HOUSE ON FIRE
Bayview Sparklyville!
This lover lives here
That lover walks by
Bone in sun or ash flakes of shell
Corpse embalmed, law violated
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Slowdown sky focus, sky maintain sky commitment to sky, original sky thought, first sky thought, soft touch sky, sky search, keyword sky
Wake up Bored with everyday details of life Think of surrealism, international politics
White yachts soaked in mist cruise gray bay waters
Ghosts & secular humanists imprisoned by Patriot Act War in Rwanda, starvation in Sudan Exploding cell phones! |
PILLHEAD
Pill bushes in my sleep,
blue fruit, red fruit, blue/red, black fruit,
white fruit for moon garden
Up all night sleeping, sleep all morning half-awake
This part of morning sun and dew on the balcony
Goodbye balcony
BAY VIEWS there it is
Biscayne Bay Miami
You pay extra for the clouds
Goodbye view
Brown haze
White haze
Bridges Islands Concrete Pilings Speedboats Dolphin Snook Grunt Needlefish Mullet
Stingray
Unit 951 2200 sq ft FOR SALE
Mother, father, grandparents best friend buried nearby. . .
Nervous calm
The window washer comes
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I like to think there’s a party going on somewhere
and everyone I’ve ever known or loved is there
Eventually, I will join them
live it up in the land of the dead
dance, play ukulele, and all kinds of Latin drums
in a Florida of my dreams
oceanic and love-drenched, over-flowing with
a pharmacy of hangover free intoxicants
palm trees, red and yellow hibiscus, anahinga
manatee, golden rums, and sweet aperitifs
*
*
*
*
Fish
Drum Inc., Medicine Show Theatre,
and WORD/PLAY series presents
a celebration reading of
CONTINUOUS FLAME
New York restaurant, eating steak with Terri, Bill, Valerie
Uncharacteristically, Nancy calls on cell phone
I panic, think something has happened to my son
“Everyone is fine,” she says, “the house burned down”
House Burned Down
-------------------------------
Shelldance
Nursery Owners' Home Destroyed
By Elaine Larsen, Pacifica Tribune
A lifetime of original and collected artwork, rare books, poetry and manuscripts literally went up in smoke when fire broke out late Friday afternoon at the home of Nancy Davis and Michael Rothenberg
The
sight of the giant plume of thick black smoke rising high above the highway on the landmark hill startled many commuters . .
. it was coming from the couple's home, nestled in the trees below the brightly colored, more visible greenhouses. . .
Disbelief. Fly to Pacifica with Terri
Although six fire trucks from Pacifica, Daly City and San Bruno raced to the scene. . . thick after-school traffic clogged the highway... with firefighters laying on the horn to move aside the path of backed-up cars
. . ..on the scene, . . . firefighters faced the problem of getting their hoses up the steep, twisting driveway. . . there are some low-pressure water pipes at the upper greenhouses,. . . no hydrant on the grounds. . .
FIRE IN THE HOUSE
Stuff. That's what it is. True
Oaxacan tapestry
Pre-Colombian frog
Twisted stick from Big Thicket
Bronze Tathageta incense burner
Rag doll of myself with buttons,
beads and safety pins
And what to do
with the charred
remains (shards)?
Make
new stuff?
Save one stuff
to immortalize
many stuffs?
National Geographic Magazine
articles about orchid collecting in Brazil
Bromeliad stamps from Ecuador
Black crystal horse
Blue ginger jar
Papier-mâché mask made by my son
in elementary school
I'm doing okay
but there are nightmares
and it's difficult to be philosophical
in my sleep
Promises of a Phoenix rising,
I wake up in a twitch,
jolt to shake off the ash,
lay back down for Part 2
Resinous smoke sludge
on photo of my brother, me
with Connie Francis, Neil Sedaka
at Miami Beach Auditorium
Scorched Tefillin from Lubavitcher Days
in Golder’s Green
Grandma’s green water glasses
Guild mahogany red-top guitar
from Nashville
“Melancholy Baby”
plays somewhere out of the ground
or through the cypress
surrounding the boarded up house
Hart Crane’s The Bridge,
first edition from Black Sun Press
Devour The Fire about Harry Crosby
Ezra Pound’s Personae, 1909
Facsimile of T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland
House of fire!
