social butterfly wife was always too worn out for her husband when she got home. These were some of the tedious, petty, irritating, and very real conflicts that became the substance of their marriage. The resolution of these realities, in whatever fashion, is what is called a successful marriage!
If a failed marriage can be called a success, Zachariah's marriage was a success. Six-and-a-half years of commitment and learning did not just evaporate into the air. Zachariah learned that he could make that commitment and remain faithful. That he needed to be around touching, feeling and intimate people. He realized also that building a relationship takes time, patience and compassion. Like many men, most of Zachariah's relationships with women had only been as sexual partners. His relationships with women from then on were ones built on mutual respect and admiration for women, seeing now compatibility where before was conflict and competition. Zachariah and his wife came together dedicated to loving each other. They are now going their own separate ways stronger for having known each other and more honest and clearer about whom they are, and what they really want from life.
‘Love is a perfect imperfection sometimes happy sometimes sad.
Whenever love comes in your direction don't you hide a-way…
don't you hide away...!
Noble Work
To do work, noble work, symbolic work
that fills the exact time needed to do
it. To rest, to reflect, to enjoy work
and not to hide behind thin partitions.
To walk sun-warmed streets, accept your reward.
To feel the strain of effort, not of work.
This has been my day today, peaceful, true.
Promises of financial exertions
fell through. A quiet phone is a thing that’s
beautiful it allows for diversions.
The walk to the lake took me up & down hills
the sun-sparkled waters were filled with thrills
the lake silhouetted the young beauties
a summer evening of such rare fidelities.
The Marines
A force of nature that’s devoid of fate,
free men who chose to enslave their state,
for a righteous cause they claim loyalty,
but who are they fighting for to be free?
It’s the money men deep in the grave,
it’s the money men who care only for slaves.
They fight for glory, country and pride;
but where’s the heart that preserves the pride?
They join when young and impressionable,
then lose their lives very unfashionable.
Each minute, three million dollars are spent
on weapons of war with only one intent,
to kill fellow humans for money’s ends,
the Marines are that force that brings on that end.
Street Saints
They walk the streets in the toughest zones
stalking for lost and the desperate bones,
their innocent gaze protects them from sneers,
as they sell the word of their Christ that fears.
What makes a free man give in to a ghost?
Family members and the fear of the host?
And how are they different from Satan’s clan?
They both have focus and a lively band.
Their faith in Gods is all a photo blow,
designed for tax reasons and a TV show.
So when they turn up to your house next time
spare a thought for the battle they’re having with crime;
the crimes of the world that they make money from
and the Gods and Satans they’re running from!
The Poet (or how I love poetry but hate poets)
Ordinarily he was insane, but at times he had lucid moments when he was merely just stupid. He had decided to become a poet, much to the chagrin of his parents and friends.
“What’s a poet,” said his uncle maneuvering his inflated carcass across the plastic covered sofa, “some kind of fungus you get under yer finger nails? Boy you’d better just get yourself a job and help out your Ma and Pa!”
The poet winched and bit his tongue, his uncle was the same man who a month before and left his wife and kids after twenty years to move in with a girl half his age and twice his size. “He needed to be understood,” he’d told the family, who whispered behind their hands and went along with the hypocrisy ‘cause their was no one in the family who dared remind him that ‘if you breed ‘em, yer feed ‘em!
The poet had his own problems. He insisted on wearing his head bald, even though he had an odd growth on the back of his upper neck, which of course he couldn’t see, but which everyone noticed immediately on meeting him. He had a big head too. In proportion to his body it seemed to equal half his torso. Anatomically, it wasn’t so rare, I’d studied the relative proportions of heads to other limbs and his was in the top forty percentile of big heads. Not unusual, per se, but significant.
He was an orphan. Well, strictly speaking he did have parents who were alive, but they had handed him over to the mother’s nurse. The nurse was unable to have kids. His real parents were living in nearby Sacramento and it took the poet thirty-five years to find that out. When he did find out his parents were alive and living in Sacramento with brothers and sisters - he despised them. Not because they gave him away, or because they lived in the netherlands of Sacramento shunning the true Afro-American heartland of Oakland. No, he didn’t like them because they were boring. I’m sure there are many kids who feel the same way about their parents. I for one think we should be able to pick our parents, by lottery - ahead of time - some people just don’t deserve to have kids. Life’s too short to put up with boring parents don’t you think?
The poet lived with his surrogate family from his first years until they died. He took their name, and administered to their ill health for fifteen of his thirty-five years. He had once wanted to become a movie director, and had gotten accepted into Howard University, in Washington DC. His professor was the famous Haile Gerima, who directed ‘Sankofa’ the most heart-wrenching film ever made about slavery. The poet lasted just one semester before he had to drop out and return home to look after his parents. His bitter poetry blues started then. Locked in a sick house of smokers, the father took five years to kill himself while the mother held out for the full fifteen years, before succumbing to her husband’s disease and joining him in smoker’s heaven. The poet, the ever dutiful son, administered the medicines and wrapped their swollen bodies and hearts in the balm of loving devotion. He guiltily rewarded himself bi-weekly visits to the poetry houses in San Francisco. ‘Above Paradise’ was his favorite spot. Only the brave, challenged, rejected, transforming and explosively creative individuals dared perform there. The fraternity, however, was very supportive and the poet found a home, and began experimenting with poetry as a genuine form of personal expression. He discovered, as we all discover when we put aside our personal hang-ups and make the effort to connect to a form that speak from our hearts, that he had something to say.
