Whirlwind trip to NYC in which I went to see Chuck Berry with brother Brickie and appeared on television to read some of my poems. The concert at B.B. King's was sold out, most of the people were crammed into these square cafe tables on the floor in front of the stage. Not round tables like in a proper nightclub, which would make sense so that people could face the stage, but square two-top tables placed so they could cram the people in. People at those tables faced not the stage but each other; then had to turn their necks to see Chuck.
Brickie and I set up camp at the bar, perfect view, and standing was no problem. He wanted to drink vodka so I went along with him, and he bought the first three rounds. He insisted, even though he sprung for the tickets as well. I think he was trying to show his little bro a good time in the wake of the Colleen desertion. Cocktails ten bucks apiece. Christ.
Chuck comes out wearing tight black slacks, a spangly sequined red blouse Brickie called a 'show-biz shirt,' and of course this yachting cap that he wears. Hard to say why he's landed on this cap as his trademark head gear. Of course most people know that I long ago wore the blue version of this hat, which is more skippery that yachty. I've retired that hat but Chuck hasn't. Maybe Chuck is bald? Doesn't seem like he is. Anyway he's skinny and wiry and looks good in the hat. He's 82, looks to be about six feet ten inches tall, and dedicated the show to Bo Diddley, who had just passed on.
Does Chuck Berry remember the lyrics to his own songs? No he does not. He can still tear through the opening licks of these songs, though, and makes jokes about fucking up lyrics. "Damn," he said halfway through the show. "Last time I played BB King's I screwed up a total of four times. I done already screwed up seven." Accurate count. He asked for requests, seemed happy that people remembered so many of his songs, then just played what he'd planned on anyway.
The crowd was mixed between guitar geeks and gray baby boomers, all with big jackass smiles on, including me and Brickie, especially after "No Particular Place to Go," by which time we were seriously, even deliriously drunk, which reminded me of high school weekends before Brickie moved out of our house at seventeen to work a hamburger stand at a demolition racetrack in Raleigh-Durham. Mostly I was thnking about Colleen. She always had more of the American rock spirit, the unironic kind. She loves that fifties and sixties shit, loves Orbison, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, the Everly Brothers, Frankie Valli, Eddie Cochrane. Never liked metal, never had a Floyd phase, never dug Rush or Zeppelin or the Kinks or the Stones or anybody except Americans singing about cars, drinking, and high school. Something to be said for that.
At a bar on 8th Avenue much later after the show I asked Brickie hey whatever happened to that racetrack concession stand job in Raleigh-Durham? Said he worked the whole summer on a promise, and then they never paid him. Luckily he'd been skimming enough to get by, so he took his wad and moved back to Parsippany, failed the civil service exam, and went to work for our Uncle Teddy in the bakery. That part I remembered. I remember going to the bakery to pick him up, a big place that was more like a factory or warehouse thana bakery, and Brickie covered in flour, telling me never to eat coffee cakes from Teddy's bakery, you wouldn't believe what we put in them.
I tried to pull the cord on the whole night at 2, since I was appearing on live TV the next night to read poems and be interviewed. Brickie ignored my pleas on the basis that the show was at 11:30 in the evening, and due to my nerves I'd be drunk again anyway by the time I went on the air. We closed down a bar near Penn Station where the bartender was playing Dean Martin on the jukebox and they had free hot dogs which Brickie wouldn't eat because of his ulcers. The hot dogs saved me.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
True Stories
Years ago in Hoboken I used to wear this captain’s hat out to the bars, and that’s why people started calling me “Skipper,” which became “Skip.” That’s true. I didn’t stop going to the bars on purpose, there just aren’t any around here where I live now. That’s also true. There are no bars. There’s a TGI Friday’s in a shopping center, but that’s not a bar. There’s a Rockin’ Robins in the Emerald strip mall, and it’s technically a bar I guess.
Rockin’ Robins put a flyer under my windshield while I was in the pizzeria. Monday Karoake, Tuesday TV Trivia Night, Wednesday Guitar Hero, Thursday 5 Dollar Pitchers of Miller Lite and 5-cent Jalapeno Poppers. Wednesday sounded interesting. Who is this guitar hero? I asked the girl at the Supercuts. Turns out it’s a video game where you pretend to play guitar. That’s true. You pretend. I wonder if, somewhere, anywhere, there are still bars.
