We Disappear

WE DISAPPEAR

“To get as close as she could,

to understand the “gone without

a trace,” for whom the earth

seemed to yawn its beak and

blackened throat and swallow

whole”—Scott Heim, We Disappear

____________

So I disappeared—

Letting Kansas swallow me

Down there by the tracks

A few years from now—

Nobody will ever know 

I even existed

Pretty soon now I’ll just—

Disappear like most of the

Emporians do

It's a ghost town—

Full of disappeared persons and
Soon I'll be one too

Snow Storm

SNOW STORM

“Around us, the room

was shrinking and

dimming.”—Scott Heim

WE DISAPPEAR

___________________

When I closed my—

Eyes, I could almost feel 

The cold snow in my face

Listening to the—

Forbidden secrets of the

Railroad tracks out there

Along the rails—

Snowdrifts were slowly

Drifting, getting denser

Outside my window—

The elms grew sinister

Snaking in the shadows

Past Things

PAST THINGS

“We want to learn more

about things like that.

Past things.”—Scott Heim

WE DISAPPEAR

Drives in the country—

It’s the same way only

It just gets worse

Watching the flat fields—

Slowly going by out there

through the window

The stark grain silos—

bleak & broken wheatfields

abandoned farmhouses

Circular hay bales rotting—

Like moldy loaves of bread

Embedded in the snow

Emporia Sunset

EMPORIA SUNSET

“but now nothing is 

visible as cold wind 

blows on a blank, 

pitted planet.

—Denise Low, 

Flint Hills Sunset, 

Spring Equinox

The last thing to go—

The glow on the railroad tracks

Into the sunset

Down past the burned-out—

Santa Fe Railroad Station

Fading memory

Then snowy whiteness—

Turns into jet-black nothing

Emporia sleeps

I’m going with it—

Along with the Doodlebug

And the C of E

I guess this is how—

It happens, the prairie takes 

Back its stark landscape

Empty Words

EMPTY WORDS

“Today dry eyes scan

only empty words”

—William Allen White &

Albert Bigelow, Rhymes 

By Two Friends(1893)

Sitting here tonight—

Watching the TV without

The sound turned on

Listening to the night—

The pale blue glow in the dark

A train rumbles by

The little shack shakes—

The Elms out there in the street  

Moan, groan like the dead

It’s only the wind—

It’s snowing & cold outside

And I’m sick of words

Neoclassical

NEOCLASSICAL

How can one ignore—

The pleasures of the decline

And fall of a town?

The very same thing—

Slowly happening to me

There in the mirror

The slow exquisite—

Decay of Emporia

Its tragic beauty

As I go through my—

Mother’s yearbooks & mine too

All the dead teachers

Snowy Railroad Tracks

SNOWY RAILROAD TRACKS

So I came back home—

I bought a dumpy little

Shack down by the tracks

The slow Santa Fe—

Burlington loaded freight trains 

Rumbling by nextdoor

They made me feel alive—

Honking & whistling away

Heading East & West

Not exactly like—

“North By Northwest” Super Chief

But still close enough 

Elms in Winter

ELMS IN WINTER

Thomas Wolfe said we—

We can never go home again

Time is a river

I came back because—

Emporia just wouldn’t 

Couldn't seem to go away

The stark naked Elms—

Those cold winter days

Stark, bleak just like death

The elm’s loneliness—

Solitary and alone

No different than me

Emporia Noir

EMPORIA NOIR

Kansas possesses a noir magic—

since it’s exhausted its own future 

and is thus free of time. 

Anything erected there—

a city, courthouse, a store

stands outside of time 

It's no coincidence that— 

ghost towns emerge from this 

aura of midwestern noir

The Flint Hills Mall and—

Wal-Mart killed downtown

Decay has set in

EMPORIA GHOST TOWN

“tense, musty,

unignorable silence”

—Philip Larkin,

CHURCH GOING

___________

Olpe, Allen, Americus—

There’s nothing going on

In these towns anymore

More ghost towns—

Bite the dust, all that’s

Left is some fading memories

_________

Even that doesn’t last long—

Then maybe a collection of

Old photos and snapshots

Memorabilia of a gone—

Midwestern Era that some

Of us may still remember

__________

Now it’s happening—

To Emporia, Kansas that

Lovely Athens of the Midwest

Once it had two colleges—

Now it barely has one with

Degrees worth shit anymore

___________

So what if you’ve got a—

Business Degree or even an

Esteemed Harvard MBA?

