“O Poets! Shamans of the word!...Penetrate to the discord in yourself,
the rootlessness, and induce the trance that will heal the rift within.
Shamanize! Shamanize!" W. Everson, Birth of a Poet.
a. Prelude: Life as a desirable object
This is Life you say to yourself whose servant you are all the days of your years. You eat and sleep with her.
You're in love with her and argue with her and make love to her knowing she’ll leave and never come back.
She keeps secrets. What does she mean? She's talking with someone behind your back. You strain to hear.
Try to catch her words, thinking if you concentrate you'll understand but it's always the same. What is she saying?
Who is she saying it to? What does she mean? She doesn't know how beautiful she is. She could care less.
Is she crazy? She can be a real bitch. You can't count on her. When upset, she makes her misery yours.
It's hell but you’re hooked and the alternative is worse.
b. Wherein the Pariah King reveals his motivations
I'm stoked and stoned somewhere south of Abandon, Oregon.
I'm at Big Red's Bar drinking like a fisherman
in between thumbing for a ride through a hot climate.
It's been a gypsy, boogie woogie passage North to Seattle
each wave in me breaking into mysterious hosannas
for the sunrise dharma of the road whispering inside my head
there can be no happiness without passion like tiny flower angels
opening in fertile fields each miraculous bloom an affirmative hug
flung up at the sky as the mad blue eye of morning winks down
on house and road wrapping the earth in tendrils of light.
Hey, if love can't save me, what can? Let the cars pass.
The cards fall where they may. I can't stop smiling.
All this must mean something. If only I could figure it out.
Inside the tartly jumbled angst of my mind, I'm a blues breathing
optimist on the make for a gig, hip hopping my way
through the bars along the Pacific Coast. Strung out
on the happy narcotic of self. My fantasy a brothel
where everything is free. I con the countryside out of its speed,
swallowing mental lungfulls of air, my wheels spinning so fast
it hurts to breathe before the hemorrhage comes of physical explosions
marinating in the juice of this bebop miracle of life woozing
like a saxophone all out there, all over the place, its brain jizzing
Karmic visions glimpsed through the prism of all night binges
rapping inside me like a bony rattle or the tip of a raspy tongue
in the hands of a shaman with a sand paper voice forcing his laughter,
the low pitched laughter of an outcast trickster vomiting up what can't
be kept down.
Hi Mzz Good Times, I say to myself. I've got my mind on your crotch
but not for long cuz it's my second coming. My center can't hold.
I'm all over the place. In the mad midsummer of this waking dream
choreographed by Nijinsky, scored by Mahler, I swallow my madness whole
spending the rest of my life barfing it back out. Clutching my drink,
I stare at my watch as the clock takes on the look of Love's face,
divorcing itself from my idol hands and I lose all custody of time.
It doesn't matter. The lost Jew in his Antwerp tenement is stoned.
The black ovens of Europe are cold.
America's turning into an Alzheimer’s commercial.
Summer in this insane asylum is a doubtful refuge of unresolved hopes
never to be put right representing the mother of all global meltdowns
but I've paid for this buzz. I'm going to hang around, pop other people's pills
or smoke a joint, getting high on the philosophy of my choice.
c. Wherein the Pariah King arrives in the small but booming
tourist town of Abandon, Oregon.
In this corner of Oregon
even angels are retired bums.
They smell like popcorn.
Their wings are papier-mâché.
And when they fall to earth
tourists gather to clap
before tearing their wings apart
for little souvenirs.
Here, between stores and more stores
are other mysterious places
the moon swims through like a fish
and the sun explores
with patient, questing tentacles
like a giant octopus.
d. Wherein the Pariah King mucks it up while mentally
shipwrecked at the Abandon Seminary for Lost
Souls; a minimum security correctional facility
with an 18 hole golf course on the Oregon Coast
In every country, city and town there is life, love and the universe
where fathers as men and lovers with the best of intentions
muck it up, tiered in multiple stories of promethean hearts
bleeding the exotica pop cultural, the lyric of noir miracles;
condominiums of giving and taking where heroes struggle
in their untidy quarries until their rocks crack in accidents
of heroic frictions
as passionate heroines undulate, legs twinning around romantic fictions
pillowed to sleep in the conceit of unreapable dreams and barefoot joys
grieved to unflattering ruin when all Barbie like and dressed doll crazy
in the expansive myths of their childhood fantasies they look at their current lover
and find him wanting.
In this space only and only for a time the Pariah King, abounding in the fixity
of his flux is mentally cast up like a teetering savage in the poverty of his struggle
mumbling and fumbling his way through a treacherous coast spiraling down
into concrete arsenals of streets the fool is condemned to walk through
carrying a flashlight to shine in the face of those he meets.
From San Francisco to New York, no light for the lost. No end of the tunnel.
The arrogant gates of Heaven are locked and Hell's so overcrowded no one gets in.
e. Wherein the Pariah King foolishly bewails his plight.
You can't stop yourself from screaming
as Death drags you before his altar.
Grabbing you by the ankle and pulling
you down that long tunnel, welcoming
you into his night club of flames.
God is the C.E.O. of ultimate bankruptcies.
His saints are used car dealers and Christ
is a rock star; a conscientious objector
drafted into the hell of a war he knew inside
he couldn’t win. To this day the angel
of No Peace stands guard with a cattle prod
before the Gates of Eden.
Scott Malby is a poet and columnist for four e-zines and a frequent contributor to Internet publications all over the world. While the Internet may not be as significant as the discovery of fire, he feels it is a most remarkable development, comparable to the development of the printing press and transcending that. He lives in Coos Bay, Oregon, along the northern shore of the Pacific Coast in the United States. His themes are universal ones detailing the relationship of individuals with themselves, others and their environment. A fascinating interview with him can be found at Tin Lustre Mobile.