Rockin’ Robins put a flyer under my windshield while I was in the pizzeria. Monday Karoake, Tuesday TV Trivia Night, Wednesday Guitar Hero, Thursday 5 Dollar Pitchers of Miller Lite and 5-cent Jalapeno Poppers. Wednesday sounded interesting. Who is this guitar hero? I asked the girl at the Supercuts. Turns out it’s a video game where you pretend to play guitar. That’s true. You pretend. I wonder if, somewhere, anywhere, there are still bars.
Otha
When people first started calling me “Skip,” I told them not to. Useless to resist, though. I was, twenty-three and everyone went to this bar in Hoboken called Block and Tackle. This wasn’t a football reference, it was a fishing thing; they had nets tacked up and seashells on the walls. There were plastic crabs and lobsters in the nets. And the place didn’t even serve seafood, or any food at all for that matter. We went there because the B and T had the cheapest drinks, the cheapest by far. If I named the prices I’d be called a liar and a fabricator. I started wearing a captain’s hat that I bought in a Salvation Army for a dime. It had the blue top, the little gold anchor, the short black plastic brim.
I wore it as a gag: not many people remember that when they talk to writers about me. It was like, look at me, I’m a fisherman. Look at these plastic crabs. I even grew a big black beard like I’d been out to sea. We thought that was pretty funny at the time. None of us had ever been on any boats except maybe the ferry.
I started actually to like the hat, and before I knew it I was wearing it around to other bars. I got used to it. Also it was easy to pick me out of the crowd in a packed saloon, and once in a while someone would send me a drink when they spotted the hat down the bar. I wore the hat every day until a show called “Gilligan’s Island” became popular, and there was this character “The Skipper” who wore the hat. He was old, sort of chubby, and had white hair. So that was that. But Skip stuck as my name, to the point where I sign my letters with the name, and rarely hear “Arturo” unless it’s a creditor on the phone.
Thought of all this because Bo Diddley died today. I know that he was called Elias McDaniel before he was called Bo Diddley but before that his first name was Otha something. Bo Diddley was just some name they came up with. Maybe after the diddley-bow, a one-stringed hilbilly guitar. Bompa Bompa Bompa. Bomp Bomp. Buddy Holly lifted that beat for “Not Fade Away,” and everybody else stole it from there. Was Buddy’s given name Buddy? Hard to say without looking it up, and I'm not about to look it up.
I wore it as a gag: not many people remember that when they talk to writers about me. It was like, look at me, I’m a fisherman. Look at these plastic crabs. I even grew a big black beard like I’d been out to sea. We thought that was pretty funny at the time. None of us had ever been on any boats except maybe the ferry.
I started actually to like the hat, and before I knew it I was wearing it around to other bars. I got used to it. Also it was easy to pick me out of the crowd in a packed saloon, and once in a while someone would send me a drink when they spotted the hat down the bar. I wore the hat every day until a show called “Gilligan’s Island” became popular, and there was this character “The Skipper” who wore the hat. He was old, sort of chubby, and had white hair. So that was that. But Skip stuck as my name, to the point where I sign my letters with the name, and rarely hear “Arturo” unless it’s a creditor on the phone.
Thought of all this because Bo Diddley died today. I know that he was called Elias McDaniel before he was called Bo Diddley but before that his first name was Otha something. Bo Diddley was just some name they came up with. Maybe after the diddley-bow, a one-stringed hilbilly guitar. Bompa Bompa Bompa. Bomp Bomp. Buddy Holly lifted that beat for “Not Fade Away,” and everybody else stole it from there. Was Buddy’s given name Buddy? Hard to say without looking it up, and I'm not about to look it up.
Self-defense
Anything I say about Cherl leaving is going to sound defensive, right? “He was not good to me.” How do you defend yourself from that? In future posts here I’ll detail it all to the last bloody Eggo waffle, believe me. To half-quote Slick Willy, it depends on what your definition of good to me is. When you’re not married and there’s no money to divvy up, a woman can get in her car and simply drive off to San Luis Obispo, move in with her old college roommate Lisa Kleinfelter, and call your son to tell him it’s over. Roomies again! How nice for them.
