My 70's

The singer Rickie Lee Jones and the song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” by Steely Dan came into my consciousness around the same time and I could never separate them. They merged with the forest green carpet I used to run my Tonka trucks across and the fluttering clip sound of the Big Wheel I rode in front of the house. The way Rickie Lee Jones looked in her blueberry beret and flowing blouses. The way Steely Dan sounded like a mathematical after-hours cocaine band that I loathed but was drawn to. All dreams issued from the off-white clock radio with the ever-flipping numbers.

written on the train

poems are good

because you can

write them fast

kind of like songs

mark ribot composed

one while waiting

for a friend

to answer the door

and billy strayhorn

wrote lush life

at age 16

walking a few

city blocks

in shimmering

pittsburgh

baggypantsrich

and i

played an open

mic at a

polish restaurant/bar

in pittsburgh

and a wizened

old man

who looked

like he might be

and open mic

bullshit artist

stepped on stage

and played

rambling man

by hank williams

and then

i believed

in 2 ½ minutes

a drifter

accepts his fate

the american universe

of loneliness is

laid down in verse

like railroad lines

sunset pulled

LIVING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE - POEM

LIVING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

     is akin

TO WATCHING

                                                            your ancient

BELOVED

                                                            uncle

SLOWLY

      methodically

PLOT

                                                            his own

DEATH  

                                                            and carry out

THE ACT

                                                            tying the hangman’s

NOOSE

                                                            scaling the stepladder

KICKING IT AWAY

                                                            and swinging

DEAD

                                     (sculpture by glenn morris)

                                                             

Meritocracy and Its Discontents

The Gorgon blowing the fire that fuels the plot of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) is the ideology of meritocracy. We are instructed in this country that if we enter a period of need – a time when we must turn to others for support – it is because we are failures, people insufficient to the task of living. This is a myth. People hit hard times in our culture not because they are inadequate beings, but rather because the society requires need and want. We live in an economy based on scarcity. People hit hard times because the human animal is a social animal and there’s very little we can accomplish entirely on our own. Those who “succeed” according to the parameters of our society do so within a significant web of support and tutelage.

To the extent that meritocracy does function in the United States, it is decidedly not a system that functions in order to reward behavior that is good for society or for the planet and its nonhuman residents. This is because what is rewarded, ultimately, is the ability to sell and selling is an amoral action. Occasionally, the type of exchange defined by sales can be beneficial to a community, but just as often the exchange requires exploitation, manipulation and despoliation. It results in strained relations that ultimately decay into alienation. Such is the case of Willy Loman. An identity and sense of worth predicated upon one’s ability to sell is a house of kindling awaiting a match.

"Monotheism is Cash." Introduction by DH. Poem by Derby Luncheon.

I first met Derby Luncheon (a.k.a. Dave Faunce) after he called the college radio show, La Casa de Pulgas, that I hosted with my friend Marcos Frommer on WBOR in Brunswick, Maine. He told us he was a fan and wanted to know if we would come by his studio apartment to hang out. Marcos and I had been doing the show for a couple of years and it had evolved into a hovering, swimming stew of old cowboy records that would sink into West African guitar music, carom into Schoenberg, squish into Brian Eno and finally blossom into some of the stuff coming out on independent rock labels at that very fertile time in the late 80s: Bongwater, Eugene Chadbourne & Meat Puppets. Saccharine Trust, Die Kreuzen & Hüsker Dü – artists whose alluring melodies where often cloaked in distortion and galloping tempos. Derby sounded open and friendly on the phone, but I could tell by the way commented on the music we were playing that he was a thoughtful guy.

We took my Chevy Caprice down Maine Street and turned down a little road that ran along the Penobscot River. We parked and walked up the staircase that rose along the side of the tall wooden house and knocked on his door. Derby let us in and immediately we could hear sounds punk and ritualistic soaring out of the speakers beyond the door. Our host was slightly shorter than average height with sandy blonde hair and a sturdy French peasant build. There were empty beer bottles standing here and there and incense holders littered with ash languishing throughout the L-shaped unit. Derby was at that stage of drunkenness where one becomes temporarily blissfully happy. He was warm and complimentary of our show, but I noticed he would always keep a pocket of energy for himself – a very smart tactic for an artist of mild means. When the manic alcohol high would dip a little bit, it was possible to sense melancholy in him.

He told us he worked as a sous chef at a restaurant in town for a guy named Jimbo and that he was in some sort of a heartbreaking relationship with a tall and rangy college student named Kate, who was a dishwasher at the restaurant. I immediately liked Derby; we were able to talk fluidly together, our interests and temperaments clearly complementary. We spoke of music, which Derby was passionate about and he seemed to gravitate towards bands that had an element of the mystic about them, such as Psychic TV and Swans. There were items of esoterica here and there in the apartment – a tome by Alistair Crowley, say, and Bob Black’s anarchist classic, The Abolition of Work. Perhaps to give Marcos and me some context to his pursuits, Derby mentioned that he had been a born-again Christian for eight years and was now just a few years out of that particular region of extreme belief. Later, on a drive up the Maine coast, Derby indicated to me the white wooden church on a hill where he had been saved.

