The Sunken Garden

THE SUNKEN GARDEN
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The Sunken Garden
Flawed Fiction
Heartland Communique
Prairie Noir
The Changing Light Over Kansas
Traveling Through Darkness
Revisiting the Plains
Indian Arrowheads
Neosho Street
If I Could Be Like 
William Stafford
Pause a Moment
History of a Town
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The Sunken Garden—

“in this pool forms

the model of our land,

a lonely one”

—William Stafford

“Lake Chelan,”

Stories that Could Be True

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I’m still sinking down into it—down deeper and deeper into my dark genealogy. My Family Tree grows—oozes its way down from Twelfth Avenue to the ‘30s Cottonwood River Bridge. East & west along Sixth Avenue—from the old art deco Civic Auditorium dive to the abandoned ruins of the old Highway 50 Drive-In.

Even though Margaret Hamilton the Wicked Witch of the West—is still flying high overhead with her squalid squadrons of jet-black bat-monkeys in tow. Bitching and fussing about this & that—cruising Peter Pan Park for any Lost Boys. Meanwhile here I am on Monkey Island—still feeling blue as usual. I’ve got those old Midwestern noir blues just awfully bad—they seem to plague me to no end, my dears.

Down thru campus past the Sunken Garden—slowly cruising frat boys on the prowl. Feeling them ooze like runny snot—through my varicose veins like some dark deep sinister River Styx. So moody and sullen—like all those Kansas City boys can be.

Flawed Fiction

“They call it regional,

this relevance”—

—William Stafford

“Stories that Could

Be True,” New and

Collected Poems

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We tried to do our best—all of us gay Midwestern Regionalists. Practicing the art of shunning—shamelessly shunning all the horrors of life. Through Literature, my dears—detailing the flawed beauty of FFA boys. Flawed beauty they say—is better than nothing, honey. Since the perfect thing—well, you & I know it just simply doesn’t exist…

How bourgeois of me—to suppress that part of it. Flawed beauty being so tres imperfect—and yet, my dears, so exquisitely and hauntingly desired. For me it was simply—a Problem of Flawed Fiction. I knew the Fly-Over State and Tallgrass Prairie had no Narrative for me that’s for sure.

How sordid the merest stain—of a spilled coffee cup could make me cringe in horror and disgust. Why? Because I saw how the Coffee Stain—was actually the Fatal blot that actually was me. I had the cursed Inner Stain that wouldn’t go away—like Hawthorne’s  Scarlet Letter turned Lavender just for me.

The Sunflower State and Tallgrass Prairie knew me—knew me better than I knew myself. Knew me like Mommy Dearest knew me—letting me have what I desperately desired. Coat-hangers!!! Coat-hangers!!! How I loved Coat-Hanger Time—when Mommy Dearest beat the shit outta me.

How many times trying so hard—Mommy Dearest would beat me severely with my favorite Coat-Hangers!!! To beat some sense into me about—the awful tacky Birds and the Bees!!! Insisting I’d stay in the Closet—just for her!!! A small-town scandal would just be awful—what would all the VFW Ladies say if I got caught? The cops finding out her son was a Flaming Fag—caught red-handed there in Peter Pan Park?

It was inevitable, of course—despite Mommy Dearest’s harangues and threats That I’d go ahead and do what she did—becoming the town whore in the bars every night. Being gay in Kansas wasn’t easy—but what else was there to do in uptight gossipy Emporia? God’s little Peyton Place—out there on the Prairie? Sweet little Bible Belt Cow-Town—my queer cocksucking homo Hometown?

Heartland Communiqué

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“Hello, is Mother

at home?”

—William Stafford

“The Farm and the Great

Plains,” The Darkness

Around Us Is Deep

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Of course, you’re not home—you’re dead and so are all the other dear ones who once were so intimate and dishy to me. You queered the Queen in me—you gave me the Authorial queer quintessence of Never Neverland.

It was the ultimate Narrative—I needed so badly. At least that’s what Hollywood said—at the local Granada Bijou. I believed everything—up there on the Silver Screen. Much more than I ever believed—in books or what boring teachers had to say.

