Introduction to the Rin Tin Tin Poems

 

These few poems are from the original 1,673 page manuscript “The Dark Bark” found buried in “The Yard” (as the poor animals who are to be euthanized call it) at the pound in Brighton Beach.  They are the work of Rin Tin Tin.  I write elsewhere of the strange and tragic events that led me to this manuscript – my depression, initial contacts with the spirit world, inadvertent destruction of the complete posthumous poems of Shakespeare as communicated to me by the spirit Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the establishment of communication with the dead animal world (Thank you, Ted Hughes) and, finally communication with Rinty’s spirit with the assistance of the KA of W.H Auden.  Here I can only give the briefest sketch of Rinty’s life.

 

We know about Rinty and the movies.   I’ll skip that.  What is not so well known is that he was an excellent jazz guitarist.  He met Billie Holiday in the Fifties.  They fell in love.  No one knew.

Intellectual love, of course.   He goes mad with grief after her death and -- because all dogs know the essential existentialist insight -- decides to create himself anew by joining the Cuban revolution.

 

It doesn't work -- he tries to establish serious theatre in Cuba and overcome the typecasting he has suffered from all of his life.

 

Oh, during the first flush of revolutionary joy audiences accept him (he thinks) as Puck in his Marxist version of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" but soon he is reduced to playing bit parts in proletarian dramas and then it’s not long before there is no place for him in the State Theatre.

 

He works as a street performer for a bit -- usually as Lenin -- for the Soviet visitors Castro welcomes to the island.  But then is arrested for anti-revolutionary activity when he tires of doing Lenin and tries a stint as Trotsky.  After his release he makes his living --such as it is -- teaching the mambo to canine candidates for the Cuban National Circus and peddling marijuana to vacationers from Bulgaria.

 

In 66 he makes his move and escapes to NYC disguised as Chiquita Banana (he never says what happened to the young girl on the cruise ship who had been playing the part) and almost at once falls in with a crowd of drunken stand up comic wannabes and, while stoned and driving a dune buggy along the beach, runs down and kills poet Frank O'Hara.

 

(O'Hara died of injuries he received when he was hit by a vehicle on the beach at Fire Island, on Long Island, New York).

 

He flees to Cuba.

 

He is caught and sentenced to prison again where he is released by Castro -- one of the hardened criminals Castro sends to the US -- where, after many adventures, he attains his dream and is acclaimed as the "Hamlet of his Generation" by NY theatre critics. He gives it all up again and travels in Texas and Mexico playing country guitar and getting in fights arguing over whether Fredric Remington or De Kooning is the best artist.  Gives that up and moves back to NYC.  His poetry begins to be known.

 

The reader will note that in one sequence of poems Rinty claims to have assassinated JFK.  True – he did testify before the Warren Commission but I believe we can dismiss these claims as sheer fantasy caused by Rinty’s failure to get Leslie Howard’s role in “The Manchurian Candidate.”  I believe we should choose to remember the famous “Life” cover of Rinty saluting the eternal flame at JFK’s tomb rather than those photos taken later that night on the Mall -- drunken, under arrest and wearing only a significant leer and a leopard-skin pillbox hat.

 

Rinty spent his last years in New York City.

 

And then, of course, destroyed by his own loathing of his being in time as a dog all he has left -- loveless and writing this memoir in the pound in Brighton Beach where he will be euthanized -- are memories of his betrayals and regrets that overwhelm everything else.

 

The first poem “Late for a Poetry Reading” starts somewhat towards the end.

