Monday, May 14, 2007

Morrison Hotel

Don Q.,

Fab suggestion. In the absence of eyes, you've grown a set of nipples. I was in California once, and I'll tell you about it - if you promise to tell me how your man came to be Elpenor? Has he been reading Ezra Pound again? Or Homer? At any rate, your tale of rooftops and chimneys reminds me of the lines:

Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe's ingle."Going down the long ladder unguarded,"I fell against the buttress,"Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus."But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,"Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:"A man of no fortune, and with a name to come."And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows."

I had gone to see Penn and Teller in Vegas. Alice Cooper was the opening act. My sister was not yet in the madhouse, and I am glad that this combination of rock and roll and magic prepared me for the traffic of Bedlam.

Of course I was invited on stage. Asked if I could escape a straight-jacket, I said, "But of course," and settled the matter by stealing Cooper's wallet and watch as he strapped me in. That was before I realized that he was the singer, not the magician. Later, Prudentia, my woman at the time, confessed that Las Vegas is in fact in Nebraska!

At any rate, see about writing me more often and I shall see about doing the same.

H

Friday, May 11, 2007

Route 128



Dear Old Friend,

We've both become a bit famous, I fear. I've lost the centripetal orientation of your variation, but am glad to have your search strings back. Someone's finally put a down payment on the castle in Denmark. Sister is working meshwork, translating this and that from the vulgate with a band of leather between her teeth - not to prevent her from biting her tongue, she's long since swallowed that. To prevent her upper jaw from crushing her lower, as one set seeks heaven and the other seeks hell.

Which is why it's good to hear about your man in the kitchen. You've always enjoyed symbolic gestures and loved your guardians. I myself function less with fewer controls. A single dynamic sword carries the mixture of my thigh and hip across many markets. I raze and rape all that I can. My long period of predominance as a major figure of international culture has finally begun to wane, and I am that ghost counted in raw numbers between the father and the son.

Should these collocations reach you in the weeks, months, years ahead, I shall look for your letters a thousand miles from here.

H.