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Don Marsh: Always ever waving back. As a child standing chapel-quiet at the end of our street, watching preoccupied trains in the stern man-mass of the work yard, giant-lettered names rocking, chain-chinking by. Steel brakes screaming

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leisurely, eerie, Lackawanna, Rock Island, Chesapeake, and Ohio, saw the big back engines barreled, bolted, flat-iron black squatting mastodons, panting cloud-white steam, crouched obedient on two silver ribbons of steel. Or brakemen

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busy standing in air, pacing rubber-legged in places, boxcars slid steadily under. Then the gandy dancers, lean and chocolate, warping, jiggling, lazy flag-furling perspective in the sun-standing shimmies, ringing clean hammer songs on

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rhythmic wavering rails. In promenade, the caboose men seated under a toy cupola, reverie-tired, nodding to my wave, always, ever waving back. Fell asleep snug down safe at night listening to gathering furnace breath, chest swelling,

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shoulder bunching, rolling box-car booms, a far-off prairie thunder. Dreamed-face, seeing the circus-painted names paraded in elephantine rows of gondolas and boxcars. Baltimore and Ohio, Union Pacific, Great Northern, Wyandot. In dream-drumming I

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become Wyandot, Wyandot rolling stock, Wyandot lawyer waving back. Morton Marcus: That was Donald Marsh, the poet from Carmel who is our guest for tonight.

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And here we are on the Poetry Show and Don Marsh, welcome. It's a pleasure to finally have you here. We've been trying to get the show together for more than a year and I'm delighted to have you here.

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Don Marsh: Thank you very much for having me here. It's been worth the wait and I'm delighted. I've never been in these studios before and they're- Morton Marcus: They're palatial aren't they?

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Don Marsh: They really are, yeah. Morton Marcus: And the gold etching and everything- Don Marsh: Life is the reflecting pool. Morton Marcus: Exactly. Which way are we gonna go for a swim

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afterwards? Don, where are you from exactly? Where did you start your years? Don Marsh: Well, East Coast, New Jersey. Trenton, New Jersey. Morton Marcus: Which is in the poem right?

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Don Marsh: Yes and I left there like most people from their hometowns as soon as I could, went to school in New York City, lived in New York City in 1951. It was a glorious time living in Manhattan. I had a cold water flat and was a student there and

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then stayed there for fourteen years. And then came out here to the coast and have been out here ever since. Morton Marcus: Well, there is a lot of nostalgia in that first poem of yours.

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Don Marsh: Yeah, I went back a while ago and where I really am a Western and now really, I'm a Californian. But still there's blood roots there, there's something about a red brick house that does things to me-

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Morton Marcus: That won't go in the earthquake, that won't happen, yeah. Well, those years back in New York, just when was it that you decided you were going to become a writer, I won't say a poet, only recently, I know you're also a novelist.

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So, when was it and what was it that made you decide to become a writer? Don Marsh: I think, truthfully, that I've always wanted to be a writer. That poem that I read to you, was my attempt to go back

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and remember when words first were important to me. And I was a just a little child and my father, who had the habit of reading everything you saw aloud to whomever was around and whether you wanted to listen or not, would take me down to the

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end of the railroad or right into the street where the railroad was, and he would read all these names to me, and I would remember them by the look, they were, you know, such beautiful circus colors, and I think that's where, you know, I

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wanted to know what Wyandot meant. I was very curious about it. My first and earliest expressions that I had, instead of doing like others, which would be expressing myself physically or something, would be to write about whatever it

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was I was feeling. Now when I went to school and I went to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater because for a while there, I got sidetracked and thought I wanted to be an actor. And it was while active in the Playhouse that I realized I

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didn't ever want to be an actor but I did want to write. It was a very uncomfortable time for me because they'd given me a full scholarship for the second year and I felt kind of obligated and-

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Morton Marcus: Where was this that you got the scholarship? Don Marsh: To the Neighborhood Playhouse. Morton Marcus: Just Neighborhood Playhouse? Don Marsh: Yeah. And it was a great school there. Martha

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Graham taught dance there, Sandy Meisner was the head teacher at that time. It was a wonderful, wonderful time. I got a great liberal education there. I don't regret that at all. What I do regret is not being able to tell them "Look, I don't want to be

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an actor," because they would have understood, they would have said, "Fine," you know, "what do you want to do?" And so I suffered from that for a while but after that, I guess most of my life has been geared toward being a writer. Like a lot of

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writers, I've had all kinds of jobs to support myself and keep myself going, but they were always in my mind something to do while I wrote. Morton Marcus: Have you had a specific career over the last

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20, 30 years? Don Marsh: A career? Morton Marcus: Yeah. Don Marsh: Other than-

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Morton Marcus: Well, other than writing. Don Marsh: Other than writing? Not really. I've worked at different jobs. I ended up in two AIDS projects in the Peninsula down there. One, the Monterey County AIDS project,

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another one, John the 23rd AIDS Ministry, for seven years, and got finally royally burned out on that, you know. Morton Marcus: So what are you doing now? Don Marsh: Now I'm not doing anything but writing. As we were

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talking earlier, before we went on the air, I am nearing the end of the novel, I spent about a seven year struggle, and it's no longer a struggle. It's a sweet time. It's a wonderful time for me because I'm, oh, about 450 pages around that, and- typed,

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and I know what I'm going to do. It's a simple matter of doing it now, and I find myself doing it each day, and I have an aim to be through in September. Now, whether that is going to happen or not, I don't know, but if not September, it'll be October.