I wish now that I’d slit her tires after the last fight, instead of just crawling into the tent and passing out. (We keep a tent pitched out back, originally for Cherl’s little nephew Hammond who sometimes came down from Flagstaff. Soon the tent became a place for me to sleep after I stormed out of the double-wide after a brawl. Or sometimes I wouldn’t storm out, I’d be literally kicked out the back door like a schnauzer.)
Sinking my Roman Meal pocket knife into each of her tires occurred to me that night, it really did. Something must have told me she was going to leave. I think it was her saying, “I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” over and over.
That was my reality. Today my reality was toddling down to the pool in my jams, towel over shoulder and J. Milton tucked under arm, and being told that I can’t go in the pool. I asked the guy why not. I’m shocking it today, he said. How do you do that, I asked. He said, You pour in this stuff called shock. Oh, I said with bottomless gravity. Stuff called shock. I know about that stuff.
laaame private joke and play on words. There’s no poems in that. That is truly the stuff of BLOGS.
I wish now that I’d slit her tires after the last fight, instead of just crawling into the tent and passing out. (We keep a tent pitched out back, originally for Cherl’s little nephew Hammond who sometimes came down from Flagstaff. Soon the tent became a place for me to sleep after I stormed out of the double-wide after a brawl. Or sometimes I wouldn’t storm out, I’d be literally kicked out the back door like a schnauzer.)
Sinking my Roman Meal pocket knife into each of her tires occurred to me that night, it really did. Something must have told me she was going to leave. I think it was her saying, “I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” over and over.
That was my reality. Today my reality was toddling down to the pool in my jams, towel over shoulder and J. Milton tucked under arm, and being told that I can’t go in the pool. I asked the guy why not. I’m shocking it today, he said. How do you do that, I asked. He said, You pour in this stuff called shock. Oh, I said with bottomless gravity. Stuff called shock. I know about that stuff.
laaame private joke and play on words. There’s no poems in that. That is truly the stuff of BLOGS.
Phone Call From Brickie
Tuesday was bad. Cherl turned up in California and called my son, so he knows she left. I hadn't told him yet didn't plan to. “You’re dad was a good guy but not for me. And not to me. He should stay away from people.” She said something like that, if not exactly that. My son Brennan who’s called Brickie by the family and I guess by everyone else, wants me to come to New Jersey for a visit, and maybe even long-term. He works for the New Jersey Transit, formerly a conductor but now wears a suit for the front office. Brickie said that yesterday outside of New Brunswick a guy threw himself in front of the 2:05 out of Trenton. El Smacko is how he put it, train lingo for a death on the tracks. I think telling me this was meant to make me feel good. Or at least better than I was feeling before the phone call. It was a bad day for me but a worse day for that guy. Or a better day? Presumably the day ended the way that guy wanted it to.
I wrote a poem about it but wondered, did I have the right to make a poem about that guy? (Of course I did.) Brickie tells me that the man had family, including little children. Doesn’t matter. If you get to that point, you’re on a one-on-one deal with what Jenny Highfeather calls the Double Vibes. Meaning, it’s you against the Vibes, (or God, if that’s your flavor) and also You against You, and you’re the only one who knows how it’ll come out. (I say all this better, with mucho grace and skill, in the poem.)
I didn’t name the poem after the 2:05, that would have been a rookie maneuver. The poem is called “Trenton Makes, the World Takes,” after the slogan of that city. When my kid told me about that guy and the 2:05, I said: Brickie, you’re not exactly making a very strong case for coming back to Jersey.
I wrote a poem about it but wondered, did I have the right to make a poem about that guy? (Of course I did.) Brickie tells me that the man had family, including little children. Doesn’t matter. If you get to that point, you’re on a one-on-one deal with what Jenny Highfeather calls the Double Vibes. Meaning, it’s you against the Vibes, (or God, if that’s your flavor) and also You against You, and you’re the only one who knows how it’ll come out. (I say all this better, with mucho grace and skill, in the poem.)
