-YouTube lullaby-

1.

Last night I looked on while Monica Seles was stabbed in the back.

The date of the assault was April 30, 1993.

Monica was stabbed as she rested between sets during a tennis match.

There was otherworldly muffled screaming from the gallery as poor

Monica fell backward into an attendant’s arms, her pallid complexion

akin more to death than to life, but then she grimaced in a sign of living

which was good to see.

An entourage of guys dragged the assailant away weaving through

the throngs of well-heeled rubberneckers.

Even in 1993, the video of the attack played-out on a never ending loop,

news outlets regurgitating the event, the stabbing and its aftermath,

until it began to seem commonplace that young Monica Seles

should be stabbed in the back on multiple occasions.

Basta!

So I toggled down to listen in on Charles Bukowski’s last

public reading, 14 years before his death.

The recital happened on March 31st, 1980, at the Sweetwater Inn,

Redondo Beach, California.

The set was minimalist in nature; a table with a bottle of red

wine standing at the ready, a chair for Bukowski to sit on, and a backdrop

containing planks of nailed wood, and a solitary aluminum stepladder

leading the way up to nothing.

A small but eager crowd gathered to hear Bukowski read his poems

and as he sat down someone in the audience shouted something.

It was unintelligible, but Bukowski heard it, calling the guy a “motherfucker”

(clearly pronouncing the “er” and the other “er” at the end of both words)

"mother fucker!"–– at which point a number of people laughed.

Actually, every time Bukowski swore at somebody, anybody or anything,

a smattering of the gathered would laugh. In fact, in the middle of a poem

where Bukowski referred to a woman as a “cunt,” people again laughed.

I thought at first it might be nervous laughter, they, being so close to a guy

who might start a violent fistfight at the slightest provocation, but

after awhile I reasoned it was something else.

It was as if laughter was expected of them whenever Bukowski

showed the side of his persona to match the expectations of an audience.

But in the end, no one seemed to be offended and the cops

weren't waiting in the wings ready to pounce on Bukowski

for his social obscenities because "they got kids" the way they did when

Lenny asked in open recital:“Didja cum? Didja cum? Didja cum good?".

2.

After a time of diddling around YouTube, I was alerted to the breaking

news of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I lamented

beneath my breath: "Jesus Christ. We've had it".

Friday, September 18, 2020