I was the poet’s agent. Yes, I know there’s no money in poetry, but if your talent runs to handling, promoting and dealing with artists, why not a poet? I couldn’t let a little thing like making no money get in the way of my destiny! I came to this conclusion after a meeting with my Diva. She was from French Canada and had found her ‘calling’ on a Chinese junk that had sailed across the southern Atlantic and up the Amazon where it was scuttled at Manaus. She pointed out that as an Aries, with Venus in Pisces, I had an unfortunate habit of attracting individuals who played on my placid, yielding and sympathy nature. There was something else she mentioned, that I refused to listen to at the time, about my imaginative capacity to plug the holes of reality in the characters I met; daring myself to make them conform to my own peculiar ideal of life.
Later, in our sessions, when we got on to the Moon in Pisces, another of my astrological indicators, she revealed that ‘being impressionable and compliant in worldly affairs, I would often be at the mercy of unscrupulous people who would misuse me.’ Unfortunately, that was two years later and the damage had been done. Or should I say, I had fulfilled my destiny! But at the beginning, when we were still in Venus in Pisces, the prognosis seemed positive. For despite being attracted to characters on the lunatic fringe, she assured me, that if I managed to fall in love with a genuinely helpless, underprivileged, dependent person, I could really have a ball.
Enter Dick Jones, the poet. Not an impressive name, I grant you, and that was what we had to work on right away. But I’m getting ahead of myself. His poetry was outstanding. Take this from his 1996 classic “The News is Bad”:
Soon we will plunge into shadows and lose/completely the connection
to our hearts. We shall arrive to that life of sorrow/like an elephant
tethered to a string ,and accept it as the lie that foretells/our futures.
It had the brooding sultry tone of Baudelaire. At other times he could rhyme like a Lord Byron jingle, take his 1997 ‘The Good Old Times’:
The good old times – are gone. All times when old/are good.
Great things have been, and yet might be/greater still, if mere
mortals had the will/to play their tricks in a wider field.
But for sheer doggedness he had the banality of Bukowski. His 1998 masterpiece ‘Imagination is Dead’ evoked the devolution of our minds to a medieval dark age:
The life of imagination has been/cashed in for bobble-headed
icons with/empty minds, bodies and souls that clang like/cash
registers when called upon to speak.
You have to remember this was pure poetry in the age of the Slam phenomenon. In search of individual expression, our youth – although it was started by a grizzly old Chicagoan named Marc Smith - took to Slam poetry as it burst on the scene in the early nineties. You had two minutes to perform a poem, without props or music and you were judged by five anonymous members of the audience, picked at random as they entered the bar or café. It helped that you were drunk, but that’s always been a prerequisite for poets. It was particularly important for the audience to be drunk, which is why the most successful Slams are held in bars. The gatherings generally started around nine p.m. on a week-night. It took dudes months to realize that this was the hottest place in town to pick up babes. Even an old fogey like me had the pick of the litter. I can tell you there’s nothing sweeter than a babe who loves poetry. You’ve heard, I’m sure, the truism that ‘women fall in love thru their ears’. Well, at one a.m. after four hours of poetry, the babes are hot to trot.
Okay so you do have to sit through a lot of shit; angry fuckers, fronting fools, and just plain bad communicators. But that’s the beauty of the Slam. Just when you think you can’t take another asshole victim’s diatribe against white middle-class values, some perky white chick, with mousy hair and the bland body of a park ranger, steps up to the mike and blasts you with brilliance and creativity. Dante Jones stepped into this void of pretenders and just blew people away.
You like the name Dante? That was my suggestion! Most Californians have no idea who the real Dante was, but it sounded strong; a two syllable machismo name with attitude. When his parents finally joined the ‘Great Smoker in the Sky’, and Dante found out about his real parents in Sacramento he had a moment of revelation. “Sometimes,” he said, “a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it”. The dissonant experience really opened the flood gates to his poetic anguish. Being an abandoned rut myself, I had little sympathy for him, except to tell him that now he really had something to gripe about! That didn’t go down too well and probably sowed the seeds of our eventual break up. But what the hell, he was a poet, he was meant to suffer and if he couldn’t enjoy it, then he should become an accountant! Writing poems about his hurt, I told him, could at least get him laid if nothing else, after all he was a celebrity now, and if you can’t get laid as a celebrity what’s the point of striving? Unfortunately, that was his real problem - his sexuality, or lack thereof.
He confessed to me once that his gonads’ were enlarged; I didn’t ask him for proof, I was his agent not his proctologist. But when he came to me soon after excited at having found a sweet woman who loved him for more than his poetry, I was genuinely astonished. I didn’t hear anything more for a month or so, which is rare, ‘cause men, are like dogs and brag endlessly about any pussy they’re lucky enough to get. He was quiet. I put it down to his somber character and I took the high philosophical road, and thought he was just ‘weird’. Eventually he confessed the awful truth and laid it on me; the woman, he said, had herpes and would love to make love… but.