I didn’t name the poem after the 2:05, that would have been a rookie maneuver. The poem is called “Trenton Makes, the World Takes,” after the slogan of that city. When my kid told me about that guy and the 2:05, I said: Brickie, you’re not exactly making a very strong case for coming back to Jersey.
Bans and Edicts
As per an edict from Pete Gleeson, Lorenzo is banned from being mentioned on this web log. Pete, who is generally horrified and disgusted that I started this here thing in the first place, reminds that old men who blog about their cats should be taken out back and pumped full of salt-shot. I’m not an old man, I told him, but I take his point. He says that I actually don't know what a "blog" should contain, even though I write one, or what a "blog" is, even. He might be right. He also points out that I should give up calling it a “web log” already, it’s a BLOG. Call it what it is, he says. Don’t be pretentious, he says. For someone who is opposed to WEB LOGS, Pete is awfully full of opinions about them.
Derek Weiss swears Pete writes a secret one somewhere under a fake name. Derek spends time looking for it. I for one would not be shocked. It would explain why Pete hasn’t written a decent story or line of poetry in about a year. Now that I wrote that: we’ll have lots of things to talk about at the next Poetics Council meeting.
Derek Weiss swears Pete writes a secret one somewhere under a fake name. Derek spends time looking for it. I for one would not be shocked. It would explain why Pete hasn’t written a decent story or line of poetry in about a year. Now that I wrote that: we’ll have lots of things to talk about at the next Poetics Council meeting.
Rug Update
More than one drip-ass sad sack from the cyber-ether wrote in to ask hey did I end up buying a rug, or what? Seems like it struck some people as funny to think of scraggly-ass antique-hunting man of letters Arturo Collins in an IKEA superstore. Yeah, I bought a rug. It’s white and gray and Lorenzo already pissed all over it. So what?
Self-Pity #2
Arturo Collins? Who’s that? That’s me, that’s who. Paul Cinque, whom we’ve all read, in real life uses a chewed-up mini-golf-pencil nubbin and a pad of children’s colored paper when he comes to interview you. He asked me if I ever thought about what my legacy would be. I told him I don’t have a legacy, I have a reputation. In fact it’s all I have--that and the double-wide and my books and this credit card slip signed by Merle Oberon that I bought on Ebay. It’s from the Brown Derby, 1984.$67.51.
I have two dogs, too, but they aren’t so much mine as just two gray dogs that hang around the property and bark at the UPS guy. At dusk when the sodium lights come on and I step out back to set up the lawn chairs, they dive under the tarp of the old Continental like I was planning to kick them. Since I haven’t given them names and don’t feed them on any kind of fixed schedule, they aren’t really “mine,” just two dogs that hang around. They might belong to Billy Helms over on Chapparal. All the more reason to guard the old reputation, and getting shut out of the Bolger anthology, while personally humiliating and just generally awkward, has me second- and third-guessing this whole shmear. Because: it wasn’t edited by some numb-nuts, but by Lorraine Creel-Gaither, whom I respect. (Or used to.)
Meanwhile I’m sitting there watching Cinque take notes with his dull pencil on a sheet of kelly-green construction paper. “You going to be able to read that later?” I said. He assured me he would, and left in his yellow Saab before I could ask him to stay for a few cold ones.
No poems tonight. Time to dip solo but with abandon into this case of Bert Peel’s and throw the empty cans at the woodchucks, if there were woodchucks, which there aren’t.
I have two dogs, too, but they aren’t so much mine as just two gray dogs that hang around the property and bark at the UPS guy. At dusk when the sodium lights come on and I step out back to set up the lawn chairs, they dive under the tarp of the old Continental like I was planning to kick them. Since I haven’t given them names and don’t feed them on any kind of fixed schedule, they aren’t really “mine,” just two dogs that hang around. They might belong to Billy Helms over on Chapparal. All the more reason to guard the old reputation, and getting shut out of the Bolger anthology, while personally humiliating and just generally awkward, has me second- and third-guessing this whole shmear. Because: it wasn’t edited by some numb-nuts, but by Lorraine Creel-Gaither, whom I respect. (Or used to.)
