WHITE BUFFALO: The Story of a Mayan Prince

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Many years later, to summarize, I accompanied a friend
to the end of the Red Road. Returning to this world
meant confronting waste, ugliness, neglect, evil, in all
its manifestations - well not, all, but enough - talk
about nausea, as fleas feast on your lower legs,
pesticides of no consequence, unbearable heat, broke,
living on brisket and walking, walking - as the hosts
looked elsewhere, and lust, greed, envy, plus four,
predators abounding, the worst exposed, nearly too much
to take, the poor defeated brother on the corner of
South Congress, weeping and begging for help as a
thousand cars sped past… Like returning from space.

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“Minutes accumulate like the skulls of the weak”
Whiling away the hours with the fellows, these impetuous
swivers… to use the old term. Prior to YouTube. I must
have been reading Barth and the Sotweed Factor. Ebenezer
- I don’t think the movie has been made. I included a
notation on Job and connected this to employment, or
unemployment, which may advance the narrative to Berryman,
and Dream Songs, and the dimensional array of dramatic inventions
formed as “players” or “characters” - as in Joyce or Pynchon
or Elliot, “actionable” as facets of the author within the
contextual narrative, super-voce, or masked in the manner
of the pantheon, or godly courts, in a progression from
abstract to imagined, then asymmetrically migrating
to Buddhist formulations, as in a scroll depicting a
procession, the movement of the figures animated behind
the eyes of the viewer, not as the illusion of motion,
in a frame-action sequence with space between each cell,
but in a seamless quicktime wraparound configuration,
stitched by hand or cursor, clicks and toggles, but
then how to account for Bukowski, the wife beater, the
drunk, Berryman too, on good authority, but I’m reading
the manuscript online “hey, Pablo” Which is what my
Norteno plevy called me…

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When I traveled to Scotland I met Sir Freake, which was
fine, but we never managed a conversation in print. Now
there are Zeelio and Milo and 4D Tommy and Veronica.

I
miss the ones in this text.

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I miss Terrible Ted and Bruce Colors, not Robert The
who had his ferocious partner Black Douglas, whose
living ghost the mothers of England used to frighten
their children to sleep. I miss the curly mangy locks
of Ted’s dreads & his many many scars, his Spanish
greetings through fucked up few remaining teeth, his
eyes behind those always broken or differnt glasses
indicating fierce intent, a well of wrath, and mirth.
When we all got high, I felt completely alive in the
aftermath, walking through the Santa Fe darkness. If
you’ve tried it there, you know what I’m talking about.
“When I depart everything lives”: Berryman leapt off
the bridge in Minneapolis. “during the time he drowned.
The laundry lived” and 4D Faulkner… As Dad lay
dying last November, I thought of you William, or
Mississippi, but the difference is I had photos of
Mom and William David McLean in the hospital room
in Charleston (West Virginia) and the multiple
cameras didn’t capture all or even most of anything
that matters, which is a sad thing about prose, or
writing, though I’m partial to Wilfred Owens I prefer
David Jones, thanks to John Matthias, Yvor notwith-
standing. & Huron (the poet, not the Indian, not
the lake) - a Viking metapoet, sketching mindlessly
next to Tom Duffy, whose name I remembered by
picturing in inner spatial continuum the man
on his ridiculous hybrid bicycle, or his strange
fingers rubbing the 1st edition Dickens serial
tracts, twinkling like a star in the desert night
or a reflection of the moon on the Pacific,
long since breathing his last exhalation, shuffling
into the claustrophobia-inducing graduate classroom
which I stole into after threatening the Norton
Anthology guy, Leslie, and I don’t know what I
could have proven by being there or writing this,
other than words follow one through life, but
so do the shades of these people, their impressions.
I don’t know whether they exist now by virtue
of my memorializing them. But I hope so. It isn’t
the same thing as a painting.

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So when Doktor Speedkills tells me he is a good
storyteller, or when the ancient Jewish Indian
trader calls me one last fall, decades later,
I can generate comparisons, at least, that never
fail to lift the bar. At least I made the gesture
though possessing negligible skill, to consecrate
the coming and goings of a few veritable people.
Who were remarkable to me, for whatever reason.
I nicknamed them so they wouldn’t worry I would
rat them out, because we were illegal so much
of the time. Tiny, Gandalf: “Relax - If we didn’t
feel comfortable with you, you wouldn’t be here.”

Morris the Cat, brother of a famous regional painter
[He beatdown Doktor later, which shocked me - naive,
I was, thinking we were all on the same team, but
there was no team, and it was no game, except “you
bet your ass.” I owe the High Priest [was this Marcel?]
$5… yes, extrapolating from the next line > I mistook
the string of nights survived as a ceremonial arc
& though I know it’s not true, I’m not certain I was
not right.

So I drew a chart like Maciariello’s, in red & black
ink, The High Priest, Owl Sundown, Mr. Greenjeans,
Randy, Cathy & Jade, The Gamemaster a/k/a Tiny,
Gandalf, Doktor Speedkills, Lou Dom & Don, Damon,
Doktor Snakeskin, Chile Verde, The Tuna, Rug Ron,
Tauro, Pablo, Maurice, Felito & Felita, Colors,
The Bag Lady with Money, Fia & Lie, Terrible Ted,
RocknRoll & Blackie, Donut, Gay Bertha, The Barker,
Tom O’Dude, Didondee, Glen & Mac, White Buffalo,
Berto, White Buffalo [again], Beal & Howdy, Dakota
& Shine, BarBar, Jewels, RW, Dewdrop, BonBon,
The Violent Femmes, Noe, Jack Good & Trasher…

no directionals, on grid paper, a Sipapu sign
at the top of the page, infinity on its side [8]
at the bottom - I remember most, but not all,
and each has his or her own story, but there are
many not on the list, and where are they all now?
Most dead. All beyond touch. None of their numbers
in my cell phone. There were no cell phones then.
There were military radios, basically.

“You have to get to know your characters” [Gamemaster]
“before you write about them.”

[At the end of the first section, I drive to Jemez
with Frances - I think this is the one where she
vomits & I propose to her… Was this the one where
the herd of elk, dozens of them, maybe hundreds,
crossed the highway, and one bull made giveaway
to protect the rest? Sometimes the repetition
of trajectories, due to dissimilarity in details,
causes jitters or confusion in the recounting
of events. Tragic circumstances do alter the
recollection of a sequence, like a blow to the
head, or a rip in the fabric. We were doing our
best to trigger anomalous outcomes, as in chemistry.]

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