City of Legends

Not the poem, TRIUMPH, but the sense of victory I have and had enjoyed so much over the past months.  A part of me is still in shock, a part of me still writhes in pain, but a part of me is intent on locking in t mountaintop moments and feeding me the morsels and mould of those times.

I don’t claim to know anything about anything, I just feel that, I know that, as sure as God is in the rain, love is more than a transient state.  There is much I would do to heal the wounds, much I would do to make things right, much I would do to acknowledge that I have lived, not an illusion, but something so powerful that every atom of my existence is changed for all eternity.

I may feel this alone.  But I feel this.

And by this awareness, I am humbled and exalted.  I am broken and purified.  I understand a depth of emotion I had not known and probably a sane man should never touch.

I had a good working session with Tag yesterday.  One question came down to the name of the press.  I told him I was uncertain, as I had no indication, no sense, of how keeping the peacat name would be received and whether I would be doing more harm than good for and to people I honestly care about the feelings of.  His response?  (He’s getting cheeky in his old age.)  He told me that every time I work on a project to for or with the press I would be reminded of something, of someone, and I have to ask myself if that’s what I want for the rest of my life and legacy.

My answer, after a moment’s pause, was "Yes".

A look to the heavens, a gesture followed by my now familiar cry of defiance:

"If you want me dead, you have to come for me in person."

Now that is triumph.

Barring a specific request to not use the name by the one person who I would listen to on the topic (and not some asshole who thinks they are speaking for another, I can talk directly to God (the priesthood of the individual is a cornerstone of the Protestant faith, for those of you who didn’t stay awake in Sunday School), no human is too good for my countenance), which I would accept, without question or rancor, peacat press lives.

We have two projects in the hopper, I am awaiting manuscripts on both, including a very exciting combination short story and poetry collection from Dan McTaggart entitled Best Man in Albuquerque. 

Well, on April 22nd, I have to put up or shut up. Not the first time, not the last, I am sure.

It’s just a reading, actually a book signing, not my most important, but it is likely to get attention on several fronts.

Commercially, Barnes and Noble will be taking my temperature to see how well the small stack of books they provide sells. Best result, they sell out during my first hour. Worst result, nothing moves, nothing sells, and I bite a passer-by.

Okay, the latter is unlikely. But I think back to some of my more notable fulcrumed appearances. Here’s my five most memorable, in no particular order.

The Southern Poets Reading Tour (I), The Fairhope Arts Center, Fairhope, Alabama, Summer of 1997. Loki was right, I’d been flat all weekend, and I was supposed to be the big dog. So, I drop my reading list, put on my shades and did a set only of poems I could recite from the heart. As they were almost all about my relationship with Psyche, I cried through the read, then left the building. Ann followed and had to bring me back into the room, where poet after poet who followed me was changing reading lists and doing their most intimate works. It became a massive, public, catharsis session. I wrote my poem "Breathe" in one of the Leopard Cycles, about the incident.

The AOL Writers Club Party, The Algonquin Hotel, New York City, September of 1995. Having helped plan and execute this intimate gathering of poets and authors, when I was called upon to read to a room of peers, I chose works from the first six "Panther Cycles" (that’s all there were back then). It’s the only public reading I ever did with the Panther herself in the room, and the stress of being conscious of her presence in a room where, theoretically, no one knew about "us" yet, was intense.

A Catholic Girls’ High School in California, April, 2003. Just months before abandoning my beloved Golden State, I was invited to speak at this school. I called the place Kevin Smith’s Greatest Nightmare (or his wet dream). Several hundred well-groomed, upper middle class Catholic high school girls, all in their uniforms, most with attitude. I was actually intimidated. Yeah, I know, that’s funny. I recall particularly, not so much darkly, the one girl in the front row whose blouse was probably unbuttoned one more button than permitted, who seemed to be trying to channel Sharon Stone in ‘Basic Instinct’ with a smirk as she slouched in her seat, her knees apart, through most of the read. If I was but twenty years younger and willing to do jail time, I might have thought more about her. As it was, I had a good audience, and I got to see how well my material played to a young, estrogen-laced audience, which has always supposed to be a key demographic for the "Romantic Poet of the Internet".

The coffeehouse at Drummond Chapel United Methodist Church, Morgantown, West Virginia, sometime in 1974. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was my first "real" reading. After enduring a couple of rounds of polite applause from an audience that obviously was not listening to what I was reading, I gave them a tongue lashing for their hypocrisy. Thus was a reputation born.

The sports bar reading, Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, late 1978. My friend Dave Demeter, whose band was playing that night, set me up to be the act between musical sets. It takes a certain amount of confidence to be reading my poetry between musical sets in a place where most of the people are half into their third beer, watching a hockey game. It toughened me. I got applause, sold a few books, and fulfilled my quest to stop reading in poetry venues. Plus, it was the first place I ever performed "TRIUMPH". I don’t recall the exact name of the bar, alas.

So, aside from a few "private" readings, these are the ones that really stand out to me. If I had to pick a sixth, it would be the reading at The Blue Moose in Morgantown, during my 2002 tour. I sold a ton of books that night and met some guy named Dan McTaggart, plus it was the first time in decades that I had done a public reading in West Virginia.