Meanwhile I’m sitting there watching Cinque take notes with his dull pencil on a sheet of kelly-green construction paper. “You going to be able to read that later?” I said. He assured me he would, and left in his yellow Saab before I could ask him to stay for a few cold ones.
No poems tonight. Time to dip solo but with abandon into this case of Bert Peel’s and throw the empty cans at the woodchucks, if there were woodchucks, which there aren’t.
Self-Pity #1
Are these “blogs” just for belly-aching? Is fifty-nine old? Don’t answer. I don’t feel old, but went to this furniture place IKEA. I guess I’m the last person in the country that hadn’t been there. Was going to buy a rug since Cherl took our shag throw when she moved on/out. Took sixty-five minutes and twenty dollars in gas for the Pontiac to get me to the new center in Trellis County where they have this IKEA as well as all the other soul-sucker stores. Big Boxes they’re called. Original. Wasn’t drunk at all but hung over, and this twenty-ish girl in blue titty-shirt at the entrance, fellow-customer, mistook me for her dad from behind. Touched my shoulder and everything. “I’m not your dad, kid,” I said, and never felt older than when I called her kid. Christ.
It’s no comfort or great honor to be called, as I too often am, the “Last Man Standing” of American poesy. Bolger Press is putting out an anthology of “Best Living American” and I’ve been told I’ll be amply represented in there. Ok, fine. I would hope so: there’s hardly anybody else around. There used to be a great many people doing this for a living, and that run-in with the girl reminds me of the thinning ranks. Also reminded me that I will never go home with a girl like that again, maybe never did.
I was never exactly Valentino even in my prime, hiding as I did too often in boystown camaraderie, in writing the poems. I’ve suffered rejections from pretty young women but this was like a pre-rejection, before I’d even seen her, let alone worked up the nerve to try anything. Not just rejected but mistaken for her old man. I feel sorry for the guy, if he looks like me. (In ’73 I agreed to be on the Jimmy Nichols show in Paramus, after seeing an old tape of Kerouac on Steve Allen, but I got bumped for a trio of poodles who balanced things on their noses; so I know from humility.) Many poets have used their poetry to get laid. I’m not one of them, but God knows I tried.
It’s no comfort or great honor to be called, as I too often am, the “Last Man Standing” of American poesy. Bolger Press is putting out an anthology of “Best Living American” and I’ve been told I’ll be amply represented in there. Ok, fine. I would hope so: there’s hardly anybody else around. There used to be a great many people doing this for a living, and that run-in with the girl reminds me of the thinning ranks. Also reminded me that I will never go home with a girl like that again, maybe never did.
I was never exactly Valentino even in my prime, hiding as I did too often in boystown camaraderie, in writing the poems. I’ve suffered rejections from pretty young women but this was like a pre-rejection, before I’d even seen her, let alone worked up the nerve to try anything. Not just rejected but mistaken for her old man. I feel sorry for the guy, if he looks like me. (In ’73 I agreed to be on the Jimmy Nichols show in Paramus, after seeing an old tape of Kerouac on Steve Allen, but I got bumped for a trio of poodles who balanced things on their noses; so I know from humility.) Many poets have used their poetry to get laid. I’m not one of them, but God knows I tried.
Out of a Paper Bag
Second thoughts on disbanding the Poetics Council. Change of heart so to speak. Turns out we all like it too much, and I would miss wearing the robes. Not that we actually wear robes, but we do sit “on high” and pass judgment on other mortals, determine the fate and the course of all verse written in English, and drink Bert Peel Lager in lawn chairs out behind my double-wide while we listen to the lavender insect zapper do its thing.
(We all drink the Peel’s except for charter member Jermaine Tenafly who drinks homemade wine from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag and told me about this black fraternity at Howard in the fifties where you had to have skin lighter than a brown bag in order to be admitted. They would actually hold up a brown paper bag to your arm. According to Jermaine there was a great debate about his own color, but they finally invited him to “pledge.” Then he turned them down. Joined the cross country team, who turned out to be bigger drinkers than the frat boys. I told Jermaine he should write a poem about it. Shook his head no. He writes poems about fishing, period.)