House of ash!
House of vulnerable ruins
and relentless attachment!
8:30 pm
I leave the motel in my pajamas
go back to the house to make sure
the front door is locked
The remoteness of the house. . . a tough fire to battle. . . It couldn't have been worse. . .
Dear Joanne,
Here we are in Pacifica house provided by insurance company to ride out storm
of claims and negotiations until the house is rebuilt, if it is rebuilt. Getting
oriented, phone, gas, electric, cable, groceries, pillows and sheets. Terri and I,
Nancy and Cosmos, two German Shepherd puppies, smoke and ash stained clothes. Few things salvaged, only just beginning to peck through the charred mess. Taking the night off, waiting for Nancy and Cosmos to come home to surprise table of Italian delicacies purchased and designed by Terri and me. Flower arrangement of fresh flowers from fresh planted shrubs in the yard. Rhododendron, red berried stems, and a palm leaf streams across the table. Mozzarella, calamari, wrinkled olives, three types of home baked bread, breadsticks, apples, oranges, grapes, roast beef, prosciutto, smoked turkey, peppers and sausage. Got a real strange salami, Terri hung it over the doorway to Cosmos' room, a mistletoe of the testosterone kind. And thought I'd send a greeting to you because it has been forever. Greetings! Peace and love, health and fame and fortune without misery to you and Donald. All our love and more for the coming year, Michael, Terri, Cosmos and Nancy
The
flames were largely confined to one of the bedrooms. . .However, thick, black, intensely hot smoke poured through the enclosed
house, charring everything in its path and leaving grimy black residue on the walls, surfaces and windows. Whole shelves full
of books were burned black on the outside, their pages crumbling with a touch.
The couple's son, Cosmos, 13, and two high school-age buddies had just come home from school and discovered the fire. . .
Dear Joanne,
Moved some only slightly smoked books from the house into a work area in the
greenhouses
to keep them dry. The roof leaked and the books got soaked. I am sure there will be a plague of locusts any minute! Thanks for
your note and faith. Believe me I feel pretty petty most of the time so it is good to hear about my resourcefulness and style.
I guess you can be petty and resourceful at the same time? It looks like rain again tonight. The salvage company has pulled
a house-sized tarp over the storage room and filled it up with generators, fans, and dehumidifiers so I can try to clean up
things worth cleaning. I keep trying to save stuff, but like a dung beetle. Nancy is finally going to make a lunge into the
house tomorrow to pull out whatever remains of her stuff. She has kept her distance
since the fire, fixing up the new house and taking care of business. Terri helps me with my salvage trips, we spend a lot of
time at the kitchen sink cleaning what can still be used, answering machine, scissors, surge protectors, brass incense burner,
Colombian blanket, tapestry from Mitla, bit by bit, there are things. Cosmos seems to have leapt intensely into male hood, it's
time for a bar mitzvah! I just tell him stay out of trouble and don't compete against me, I can't take the pressure. Well, that's
all for now and love, Michael xx
"We pretty much lost everything," said Nancy Davis.
Stuff becomes us
We become stuff
When we lose stuff we lose
pieces of ourselves,
(at
least those pieces we think we know)
But how could I be a lamp? Or a book?
And why not?
The walls of the spacious living room were literally "a canvas" for their collective artwork . . . Cosmos lost his treasured bass guitar, video games and a prized collection of Buddhas, crosses and other religious artifacts from his travels, including a memento from a trip to Ireland's St. Patrick's Cathedral.
I bite my tongue eating noodles
If I talk it bleeds
What am I talking about?
Bloody language!
I need to relax
Pudding and frozen yogurt
Huge mud slide in Ventura County, 1 dead
Big wave in Asia, December 26, 156,000 dead
We’re still alive
Space collapses
one thing on top of the other
On top of
the other. . .