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Morton Marcus: Now what is this novel about? Don Marsh: The name of the novel is, "Somebody's Fool." It's taken from a line that Orson Welles wrote that, "everybody is somebody's fool." What it's about is squaring old accounts,

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going back to that if you're not honest with, and complete with something in your past, it will come back to haunt you. And also along the line showing that everybody is somebody else's fool, no matter how clever or how smart they think they might

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be, how street smart or whatever. And that's not a bad thing, it's a measure of our humanity. And it's about a group of diverse characters that eventually come together. AIDS does, since I've said earlier I had seven years involved in the

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world of AIDS, AIDS plays an aspect in this. Morton Marcus: Now you have published a novel also. Don Marsh: Yes, I have. Morton Marcus: Now, what was that about? What was the title

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of that? Don Marsh: It was called, "The Stone-Humpers," it was published by Delacorte, Delacorte Press and received uniformly good reviews and no sales. It's out of print now. I did quite well

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with it in terms of the movies because they were always trying to make a movie out of it. They never did, but Morton Marcus: You know, you just kept getting option pay. Don Marsh: Yeah, yeah and reading scripts. My god, they're

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gonna do that? Morton Marcus: This is obviously- writing a novel is in many ways very different from poetry. Don Marsh: Mhm.

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Morton Marcus: How about defining for the listener out there what you see as the difference, and what the need to come back and write poetry again and again is all about in relation to, or in contrast to writing novels?

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Don Marsh: Yeah. Well, as we were saying a little bit about on the air, a novel is a slow, evolving process, for me anyway. Oh, it takes a long time for me to get clear just exactly what it is I want. It generally starts with some kind of itch

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that I can't scratch or scratch to my satisfaction and finally becomes clear to me what it is I want to do. And then begins the construction of the big house. Or, as I was saying to you, that after a while I find myself down on my hands and knees, and I'm

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looking at some hair on the leg, and it's the left rear leg of an elephant and I can feel the heat of the elephant and the breathing of the elephant. And I look up and there's this gigantic story there and so much to take care of, and to remember

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that the nose goes on one hand and the tail on the other and all that. So, there's a lot of detail work which I love to that. It's a great accomplishment, to me, it takes something out of me to do this. I mean, I don't know-

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Don Marsh: Physically and emotionally, more emotionally Morton Marcus: Physically? than physically. I know that, you know, I'm feeling a kind of fatigue now because I am getting near the end of this thing. And

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emotionally, it takes something out of me. I feel like I have nothing more to say ever again to anybody anywhere, you know, and a kind of abandonment that I feel too and that- I found my for years I've been busily concerned with characters that

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don't exist at all except in my imagination. And I've been very upset or involved in their machinations and now they don't need me anymore. It's history, it's gone, it's past, it's over. Poetry is something that won't let me go. When I was in New

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York City, for a while there, got divorced from my firs marriage, and I was in a bad wa and I was drinking very heavily And I ended up in the Villag and eventually became a stree person, which in those days, w would call bums, they didn'

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say street person. But I had a great time in a way, and I w s determined not to be a poet. I would not tell people that I wrote poetry. That's the last thing I would let them know. I as trying to almost like, al ost kick a habit. And I found th

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t I couldn't. I must write po try for better or for worse, f r whatever it is. Poetry calls m and I think in terms of poetry, I think most of my poetry fails. More often than not, what gets I find that I will wake up in t e middle of the night- and I'

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e learned over the years now th t when I wake up and think f something I must write it down so I get up in the middle f it. Otherwise, if I wake up in the middle of the night a d think of a line and then sa , "I'll remember that tomorr

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w," invariably I don't, you k ow. But I walk around findi g poetry allusively near me al the time. I see so much of it in so many different thing . Driving up here tonight, I was with my wife and I was looki g out the window and the sunse

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and the fields there and all o the barns and the trucks and t actors, absolutely silho etted in black, you know, and i was a very Western scene, very eautiful. And that's, you know, something I may or may not use. don't know.