(We all drink the Peel’s except for charter member Jermaine Tenafly who drinks homemade wine from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag and told me about this black fraternity at Howard in the fifties where you had to have skin lighter than a brown bag in order to be admitted. They would actually hold up a brown paper bag to your arm. According to Jermaine there was a great debate about his own color, but they finally invited him to “pledge.” Then he turned them down. Joined the cross country team, who turned out to be bigger drinkers than the frat boys. I told Jermaine he should write a poem about it. Shook his head no. He writes poems about fishing, period.)
Checking
Not that I don’t have checking account. I do. I was merely describing the events in which I cashed the Foxmoaxa check, which was with Jens, the man at Jimmy’s Palace Pizzeria in the Emerald Yard Shopping Center, relatively near my place.
The Last Thing I Wrote
I have this nightmare that if I disband the Council, they’ll be secretly relieved, and then continue to meet--without me--at Pete Gleeson’s place, who has a pool. (A swimming pool trumps many things, maybe all things, especially in this brimstony climate.) Got paid eighteen dollars by poetry magazine “Foxmoaxa” out of Buffalo, NY for a poem I wrote about Cherl leaving. Cashed check at the pizzeria where I know the guy. Free money; I was going to write the poem anyway, and Cherl was gone no matter what.
Poetics Council Getting Axe?
I’m disbanding the Poetics Council. I started the thing, I can dissolve it if I see fit. THEY have grown into a disillusioned mass of nasty invective and slurred speech. (My friends might also be my enemies.) And I won’t be publishing verse on this web log, unless it’s stuff that’s already been published other places. Am I the only man left in America? The only poet with sack? This young writer Wayne Cable called me and said he was doing article. “Is this Arturo Collins?” he asked. “Anybody who knows me calls me Skip,” I said. He began to compliment me, and being an egomaniac, I indulged him. He ended up writing in the Trujillo Review that the only real poets left scattered around the world’s prairies are Jim Harrison, August Kleinzahler, and me. Isn’t Seamus Heaney still alive? I said. Ever read “Door into the Dark”? And what does ‘real’ mean? Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?
Cherl is Gone; Old Poet Has Blog
Welcome to the first blog post from a man who's been recently described in Poetry Magazine as a "grizzled, frayed-hair genius." I don't know what my hair has to do with anything. All I know is that Cherl is gone, Cherl is gone, it’s like a song except it’s not a song it’s my life. I’m not easy to deal with or live with or be around? I know this for sure now, it's been proven. She packed her Miata and is GONE.
Took what she thought was hers while I was in Feltonburg at the desert’s biggest antiques fair. True story. Was thinking of buying elephant painting. Retrospect, can’t believe I didn’t. Retrospect, can’t believe a lot of things. She left behind Lorenzo (her name for him not mine) which is just as well since the cat and I get along. (I begged Cherl to stay and work things out. Not trying to be some kind of hard-ass or hard-shell about this. For the record, I begged. Shameless: even if she’d stayed she would have remembered my begging and tears, never been able to forget it or respect me anyway. Self-defeating display of naked emotion, of the repulsive, non-requited, male stripe.) And Cherl was good for the poetry, too. She was, as we all know. Those who follow my stuff may (will) notice a severe, sudden and generally sickening slacking-off in terms of quality poems. Alert the biographer, if there is one. Reason for the watery, neutered, bitter verse circa summer ’08: Cherl is gone.
Took what she thought was hers while I was in Feltonburg at the desert’s biggest antiques fair. True story. Was thinking of buying elephant painting. Retrospect, can’t believe I didn’t. Retrospect, can’t believe a lot of things. She left behind Lorenzo (her name for him not mine) which is just as well since the cat and I get along. (I begged Cherl to stay and work things out. Not trying to be some kind of hard-ass or hard-shell about this. For the record, I begged. Shameless: even if she’d stayed she would have remembered my begging and tears, never been able to forget it or respect me anyway. Self-defeating display of naked emotion, of the repulsive, non-requited, male stripe.) And Cherl was good for the poetry, too. She was, as we all know. Those who follow my stuff may (will) notice a severe, sudden and generally sickening slacking-off in terms of quality poems. Alert the biographer, if there is one. Reason for the watery, neutered, bitter verse circa summer ’08: Cherl is gone.
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