ACADEMIC DUST

  Our metaphors are loose in the breeze. When I say "breeze" I mean the ease of poetry,  poetry flashing uncut elbows, unclipped anything—sheer growth:  the bottom of the pit of oneself floating along, health good - fortunately or unfortunately - the pain of pleasure apparent in the pen. Ball pens write too smoothly, the secret of their business success.

The availability of everything when you're not in some civil war, is rampant, filling the bushels full, that is, the availability of cheap things that it takes to create. You have your mind don't you? I don't have mine. And you can afford a pen, a brush, a spigot — would you like to be published by Faucet? Ball in Time? Wampum House? Prissy Hall? Signing & Sueing? Belch Publishing Company? Twink,  Louse & Screw? How about Barf? That's an old house.  Or Squigglers & Sons.  Don't forget Happy & Slow. They're the biggest.  They're all waiting to suck up academic dust. A nude display of writer orgasms offends them.  They must make money off your remains.  It's a giant cold shoulder to sob on.

Don't waste your time.  Remove your mind  (it takes will power) — it only tells you where to go.  The road to hell is paved with good ambitions.  Relax.  Listen to a raga.  Forget about it. Bake bread.  Take a bath. Work will entail shoving creativity out of your mind.  Just to survive the job.  Go back to pre-art. Conversation & drink. Briefing for the day.  Letting the dog out. Feeding the turkeys.  Cooking the chicken. How will I cook it, let me count the ways.

       So, let me know what you think. 

larry goodell/ written 14Nov85 but re-pondering now.

JOURNAL ENTRY 21JUN98 (cure for depression)

Put on acequia/willow stick and Placitas quartz necklaces.  Wrap Paho in old red bandana and take it and small water jar thru 2 gates to Oso Spring acequia ditch where we bring our water down each week. Push feet of Paho into mud of ditch right at water lines. Rub mud from water line area into female face of female part of Paho. Rinse small water jar and fill it and put lid back on jar tight. Wrap Paho up in red bandana. Go back thru gates to house and hang Paho on roofbeam. Pour some of the acequia water into 4-directions bowl. Put covered small jar of water up on beam with Heheya and Fire and Duck kachinas. Put some water on my forehead and face and head. Get a small bit of Zen monk blessed sand from the sandpainting and put it on my forehead and head.

When I was getting the sand I noticed the priest stick from the garden Paho in the wall behind the Lenore-poem paho. Thought I’d lost it. Got a cotton seed from the Spider Woman “Kachina” and put it in a crack in the priest stick. Took a string from on the major altar cloth and wrapped the seed tight against the stick. Put some acequia water on the stick and took it out to the garden where I placed it with the male and female sticks it belongs to to make a complete Paho. Write on prayer paper Bless Joel, bless me, bless Lenore, bless Dad, bless Cris, bless Maria and baby, bless Abby, bless Lyra, bless Carl and all and take 4 sticks of temple incense and paper prayer outside following the will of the way.  Went to turkey coop and picked 4 large feathers and a couple small from the ground. Take all to altar and put feathers into cracks on top. Light incense. Put paper prayer on metal fence and light it, saying bless etc. Say what I’ve written as it burns.  Pick up ashes and throw into the air. My depression left me.  

Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico / June 2026 

"Bless Joel, bless me, bless Lenore, bless Dad, bless Cris, bless Maria and baby,                                 bless Abby, bless Lyra, bless Carl and all."                                                                                                                           

             

Where Is the Audience?

(Placitas Audiences Anasazi Fields Winery & Thunderbird Bar)

We'll start at the beginning & before that's over we'll be done. We being all of us For is anything ever finished even in death? Do you lecture? Do you get paid for it?

Then you're a professional lecturer: I'm an amateur. Or maybe I'm just finishing things up while it seems like I'm starting over & over and I'm here all by myself: utterly backward. Lost in the dark, far from a moralist: a wacky speech maker.

Who listens? Who pays?

The professional audience. Voice I would grab, hold me above myself and give me to them, but also, all of us. Every goddamned one of us is the same species. Amateur professional alike: known & unknown, beginning & possible end. The voice is its own audience: who knows what will come.

Will anybody read what words lips listen to? And ears & brain of one of this too big species?

I am only me finishing everything off I've begun. Really only wanting to reach one audience one impossible audience: the fan-tailed pigeons that used to come & eat our worm-infested cherries & keep the cherry fruit-fly under control. Where are you, that used to come in a flock just when the cherries were ripe? Did you get hunted out by kids & ignorant sons of bitches of my species? Poisoned by over-pesticiding farmers & gardeners? Why aren't you here to eat up this wormy fruit & get the bug population down?

If I cd only reach that audience as you flocked large & loud from tree to tree, eating your share, my saying this loud but not clear to you, or would it be, I'd be the professional I could be, with an audience that is more than me. And that would be the beginning of something better than me.

/larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / from Outer Space Workout, 1994 and LISTEN to the poet reading this here.

larry goodell/ placitas, new mexico / usa

/7Jul94

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