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down on the page is very little of what I dream, you know? There's the dream and then there's the croak that comes out eventually. Morton Marcus: Do you think you get more into the prose? More of

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what doesn't get into the poetry can you do that in the prose, or it just doesn't get there in either case? Don Marsh: It just doesn't get there, that's all, you know what I mean? As a matter of fact, one of the characters in this novel

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that I've been writing, his name is Dreamer Davis. He's one of those people who, no matter what he does or where he goes, he gets stuck with the same nickname all the time. And he's a poet and so I've been able to vent all my frustrations and

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dreams and hopes and everything through this character about poetry, and I'm having a great time with that. Morton Marcus: Why don't you read us one of your poems now? Don Marsh: Yeah, I'd like to go back since we've been kind of

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starting off. I would like to, and eventually, near the end of the program, I'd like to go back to Trenton as an old man. Morton Marcus: Oh, that's marvelous. You have this wonderful chapbook of this long poem called, "The Ice Cream

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Communion." Would you like to read that during the course of the program? Don Marsh: Sure, do you wantme to read all of it? Morton Marcus: How long do you think it would be?

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Don Marsh: It takes about twenty-five minutes. Morton Marcus: Yeah. Don Marsh: Would you select from it? Morton Marcus: I mean, it's up to you.

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Don Marsh: Sure. Morton Marcus: You know, you said we'd be able to hear the earlier poems, later poems, things like that. Don Marsh: Wonderful. Okay, this is a poem about earlier times.

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The title is: I'M TALKING ABOUT FORM, I'M TALKING ABOUT EMPTINESS. The two trees were not the trees, or even those trees. They were this tree and that tree. They stood at the bottom of a

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garden. Their shade mingled this and that. The trees were named by a boy. This, he told his father, is that tree, that is this tree. This is always that, that is always this, and sometimes it's the other way around. The boy would stand on

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the roots, then hug the trees with all of his body. He would hug and feel the thickness alive. The yard, their house, the sky swayed. "I love you," he would whisper and took the sway to mean that this and that loved him. The boy sprawled in the

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branches and felt this and that move wonderfully under him. At school or running somewhere for no reason at all, he would feel them down to the roots. Especially between sleep and awake in bed, he would feel them move. It might have been elms or

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maples. They were poplars but the boy didn't care. He knew they were many things. "That is this, at the same time, this is that, and this is this," he would chant to his parents. One day he came home from school to find blue air where the trees

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had been. "They were trees, now they're firewood," the father explained and that is that. Morton Marcus: Very nice. Don Marsh: Yeah, while I'm- that reminds me of another one.

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THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET, I'd like to read that if I could. Morton Marcus: Of course. Don Marsh: From the song you know-

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Morton Marcus: "Get your hat and get your coat." Don Marsh: Yeah, leave you some worries on- And this is something that- I collect wild mushrooms, mycology is one of my hobbies.

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The man came on the mushrooms where he guessed they might be, pleased that he knew the way of edulis. The mushrooms were voluptuously drunk and didn't give a damn he picked them. They went limp, dense, bulging, porous, smelled spreading of

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musky, pubic heat. The hunter at home with mushrooms, sitting, straddling wood-burning stove, getting warm hugging mushrooms gently with ice tans, trying not to shiver, sock wet, loving the moment of trying not to shiver. Sits with mouth open, getting

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warm, while hugging and feeling stupid, and enjoying feeling stupid. Finding stupid fun to be while warming and nuzzling wild mushrooms. So stupid it was with a burball(?) and stupid stare off until damp warm. Then up sniffing, inspecting kitchen

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sink in blinding morning light, winter light, the mere light makes him squint and see breath, makes him look like generations of Vermeer squinters over a sink with a colander of wild mushrooms that he carefully, lovingly molests in washing.

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Then the man with spatula at breakfast, the strong Turkish coffee makes him think of smoke and honey. Homemade bread with audible crunch to crust, tasting sourdough, meaty clubbed strips of mushrooms sauteed in butter, limp, dripping. The man eats

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dreaming and wonders if a Rockefeller back East, up earlier, richer, had any wild mushrooms for breakfast. A Rockefeller could have any mushroom he wanted. He could have them flown in. Steinpilz from Bavaria, morels from the

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Sierras, chanterelles from Big Sur. He could have but the hunter in a stupid mouth full smile, knew that he didn't. Morton Marcus: Very nice. You seem to be lifting something there with-

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Don Marsh: This is a broadside that I hand out on street corners. It's something I'm doing in my old age. Some of my friends don't approve of it, others do. It's entitled, "Handsel Poems." A handsel is an old Anglo-Saxon word, a Scots

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word for, it's generally a gift given around the time of the new year. And these are six poems, and I go out on street corners all over the place including Santa Cruz, and just stand there and try to make eye contact with people and say, would you like

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some poetry? It's free. And then we go from that. I find it worth doing. I like the people I meet, I like the conversations and the situations I've gotten into. I have a thing about poetry is- at times I feel it's been made too exclusive, too elitist. There

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are some publications, one that I am subscribed to, The American Poetry Review, and oh boy, at times... And I like to get this out to people who I feel wouldn't ordinarily- who might be intimidated or won't go near that kind of thing. And I've had

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long conversations with them. I can think of one father and his daughter who he came to me and said, "What does this mean? This poetry, man." And I started talking to him. I said, "Well, that's what it means. Whatever it means to you is what it

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means, you know?" And so this is part of what I do. I get them made up, I get a couple thousand made up and this is the second batch of this that I've done. Morton Marcus: Let's hear some.

