FROM THE CAPTAIN TO DON VAN VLIET

81 Poop Hatch

"My eyes are burnt and bleeding and all that looks like a monkey on a silver bar …
big poop hatch with a cotton hatch – hatch holes that the light shows in and the light shows out …
and the little red fence …
and the wire and the wood …
and the barbs and the berries …
and the tires and the bottles and the caruponrims …
and the heat swims on its fenders and the dust collects and the rust of autumn surrenders into gold …
trumpet poop on the ground with peanuts

its bell was blocking an ant’s vision …
and the mice played in its air holes and valves …
a ladybug crawled off its mouthpiece standing out red

and blacked its wings and blew off to a flower …
its hum heard just above the ground …
black dots were hung in what turned out to be an olive tree that originally held a tree house full of a building with one small window …
birds and broken glass and tiny bits of newspaper …

"My sun is free from the window," said the god the green dabbers …
rice wires mouse tins and milk muffins …
cereal and stone …
matches and masks and mace and clubs …
and splintered shaft light intrigues a cricket on a dust jeweled penlet …
cobwebs collect down plaster run into a hole and find collected glass that drinks the reflection of midday afternoon midway between telegraph lines …
a silver wing – a cloud – a rumbling of a cloud …
a crowd of various violins strum from next door through my wall

into my ear obviously artificial …
neighbours laugh through sandwiches …
Harlem babies – their stomachs explode into roars …
their eyes shiny with starvation …
spreckled hula dance on my phonograph …
my door rattles windy …
sand wears my rug shoe and taps on the unheard finish of an hourglass I cannot hear …
a typical musician’s nest of thoughts filter through dust speakers

"Why don’t you go home? Oh Blobby, are you great,"

exclaims two lips in some jumbled rock ‘n’ roll tune and wears a spot I cannot scratch …
the surface of a friend …
this high book a friend laid on me …
on the couch relaxing in the corner

behind a still life pond with plenty of bugs and lily pads

slurred in mud banks and boulders

tin cans and raisins warped by thought …
strain on the spoon like a wheat check – check Bif – cotton popping out of his sleeve …
poop hatch open – big poop hatch with a cotton hatch – hatch holes –

got to pick up the horns …
but the head won’t move until it walks"

"So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place."

Jeanette Winterson, from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Don and his cat Garland

'Yeah, I’m much better off now. I’m just up here painting and getting beat up by my cats. These creatures are so intelligent it’s frightening, especially this cat of mine named Garland. He’s as smart as a chimpanzee and he tricks me in every way. You know they don’t know that much about cats. Cats just came in and started living among humans. You wouldn’t believe what I do for these things! I’m not that good at gymnastics but I bend over and pet Garland for 15 minutes while he’s eating. Garland likes Lightnin’ Hopkins but he has too much ego to listen to my music. If I’m listening to my music while I paint and Garland walks up I have to turn off the music or he won’t come in the room.'

Don Van Vliet speaking to Kristin McKenna, taken from an article in the January 1988 edition of Spin magazine. The picture of Don and his cat Garland was taken by Don's wife Jan at their home in Northern California in February 1989.

http://www.beefheart.com/wheres-the-captain-by-kristine-mckenna/

"Hey Garland, I dig your tweed coat.
I'll trade you a domino this size, mothball-scented.
The woman silk nude tie painting his chest.
One celluloid stay exposed through his nibbled collar.
Feet speckled the sidewalk.
Faces gurgled through windows.
Passing cars gum rubber streaks.
Neon plants swim like green seaweed to a deep rhythm of blues.
Red thyroid sunsets, flame in speckled chemistry.
Pipes run off dark tubes.
Erase into marks that pour the dye of darkness.
Crystal comes together as silent as ink.
I don't think I could let it go.
I got it at the religious scene
Teeth let go, tobacco juice, an oiled balloon, brown eye in an egg white,

black tar bubbles and stripes.
A straw hat squeaked on the brim of a feather.
Newsprint thumbed through nicotine fingers, a dark olive was turned on.
Its small pulp speaker burst into a scream.
One large tomato was immediately peeled skin red.
It bled into a red "O" and smacked behind accepted fangs.
Quick eyebrows danced cutely above a mole.
The bridge held a large gold pair of spectacles.
The front was smooth.
It slightly gathered and wrinkled at the holes.
A dark wooden moustache deposited below above Chinese red varnished lips that dented slightly into the evening.
It's gotten quite cold.
I've decided I can't sell you my coat.
Honking, the wind puffed into the clumps above the lattice rows.
And out looked Panatella, naked and not ashamed, without no clothes.
Wiggle Pig went snout-first into a tree.
The rubber turkey was gobbled up by the night's dark rubber mouth.
A white phosphorous raindrop dropped in the sky.
Hot silhouettes in a convertible gave this applause.
And several white porcelain trays were rolled in by bumblebees.
Their wings arranged with pictures out of the past.
And the rainbow baboon gobbled fifteen fish eyes with each spoon.
Pockets was caught at window level.
Approaching the fractured glass, dripping in light, he spoke:
I've just looked at myself, and from here to here it ain't far enough,