WHITE BUFFALO: The Story of a Mayan Prince

The dead feed the dirt
Their souls flutter above us

The natural song pleases the ear, the cries of the mourners, the weeping

The widow is pleading. Who are these orphans? Who are these people?
White Buffalo is dead.
One man observes the sight unseen/his mask himself
perfect and complete

No one can see this. & I won’t tell you how you will die. Dying is not drama.
The catheter is not a cathedral. Senor Chapuy is hardly

When this voice was younger, I didn’t listen & neither would you.
One in each ear > White Buffalo, the story of a Mayan Prince & Others

Paul Joseph McLean among the scholars of war. No matter
How hard I tried

I was no good at poetry, &
I’m still not any good at poetry
No matter, how hard I try

It turns out not to matter at all

No one reads it. Nobody remembers poetry.

When I was 22 Mike gave me a ride from Red Rocks to Trinidad & Raton
Then, I think I took a bus to Santa Fe. I don’t remember. I was holed up in a hotel for a week
making paintings, drinking Jack Daniels with a gun two pairs of jeans a couple of tee shirts
A sheepskin leather coat Ray Bans, smokes, a few hundred dollars. What was I thinking?
The motorcycle wreck
The blow to the head
Messed me up. NEECHEE screwed me up. When they take the eye out of your head
& lay it on a tray, maybe that’s when you start to see two worlds. The Doctor later tells me
I can only see out of one eye at a time.
No perspective.
No 3D.

How can you be a detective and not see the three points
and a horizon line?

I think they all are dead now
I’m not sure if any of this happened, really

I made a huge pot of spaghetti for Marcel
when his esophagus exploded

Was that the day I found the black widows -
like, five of them
in Will’s kiddie car?
The pink one, used to be red
Faded in the sun
On the top of Monte Sol?

Rudy was not his real name.
You’re not a tourist, anymore, he said
You’re not American - you’re a citizen of the world
Borders don’t matter [or something to that effect

“I know not civilization, your civilization. For I am a child of the wilderness, & your civilization for me is poverty. When your civilization crumbles I shall rise once more to restore the earth, my mother.”

They were always writing on bar napkins. White squares.

The Blue Moon tonight. The bottles behind the bar are brightly lighted
“Paul, you’re an ace.”

How can he be dead?

I bought drinks for them and for me. 11 thousand dollars
In three bars in six months, for a book.

Writers are such assholes. It’s not enough
to take pictures. Nothing is ever enough.
No thing is enough.

Dad is passed on, now, and mom, too

Dulce et Drucker ESTamos. The Chistmas lights are white, but
I have a broken tooth and scratches on my hands.

I don’t know where they came from.

“I awakened one
morning…
To find that my mask
had been stolen in
The Night. I Ran unto
the streets Hollering
Thieves, Thieves, Oh!
CURSED Thieves who
stole my mask!!
The the sun
Kissed my face….
And from then on I
walked the streets
saying… Thieves, Thieves
Oh Blessed Thieves
who stole my mask”

Rudy wrote that on a bar napkin. He flew around a truck
I saved Scroggy from a gang of Mexicans in the parking lot
The Wizard fed me White Crosses and I bet them
My heartbeat would stay the same for an hour
& then I drove home to Pecos

What was the point? I did a flip after eating mushrooms [in cowboy boots]
Sitting in the driver’s seat of some nice couple’s car
Pretending to drive, with my dog Rock n Roll staring at me mournfully from the passenger seat
What was I doing there? Is that how dumb life is?

That painter from the jungles of Columbia said, “No tricks,”
But his paintings were no good, knock-off of Rousseau
Getting it on with a red head white girl, but he was a friend,
The day after the mushrooms Freddy sold me, he said I went to the space between
We were at the bar, or a table at Babe’s
Lou was there, maybe, or not.