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Don Marsh: Okay. USELESS FANCY. Hiking, a hawk's spitfire shadow blinks past, then shock-absorbs across a mountain meadow, quickly compacting to a black dot. A sky opens in me. Hawk cacophony, hawk staccato,

00:24:05.460 - 00:24:29.910

strutting on the stretching air. Hawks updraft in ease to touch light high in the swaying rigging of Monterey pines. At home, both found a hawk feather quilled upright in a vireo's nest. The feather, no matter the smoothing, ruffled defiant. If

00:24:29.910 - 00:24:47.720

when awakening I hear a hawk, far and clean and crystal, it is enough. The day is then to waste in attempts at useless fancy. And this, I'd like to read this one other one called: GOD AS PASSIONATE LOVER.

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It was while I was in the- one of the AIDS projects, a priest one night asked us all to imagine God as a passionate lover and then to dance with him, ergo this poem. God came, a Princeton graduate, tap dancing, bow-tie, dark

00:25:11.270 - 00:25:35.660

flannel jokes. God, a lonely pie-faced woman eating a sundae in a five and dime, a longing and looking out over notions. God a Brahmin girl, finger cymbals, sidesaddle looks, supple brown bare midriff. Her eyes told me I could not seduce

00:25:35.660 - 00:26:01.670

him, but she me. God, an old black man has seen everything in a reverie in an empty ghetto lot. Calls klaxon, smile snaggle, offers all a paper-bag bottled benediction at a going-by. So many birds in a field feeding, on a signal they

00:26:01.670 - 00:26:20.460

rise together, turn in a slow tornado, confetti pieces of night only to please. One of them is God, a red-winged blackbird. Morton Marcus: I've seen that bird. Yeah, he's even here in

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Santa Cruz. Don Marsh: Yes. Morton Marcus: We are talking to Donald Marsh who has been reading to us from several of his poems and we are going to be

00:26:27.900 - 00:27:21.380

back and talk about his long poem, "Ice Cream Communion," after we take a musical and public information break. And this is the Poetry Show, and tonight we are talking with Don Marsh. But before we get back to Don, I'd like to say that

00:27:21.380 - 00:27:39.560

Stapleton's has made this program possible in part by a grant. Stapleton's grocery, we appreciate their support. Stapleton's specializes in organic produce with stores at the Farmers Exchange Building in Santa Cruz and on Clair street

00:27:39.560 - 00:27:59.300

next to Trader Joe's on 41st Avenue in Capitola. And of course that second store is a new store, there's a coffee bar there and everything. And I would like to tell you about the only reading that is in the area this week and that is by Bob

00:27:59.300 - 00:28:16.640

Gomez. And it will be on Wednesday, August the 11th at 8pm at the Portofino Cafe, 620 Lighthouse Avenue in Pacific Grove. Bob Gomez is a teacher, poet, singer, songwriter, satirist, community activist. Originally from San Francisco,

00:28:16.940 - 00:28:32.810

he now lives and works in Watsonville. A third generation Mexican-American, he has traveled extensively in the US and Mexico. Bob obtained his BA degree in creative writing and poetry from San Francisco State University and an MA in Spanish

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from Harvard. So, that is Bob Gomez reading and performing tomorrow at the Portofino Cafe, 620 Lighthouse Avenue in Pacific Grove. And my favorite announcement, as you know, "Selected Shorts" Wednesday night at nine that is on this

00:28:54.140 - 00:29:09.920

time slot, but a day later. Wednesday nights at nine, KUSP presents the popular pairings Oscar and Tony Award winning actors with short stories by acclaimed contemporary and classic authors. And who is it tomorrow? It is, "Where are you

00:29:09.920 - 00:29:27.110

going? Where have you been?" by Joyce Carol Oates, one of her most famous short stories, and it will be read by Christine Baranski, and "The Worm in the Apple," by John Cheever, which will be read by Anne Meara. So stay tuned for that, or tune in,

00:29:27.110 - 00:29:49.040

I should say, to "Selected Shorts" Wednesdays at 9pm. As you know, it is one of my favorite shows on KUSP, marvelous readings, marvelous selection of stories. And now back to Don Marsh. Don, what about this long poem which I

00:29:49.040 - 00:30:13.940

know you're still probably very, very involved in, very moving piece of poetry called, "The Ice Cream Communion," why don't you tell us something about it? Don Marsh: Back in 1986, just kind of following a blind hunch

