been a whileActually have been going to a public reading to see how my work sounds as spoken word. Here is a fragment of a longer work that I started. I have a poem but it's coming slowly. The story of his life: born in a ditch near the Sacramento River. What can be said of a man born in a ditch near the Sacramento River, other than he will be intensely hated, or intensely loved. There are no grey areas with a man born in a ditch. Black and whites are the flavors of his age. He was most assuredly guaranteed a charmed life, being born in an overturned 1952 Emerald Green Chevy Fleetline, his mother screaming at the top of her lungs. He was born in the age of buzz cuts and dungarees. He was born in the age of white soul. He was born of a mother who got dizzy every time she saw him. He said once at a later time in his life, “I need to eliminate some of the contexts. Too many contexts vexing my soul, too many contexts giving me the semiotic flu.” “You’re full of whatever you are smoking in that pipe,” she was weak on comebacks and comeuppances. She was Angel and she spoke to men in shining white suits. She was unique in that she intensely loved and hated the man. She was angry that he was in an institution, but vaguely glad also, because he was mostly out of her hair. But, being born in a ditch near the Sacramento River, in an overturned 1952 Emerald Green Chevy Fleetline does have its perks. The combined action of an atomic contraction and the frightening act of overturning in a vehicle propelled that infant out the birth canal like a pellet from a musket. So, mix: the maddening sound of automotive glass shattering, the feral groan of sheet metal being deformed, the fetus’ fleet passage out of the dark into the light, and coming from deep inside her collective subconscious his mother was shrieking some Aztec imprecations of the gods at the top of her lungs. Needless to say he let out a yelp that sounded like a police siren landing on a spastic cat. Of course, hearing his cry she loved him so intensely she developed aphasia for 67 days. In direct contrast to the child’s father, who hated him, intensely. He ranted to the boy’s mother for 66 days about the infant’s flaws and left. The infant’s flaws were legion. In addition to his cry sounding like a toucan belch combined with a rifle shot. He had one black iris and one without any color. His face was asymmetrical on two planes. On the 67th day after the boy’s birth she simply said “Good-bye.” However, they would find out later, when they received an envelope from the Sailors Life Assurance Mutual containing a check for $497.86 and an explanation that he was working on a fishing boat that capsized off the shores of the Ivory Coast. They took the insurance money and put a down payment on a 1953 Buick Roadmaster. Since, Chevrolets gave his mother the heebie-jeebies. | 