Listening to the Supremes—chiding me with “Shame, Shame, Shame!!!” Watching Elvis the Pelvis smirk his way through Las Vegas—wiggling his ducktail greaser Ass for all the screamy ladies. Along with lovely bejeweled Madame Liberace with her grinning, leering face. Sitting there in the quiet Bijou balcony—the Night life meant more to me than anything dreary Daytime could offer.

I had this art deco photo—a NYC overhead snapshot. The Chrysler Building gargoyles—up there all looming high above. Glaring down at the rushing ants and tiny peons down there on Eastside Manhattan. I compared that to me there in Kansas—a satellite pic looking down now of my gay boyhood. So very high way up there—above the Fly-Over State of Never Neverland.

Prairie Noir

“on a relief map”

—William Stafford, 

“Sioux Haiku,” The 

Darkness Around Us Is Deep

Prairie noir sidewalks—chalky crinoid shells and criminal oozing prehistoric monsters. Beneath my bare feet—Prairie noir was like that. Moody in the moonlight—like limestone fence-posts standing gaunt and alone…

Way out there in the—Middle of Kansas Nowhere. In those stoic Flint Hills—beneath the stoic sky. The old sidewalks—slabs of limestone. Each one different and cracked and ancient… After Sat night movies—walking back home from the Granada or the Strand. Things got scary sometimes… not exactly a Staircase to Heaven.

Pale Paleozoic denizens—still lurking in those dead

deep limestone sidewalks. Once fetid lagoons—full of scary Mosasaurs with lots of teeth. Nightmare creatures of some vast fetid Inland Sea—crumbling embankments still writhing with wormy death along the hills of Emporia.

My primal prairie fear—the limestone ruins liquidizing back into life once again. Back into Life of the Living Dead—Hometown showcase for all the Halloween movies. But more than that—Prairie Noir itself running through town in its River of Darkness. Flowing down  deeper and deeper—outta the Sunken Garden…

All the way down abandoned Commercial Street—down past busy old ratty Sixth Avenue. Past the old Santa Fe tracks to—Soden’s Grove & the Cottonwood Bridge. Down past Bird Bridge there in the homicidal country Darkness—where even the sunlight got darker and darker. Deeper and darker than the Darkness of Noir winter nights…

It’s still deep inside me—that Prairie Noir darkness

Flowing in my blood & through my limestone veins. I don’t usually say this—or talk about it much. Except maybe sometimes—when I can't be stoic and silent anymore like the rest of them…

Talking about it's one thing—but feeling it in your feet, walking the limestone sidewalks, looking at the limestone foundations, sensing all the limestone  basements and knowing all the crumbling curbs is something else. Prairie noir darkness—lurking in all the old churches and buildings and courthouses and downtown Kansas architecture…

Even winter sunlight—coming down through my stained-glass windows is darker than blackest octopus ink. Darker than dead of night—I’m deep in darkness. Especially way out here faraway—far from the West Coast millions. Way back in time—miles and miles deep into prehistoric present Kansas… 

The Changing Light Over Kansas

“each day—

a treasured unimportance”

—William Stafford, “The

Rescued Year,” Rescuing

Some Years in Kansas

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There’s something about it—the way the winter prairie light comes down thru the windows and crawls across the Persian carpet floor. I remember sitting in it—moving the antique high-back rocking chair with it as it moved slowly across the floor…

Letting the warmth of it—seep and soak into me as

as I read a book back then in those long afternoons of sad Emporia sunlight. Kansas winter sunlight—it’s different than summer sunshine filtering down thru Elm-tree boulevards of cool shade… 

Winter sunlight—brings out the tans and golds of the sleeping front lawns and limestone sidewalks. The old bumpy sidewalks—limestone foundations of old courthouses and churches and small town college campuses…

Sitting there the front room—there on Constitution Street where my grandparents retired and then gave it to me. Today faraway now—here on the West Coast where Seattle winter light isn’t like the bright  light that was Kansas. An Emporia Gazette photo—winter light shinning down on a hardwood floor moving slowly across a Persian carpet…

Traveling Through Darkness

“In the late night…”