This New Great Depression—

Without any FDR Savior is

On the Event Horizon of Hell

____________

Lots of Downtown Emporia—

Boarded-up and bankrupt

WalMart & Flint Hill Mall rules

There’s always the adorable—

Hostess Twinkies though to

Lift one’s dour stoic spirits

WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

“someone would

know: I don’t”

—Philip Larkin,

CHURCH GOING

___________________

Midwestern minions—

On the move looking for

A new ELMER GANTRY

Flocking to the sacred

Red Rocks Temple there

On shady Exchange St

_________

Tea and crumpets—

Maybe even a nice petite

Soul-searching Reading

Recounting the Life—

Of pretty tres precocious

Mary White of Emporia

____________

The attic is haunted—

Supposedly by the ghost of

The great GAZETTE Editor

Mounting the Lectern—

Clearing his throat and

Then hectoring the Mob

_________

Bombastic Editorials—

Worthy of Teddy Roosevelt

Calvin Coolidge & the rest

I sign the book and—

Donate ten bucks toward

The Future of Emporia

A GAZETTE EDITORIAL

“the place was not

worth stopping for”

—Philip Larkin,

CHURCH GOING

_____________

And yet stop I did—

In fact I often do, ending

Up usually this same way

Wondering what I’m seeing—

What there is to look at this

Falling completely out of use

___________

What shall they turn it into—

Keeping the town chronically

For a local quaint showpiece?

Letting the town rot & decay—

Avoiding it like some unlucky

Place haunted by old ghosts?

__________

Obituaries full of dead people—

Roberts-Blue beloved ones

Buried out there at Maplewood?

Superstition like belief—

Outmoded and dying like some

Riddle that was never solved?

_________

Smooth flat mowable cemetery—

Tombstones but what remains

When even disbelief has gone?

Weeds, gravelly path, old tombs—

Their purpose more obscure as

The years creep by like snails?

KENYON HEIGHTS

“Bored, uninformed,

knowing the ghostly silt”

—Philip Larkin,

CHURCH GOING

________________

Here I am retired—

In a lovely apartment

In the new Kenyon Heights

The swanky remodeled—

C of E Administration Bldg

For aging Emporia retirees

____________

I was born across the street—

At Newman’s on West Twelfth

Via Roberta Eckdall’s grandfather

As Richard Doxtator said—

We’re all dying at different rates

Such an astute EHS philosopher

_________

Yes, I’m rotting ever so slowly—

The view from my west windows

Overlooks Maplewood Cemetery

I’m sort of like C of E it seems—

My purpose gets more & more

Obscure like the Carnegie Library

MAPLEWOOD CEMETERY

“It pleases me to

stand in silence here”

—Philip Larkin,

CHURCH GOING

____________

Reeble’s Monument Business—

Must have made a mint over the

Years with all the funeral homes

Grinding away at all the granite—

Tombstones to enshrine fading

Memories of the Dearly Beloved

________

Margaret Reeble butch bull dyke—

Stomping in & out of Reeble’s South

Glaring at schmaltzy bagboy me

I was deadly afraid of her—

And so was everybody else there

In that ancient Grocery Store Tomb

____________

Ship’s Lounge across the street—

My tall lanky skuzzy stepfather who

Had more than a few tall cool ones

His rundown Mechanics Shop there—

Across the street on Commercial with

His dirty greasy awful finger nails

EMPORIA KANSAS

“A serious house on

serious earth in whose bent

air all my compulsions lie”

—Philip Larkin,

CHURCH GOING

______________

Down by the tracks in a little town—

Plopped down like a cow-turd there

Along the sad lonely Santa Fe tracks

What more can I say that the—

Diva Bette Davis hasn’t already said

Like I fastened my seatbelts, honey

_________

Small towns fuck you up—

The same with your mom and dad

They may not mean to, but they do

You end up with their faults—

And add some extra bad karma just

To torment you & keep you busy

______________

Small towns are fucked up—

They get even more drunken-mean

With naïve chicken like you and me

A serious little fucking town—

Serious stoic Red State Republican

With its plans mapped out for you

GANG BANGING IN KANSAS

“Man hands on misery to man.

Get out as early as you can”

—Philip Larkin,

THIS BE VERSE

________________

Heteronormativity deepens—

Like mud and sludge down the

Mississippi River to the Gulf

Past the bad boy Big Easy—

But in Emporia it’s with the

Flooded Neosho & Cottonwood

__________

It’s lucky I didn’t come out—

Back then in the Reagan Era

When Just Say No was Password

Then came Clinton’s mantra—

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but that

Didn’t do any fucking good at all

______

Need I go on, my dears, with—

The usual deadly Plague Roll Call

Did ACT-UP really do any good

And then there was the lovely—

SF Gay Baghdad by the Bay with

Milk and Moscone slaughtered dead

__________

The tender Tentacles of Death—

Even reached down to innocent

Wizard of Oz Kansas in Emporia

My favorite gay flamboyant—

Flaming Cheerleader a la pom-poms

Jimmy Stevens suddenly died

Peter Pan

PETER PAN PARK

It’s like a river—

That runs beneath everything

There’s no end to it

A melancholy—

Current in the Cottonwood

Past Peter Pan Park

Funny how I think—

Now about the way it works

Once it was simple

But now Peter Pan—

Reaches out to me again

Lost boyhood returns

HOOD MANSION

How can I ever know—

Anything about the town

I was born into

The Hood Mansion—

Across Seventh Avenue

The Civil War thing?

My divorced mother—

There across the street

Me and her alone

History was there—

What did I possibly know

All the heartache there?

