<span style=”font-size:medium;">23 april 2005

ok richmond...

there is no elegance
in the behavior of one
acting out a newly acquired obsessive side
now what.
oh.
this.
must have been another gift
of belly fire
from the menopausal prankster-gods...

mortified.
fifty-two years on this planet
some of which was spent
stroking joan and geffen’s
starmaker machinery
in the business of music

fifty-two years on this planet
i never quite understood
the pathology of the fan
the rock and roll groupies
the letter writers
the girls waiting at the backstage doors
hotel bar and lobby-hangers
hoping for the morsel of attention
the free ticket
the coveted backstage laminate
an autograph
the kiss of validation
or even love
most of them thrilled
to settle for
an invitation to be
girl du jour backstage
that night
from mr. right
(or even mr, right away)
as long as it was rock n roll

i never understood
the fan-addict-ism
to me, this was just a gig
my job           
across england
seattle to san diego
all major cities in between
the saga of life
on the road
in this music biz
for mostly boys
whose records i had to sell or promote
slaving at it
in order to live
and pay the mount tamalpias rent
boys whose tour buses
i had to get them into
and whose hotel rooms
i had to drag them out of
to make the 4pm sound checks
a bus
a plane
or to the venue of the night
the groupies twisted in the sheets
never quite as pretty as the night before


these girls are insane, i thought
traveling from town to town
state to state
just to be near the band
what’s the big deal?

management company and a&r guys would chuckle at
how perfect i was for these gigs
untainted
and unimpressed
a lone woman on the road
having to work hard at not just being
another starfucker
working hard at playing
dick dodge-ball
on those roads

sister to some
mama to others
friends with most
lovers with none
maybe she’s a dyke, some snickered (not yet!)
nah.
i just had a love
traveling another road
i wanted to be true
even tho he wasn’t

i never understood
fan-atic-ism
until this
another morning
of my fifty-second year
when i woke up
mortified
with the sudden realization
that i had become
one of them!           
a suddenly enchanted
poetry groupie
pathetic       
panting
crawling around the floor of the used bookstore
spending the rent           
lowell! bly! cocteau! more ferlinghetti! more buk!
more creely! more sylvia! More collections! More
soft-shelled books out of locked cabinets!
Treasure! Gems!
Need
craving
obsession

and waiting to hear
and waiting to read
more hoped-for morsels
from a once-cruel
Santa Monica poet
tangled up in my youth
who as a love-struck girl-child
i feared
and whose words
as a young woman
i found i loved   
and as this fifty-two-year-old woman
i remembered
the pain that men like this served up
to girls like me
realizing and detesting the poet
for his lifetime of piggy-ness
with the women                   
perhaps not the poet of today
but it reads over and over
recorded in yesterday’s dusty pages

so you see
i have embarrassed myself here
feeling kinda bare-assed
naked
before a crowd of laughing
jeering
men-poets
your demons disguised as poets?
or the poets disguised as demons?
shaking their heads in amusement
stroking their cocks
enjoying the ego rub
this adoration has provided   
through my humiliation

            ******


i hate me in this
the shoulder-residing residents
tasmanian devil-like critics
woke me up
at the crack of dawn
on this day
blowing police whistles
sound-shredding my eardrums
with this
they pole vaulted up and down    my spine
demanding
extracting
a most extravagant
shade of crimson cringe
and after ripping my head out
from beneath the pillow
i groaned under
their bloody fingertips pried open
tightly shut eyelids
“look! look!
fool! fool!
neurotic! pathetic!”

for thirty days plus
he and his words
held tatters
of your long-gone youth
and became
the needle
the tar
the lines   
the smoke
of a vicious dragon’s breath
and you! the addict once again!
obsessive old neurotic fool!
they have all had a good laugh at your antics
these old poets have
and hee hee hee
ha ha ha

this time it's YOU
on the other side
of the backstage door




this is the end           of it…ok richmond?