—William Stafford, “Through

the Dark Night,” The Darkness

Around Us Is Deep

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Traveling thru the darkness—the dead are calm & stoic. They know all about Literature and Poetry—since the Land of Logos is their grave. They live in our dreams—no wonder we don’t want to remember them and where they come from. They’re much to grim and stoic for us—down there in the womb we call Mother Earth

Time to be Progeny for a little bit—choosing to be ignorant of it. The secret often concealed from each generation. Languishing in the local Zeitgeist—time enough to pay for the magic ride of the mise-en-scene moment. Choosing to travel back in time—the Santa Fe Super Chief zooming me and Harper Lee back deep into the Heart of Kansas Darkness

Revisiting The Plains

“That winter when this

thought came…”

—William Stafford, “Living

on the Plains,” The Darkness

Around Us Is Deep

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That winter I bought—an RV and a used trailer. I had the dealer drive it out to where I wanted it to be. It was just Land now like it used to be—before all my relatives showed up. All the buildings were gone—except for the dirt road and the hill and ravine that were still there…

That’s all I really needed—I wanted to rescue it. My memory of what it was like back then… It didn’t take much—I wanted to recuperate in the Moment of being once again a Kansas Chicken Little.

I wanted to rescue it—the way the snow covered

everything after the divorce. When my parents broke-up—dumping us boys with our grandparents. Way up there in the primitive wilds—Republic County southwest of Bellville, Kansas.

Dumped somewhere wild—up there near Concordia by my estranged parents. The first time by our estranged redhead mother—who wanted a divorce. Her husband in Korea—her left to herself there in Emporia. Picked up by relatives—Valentine Day 1954 not the best birthday for my little brother and me…

Suddenly finding ourselves—in Republic County up by the Nebraska Border all because of the Korean War. The War wrecked it all—the marriage, the military attaché assignment in Tokyo, the whole ball of wax…

There’s nothing more bleak—nothing more lonely than to be an Exile suddenly in the Kansas High Plains… The ghost of Prairie schooners—then the summers south of Belleville. Getting the feel of the Great Westering Experience

I wasn’t in any hurry—slowly spring came and went. Then summer came and I just did my usual thing. All I needed was time—a couple of mulberry trees and a hammock to take me back to those summer Ace paperback worlds…

I read the same books I read back then—all the juvenile sci-fi classics. Especially the trashy pulp fiction ones I didn’t understand back then… I drove over to Mankato—to see Mark and my cousins who thought I was crazy… staying out there alone…

Rescuing the past—it takes time to find it again. But I was in no hurry—there was plenty of time. Each inconsequential moment was important again—because each moment was the reason I was back  there again…

Indian Arrowheads

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“Inside — soot from

a cold fire, powder

of bones, a piece

of ceremonial”

—William Stafford

“The Indian Cave

Jerry Ramsey Found”

Why the Sun Comes Up

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Richard Stauffer—and James Swint picked me up one

early Sat morning. Arrowhead-hunting—southeast of town where I’d never been before back then. It was wet & cold—both of them were amateur archeologists back then there in Kansas. The hunting was good—and there were these weird gothic hills that stuck up out of nowhere…

They took me to see—this old man who lived in a huge stone mansion who was a collector too… I stood in this room—with glass-cabinets full of Osage Indian points plus lotsa prairie death… We stayed overnight—the timber had a life all its own then us three getting up in the morning…

Down this river trail—old limestone fence-posts still standing gaunt and scarred by barbed-wire… It was very scary—for a sophomore kid like me a small-town naïve gawker type… A cold Indian dawn—the Mound People still all around and not a sound anywhere except the morning fog on cat’s feet.

Neosho Street

“how the world

can’t keep up with

our dreams…”

—William Stafford, “Living

on the Plains,” The Darkness

Around Us Is Deep

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There are those midwestern Machiavellian moments—when the world leans in on you. When you’re young and don’t understand the human heart yet—and how it breaks so easily. When the Love that created you—suddenly doesn’t exist anymore. And your Mother has a couple of black eyes for telling Lies… When your father beats her up—really bad there in that duplex on Neosho Street because she’d been lonely and wanted out of a crummy marriage. Sick of being married to him—hating the military life and wanting to try again to be happy while she was still young. Twelve years was enough—three kids later and she’d had it with her marriage of convenience gone sour. Her parents had worried that—she’d be like her mother who’d given her up at the Willows Home for Unwed Mothers. Surely an early marriage—and kids would tie her down to a nice family life of decency and responsibility. It lasted beyond the—usual normal Seven Year Itch but then it was time for a change.