00:30:13.940 - 00:30:32.870

and whatnot, I got- found myself getting involved in the world of AIDS. I didn't know anyone who had AIDS or anything like that, but I felt myself drawn to them because of the way they were being treated in the- in the press and by the public and

00:30:32.870 - 00:30:49.730

everything and so on. I found my- a chance to become a companion. I took training to become a companion to someone who had AIDS. And right out of the training immediately I was assigned to this man that this poem is about. We were together

00:30:49.730 - 00:31:10.490

almost exactly a year and I was with him in the last sixteen hours of his life and we became extremely close. He began to change my life for me and to make me see things much differently than I ever had before. I'm very grateful for

00:31:10.490 - 00:31:31.640

the whole experience that I had. It's been, oddly enough, and in the middle of death, I've never found so much life as I found in working with people who have AIDS. And this, he knew I was going to write this poem about him. And in fact, one of the

00:31:31.640 - 00:31:50.660

last things he said, coherent things he had said to me was, now you can write your poem. And I, after he died, I took some time off, I didn't do anything for a while on writing this and went back East, and then came back and I started writing and

00:31:50.660 - 00:32:07.070

once I started writing it, it came. It was one of the easiest, in terms of just putting it down on paper. I'm a re-writer, and in this I did very little rewriting, it just came out the way it is and a chronicle of our time together.

00:32:07.370 - 00:32:28.270

AN ICE CREAM COMMUNION, okay. At our first meeting, he was elfin with a dawdling, gay inflection, and resigned moon-amazed eyes. We sat in a booth in the back of a restaurant and conspired. One of

00:32:28.270 - 00:32:46.750

us was to die, the other to help that death to matter. I sat a nervous suitor, not sure he'd accept me, uncertain I'd have the honor of kissing his corpse. We reached across the years over ethics, morals, and experiences and touched in laughter at the

00:32:46.750 - 00:33:08.710

absurdity of our friendship if others were to know. We talked and agreed. I would try to tell the truth, he in turn would die in all probability within a year. He kept his word and so did I. I says, it became a time of nights of, I says. I says

00:33:08.710 - 00:33:30.940

what is going on here? I says, what difference does it make who it was? Would I be any sicker if I knew better? He says, I says, they say, we say, what will people say if I say he says? We all have our say. Say it. Fill a room with idle wonder. We talked

00:33:30.940 - 00:33:49.000

darkness away, telling of ourselves each to the other, my friend rocking a nervous jittering knee-jerk jerking, his rocker-lounger twitching. I says it doesn't matter who, what am I going to do with who, so many, me is who, my sleazy greasy

00:33:49.000 - 00:34:08.740

self. The young and the hung is who, I says my sleazy, scummy, greasy self does it matter? Do I say to somebody, you matter and you're going to die? So matter, and what changes? I say nothing does, nothing. So long ago so final now. We talked to families

00:34:08.740 - 00:34:32.410

of loves. He had only one love, so did I, both of us had many lovers. His love had left at the diagnosis. It was a one way thing. He is, a wave of the hand, with others. Death sat with us those talking nights would never end, I says, of his

00:34:32.410 - 00:34:52.040

own. Death sat comfortable, sprawling, cuddling, abiding the hysterical rocking, casually trying out a chokehold that bent my friend's head forward. I says, what's going on here? We go for drives, we talk, we take towels, change of

00:34:52.040 - 00:35:05.990

underwear, of jeans, a plastic bag for the soiled. We drive with restrooms as legs of our trip. We talk of houses, we see them, would we live in them? We talk of RVs, which kind we prefer and where we'd go. We talk with men we see and what

00:35:05.990 - 00:35:22.280

makes them attractive, available, of eyelashes and buns, of side-long looks and smiles. I see another different world. We talk of snow tires, termites, beauty salons, cream puffs, Philadelphia scrapple, fuel injection, the why of

00:35:22.280 - 00:35:39.740

quatrains, and always we talk of bathrooms. We talk at home. As he grows weaker, we stay at home and watch TV. We talk fearful the landlord will know, will guess, and start eviction proceedings. We talk of death, of funerals. We watch game

00:35:39.740 - 00:35:56.300

shows, old movies, the news. It all runs together, then overlaps, runs back. Everything is anticipated, known seconds before, a timeless time repeated. We talked through Jeopardy, beating contestants to answers. I tell him I love him.

00:35:57.230 - 00:36:11.420

He puts skeletal head in taloned hands and weeps. We weep, we talk. He tells me I have a family to go to. I tell him I know he is afraid I will abandon him. He says he wouldn't blame me.