"I lost early drafts, manuscripts, whole collections of books," said Rothenberg. . . I find myself stopping strangers on the street and telling them my house burned down.”
“Some dance to remember/Some dance to forget”
“Hotel California”
SALVAGE
(maybe Salvation)—
“Oh, Mama!”
Miami
Beach antique store 1960’s:
Chinese brass incense burner, 19th Century
Noe Street Art Gallery in 1975:
Two witches and a comet, original signed sculpture
From Donna Kuhn:
Handmade doll of Philip Whalen
Philip’s soapstone Ganesh
“It was 35 dollars, a fortune at the time,
but I had to have it!”
Counting up ashes
Affixing value to phantom form
Philip Whalen’s religious library
What
are the alchemical properties of fire?
“All the living creatures are safe, thank God. But losing a home is like a sudden and unexpected death. . .”
Aquarius
You are probably attracted to very original kinds of people, dear Aquarius.
But, you should ask yourself: Do you allow yourself be as original
as the people you admire so much? If not, today you might find
the strength you need to arrange things in your relationships,
so that you can begin to develop this kind of freedom inside of you.
I burn! I burn!
Universal Mother of Fire!
It’s not her I’m attached to but what she means
GARBAGE TRUCKS
“Standing Bear” 36 X 48 Acrylic on Linen by Nancy Victoria Davis
1
Gucci Sport Coat
Taiko Drum
19th
Century Four Seasons Chinese Urn
3
Turkish Samovars
Egg-style Music Chair
Bronze African Fertility Statue
Teddy Bears from Teddy Bear Factory
18 Eye Shadow Compacts:Chanel
10 Powder Compacts: Chanel
5 Foundation Makeup: Chanel and Sisley
11 Assorted Eyeliners
8 Lipstick: Chanel
1 Kama Sutra Honeydust 8 oz
1 Large Box Band-Aids
4 New Toothbrushes
1 Large Box Cotton Balls
1 Tube Colgate Simply White Tooth Gel
1 Pair Bathroom Slippers
1 Hot Water Bottle
1 Pill Dispenser
Retin A Micro .04%
Tri. Lama Cream Gel
Tretenoin .025%
Butalbital Compound
Sunday morning
I sweep the front steps
for The Insurance Adjuster
*
NEWS
We grow accustomed to our space
Fabricate a patchwork world
Ages in chaos
Redwood rings
I walk on a broken arch
Antichrist in White House
Blue poets in red states
Brass monkeys see no evil, hear
no evil, speak...
“Make War Not Peace”
Secrets of a generation
1 Magnalite Roasting Pot with Lid
5 Corningware Casserole Dishes
3-Speed Mixer
Minolta Compact 8 x 20 Binoculars
1 Smith & Wesson 8 x 21 Binoculars
Get a realtor
Find a realm of consciousness
Karma
Buy into an investment
Resell it in a couple of years
Karma
Move into a Senior’s Residence
Play Bingo
BINGO!
Nightmare
I trudge up and down the stairs with heavy boxes of books, up and down and back to the top of the stairs for another box, but there’s nothing there. I ask the landlord, “What happened to the books?” He says, “Anything left on the stairs is taken to the dump.” I go to the dump on the apartment roof and find hundreds of boxes. “Books,” I think. Books.
But there are no books, just garbage.
Inauguration Day
Gorgeous drama queen on my balcony
doesn’t know what to eat,
where to go, what to do
Summery winter day parrot screech
I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!
“Freedom” occurs 27 times in a 20 minute speech
“Parrots should not be kept in cages”
Freedom burns!
“Liberty” occurs 15 times in a 20 minute speech
She ruffles her smoky feathers
Miami, FL-Pacifica, CA
Sept. 28, 2004-May 1, 2005
Featuring Photographs by Terri Carrion
as well as photographs and images by:
and from the Public Domain
HOUSE ON FIRE BY MICHAEL ROTHENBERG
Special Electronic Broadside Edition
Martin Luther King Day, January 15, 2007
$lavery - Cyberzine of the Arts