The Poet's Hour

In commemoration of KUNM-FM’s stronger voice, 

which can now be heard in Placitas, I read this,

in part, over the air during the Larry Goodell Show in May 1976.

The Poet took pen to paper. There was a shuffling in the other room but all fell silent. The scratching of the pen echoed down the canyons of immortality. This was what he said or sang as he wrote:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, My pen is big.” The scratching echoed out there to the chickens. “The revulsion I’ve lived through has not passed. So long I’ve hated you and thought you were sheer nylons with me trying to fill your bag. I’ve blown you & blown you and still not blown you down. You’re bigger than me by a long shot. You have toes – and ears – and fights. You fight me. You jam your nylon stocking over my head. I love it. I wish I had one on my head now. I wdnt look at you. I’d eat you. You eat me up. You gag on my face, but you’re little. Little than big. Bigger than a toenail. You’re gas stations & the whole rigamarole up to the top. I am the top of the pyramid. Blinking the eye on your goddamn dollar bill. You’re mammon and a preacher. You have free time on Sundays and tend your garden club. Your radio audience isnt fixed, your radio audience is all you’ve got and it’s free. Free to move over and let me take a stand.

“Eat whole foods. This is your radio audience listening. Listening to the Poet give his fireside chat. There is rain in Cambodia. The Communists have fallen and picked themselves up. They are crazy with laughter. They have bifocals too. They’ve heard of Benjamin Franklin. They want him to come over and buddy buddy with them. They’ve restored the locks in the canals. The voices are pulling your head apart. Don’t jam them any more. Don’t screw them in any further. You are totally nuts and I hate your guts. You are the Nazis. You are not this radio audience.

“I have not said anything trivial, that’s why you hate me. You might listen to me but you’re married. You have kids that glue their heads together out of nothing to do. You would let Gertrude Stein die of a miscarriage. Baudelaire is your Uncle. And Edgar Allen Poe. You make sense to me because you’re instant art. You’re constantly echoing in the hills of Congress all over the land. Until you fall silent. You are hung over and don’t know it. I cant destroy you and I love you. I bid you walk for me. Get up and talk for me.

“I am potentially your victory. Your victim and your victory. But reaching out I grab you. There’s peace in the Yucatan. Fighting is calm over Alaska. There are marching girls in Paris. No one wears stocking any more. What a thing to deplore. This is your midnight speech on Sunday. We need more wire fence. To fence ourselves out, away from you. You dogs. You dogs.

“You bottom dogs. Sooner or later you will meet your failure. Failure to do this or that. I will play your game until you play it. Play it all the way up where I'm the floating pyramid. I am all the gurus in the top shelf. I am Carlos Castaneda's hand on backwards. Clapping ass and calling me pardner. You are dissolving in Alka Seltzer, Hadacol & Sal Hepatica. Pow! When hate disappears isnt it great? What a beautiful day this is. Everything is balmy and there isnt any noise. Sometimes somebody forgets to do something but theyre paying me to talk tonight. I'm selling you a bill of goods. Vote for Crazy Horse the Doctor of Medicine. Be kind to your families and try to include a Poet in your social acquaintance. Ask him a question about God. or grass. Promote the use of useless electricity? Use the electricity that is to be used. And no more. Make garbage bags your grab bags and give them away in public. Sit down at somebody else's plate and eat his food every disgusting drop of it. Smell your own manure wastes and don’t heap scorn on somebody else's plate. But you will do this anyway. Dear God let us pray.

“We pray and we pray and pray. And still the plants come up. We cant wish them away so we pray and we pray and we pray. Dear God how we pray. We play and we pray. Don’t you fig come up. I want only weeds in my garden. Social weeds. Weeds that fuck each other while I can stand by and catch fire. This is your poet talking to you, your small town farmer poet. The poet tilling the soil and turning the soil under your feet. While you march along together. Trampling it down. You stepped on my bind weed. I am your living weed. I am the history of natural flowers. I stop where your nylon stocking starts. I am the You of the nation. A living legend in trees. I am your walking Campus. I am your inspired parts. I wait for the wave of inspiration. It comes and comes and comes, and makes me the prize winner. The winner of your Emmy Poet Award. Nineteen Seventy Sixty Two. I am the you of the me of the sea. The sea is talking tea tonight. Salty teardrop tea. I am the puff in you’re a Bomb smoke. I am making your money, I am giving you all the angles, I am half again a man. A man on top of man is stronger too. The woman of my dreams passes through. Through here! Right here this minute you filthy scads. Try out my dreams. I'll hand you the box that contains them. Sniff well.