00:36:12.230 - 00:36:31.940

We watch The Golden Girls. "Tell us why you got involved," Mike Wallace in his best shoe-polish hair style, close up, with me pondering, lip-biting, a feeling for the underdog, I suppose. A strong sense, searching off for the right words that these

00:36:31.940 - 00:36:50.960

people are the modern lepers. "So, a sense of injustice?" Mike Wallace cocking his head quizzical quick-cut to me. "Yes, if you will." Sixty minutes in the first man to beat AIDS, a slow-loving zoom-in on my friend grinning, network debut,

00:36:51.140 - 00:37:08.390

millions watching, hoping, wanting to know, my friend clear-eyed, healthy, sweating, fresh from a long run. "Mike, baby, how about a little safe sex?" My fantasies always run off the edge of belief. I am famous to diet and meditation

00:37:08.390 - 00:37:27.710

that disease is arrested. I will be interviewed, extolled, gay communities everywhere onto me, arm in arm, we make Newsweek. I tell a priest of my fantasies, motives, guilt, reality, finally settling for people admiring me. I know I will right of all this.

00:37:28.190 - 00:37:48.200

I am deep in doubts, self-loathing. The priest looks off then asks, "Does it matter?" I wake sitting upright in bed on cue as in a bad movie, my finger, much earlier that night my finger rubbed my itching eye after what? His blood, saliva,

00:37:48.230 - 00:38:05.300

shit, sweat, what? My finger has a raspberry red scratch near the nail, up and standing in shadowless fluorescent hell, and a bathroom mirror looking for what symptom? Staring at aging, dream-familiar flesh reflected in terror, my finger has a

00:38:05.300 - 00:38:22.580

scratch. I was holding him while he cried, while he shook with lands and cold. Have I been too careless? Will I be the first? The one in a million? The one no one will believe, "Caregiver Contracts AIDS" headline? We don't really know how, they're

00:38:22.580 - 00:38:43.700

not telling us. I have gotten it, oh my god. Out on our deck the Milky Way sprawled overhead, blizzards of stars in one arm, faint galaxy is burned, spewed pinwheels. And out of all that me, with a microscopic germ with a mission to destroy me because

00:38:43.700 - 00:39:03.020

I'm too callous. I shall weigh less than one hundred pounds, be so weak I'll lay in my own shit. Spit, cough, gag, be covered with lesions, babble glossolalia, vomit, bleed, convulse, die drowning in my own bile and shame and disgrace

00:39:03.050 - 00:39:24.340

alone and unloved. An owl calls, another answers. I yawn, a cat comes gliding lamp-eyed. I go back to bed, lie still, a splayed trap for nimble sleep. My friend waving away suggestions of dinner, moving

00:39:24.370 - 00:39:42.550

brittle in his chair, elbows pushing him up, ginger wrists held him up and outward. The child of him wincing, "Hemorrhoids." "Herpes," I answer, flat, weary. "Hemorrhoids, my father had them." "Maybe, but you got

00:39:42.550 - 00:40:01.960

herpes." "Hemorrhoids, runs in the family." "You mean squats?" "Jesus, how long are you going to keep this up?" Looks at me reedy, erect, frayed-face, blood-lipped, "What?" I have reached something I cannot ignore, a point where I violate

00:40:01.960 - 00:40:20.950

all my training in a firing squad recklessness, in a weary disgust at my helplessness. Into despair of diseases I turned judgmental, exploding fears. "You and your damn lies, denial. I was there when the doctor said it remember?" You're lying,

00:40:21.100 - 00:40:36.130

you're in denial, your sad management of terror, perianal herpes." "You lie all the time, it isn't herpes, it's hemorrhoids." It isn't AIDS, it's a nice vague cancer. You are not gay to your mother or certain select others. Your

00:40:36.130 - 00:40:50.590

brother doesn't know, one sister does. "Everybody does, everybody, your mother, the whole world. Be proud of who you are. Part of you being sick is your lies, hell, you want me to lie for you. You make me a part of the sickness. You're a

00:40:50.590 - 00:41:05.460

different lie for different people. What does it matter? They know you're gay." "A whole lot you don't know. I'm going. Make your own fucking dinner if you want, if you can. Starve for all I care." At the

00:41:05.460 - 00:41:22.920

door he calls my name, swallowing the sound. I hurry back, fearful the disease has some new taunting manifestation. He sits painfully erect, his clothes sizes too big, fleet, weeks away from death, tall and vulnerable in his jiggling

00:41:22.920 - 00:41:50.250

lounge chair, blinks. "I've got dentures." "Me too, partials." "Mine are all false teeth." I sit, I remember a time, hospital, short-stay cubicle. On a gurney he shivers, I cover him, hold his hand. We laugh, I look to him behind bosoms as

00:41:50.250 - 00:42:12.120

battlements staring. One whispers and they look with vindictive, straight-edged lips. A whole lot I don't know. My friend taps a bird finger at the room remote control, the TV goes splott, a smiling Dan Rather warps into view. I sigh,

00:42:12.180 - 00:42:32.760

nerves as broken wires waving. Soup then, beef and barley, the kind you like and a roll, soft. My friend nods at a sincere Dan Rather. The family gathers, reluctant refugees from a Norman Rockwell painting wearing Rotarian eyes. The family comes

00:42:32.760 - 00:42:53.310

single file to the hospital, intimidated, then hurting, observing me from group safety. I have called them. "If you think we really need to come now-" "He asked for you." "But do we need to-, you know?" An American charade is played out.

