At least that’s what the guy from Mader’s Restaurant says,
As he serves us a pretzel big as a severed human head.
Then into the rainy night we run, to the Intercontinental Hotel,
Our blue plastic flak jackets pulled over our heads,
Past the autograph hounds and into the bathroom mirror, I sing,
When I wear this mask the girls all scream When I wear this one they laugh instead. When I hit MiIwaukee with a pint of cream, They pull the sheets over their heads.
I carefully concoct a paste in a bowl and I paint my hair black,
So that it sits like a sleek, inky raven’s wing
On top of my multi-storey forehead. I lean in and gaze deep
Into the confused crop-circles of my eyes. In the right eye,
In the blue, is a little brown discolouration and the whites
Are beginning to yellow. There is a liver spot on my left temple.
A spider-vein on my right nostril. The bathroom light is brutal.
I reposition my face so that I stop looking
Like Kim Jong-un and start looking more like Johnny Cash,
Or someone. Hang on! Just a minute! There you go! Like that!
•
In a studio in Malibu, Johnny Cash sat down and played a song. He was partially blind and could barely walk. I was there. I saw a sick man pick up his instrument and be well.
With regret I have seen the opposite too. Pick, pick, pick.
I have seen well men pick up their instruments and be sick.
•
Resist the urge to create.
Resist the belief in the absurd.
Resist by means of provocation.
Resist by means of sickness and sadness.
Resist by means of masturbation.
Resist by motivational manuals.
Resist by doing for others.
Resist by comparison to others.
Resist through the opinions of others.
These are The Nine Bedevilments of Advancement. They live in our blood and skin and nerves. They are as present and cataclysmic to our progress as a runaway train thundering towards us, as we stand rigid with fear on the tracks.
The oozing entrails of my sick bag sweep stars and stripes
Across the sawdust floor of the USA. But, hark! What is that sweet breath behind my ear, I hear you say? It is the Muses and Johnny Cash blowing us along our way.
I am vomiting up Milwaukee’s mussels and pretzel in an alley
Behind the State Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Minneapolis with its sensible weatherproof walkways,
And the State Theatre in the free Italian Renaissance style,
Its restored proscenium curving a hundred feet above the stage,
Bought by Live Nation in the year two thousand,
Then sold to Key Entertainment in two thousand and eight.
We arrive early but we get sick and we go on late.
The show of warmth from the crowd is staggering. Look! The audience are turning their bodies into concrete pylons! Their arms reach out like the lethal branches of half-felled trees! The music rumbles towards us along the tracks! We have waded through the blood of buffalo And Cheyenne warriors to be with you tonight. Look! The concrete pylons are turning into columns of light. I stand like a flayed dog on my hind legs and reveal An extending stripe of wet, pink skin. Leap! I say, Fumbling with my doggie bag of sick. Leap, you fuckers! And all the columns of light hold hands and, one by one, jump in.
•
That late night in the Grand Hotel in downtown Minneapolis
I approach John Berryman’s Dream Songs Like a master thief. I slow my heartbeat, And press my ear up the eighteen rails Of dark, vibrating verse. My innards rumble like a train. Slowly, patiently the tumblers click and with terror And comfort the entire world falls out. I yawn.
Then I dream on down to Washington Avenue Bridge,
Where the poet debated the subtle difference between
Flying and falling with the pretty lawny bank below.
You must take the first step alone –
A fraudster angel with paper wings tied to its back, like a sail
Said, You must take the first step alone! And, so too, the last! Then he kicked John Berryman over the rail.
And as the concertinaed poet suffocated on the grass,
I hit the fourth line of ‘Dream Song 54’ like a runaway train
‘I prop on the costly bed & think of my wife’ And awaken with a rush and a shrieking need, And dial, dial, dial, my wife! Don’t jump! My God! My pretty baby, don’t jump! Pick up the phone! As I remember, on the goodbye steps of our house, Her wet, unstable eye, that said, huh, huh, huh, Don’t leave. Don’t go. Stay home.
•
The Sick Bag Song is the leavings.
The Sick Bag Song is the scrapings.
The Sick Bag Song is the shavings.
The Sick Bag Song is the last vestiges.
The Sick Bag Song is the bile and the tripe.
The Sick Bag Song is the remnants and the residue.
The Sick Bag Song is the leftovers and the throwbacks.
The Sick Bag Song is the barrel’s dreggy bottom.
The Sick Bag Song is the rejectamenta, disgorged –
So that we can move forward and tomorrow leap differently.
We flew to Denver from Minneapolis on United. Right on! Grabbed some sick bags so I’d have something to write on!
•
In Denver I buy a lovely little book by Patti Smith called Woolgathering and she writes about having possessed a kind of knapsack full of souvenirs – a ruby, a spoon, the insides of a walkie-talkie. It’s a lovely thing to read under a blue sky on a bench in Colfax Street in Denver. Right on, Patti!
I pick her up by her braids and drop her into my sick bag.
I look inside.
I can see a tiny Gertrude Stein and a little Emily Dickinson. I can see a miniature Philip Larkin pushing a lawnmower, and a little wrinkly W. H. Auden. I can see a pygmy dressed as John Berryman with a bone through his nose and loads of other people too. A small-scale late-period Elvis, a tiny John Lee Hooker with stars-and-stripes socks, a crazy little James