Category: Goby’s Journal

Still Imperial His Laughter

A poem I wrote some 30 years ago, put aside and forgot. Remembered last night in a dream.
#555
The river runs — a stillness
with the city around her
runs
through the city
a stillness at its heart
of trees stripped
lifting
shadows from the bank

Here and there a leaf rides clear
water through the branching thicket

A blazing gust
blinds windily — wakes
A presence in the
deeper tempers of this November noon.

A weighted glint of cold
a flashing
eye
an understanding, silent mock

A laughter not of water stalks
across the surface of the stream, chills
the vestal air

Winter, soon.

And near, high
around its dark mass — The Colossus
strides on iron feet
ferric dust, red flakes rusting red
over red leaves everywhere he walks
the laughter goes

withering over the coming snow, spreading
his fine red rust over the white crust of snow
falling…

because he is not forest
or the wild hills
neither is he City
— built of love but broken — broken
leveler

of forest and the city’s siege, his coronets
crying over midnight seas

Still Imperial, impaler
of the singer and the song
falling

like red snow
everywhere

he goes

is Death

 

The Future is Black Hole

What we see now, is essentially what has been in place since before most of those marching on the street were born. If it were not so, there would not be this rolling-over-on-it’s- belly full-out effort to normalize the nightmare. They were already fascists. We already lived in an Empire of Money and Death that deserved to be overthrown.
Some of us told you. Not that it affords any comfort or satisfaction. If we can’t turn this around; if we can’t prevent what is sure to happen, there really isn’t any reason to live. Death is by far the greater mercy.

After the rage…

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I finally got a couple hours of sleep.

The rage has dissolved into tears, and the tears into grim resolve. It’s time to wipe the tears, to do what must be done… and then… to laugh, a laughter sadder than tears.

It’s not only at the beginning of the day, one must ask, why go on? but before every undertaking. There is nothing any longer that is trivial. Everything, everything–is life or death.

Do I bother to draw water to drink? Do I prepare food to break the fast? This pen, and these brushes? Is there any reason to pick them up, to make marks on this paper?

How many times I’ve wondered–what was it like, in Germany, 1933?

I think about the people who voted for … I will not write that name, or let it pass my lips… the ‘good Germans’

I will not be a ‘Good German.’ I will not be a ‘Good German.’

No more, the prattle of the ‘realists.’ No more talk of following those who ‘get things done.’ There is no longer any reality worth living, but that we take up and create for ourselves.

Love, Solidarity, Imagination…RESISTANCE!

Tea with Anna Brinton at Pendle Hill

anna-brinton
At Pendle Hill, in 1964, Anna Brinton would have afternoon tea. She had a huge, Russian type samovar. One would add milk or water, but even then, it would taste like tea. Tea bags, even the expensive ones, are like colored water.
I need a teapot to make tea with tea leaves. Let it steep till it’s good and strong. Keep hot water on the stove to add.
Here’s a sketch I did of her, probably winter of ’65. She was in her 80’s. If you’ve been to the Friends Center in Philadelphia, you’ve seen the statue of Mary Dyer–hung from the gallows in June, 1660 by the Puritans in Massachusetts. Anna Brinton modeled for that as a young woman. I am grateful to have known her–a strong, courageous woman–a great human.
I keep thinking I should frame this and send it to Pendle Hill. I wonder if anyone there remembers her?

Call for a National Day of Reparations

imagesI‘m a son of parents who were children of immigrants, not a native of this continent, even so, knowing what I do about Columbus, this holiday deepens my depression and angry indignation. We can’t undo history, but neither will be free of its burden until we collectively, without reservation, acknowledge our complicity in what we have done and vow to make a new beginning. That goes both for the genocidal theft of land that was the mother of our indigenous peoples, and for the theft and enslavement of humans from the lands where their mothers bore them into the world.
Because so much of the wealth of this nation was purchased by their deaths and suffering, there is no, can be no, meaningful acknowledgement without reparations.
Let this day be known, not only as Indigenous Peoples Day, but The Day of Reparations for all those we have wronged.

#188

When I have nothing else to paint on, I’ll use whatever is at hand: cardboard, old signs. I was looking for pieces to trash (the cardboard isn’t going to hold up anyway and I’m running out of space), and found this, from July, 2013, painted on my return from New Mexico. It’s Acrylic on strips of paper on PVC foam board. Eventually, the paint peels off the PVC, but thought I’d keep this. It seems to have held up, and evokes something of what I got from Rio Grand rift– the desert between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
I wonder if it would have been better to keep making throw-away pieces. One less thing to be anxious about… like, what am I going to do with all the art, particularly the larger surface canvases. They represent significant expense, for whatever their problematic aesthetic value. I would be happier floating down a river, drinking wine and throwing my poems and drawings into the water. It all comes to the same end.
28″ x 40″ Remembering New Mexico
188-remembering-n-m

View GALLERY HERE.

A Confession

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I woke up this morning and didn’t feel hung over. For the first time in as long as I can remember. I’ve been using wine, essentially, to self-medicate, to mask depression, and to still the incessant anxiety that made it hard to get to sleep without it.
Even though I knew that the alcohol was contributing to both.
40 years ago, I smoked a pack, pack and half a day. From unfiltered Pal Palls to Marlboros. Every morning I’d wake up, my mouth feeling like a garbage dump, telling myself I had to quit. Then, breakfast at the little diner around the corner, with the first cup of coffee, I’d buy another pack.
I have a couple of stories to explain how I finally quit, but I have no better explanation, than–who knows why or how–I stopped telling myself I was going to quit, and just did it.
This feels much like that. I’ve been telling myself, every morning, that I need to stop. Then sometime into the afternoon, I’d begin thinking about going to the wine store, start in with the rationalizations, and before closing time, there I’d be.
It took a drunken blowup in the middle of the night to shock me out of that. I went downtown today, and it felt like my spirit self had come back to life. Even feeling that residua of anxiety in my gut, I felt good. Strong. And the Shamer didn’t burst out of me, not once! Not once, did something bring to mind some stupid thing I’d done–decades ago, as a child even, and it would burst out of me–in my own voice — YOU STUPID ASSHOLE! … I’d curse myself in Self flagellation. This was like, not just once in a while…. every 10-15 minutes. I came to calling it, my Shamer–and would talk back to it. Why are you doing this? Shut the fuck up! I’m not going to listen to you!
Not once today did that happen.
I think now that it had nothing to do with those flickers of memory–it was my Spirit Self in chains… because I was killing it.
When I would tell myself in the morning, it’s time to stop… that was the same voice, my Spirit Self–and when I refused to listen–it turned on me in a rage and became my Shamer!
My Spirit Self is not soft and kind. It wanted to be free, and would have killed me–driven me to self harm, suicide, had I gone on. I could feel that coming.
I ask forgiveness and understanding from those who have been distressed or frightened by my behavior at times. For stupid hurtful words said late at night, or posted on the web.
My Spirit Self … selves…are free. I will not again place them in chains of shame.
Solidarity, Love, Imagination, Resistance!
—Gobi Cantabs
note bene: This afternoon, about the time I would begin to think about a bottle of wine, I went downtown and bought art supplies!  Who says art can’t save you!