00:42:53.640 - 00:43:07.650

Something has gone so wrong. My friend in bed fevered, blurred by pain and shame, no one but his mother will touch him, from a small Eastern town of lemonade, confirmation, graduation, then poppers, bathhouses, and death, nightmare

00:43:07.650 - 00:43:27.480

normalcy. I wish we could stay, heartbreaking. "You've been so good." "Please call." "We wish we could stay." California is his home now, he loved it so. Best be buried here, or you scattered, don't you? He loved Big Sur so, he still does.

00:43:28.350 - 00:43:45.180

"Thank you again every so much and please do call." I eventually call to say the inevitable. I get the mother, wake her, she takes the news with a granite calm voice, no stranger to grief. She monotones, different losing a

00:43:45.180 - 00:44:12.330

son. It's empty. I ask her if she is alone. "Yes," she whispers, racing along wires leaping off a satellite. Doesn't matter, all of us got to be alone some time. For me, alone is here, now. Shit, fuck, piss, scream, scum, bastard. God damn

00:44:12.330 - 00:44:30.390

the disease, the hate. God damn the baboon monkey virus. God damn the pain, the misery, the shame, disgrace, disgust. God damn the fear, the loathing. God damn the world of the bug, the microscopic life doing God's unknowable will, God damn the

00:44:30.390 - 00:44:46.260

helplessness. God damn the families who run for reputation. Damn you, God everywhere, for all this befouled, fearful sickness for making me small and afraid, for making us all pull away, for the turning of backs, for all the smug inhumans

00:44:46.260 - 00:45:10.470

serve-them-rights, damn you forever. And then and then and then and then, Thy will be done. It can be remembered as the last good time, remembered as wondering if it was, suspecting, musing even amid laughter, was

00:45:10.470 - 00:45:29.730

this to be the last good time? Was it from here to be gray-skin smiles? Little dribbling, shit-steps, weak-fevers, whispers, spiderweb-fingers. It was to be the last good time, last laughter night, a dinner prepared by a French chef with

00:45:29.730 - 00:45:45.300

lighted candles in a formal setting. Four of us seated, my friend with hands as happy barrios or thrumming hummingbirds, fluttering out the laughter of the food, contrapuntal to raucous, gallows humor. Diet like this could kill

00:45:45.300 - 00:46:03.210

me. Dinner and amused, musement interrupted several times helping my friend now space-alien thin to the bathroom, diarrhea directing, while we sat, chatted, waited, tried not to see him until ten seconds away from knocking, are

00:46:03.210 - 00:46:19.920

you all right? And dreading there wouldn't be an answer. The last good time ending in a dessert, my friend demanding, waving away help, bracing himself with the backs of chairs, making it to a tall stool in the kitchen where he

00:46:19.920 - 00:46:40.980

prepared our dessert, with many apologies, breathless, then burying the gift in both hands. Four trips from the kitchen to table, a distance of ten feet, ten miles, years, lifetimes. Four exhausting trips carrying a plate. Finally cantilever

00:46:40.980 - 00:47:02.310

jackknife collapse down, chalk-face, bloodshot, tremored. Nodding in our dessert, his contribution to the last of the good times. Eskimo pie, glossy with chocolate sauce, eat, gasped, eat before it melts, eat. Of times, of the last good

00:47:02.310 - 00:47:22.590

times, last good night, we ate. He died in the hospice swaddled in wonderful white linen. He died on a day when the sky was a taut electric blue, dancing molecules buzzing, all atoms everywhere dancing, save in my friend. For me, a stillness came

00:47:22.590 - 00:47:41.670

over everything. The wind stopped, birds sat blinking, a vacuum touched everywhere. Miles away men stopped their doings and wondered why the silence. He simply stopped breathing. In a coma for some time and shallow chain-stoked breathing, he just

00:47:41.670 - 00:48:00.720

forgot and stopped and stared at eternity. The Death Watch was done. What was left of him weighed less than ninety pounds, a husk, small and light enough to lift with one hand. A shed skin dried in shape, an easy task for the

00:48:00.720 - 00:48:19.470

flames where I imagined he would twist slowly as a matchstick, and crumble and cool to fit a thimble. The drive away from the hospice didn't happen the way I will tell it. Instead, I telescoped many drives on many days and many little deaths now

00:48:19.470 - 00:48:38.070

remembered and lived and loved. At a stoplight next to a pick-up, an old Chevy with swelling fenders, domed hood, high-riding cab, side-panels lashed by mud-whips, bales of alfalfa stacked in bed. A mother, an American prairie face