Derby moved from Brunswick to Portland, Maine in 1988, very excited to try to land a job as a chef. However, the recession was already taking hold and there were very few jobs available in Portland. He had to take a position as a line cook for fairly low pay and he was also experiencing some health issues that were interfering with his ability to do the job. By the way he spoke about the job and his health issues, I could tell he was feeling frustrated, down on himself and even somewhat ashamed of his situation.

In other ways, Derby was enjoying Portland. He was beginning to make the acquaintance of some likeminded folks and was taking advantage of the well curated video store down the street from his house, enjoying some of Richard Kern’s hard-hitting cinematic shorts featuring a powerful and alluring Lydia Lunch. And he began writing. He published a couple of very immersive essays in the alternative monthly Head Cheese – published by the musician Curtis Harvey – about tripping on psychedelic drugs. Beyond the reflections on his own experiences with the drug, Derby referenced various pro-lysergic acid philosophers, such as Timothy Leary and John Lilly. I thought the essays were expertly written and I can still conjure the image of the newsprint broadside with Derby’s text and illustrations of magic mushrooms in the margins. I’m sorry to say that Derby’s essay was what got the magazine put out of business. Apparently, several Portland area businesses refused to carry the magazine after the issues recounting the drug trips… and that was the end of Head Cheese.I moved to Portland from Brunswick, myself, in 1989 and was quite pleased to begin hosting a midnight radio show with Derby at WMPG, the local college station. He came up with the name, “Endolymphic Squish” and designed some gorgeous posters featuring illustrations of tall, loping dinosaurs in spectral light to promote the show.

By the relatively young age of thirty, Derby Luncheon had developed a strong and recognizable voice as a writer. This is not really surprising. Besides being a man who loved books and music, Derby also possessed a rather unique personal history. When asked once by a journalist how he managed to write such potent fiction and poetry, Charles Bukowski responded, “I was blessed with a crappy life.” And there is an element of the “blessings” of a crappy life when one considers Derby’s history. He certainly didn’t have an easy life. From what I could learn, he grew up poor in Central Maine with his mother and an alcoholic and abusive stepfather named Henry. Henry’s abuse of Derby growing up was severe and he was still processing it when we met when Derby was twenty-seven. Mercifully, there was progress on this front; he wrote proudly in the one surviving journal I have by him that in a phone conversation, he and Henry were able to “exchange words bordering on tenderness.” Derby joined the born-again cult in high school and remained in it for several more years, through a family move to Albany, New York. In Albany, Derby fell into a vibrant local punk scene and became the lead singer and lyricist for a band. He confessed that he became known for getting quite drunk and diving into the crowd during shows. It was in Albany that Derby got exposed to important influences, such as the ReSearch series of interview books published by V. Vale and the work of ontological jester Robert Anton Wilson.

“Monotheism Is Cash” was written by Derby Luncheon and performed once, at the Broadway Deli on Maine Street in Brunswick at a poetry night that Derby organized. It was very gratifying to see him present the piece to a crowd of about appreciative and perhaps somewhat scandalized people. Derby had an enigmatic kind of charisma, sort of like Harry Dean Stanton crossed with Jello Biafra, as well as a very sure and strong reading voice. That’s what the audience saw and heard as he read such lines as:

“One God is science, the only true knowledge, casting down imaginations

and bringing every thought into captivity.”

In March 1990, I went to pick Derby up at the end of his shift at the restaurant where he was working. Usually, he would come to the front door and greet me wearing his cook’s whites. But on this evening, one of his coworkers told me that he had been in an accident involving a motorcycle and that they didn’t know what his condition was. I soon learned that Derby had gone on a beer run with a friend, riding on the back of the friend’s motorcycle without a helmet. Their motorcycle was struck by a car and he went flying into a concrete barrier, injuring his head. Derby was in a coma for three months. Finally, he was removed from the machines that were helping him to breathe and he died at the age of thirty. On the morning of his final day on Earth, I had a dream in which he came to me to tell me that he was okay – that he only had headaches now and then and he couldn’t drink alcohol anymore. In the dream, I was overjoyed. He said to me, “Thank you for coming to visit me in the hospital. That’s how I knew you really loved me.” Then he took my hand, and a bright vertical beam of light shot out of our joined hands. I will always view that experience as Derby’s visiting me to reassure me and to say goodbye.

Derby Luncheon left us this explosive, inspiring and wonderfully heretical poem. May it broaden your gaze and open you up to finding your own experience of the divine, as Derby hoped it would.

