why are you
blues-lady?
have the skies
no brightness?
where does trust
begin?
she judges as the sun
falling around a helpless thing.
— Stephen "Arshad" Uprichard, 1932-2006
Sorry for the delay in writing, old friend .
Your blue notebooks hit my mailbox today.
And yes, I think your author friend is right:
the holy mother fertilized you with a gift for metaphor.
My favorite? Elegy for a friend.
That one who stepped off a cable-stayed bridge near Greenfield
and burst into monarch butterflies
across the surface of the water.
Romantic, maybe.
You do wear rose-colored sunglasses,
but wrapped in tortoise rims, they work.
Those lenses take me back to Venice Beach,
a block past the Rose Café on Rose Avenue,
where I interviewed you for our faith
in a bar. We sifted over your addictions
to coffee and god, and found them roughly equal.
I loved your friend Sebastian, the homeless Dutch
business tycoon. Who else would stand on his chair
barking sermons from a tattered copy of Garbage and the Goddess?
His black eyes scared the crap out of people.
So did the words. Which reminds me—
the oil on canvas he painted that summer
of Bhagavan. I sent it in, behind the clerics.
Tell him his last gift to daylight made it home .
And you Arshad, did you not fall on your cracked knees
and see the Lord at last with your own first eyes
as He towered on the Mountain?
I told you we’d get you there.
You cry too easily, brother.
You fall in love at first glance.
That weakness bleeds in your devotion,
and now it’s running into mine.
A debt I owe you in jade, Arshad.
I save all your messages on my answering machine.
The cursing, the rhymes, the laughing seizures.
The wheezing and hacking and tales
of sun-drenched ashram orgies and even more baroque scripture.
“Om Da.”
You say it like you mean it.
If you can get it in before the beep.
The thing, friend,
what I mean to tell you here:
it’s your new business plan.
This one about a filter converting sewage into Evian.
There’s no new life for you!
Cleave it all but your turning.
Hack your crutches off too.
Oh, friend. Your e-mail
this morning took my breath away.
The church put forth no effort to make you pretty,
and I guess that’s how you’d want it. Yawning.
Your head yanked back like a slave.
Eyes screwed to the ceiling. Brother,
you looked like your own last box of Marlboros.
Some holy bastard waving sage around your iced face.
But hey. You’re free, baby.
And sure we’ll find each other. Easy.
"I’ll be wrapped in a red scarf," you said.
"I’m a 68-year-old ex-hippy with a mean streak and fast.
My Lennon glasses make my eyes look big.
I take in too much life and love it.
Find me in the corner booth and ask whatever you like, boss.
The Dutchman may be holding.
We’ll pull down blue smoke and grin.
Our hands clasped soft as hard-boiled eggs.
We’ll belt the word of god until they run, boss.
We’ll light the fucking wicker tables on fire."
(here is a little more on Arshad...)