DRAFTED (from Kayfables: Confessions of a Wrestling Poet)
...At the Windows, L. D. Bowers had been on the attack, calling me a Commissar, calling Cap a Nazi and a baby killer. I knew that first thing made Roland laugh, but not the second. He hadn’t killed any babies. He’d killed fiercely dedicated professional soldiers who were coming at him with everything they had, fighting for what they saw as their homeland.
“Ever-body always talkin’ ‘bout the Cong, the Cong, the Cong, like they ninjas or somethin’, but hey, cowboy—the North Vietnamese Regular Army was a stone motherfucker. The Cong! Bull. Fucking. Shit! You best watch out for the NV-fucking-*A*.”
Though an ostensible Liberal with anti-war credentials, I had taken a little instruction from Cap about the recent unpleasantness in Southeast Asia, and felt proud to introduce Roland each month as a man who had waded neck deep in War, a Warrior Poet who’d brought his finest words to the subject. He was our Kipling, I often said. You had to hyperbolize a little, sell your poets. Just like wrestling. But with Roland it was hardly hyperbole. In his work, Cap referred to War as Authorized Insanity. His poems were very strong and fine. Epic Style. He built cathedrals, not coffeehouses. Many poets at the Windows held Cap in a sort of nervous awe. Some folks didn’t like his credo—the fact that individuals could achieve personal glory in War, despite the fact that War itself was not a damn bit glorious.
One night, I finished my intro of Cap:
“And now, a poet who knows War and can write of it with accuracy, Captain G. Roland Fallon!”
L. D. Bowers from the balcony: “Oh yeah! WAR! And he GLORIFIES it!”
Cap came to the mic, notes in hand, and looked slowly up to the balcony. He made eye contact with L. D.
“L. D.,” he said slowly, “I’m gonna pay as much attention to you as I usually do.”
The house was packed, a good hot Windows night with the trademark windows wide open, a soft breeze coming through, riverboats churning by on the Cumberland. The audience ROARED as one with laughter and approval. L. D. was unbowed. Nothing could faze him. He was the Truth on Two Legs. We knew it because he had told us so himself.
It was getting to be a bit much, the Windows. A new Asshole arrived each month to tell us how we should be running the event. To explain to us how it wasn’t FAIR the way we did it, wasn’t how they did it in Chicago or New York. How we were disrespectful and unwelcoming to new poets, and rudely talked through the dozenth performance of the same bad poem. Those kind of poems were usually read by persons who went first or third, then ran for home, unwilling to stay and hear anyone else. I called such folks Deserters. They always fled with the same little sick grin, as if to say “Terribly sorry, love to stay, important pressing business you know.” They made me think of dogs slinking away from their flatulent masters, so ultimately I came to call them Deserter Dogs, which for some reason tickled Cap to no end.
We had not volunteered for the co-hosting job 7 years before. We had been drafted.
“Can you guys run it this month, then next month someone else can run it? Jerry and I can’t do it anymore. Too busy, and I’m about to have my baby…”
The speaker had been Jenny Halston, half of Jenny & Jerry Halston-Gomez, the husband and wife team who had first inaugurated the Poetry in a Pub readings several years before. Jenny was a sweet slim aging flowerchild with witchy hair and a pleasant scent of lavender. The readings had been her first baby. Jerry, a fine guitar picker and songwriter, was official emcee and tech man; Jenny, a fair poet and fine person, was the acknowledged host and soul of the thing. Losing them was hard, but Cap and I stepped up.
We did fine the first month. The second month, no one else wanted the job. And so it went, for 7 years. Our tour kept being extended. Finally, we had a good and popular reading with mostly solid poets, the shitty ones having weeded themselves out. At that point, the Assholes began to appear, salivating to rip the mic from me and Cap, to be in charge of the best poetry reading in town.
“No way we give it to anyone ain’t gonna Do The Work,” said Cap one night on the Alley, and I concurred. We wanted out now. Windows was an exhausting job, a very real one. We made it look easy, professional and relaxed, but Poetry in a Pub whipped our asses each and every month. Cap and I figured that the reading took us 3 days to get ready for and 3 days to recover from, emotionally and spiritually. It was a psychic week out of our lives. Yet no one had appeared who seemed up to the Office. We were in it to the end.
The two and only Rules we’d established at the beginning of our tour of duty still worked very well. 1) Show up. 2) Try to keep it to 5 minutes.
There were some unwritten rules, of course, like “Don’t go bitching to Cap about how you signed up to read at number 8 on the sign-in list and now you’re being put in front of the mic at #4 or #11.” The List was solely for Cap’s convenience. It gave him a plan of attack. Regarding the List, Roland was impervious to tears, threats, or recriminations. I was a kindly soul who’d give you a flattering introduction. But only when my Captain gave the nod.
“Goddamn, hot dog. That is some funny shit, that kid come gunnin’ for you…”
It was true. Some ear-mite from El Paso named Bradley Cooper had been going around to the various poetry pits, announcing his challenge—
“I will DESTROY C Ra! I will be the NEW C Ra! I will TAKE the Windows!”
“I don’t get it, Cap. What the fuck does the Asshole From El Paso think he’s taking? It ain’t MINE…”
“Course it ain’t. It’s just we got somethin’ good, somethin’ we worked for, and now everyone wants it, not havin’ done the god damned Work. Old story, cowboy.”