Achsah May Harris

ACHSAH MAY HARRIS

“One of Harris’ daughters, Achsah May, 

was a member of the Emporia State 

University faculty from 1890 to 1936. 

She was a poet and taught in 

elementary education.”—Emporia Gazette

____________

She seemed rather shocked—

There I was visiting her

After all these years

So I was finding—

Myself standing there at her

Exchange Street front door

It was then I think—

We both realized that the

Now is always here

Her “Kansas Reader”—

Was updating itself now

Because we both knew…

An Emporia Poet

AN EMPORIA POET 

What did we know then—

Both Achsah May Harris and

Me then in that dream?

What I say that—

We talked about back then

Since it was all NOW?

Such a strange insight—

That even a small town was

Always eternal?

Dare I imply that—

Cities are Topocosmic

They’re here forever?

Parlor Poetry

PARLOR POETRY

Here in Kansas—

Writing in the Yeats parlor

Ariel gets born

It’s like a “sea-change”—

That’s why Sylvia's Double 

Makes a poet

It's when the Muse comes—

To live with me the same way

Then it's my Double

Ditching Big Daddy—

Becoming my own Other

I write for myself

Burroughs in Kansas

BURROUGHS IN KANSAS

He retired to a—

Lawrence Kansas little shack

With his little cats

So much for his chic—

YMCA New York days

Kansas his new home

He made bucks from—

His Shotgun Spattering Art

More than his novels

He had late cocktails—

During conversations with

Ginsberg and the rest…

Behind the Candelabra

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA 

Yes, Miss Liberace. Quite the Queen Bee. I've seen the movie several times. What's marvelous and amazing is that a movie like this is possible now after all these years. Closetry is bad enough wherever you are, especially back then. Professional closetry even more difficult it seems, but then Liberace covered it all up with his flamboyance and Las Vegas act. It was just all show-biz, dontchaknow. Even so, was the price worth it? Liberace, Rock Hudson and all those thousands of SF & NYC young gays dead of aids. Jimmy Stevens one of them. 

It's lucky I was married to Frank all those years and didn't do the bar or dance club scene. The booze and drugs. It's a wonder the gay movement even survived. Of course, there was Act Up and now retro-virus medicines. The obits in the Bay Area Reporter in SF back in the 80's and 90's went for pages. Now it's down to one or two. Most young gays don't even know about or care about that era that some of us went though anymore.

The Liberace movie is excellent because it's an actual 'uncloseted' documentary melodrama of the way things really were. The struggles of an artist and pianist to be true to his art, even if he is gay, and still perform his dream. Even though they've closed the Vegas Liberace Museum and all the blue-rinse ladies that flocked to his shows are all dead now...

My imagination is like that. I know the FFA boys back in the Midwest were all mostly ugly and had bad teeth. But I try to publish a midwest-noir blog world of fantasy, romance and beauty like Liberace did. It's the only way I can keep from having nightmares about that little Shit-hole of a Kansas Cow-Town down by the tracks. They did to the Hispanics & Somali at Iowa Beef what Bloxom did to Rodriquez  there in that hellish corner room of the EHS tomb. They're still doing it, nothing really changes back there, does it?

It's amazing to me, Connie, that we even survived back then. Some didn't, they succumbed by stoically getting married and just simply living & dying there. I read the Gazette obits and feel sorry for all those lost lives who stayed there, lived there, had kids there, paid taxes there, then just died there. It's the same with my grandparents, my mother & her second husband from Olpe. Somehow trying to compensate for their despair and unhappiness, they slaved all week. Then smoke and drank themselves to death at the VFW nightclub every Saturday night. 

I fled from such futility like you did into Jane Eyre and literature. That's why I'm fond, I suppose, of that 9th grade Gazette photo of you, me, Roberta and Jan Tholen. It's like I felt Elsie Pine, Louis Jaquith and Marjorie Sullivan sensed that fleeing despair in me and gave me that award. Why? What did they sense in me? A poet who didn't know it, ha ha???  

It was just a young gay confused fag who hadn't found the trick of being a Miss Liberace yet.

Elms

ELMS

We know the bottom—

We know it with our tap roots

We know, we’ve been there

We used to hear the—

Horses & buggies go by

Now we hear the cars

We suffer winter—

Our stark branched frail fingers

Reaching for the light

Up and down the streets—

Cool & shady in summer

Winter sunsets grim

Poet In Residence

William Burroughs home

1927 Learnard Ave Lawrence KS

POET IN RESIDENCE

“When I started to write this 

companion text to Queer, I 

was paralyzed with a heavy 

reluctance, a writer’s block like 

a straitjacket. I glance at the 

manuscript of Queer and feel 

I simply can’t read it. My past 

was a poisoned river from which 

one was fortunate to escape.”

—William Burroughs, Queer

____________

I found it out there—

His typewriter in the weeds

It was pitiful

It was a Royal—

But didn’t work anymore

Now it’s on my desk

That was years ago—

My IBM Selectric 

Antiquated too

But now I use Word—

Publishing there on the Net

The screen’s ghostly glow