“Your mind reaches out to shake my hand. Here is the ten bucks. Call me again when you want to write a poem. I'll pay you a decent wage for services rendered. I am your public. This is a musical interlude. I am your employer. John Q Public.

“You write me a poem for my wedding and we'll give you a crisp new dollar bill. I love you, Peggy Sue. I take the woman on my left. To be my hip and sway. To be the one I live today to love and wish away and dine and dine and dine. Dine. And day. A dime a day keeps the apple away. Avoid doctors unless they read a poem every day. Sometime. Read this poem Doctor and read this poem Doctor AMA, your heart is not in the right position. We will move it over here and beat against the rib cage our message here tonight. Avoid white sugar. Fill up your stomachs with praise. Read more. Do more outside work but not of too regular a fashion. Or youll get in the rut of your stereotype and become sane. You want to remain a weed. A weed in my very special garden. Yes you are you, and you are you. Listen to the cloud forming above you. Try out your sixth sense but not in any organized way. Rotate the voices inside you. Listen to me I am you, in me the way I am. This is the way I am youre paying for inspiration. Constantly risk and youll be extending with me. More more more is not necessarily fattening. By demanding more you are extending yourself into a thin presence.

“Don’t ever say what has been said before. Let me repeat. Don’t ever allow yourself not to listen when you ask me a question. Listen to your answer, but in my head. And we truly will become partners. I will report the news as I see fit. I will announce the presence of the iceberg, or pyramid, as you wish. The solid object of my voice falls like a lump at your feet. A furry body. You pick it up. It sings. It says, there is value in my voice while I'm still alive. Don’t kill me in order to pick my guts. Show me how we can think a thought together. I can be your synapse, because you are listening. You are listening to me tonight. Thank you for listening to me listen.”

Friday 28th of May, 1976

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico from NB #23

BATHTUB INTERVIEW

(transcribed from a tape running while in the tub)

“the avant-garde has been made up, I think, completely, 

and all through history, with people who are bored 

by other people’s ideas.

– Frank O’Hara

Are human beings restricted?

     Human beings live conscious of immediate barrier-like surroundings which only enclose so much space. That's why art galleries or museums are still viable, because the concept of a museum or gallery is that you can walk into a restricted space, I mean you know what's going on on the other sides of the gallery walls, and be transformed. Which relates directly to a Japanese tea garden where you can blot out the traffic noise and sights and city goings-on by just stepping in this area which is surrounded by trees, and step into a room which is surrounded by wood, and really understand what it's like to read about something you have never experienced.

(Bathtub Water Noise)

     The secret of any kind of enter-able event is its restriction in space. If it didnt have that restriction in space it wdnt be as powerful, therefore you can be content with the friends you have. But the problem with contentment is that it's an ideal, and everybody wants to make new friends all the time. So some make new friends faster than others, others take a long time to make good friends. And then there Is the difference between two people concerning the definition of friendship and whether or not your friend is really an acquaintance or just a friend. But I have never been able to find out who a friend is, because friend is an ideal and it remains as an ideal, and is occasionally touched on by reality.

     I think the true friends are the ones that are with you the most whoever they may be, how many there may be, that when you're by yourself, that's the true test of friendship. That cd only be for a few minutes in a particular day say, that you're completely by yrself, surrounded by the room that youre in at the time, or the sky outside. Then is when yon can best define friendship and know who your friends truly are, because generally they will come to you, one after the other, as friends in your mind, and if you are reasonably content at that time, it's like watching a zodiac of people you know well, and trust and love, knowing that within each category of trust there are deleterious wanderings along the way, zigzags from the ideal, as those big words always are ideals. And love, whether you consider friendship to be companionship or love, sex-love, friendship will continue to be friendship. Friendship will generally be when you're talking about something very important to both of you, very important, and it's also simultaneously very important that both of you are talking about it, and it seems almost a secret as you're talking about it. That's the test of friendship when you are with your friend, not when you are away from her, or him, or it.

