St. Peckinpah

 
"Come" she told me, "with your shame and your gringo." I looked up & stepped toward
the old woman, black habit
standing under the sun-white arch of the church.
She was called Agatha, mistress of God.
And I would be called graverobber, trapped in a movie
trapped in Mexico, some hundred & eight miles from the border,
with a man's head in a Scotch plaid hatbox. Fucking flies. And not a whorehouse in sight.
This is a dirty old town without clear pavement markings
& I drove right into the doorway of the little apostolic house of Jesus
before I noticed the labored eyes of Our Lord looking down on me.
I parked the sedan. It purred raggedly, panting exhaust
like a hole in a lung. Then the engine stopped altogether & I took my cue to get out
& get religion. Head, I'm taking you with me.
There's nothing sacred about a hole in the ground. The Church
cuts off lips, fingers, the petrified genitals of saints made merchandise ...
but me I'm seventy miles an hour
out of midnight, the village cemetery in Jalisco,
men shouting in Spanish on brown horses, women on horses
shouting & everybody's got a gun.
Hypocrites, double-crossers ... Head, you're the only one in this country who's not trying to kill me
& I appreciate that. Bygones are bygones, the past is the past & the past
wants us all to be happy. I'm going to stagger into the confessional
& stagger back out. Then we'll go see Mr. Big
& his boyfriends. So don't touch anything on the tables. So stop looking at me
with your goddamn fucking eyes.

David Penn
1995

 

“peckinpah”
by Omar Willey

 

 

 

In case you’re wondering...

I’m working on a play that requires me to think a lot about decapitation.  And that finally brought me back to a poem by my long-time friend David Penn.  I hadn’t read it in over a decade.  I searched for it first in scattered files, but you try finding actual paper these days without benefit of electronic search tricks.  Where to start?  Finally, I simply messaged Dave and asked him if he had a copy handy.  He got back to me within five minutes with the poem in electronic form and a cover message, “Depends on what you mean by handy.”

David and I went to high school together.  I met him in 10th grade when he signed on as lead guitar for a garage band I sang in  (“At The Beachhead”, in case you’re wondering.  We innovated P0p-Blues-Punk fusion for nearly all of Central Northern Baltimore County south of Hereford.)  Dave and I were soon swapping new song lyrics between classes.

 We wound up going to different campuses of the University of Maryland: him to study poetry; me—god help me—theatre.  We wrote more letters to each other in the following ten years than most lovers write in a life time.  He introduced me to such poets as Robert Bly, Seamus Heaney, Pablo Neruda, Rita Dove, Ikkyū and Elvis Costello.  He gave me my first David Bowie tape, my first Squeeze tape, my first Sade tape.  It ain’t easy to repay such debts.

But I thought you should have at least a taste of his work, so that now you can owe me.

Comments

[Bill Salyers]

If I loved this poem any more, I'd have to marry it.

[Paul Mullin]

Read it again in 15 years like I did, Billy, and you'll love it even more!