parisiana

MIRROR

how strange it is to know
to realise that you’ve been seeing
something without seeing it
that it’s been staring you in the face
the whole time

usually you look at yourself but can’t
put off the mask somehow
can’t see yourself as you are
as if all you see in a mirror is
a history of reflections

LIFE BEYOND MARS

why do scientists keep saying
where there’s water there’s life?
because that’s what they know
that’s what they’ve seen

we’re mapping the universe
men walked on the moon because
we got the calculations right
and water we say is life

yet what if out there
intelligences are looming
like nothing we know
like nothing we’ve ever seen?

with no words to describe them
anything we say will be a metaphor at best
when those ships appear
one day on our horizon

Enter Brion Gysin. The famed painter, anti-poet and self-proclaimed misanthrope (“Man is a bad animal”); the man who’d turned Burroughs on to the possibilities of cut-up writing (a notion he himself had filched from the Dadaist antics of Tristan Tzara) yet later called William “Master,” and who years earlier had been unceremoniously evicted from the surrealist movement by André Breton...Brion Gysin was back in town, brought to Amsterdam by Benn Posset for a duet at the Melkweg with très avant-garde soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. I’d gotten to know Brion at P78, had visited him a couple of times in Paris, and for sure wanted to catch this dynamic twosome strutting their stuff. As ever (i.e., when all else failed), my press pass got me in. 

Written for, and delivered at, the Henry Miller centenary celebration, December 19th 1991 (one week prior to Henry's actual 100th birthday), at the Literair Eetcafé Miller, Binnen Bantammerstraat 77, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Would you believe I got specially dressed up for this? No, sillies, not to come here. You should see me when I get dressed up. Though most of you won't. And some of you definitely won't. Henry Miller's motto was: "Always merry and bright." Eddie Woods's motto, till further notice (and don't hold your breath), is: "Yes, we have no bananas." Tut-tut, the ideas people get.

And bananas is what Henry would be going, were he alive and listening to this. Indeed, he started turning over in his grave last night, the moment I reached for the black net stockings. As for the rest—the flimsy negligee top, the silk panties, the fringed skirt, la-di-dah; once I had those on and was sashaying down to the office in my little Chinese slippers with a bunch of Henry's books tucked under my armpits...well, by that time half the cemetery was awake! And don't go spoiling my metaphors by telling me Henry was cremated. If so, his ashes were exploding. One orgasm Henry never dreamed of having.

• Read more