00:48:38.310 - 00:48:56.010

opened good whitewashed teeth braced, face a field of sensible freckles, clean, washed away features, the squinted, drenched look of having stared at a strong light for generations. Or husbands, stolid, angry as a male pose, overweight,

00:48:56.340 - 00:49:13.650

mustached, impressed, stamped with swaggering responsibility, White Panama hat pulled low and dangerous. A sleepy-eyed child greedy with love who curled shoulders possessive in his mother's fortress arms, patting her face with foam rubber

00:49:13.650 - 00:49:35.160

miniature hands, a ruby fruit mouth about to bite-kiss her face, to eat that face and smear its saliva love. The stoplight as forearm out over the street. The long gold metal arm hollow, halfway from stuck to light a hole, a tubed protuberance for

00:49:35.160 - 00:49:54.630

progress, for future lights a sign. Now the nest of an opportunistic starling, or iridescent black-head popping out, reconnoitering with alert black and yellow bull's eye eyes. Avid, preoccupied, makes a pencil-line of flight away, then

00:49:54.630 - 00:50:15.630

back, a squiggle of something in its polished beak. Disappears crouching awkward, boat-tailed rocking, light still red, a dog toenail, tapped, hip-sprung, head low around the corner, Irish setter solemn, heading someplace where there's food and

00:50:15.630 - 00:50:38.130

affection. Or he has a worth, warm and a leisurely scratch down to sleep. All of us so much heading home. And why not? It was a beautiful day. It was evening and we were deep in summer.

00:50:42.530 - 00:51:02.580

Morton Marcus: And life alas goes on, or not alas. Don Marsh: Yeah. Morton Marcus: Listening to the poem, one wonders if you feel you've got a territory or a theme that is specific, that you

00:51:02.580 - 00:51:24.810

want to pursue or that you move around. Is that true or not? Don Marsh: No, I really don't feel it is. It's one of the things that's kind of haunted me as a writer that I've never had a kind of county as Faulkner has, you know. I feel that I

00:51:24.810 - 00:51:43.110

should yet I don't, although friends of mine say that I write about nature an awful lot. I don't feel that AIDS is mine and that it's my subject to write about that much. But I find that, too much I think I'm scattered all over. I mean, I

00:51:43.110 - 00:51:54.710

have too many interests in too many different directions, you know, for me to say this is the kind of thing that I do, you know? Morton Marcus: No, there's nothing wrong with that. You

00:51:54.710 - 00:52:07.370

don't want to box yourself in too much. I was just writing something about Martin Scorsese, and I was just saying, Lord almighty, look at how limited he is in what he pursues, you know, and-

00:52:08.270 - 00:52:24.150

Don Marsh: There is that. I didn't think of that end of it. Yeah, there is that when they say, oh God, not again, yeah. Morton Marcus: We are about to end this very quick hour, believe it or not, and I would like to hear some of the new

00:52:24.150 - 00:52:38.640

poems. You said, you were an old man going back in one of your poems and visiting East, so since we started as a young man- Don Marsh: Back there in the East, yeah, I would love to end it with this poem, a recent poem of mine. It's called:

00:52:38.640 - 00:52:44.200

THE FATE OF CANALS And I don't know if you're an Easterner, I don't know where you're from, but- Morton Marcus: I'm from New York City.

00:52:44.000 - 00:53:04.220

Don Marsh: Uh, huh. Well, in the East there are canals, and they're not aqueducts as over here, but wonderful canals and I grew up around them. And this is a poem about them. Long ago, New Jersey, first morning canal light. The only

00:53:04.220 - 00:53:31.340

objects discernible were things immediate: reeds, water, embankments, trees, faded to washed steel, tule fog, feathered cat-tails. I lazed in a kayak, canvas, wood-ribbed drum, canal surface crinkled tin-foil as the boat yawed

00:53:31.370 - 00:53:58.700

thoroughbred, uncertain as balloons under me, scrimmed by willow-streamers. I saluted, auditioning dubs. I ate a fried egg sandwich. I will have the sun to finger-snap. Half a century later, the canal is a freeway, flowing concrete

00:53:58.730 - 00:54:25.490

traffic. I am growing old. I have failed at everything. I am floating, afraid. Morton Marcus: Well, tonight we have talked with Donald Marsh who has read us some poetry from around 30, 40 years. And we're

00:54:25.490 - 00:54:42.830

all moving into this uncertainty. This is certainly, I think you'll agree, Don, a very different America than what we were born into and had hoped to achieve and see going a different direction. For you out there, this is Mort Marcus and

00:54:42.830 - 00:54:56.990

you're listening to KUSP community sponsored radio in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Salinas. Do stay tuned now for "Outfront, Outback" with Larry Blood and I think we are ready to roll.