     10 years later you may not be seeing that friend anymore, and youve heard such & such has happened to your friend and it seems like you are very far away from this friend, but you don’t particularly miss this friend because so many things have happened and youve made new friends.

(Bathtub Water Noise)

Mr. Goodell, wd you mind telling us what you think about performance.
     Everybody performs all the time. Oscar Wilde said "Appearance is all." It is up to you to change it if you want to. If you don’t like your appearance change it, it's as simple as that. A couple red checks on each cheek, a little hydrogen pyroxide on a lock over your forehead. Just think (it's like) a little swish & sway with Danny Kaye. Or Aikido Now, Forever, or Judo, or writing books about subduing mastodons, or just an increased interest in Egypt. I think that America's history has led to the final awareness, though all awarenesses are final. America's history has led to one shining development – the hobby. That's where America can be seen at its best. In the hobby sections of all the fairs, and there's one coming up here. Now my hobby is carrying on an interview while taking a bath. I find it quite modern to do that, actually it's decadent that's why I call it modern. The things which I really value in my life I classify as contemporary. Modern to me is a really old-fashioned term. It's probably showing up in antique stores now, and there certainly is a boom in antiques.

     Most of my interests have now become antiques. There's a hell of a lot of me that is definitely saleable, however there needs to be a name for my saleable product and I havent quite figured out whether I should call it Larry Goodell Specimens, or simply an attribute of someone we all love. For instance, if youre really bored, why don’t you start collecting knotholes. Knot-holes are fascinating because they go in a different direction in their grain, than the wood that they are within, so they leak moisture like mad, and you have to seal them a lot if you're sealing them, and have to seal windows with knotholes. I’ve always felt a special affinity with knotholes, especially when the knots are in them. It bothers me a little more if the knots have fallen out, because to identify with a knothole when the knot has fallen out, is much more difficult and vacuous a thing to do, at least for me.

----------- (end of recording)

/25Aug76

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / nb #23 1976

BLOP

Poetry is a blop that governs the deerk.
A conniving wave of mop justified.
It flavors the tender gate keepers of atom pie.
Eating sliverously it touches the peak
with musical patois, patty cake, serious sneezes
and command of abrupt. That is it’s
words tiramisu, terrible kid of punk nodes
causing kissing of back notes and musical feezsickles.
Thus acaputrids love it dissecting its outwards
with its innards. But it sur-paces its stiff sinoids.
Vowels, bowels, consnickets and tongue twasters.
We all love its gup, or those of us who read its stenchbuds.
Snick it? Oh ancient mashed up muse.
Poet DC is at base of our bastion.
The reverand of gold. The river run of old.
Beep music. Yes said is no. It fictional fantasizes fun.
Have sum. Add more to your plunkit.
Merry dine. A stanza in line saves nine.
Such are the kissing in the dark.

larry goodell/2009/placitas, new mexico 

from my book GROUNDED, Poems from 3 Years

duende press 2020

from a student at Singing Arrow - Albuquerque

AHOY MOLLOY!

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That God Part - The Universe As An Erogenous Zone

                                                  

                                                                            The God particle proves man exists.

                                            Before the Higgs Boson we wondered if

                            men & women were someone’s imagination

                                             or our bi-polarity. But now we know:

                  we’ve been smashed into reality.

                                                                           The little G-spot trigger has been discovered

          and we’re all excited.

                                                                                          All your little triggers really exist

            and they’re triggering you & me

                                                                             and all that there is: the little G-spots are

                           at the center of everything.

                                                         The Universe as an erogenous zone has been cracked.

                                 It’s so tiny, the little teeny orgasm God of all

                                    is the super dooper big round womb discoverer G-spot popper!

larry goodell/2Mar09