Dan Hanrahan. Chicago. September 15, 2019

MONOTHEISM IS CASH  

The Gallup poll asks, “Do you believe in God?” (Big G), but no other question. Even in jail, Wiccans cannot observe their days and nights while thieves and murderers may go to church.

“Is it not written, ‘Ye are gods.’?”– Jesus

Before we were “Judeo Christian” (as if that is ever one thing), we were Greek and often Barbarian. Yet the past 200 years have hardly been the apex of spiritual evolution. One god unites empires, perhaps, while it narrows the soul, dualizes it, blinds it to many Aspects and Attributes.

One god has stolen the throne, robbed all others of their light.

One god is a jealous god, a hungry god, eating his children, killing his fathers.

For reasons of State.

One god marches with lightning and thunder, heavy boots.

One guy is hydrogen splitting, the Aten bomb.

One God is a lawgiver. He demands obedience. Love him or else.

One God is science, the only true knowledge, casting down imaginations

and bringing every thought into captivity.

“Monotheism (is) the rigid consequence of the doctrine of one normal human being.”

– F. Nietzsche

Children, let me tell you a secret:

            Beneath the earth, way down by the fiery core, titanic monsters roar,

            stoking the burning heart of the world. They do nothing but drink fire

and eat stone day and night, never resting from their excess. When they retch,

            their bellies push up mountains, raise continents, grind the land,

pull worlds apart. So it is with the gods, who rise with their Olympus. They,

too, are children of Groaning.

“For there are gods many and there are lords many.”– St. Paul

Gods and Goddesses do not need Idols,

for they are likened unto us so we may know them

and so know ourselves

Is this self-worship or is this self-realization?

Is this anarchy or is it enlightenment?

Can we make our way to the One without

stopping to humbly try on the Faces?

“Well, then, I contradict myself. I contain multitudes.”– W. Whitman

Legions. They’ve been demonized, repressed, unrecognized

like in a funhouse mirror, sold for a ticket.

“Welcome, folks, to the Idol Mart, here on the Home Shopping Network.

May I have your credit card number, please?”

A new God puts them to work, a new trinity.

“Better an Old Demon than a New God” – album title

Philip K Dick, a science fiction author of some great talent,

was hit for days with light blindness, Messages from somewhere else,

wnd recognized that the Empire had never truly died, that Rome and

Byzantium are still at war, that the sign of the fish was the enemy of God.

The fish was forgotten, laid aside for the Eagle. Christ returned to the desert.

In the Age of Aquarius, the fish discover water.

“No story is the whole story. It takes many stories to tell the whole story,

yet the whole is known always and only through the many.”– D. L. Miller

We get the idea of democracy from the Greeks,

whose councils of freemen, like ours, served

elites and factions. A democratic people does not

cry out with one voice, “We will have us a king.”

Elvis was king and they killed him. John is dead.

Some individuals find refuge in traditions, find

in them channels for their polymorphous selves:

“One can be polymorphous without being perverse,” they say.

“A frightful sphere whose center is everywhere and whose

circumference is nowhere.”– Corpus Hermeticum, quoted by Blaise Pascal

There are gods for the moon and the sun, the

stars and the earth beneath us, gods for the seasons

and the changing winds, gods of fate and war and love,

gods of hearth and the gods of the lively woods,

sleek new gods, gods of better times,

gods of shadow or silk,

gods of rage, gods of bright mornings.

To each we bow in their due, knowing that they made us.

To some we sacrifice, desiring their pleasure.

We put faces on them, call them names.

And so we seek godhood.

“Where are you going with all your realities? I am reality!”– Butthole Surfers

The integrated one knows his place,

defends his place, spends his life establishing

this fact. And what else is life for?

(“There, you’ve asked THE QUESTION)!

There is a time for less wholeness.

A Fragmentation allows for breadth

an acceptance of the dark with the light

and all that springs from the great Yawning

which lies at the heart of all things.

“The Map is not the Territory”

Daughter of Chaos, sister Discordia

has found her place (which is Everywhen).

Infoglut, Culture Clash, Future Shock,

she makes her nest in this post-mod village,

laying two eggs: Possibility and Despair.

The old cosmologies saw the universe as a

perfect sphere, totally closed, one center.

I see it as swirls within swirls,

a fractal star, like the ship

which brought Superman to earth.

“The opposite of a great Truth is another great Truth.” Niels Bohr, pioneer of subatomic physics.

THX-1138 is the name of one of the best

little-known films ever made, a collaborative

effort of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.

It is the “Sien und Zeit,” the “Ninth Symphony”

of American film making.

LSD-25 was one of the best

things to happen for humanity in the 20^th Century.

Yes, casualties happen.

Remember the reptiles.

I can say things like this because

I live in perhaps the first polytheistic

republic in 600 years. We are a tolerant

people. We’ve seen a high city

with many gates.

“Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.”

Einstein was wrong about the dice, of course,

But he’d take comfort in knowing they’re loaded.

Snake Eyes.

Derby Luncheon, 1988