If I Could Be Like

William Stafford

"I'd rather slime along

than be heroic..."

—William Stafford,

"If I Could Be Like

Wallace Stevens,"

The Darkness Around

Us Is Deep

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“Turn into an—

Octopus with words”—

“Eight arms reaching—

Out into the Darkness”

“The inky Darkness—

That wants to be understood”

“All your suckered fingers—

Reaching out into it”

“I want you to know—

You can tell it to me”

“Try not to be so—

Mock heroic, just be real”

“Pride gets in your way—

It’s not easy being gay”

“Whitmanesque rants—

Skip the tan-faced boyz”

“Be more stoic & gothic—

America is that way, kid”

“Take your time—

Reinvent it as you go along”

Pause a Moment

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“Your job is to find what

the world is trying to be…”

—William Stafford

The Darkness

Around Us Is Deep

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Pausing a moment—and then putting down the cup of coffee. Listening to what Emporia was trying to say to me. On the other hand—turning away and pretending to know more it than it did. Even though I was probably wrong. I know nothing it said—except this and it’s totally unique to you… What more could it say—than what it was saying to me. Sitting there listening—to  the quiet that invites me to turn my face away from myself… Waiting for the moment—the timing is everything… When something in the night speaks to you. It will touch you—from that Dark Place that is the gift inside you down deep. I can only say this once it said—but then even once still's not enough because it happens only once. There’s this detour—this excursion and evasion of oneself. That poets have to do—to know themselves.

History of a Town

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“…for whom history was

walking through dead grass,

and the main things that

happened were miles and

the time of day…”

—William Stafford,

“Prairie Town,” Rescuing

Some Years in Kansas

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Jiving the Elders—it doesn’t work anymore. They know too much about living in Kansas. Especially those two lonely men—my two stoic gaunt gothic grandfathers who I once knew back then. Walter the calm cool Santa Fe man—working down there at the switching yard on the old railroad tracks. Later John Deere dealer of combines, tractors and farm equipment. Long term County Commissioner—smoking cigars and making deals for lucrative road and bridge contracts. Down on Sixth Avenue—in the old gothic Lyon County Courthouse. With all the Big Shots and small-town smoothie wheeler-dealers. Until one day—he had a heart-attack at the Poker Table in that old country courthouse. From then on—a recluse just sitting out there in his empty office alone out there on his crumbing Thirties Depression place on Old Highway 50. He didn’t go to church anymore—not with his wife Jenny or me & my brother. No need anymore—to keep up the façade of being an important Emporia King Fish. Jenny Larkin—G. A. R Queen & Civil War daughter with her Union Army Family past. Dark evenings—her quiet RFD garden full of snap-dragons, petunias, tulips and twilight wisteria… My grandmothers—the Movers & Shakers… The ones who kept both Families going… Jenny down south in Lyon County—Theresa up North in Republic County. Teacher & County Commissioner Schools.Natural-born Women Leaders—Eleanor Roosevelt types. Endeared to how many generations of children—in all those one room school houses in the country. All of it gone now—including her position. While Arthur like Walter—both moody withdrawn Gothic Americana Kansas Republicans… Done in by the Great Depression—the droughts, the sandstorms, the usual Thirties Nightmare stuff… They’d given up—disillusioned, letting go. Leaving their wives to do all the heavy lifting… It took Determination—to keep those families and homes going that’s for sure… And there I was—supposedly the one to seal my parent’s marriage. A fourth generation grandson of the Border—just another Whitmanesque tan-faced boy of the plains. Young enough then—to know I knew nothing back then other than listening to the Doodlebug passing by down there on the Santa Fe tracks. Its lonely whistle calling out to me west of Emporia—where was it going, where was I going too? Elm-shaded streets—Peter Pan Park and growing up back then in the Eisenhower ‘50s. No time to jive them anymore now though—the Elders of Emporia they know too much about me and I still know nothing at all.