Featured Writer: Robert Woodard

"Honest, unrelenting, blunt..."

My Continuing Education

In my teens and early twenties I spent a lot of time at the library,
both public and college

But then after I'd read all the books that truly moved me
and had forced my way thru a whole bunch more
I convinced myself I should read if I really wanted
to truly know literature and be a writer

I realized that I could no longer walk thru stacks
that always seemed to contain three copies at least
of Elmer Gantry, four of Steinbeck's The Pearl,
a couple of Ivanhoes

and no Bukowski   because
       my word needs

I understood had suddenly become like voracious tigers
or crazed swordsmen or determined termites that demanded
the still-bleeding poets who generally can only make it into libraries
in the years after they are dead and safe like little
Emancipation Proclamations placed under glass to be worshiped
by people who pick apart their meters and "meanings" but wouldn't
know a poem's true meaning if its author came up to them and sucked
their dicks for spare change like real poets so often in some sense
have to do to scrape up the means to write their exploding dreams
of the self and life itself thru themselves …

So I flung myself out of the library doors (literally, I swear,
one day at the North Seal Beach Branch of the Orange County
Public Library) in search of these bleeding poets these free-soul poets
these heroin poets these sex-fiend poets these rock-and-roll poets
these endlessly wandering poets these Beat poets these gay poets
these Zen poets these Bob Dylan acoustic guitar poets
these coffeehouse poets these punk rock poets of no future
these hip-hop poets of beat and rhyme these anarchist poets
these American poets denying America and therefore
making it truly American these whiskey-soaked poets
these these howling mad poets these poets of flowing beards
and most of all these broken-hearted poets who would
have been happy as bricklayers or bus drivers if only
the one woman they ever loved would have loved them back
and agreed to be forever at their side on these roads
of surface banality …

I left the library In search of my kind in other words,
in search of my family and friends

And I'm still out there today, living in a small apartment
so unlike a library in its witness to a multitude of non-hushed
impolite struggles and row after row of books shelved so sloppily
to those who don't know the certain perfection of my mind
and therefore that each is sitting exactly where it should,
surrounded by partner books that could be no others,
(unless of course I change my mind) …

But recently, I must admit, I've begun to return to the library occasionally,
mainly because I realized one day that I'd read very little Shakespeare
and that there were other important things in this institution
that I'd missed in my necessary dash to freedom—because
I was simply too young and too angry to know where
and how to look for them

But these returns are pretty rare and I stand by my initial flight:

because poetry, like human life in general, exists most deeply
on the street, and because no one needs
four copies of The Pearl




Latina Nude (Memories from an Art Class Many Years Passed)

Eighteen or nineteen-years old, I'm guessing,
plump cheeked cute if not quite pretty
hair hanging full and black to her shoulders
all squat and peasant stepping onto the little stage
in the center of the small studio—

Quickly—eyes unsure with fear and heat
not really meeting mine (or anyone elses')
as thin shiny robe slips from shoulders revealed
round like Neruda's loafs
skin brown and slightly
glistening (the room's a little warm and
she's nervous—she's never done this
before, the teacher informed us beforehand)
on its time slowing way to soft pile
on rich polished wood

uncovering on the way small loose breasts with large
dark nipples hanging motherhood in harmony with belly
round like a French postcard 1872 hips wide and soft
plump short thighs all framing pubis hairy like pornography
before it became an industry …

But without warning her suddenly wide-open
black-brown eyes are meeting my optical copulations
with a flash of anger and confidence, saying:

OK POET, YOU'VE GOT ME WHERE
YOU WANT ME—NOW SHOW ME
WHAT YOU'VE GOT!

But I have little art for her, I'm sure

I quickly wilt from my objectification
and begin to draw, poorly—too young,
lonely, and horny to render anything worthy
of her daring gift




A Descent Into The Dark Labyrinths of Love

For Victor Zahn

It was recorded in a club somewhere in L.A. in 1953, I think
(you can just barely hear the crowd and their clinking glasses
throughout the performance)—

The Gerry Mulligan Quartet is covering the now old standard
"My Funny Valentine," but not as pop tune turned into jazz
or even as the crowd pleasing ultra-romantic melody still played
as true jazz as is usually the case, but as a harrowing short story
where jazz just happens to be the medium, where the decent
into the dark labyrinths of love is quick and fearless
as Carson Smith's metronomic base plunks down what becomes
a near-static background (after the first roll, you generally can’t hear
the drums for some reason) soon to be followed by Chet Baker's trumpet
boldly plunging into the melody in just a bright enough fashion to say
that he knows that love's brutal machinations may be perfect and necessary
and ultimately what we live for, but that they also drive us into pain
that is anything but the pastel lines his trumpet is to become famous
for laying down, unless of course you understand the deep and profound
irony in his tone, which he obviously does and some of the audience
must as well (those experiencing spine shivers and thoughtful stares
into their drinks) …

Then enter Gerry Mulligan with his bottom-feeding baritone sax
that doesn't engage in that kind of honorable tongue and cheek
but instead just paints with dark tones straight out of the tube,
as if he's saying I understand the coming of our drug-longing futures
and the fact that love of women and life and horns and rhythm instruments
played as they can and should be will be rewarding and perfect
as we are greeted with tequila-laced kisses, breasts warm and yielding,
and the lonely cigarette nights of all that we want to be
and dream to be and ultimately are …




My Autobiography

My autobiography is a beached seashell
lying next to a beer bottle tossed overboard
on a sultry Polynesian night—
Who is the blonde man with the long nose
and the wild dark eyes?

He is the one who will hold you close if that interests you,
in abstract "love" or cunnilingus so complete that he gives
each of your pussy hairs a name and a life's story
The choice is yours
I'm waiting



Andy Warhol—The Last Artist

There's nothing but commerce—of the self … leading
to the creation of TV news, Elvis, "Superstars" in general,
A-bombs, death, love, Hollywood, Jackie O Oh Oh let
me lick you Mick Jagger in obvious delicious irony
Mao don't know nothing which is why he matters
so much many feet tall Velvet Underground Nico
modern noise Lou Reed cocksucker speed freak
keep it going no blues until

BULLET ENTERS CHEST

But that's going way too fast, proving
the point much too quickly

The best way to become a star is simply
to declare yourself one, says Andy, so completely
right, like my poetry for example—put it all back
into the system as subversion and light
media exploitation as you love sucking on its balls
because sucking on strange balls is exciting
not that it's always so graphic (though the girls
in the back room at Max's Kansas City often had
dicks) stir it up but still love your mother and
your brothers and sisters blah blah blah cut
to the pretty chorus and mean it though
it's silly and obvious

like silk screening to canvas in general—

because America itself is obvious in certain ways
and devastatingly new in others: all Coca Cola is the
same no matter how rich you are, points out
Andy, but what I guess I'm trying to say is that
when art becomes simply a congregation of ideas,
insanely democratic, the artist becomes
just another businessman,

which is why there's been nobody since Warhol—nobody!

Jackson Pollack the last poet with paint, Warhol the last
"artist": he understood where we were going and documented
it as it was happening and therefore made it happen further

There's no romance anymore, just life

He didn't create this, just pointed it out,
circling back on himself—

see what I mean?



© Robert Woodard

---

Rob Woodard was born in Anaheim, California and lives in nearby Long Beach. He is the author of the novels Heaping Stones -- named one of the best fiction books of 2006 by Ottawa Xpress -- and What Love Is, to be published in 2007. Burning Shore Press will be bringing out his first volume of poetry, King Of Long Beach, in 2008. He is currently at work on a third novel, tentatively titled Backwaters of Beauty.