A Red Devil Machine
Many red devils ran from my heart
Stephen Crane
And out upon the page.
They were so tiny
The pen could mash them.
And many struggled in the ink.
It was strange
To write in this red muck
Of things from my heart.
You don’t go to school to be an artist.
You’re born that way.
It’s a kind of affliction.
Ignore this deformity and it’ll waste you. Turn you into a gollum or worse…
I’ve spent a good part of my life doing at least a lazy man’s homage to my Affliction.
Consider what your reading.
Here’s how it works. Stuff appears in my head.
Often crazy shit.
I exorcise this crazy shit. Spill it onto a page.
Make it a Post.
I’m a Personal Blogger.
I would much prefer playing a song
or painting a picture
If I could make up a song like the following?
My life would be complete:
Was that bad ass or what?
Shit.
Or a picture!
If only I could PAINT.
I’d paint a grand ass picture.
Man! This is what I’m talking about.
Or this:
If I could only paint MY DEVILS.
That’s what I’d do!
But no luck for the Digger
I’m stuck being a Blogger.
The only Red Devil Machine I got going…currently.
A Piss Poor Red Devil Machine to be sure…
But what the hell.
When you’ve got lemons make lemonade
A decent Red Devil.
I mean, I’m enjoying the memory.
Not the part where I dumbshit fell and landed on my face.
Would’ve been way better if I earned this face by beating the shit out of a pair of thugs. Got crazy drunk, grabbed some old broad’s ass. Fought off her Uncle and Grandpa. Slashed with a busted tequila bottle. Something worthy of my Old Man.
Bobby Lee.
A snap of him near the end of his short wild life. He bore a striking resemblance to the doomed actor Montgomery Cliff.
Bobby Lee had his share of busted face knocked out teeth slashed face knife fights. Plenty of drunken brawls and bad old nightshade revelries.
He had no creative outlet to exorcise his devils.
He was a devil…
Me, I’m trying to express myself artistically
Why?
Mainly to rid myself of the Devils.
Make something from all this crazy shit pouring from my head.
Where’s it come from?
It pours into my head from out there.
The everyday world!!!!
Shit I see every damned day.
Crazy Shit is out there!
All around
You can’t escape it.
Not if you got your eyes open.
I need to do something with it.
Blog it.
Or I’ll end up like this:
Smearing it on a shirt.
Which aint a bad Idea now I’m thinking about it.
Matter of fact,
could be even better than a Blog Post!
One thought on “A Red Devil Machine”
Thank you, Gloomy, for your finest post yet. In my humble opinion, you aid it all about demons and the flickering, candlelight of being, as Charles Bukowski expressed when writing, Born into This. Yet you needn’t allude to other writers for you are an amazing writer. Years ago, while studying with Mark Strand, who, like you, citing a work that he would have stopped writing after having written, shared The Bones of Chuang Tzu with me; and now I pass it on to you and your readers. It has taken me a life-time to understand what Mark meant. Now, in my own small way, I do. Once you achieve such cosmic insight, as Bukowski himself did with Nirvana, you can unshoulder the weigh of existence, for you have arrived at the destination of meaning of one soul under the stars,
The Bones of Chuang Tzu , by Chang Heng, 78-139 A.D.
5:13 pm 25 January 2014
The Bones of Chuang Tzu
by Chang Heng, 78-139 A.D., translated by Arthur Waley in his Chinese Poems
I, Chang P’ing-tzu, have traversed the Nine Wilds and
seen their wonders,
In the eight continents beheld the ways of Man,
The Sun’s procession, the orbit of the Stars,
The surging of the dragon, the soaring of the phoenix
in his flight.
In the red desert to the south I sweltered,
And northward waded through the wintry burghs of Yu.
Through the Valley of the Darkness to the west I wandered,
And eastward traveled to the Sun’s abode,
The stooping Mulberry Tree.
So the seasons sped; weak autumn languished,
A small wind woke the cold.
And now with rearing of rein-horse,
Plunging of the tracer, round I fetched
My high-roofed chariot to westward.
Along the dykes we loitered, past many meadows,
And far away among the dunes and hills.
Suddenly I looked and by the roadside
I saw a man’s bones lying in the squelchy earth,
Black rime-frost over him; and I in sorrow spoke
And asked him, saying, “Dead man, how was it?
Fled you with your friend from famine and for the last grains
Gambled and lost? Was this earth your tomb,
Or did floods carry you from afar? Were you mighty, were you wise,
Were you foolish and poor? A warrior, or a girl?”
Then a wonder came; for out of the silence a voice–
Thin echo only, in no substance was the Spirit seen–
Mysteriously answered, saying, “I was a man of Sung,
Of the clan of Chuang; Chou was my name.
Beyond the climes of common thought
My reason soared, yet could I not save myself;
For at the last, when the long charter of my years was told,
I, too, for all my magic, by Age was brought
To the Black Hill of Death.
Wherefore, O Master, do you question me?”
Then I answered:
“Let me pray for you to the Gods of Heaven and
the Gods of Earth,
That your white bones may arise,
And your limbs be joined anew.
The God of the North shall give me back your ears;
I will scour the Southland for your eyes.
From the sunrise I will wrest your feet;
The West shall yield your heart.
I will set each several organ in its throne;
Each subtle sense will I restore.
Would you not have it so?”
The dead man answered me:
“O Friend, how strange and unacceptable your words!
In death I rest and am at peace; in life, I toiled and strove.
Is the hardness of the winter stream
Better than the melting of spring?
All pride that the body knew
Was it not lighter than dust?
What Ch’ao and Hsu despised,
What Po-ch’eng fled,
Shall I desire, whom death
Already has hidden in the Eternal Way–
Where Li Chu cannot see me,
Nor Tzu Yeh hear me,
Where neither Yao nor Shun can reward me,
Not the tyrants Chieh and Hsin condemn me,
Leopard nor tiger harm me,
Lance prick me nor sword wound me?
Of the Primal Spirit is my substance; I am a wave
In the river of Darkness and Light.
The Maker of All Things is my Father and Mother,
Heaven is my bed and earth my cushion,
The thunder and lightning are my drum and fan,
The sun and moon my candle and my torch,
The Milky Way my moat, the stars my jewels.
With Nature my substance is joined;
I have no passion, no desire,
Wash me and I shall be no whiter,
Foul me and I shall yet be clean.
I come not, yet am here;
Hasten not, yet am swift.”
The voice stopped, there was silence.
A ghostly light
Faded and expired.
I gazed upon the dead, stared in sorrow and compassion.
Then I called upon my servant that was with me
To tie his silken scarf about those bones
And wrap them in a cloak of sombre dust;
While I, as offering to the soul of this dead man,
Poured my hot tears upon the margin of the road.