Beatnik Devil of Death

Don Shearn

I was born in a village situated under a plastic bubble. Because of television, the bubble seemed like the real world. The bubble cracked in the revolution of ’68; the splinters cut my head.

I smoked Pall Malls in college, majored in avoiding the draft and cutting classes. Chain smoking while I sat at my Royal typewriter, clacking out a roman a clef and wishing there was something interesting to fictionalize.

Then I met her. Half-Cherokee and half out of her mind. One day she lived upstairs and the next day she moved in. Did I tell you she was broke? She was an artist. She showed me her woodcuts. Not bad. And the sex was great.

She left me for one she thought was my best friend. I knew better. He had a car and a place in the hills. And a job. In many ways, I believe he was the first yuppie. The car … a BMW.

I couldn’t believe it was really over. When she came for her stuff, I told her I loved her. That’s sweet, she said. What I needed was a tattoo on my forehead, so every time I looked in the mirror, I’d read, bye, bye, I’m gone.

And then the poems … always starting in a tangle of possibilities working their way through despair, regret … poignant moments of insight, abruptly ending in puddles of blood.

There are times I still want to call her, but I don’t know the area code for hell. I have no monopoly on truth and wisdom…or even a clue. I quit playing those games but give myself credit for memory.

When I open my heart, the dragons escape. Honesty has been my only consort and to it I must be true. I want to believe in an afterlife so that she can suffer the eternal damnation she so richly deserves.

Amo et odo: I love and I hate. That was written by Catullus, the famed Latin poet who toured with Tito Puente in the 40s. And that’s how I feel about her. When I wake up, I hate her. And yet whilst I sleep I dream of being with her.

One morning on my way to the office in another dimension … driving on Lake Shore Drive, I look in my rear view mirror and see Harry Caray driving a white Cadillac. He had been dead for five years. Then I knew it was over.