 

 

Late for a Poetry Reading

 

Late for a poetry reading

and trusting the Sufi

livery cab driver

because he pretended

he knew me

(“How old are you

anyway? What is that

in dog years?”)

and half drunk

in any case

having known

intellectual love

with Billie

She dead these

thirty years

and fame and

an excess of revolutionary

ardor those years

in Cuba

and don't even

ask me about the sixties

having ridden the

Union Pacific

to the Cheyenne cutoff

loveless

in America

in winter

dreaming a

heavenly chasm

but no and

then hating

death and all

those who love it

returning through

West Texas from

Pancake to

Goodnight

in the railroad yard

there I heard

the OJays and

so returning to New York

and ending that night

somewhere in

I think

Long Island

poetry reading

in the Bronx

and at dusk

trying to find

my way back

seeing at the

window of

a perfectly bourgeois

house her a

young German Shepherd

the cream gold

glittering of her

eyes she looking

at this old dog

in perfect indifference

and knowing never

again I turn

the corner

always forever

going no-where

at the end of this

life

 

and bark

at the difficult dark.

 

 

This second poem is a beginning and an ending of sorts (a typical denouement) after Rinty returns to the USA after exile in Cuba.

 

 

Los Marielitos

 

You know Elmore Leonard

got a lot of his Florida schtick from me

when I was sobering up down in Miami.

 

I guess it was inevitable that I would

get involved with the mob after I fled Cuba

but it didn't start out that way.

 

May, 1980. They called us Los Marielitos.

 

I was one of 123,000 new Cuban refugees

that came to the USA in a short five months,

including about 5,000 of us who

were said to be hard-core criminals.

 

They crossed the ocean on a prayer.

 

On crowded, unsafe fishing boats.

 

On rafts held together by tires.

 

In search of a myth.  Carrying only the

clothes on their backs, a passport, and a

crumbled piece of paper with a relative's phone number in the US.

 

I knew better.

The myth was over for me long ago.

 

I had Lassie's phone number but of course I would never call it.

She was probably dead and it was a whole new generation and

here I was, the icon of a previous generation, puking half

digested red beans over the side of a raft.

 

Back in the USA. Back in the USA

done in by the hype back then and by,

yes, my own yen to do serious theatre.

 

 

"The Defiant Ones"

 

The studio really wasn't happy with Tony Curtis

His real name?

Bernie Schwartz.

 

They came to me.  As always.

 

But I didn't really think it would be a good move

to play a role in which I would have

to be manacled to another actor for the whole movie.

 

I didn’t tell this to Billie.

But she would have understood.

We had that kind of relationship.

 

"Don't threaten me with love, baby.

Let's just go walking in the rain."

 

I was already leery of typecasting

and ready to break out.

 

This was in 58, of course.

Billie died next year.

I remember what she told me:

 

“You can be up to your boobies in white satin,

with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane

for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.”

 

Yeah, so my TV show was a hit.

So what?

 

West Side Story had been a possibility

It's based on Romeo and Juliet

but I turned that down too.

 

They didn't know about me and Billie.

Lady Day.

 

No-one did.

 

If they only knew.

 

Sidney Poitier was a gentleman to me when

I met him but I felt that… well…

that he simply wasn't up to the role

 

and I was tired of having to carry my part

and everyone elses.

 

I suggested Richard Burton -- a little make up

… but they wouldn't go for it.

 

Sir Lawrence Olivier would have been good

But tell you the truth I didn't want to be chained to a lisping Limey for hours on end.

 

And I'll tell you what.

 

It was Shakespeare or nothing.

That’s the way I felt.

I told Billie I loved her.

She said:

 

"Don't threaten me with love, baby.

Let's just go walking in the rain."

 

 

 

 

 

No, I Am Not Prince Hamlet Nor Was Meant To Be

 

You humans are so predictable.

In fact for years most dogs

were convinced that you were utterly

without self-consciousness -- without Mind.

 

After all, we present a stimulus to you

and we ALWAYS get a predictable response.

 

The fact is we have such a horror

of the fact

that we can NOT be sincere

that we do whatever we can

to make it stop.

 

Yeah, a dog will pant

and bark and bring the

damn ball back again and again and again

 

-- we do it to keep from going mad,

to hope to experience

just for an instant unmediated

unironic consciousness, to --for just one instant

-- be THERE, be in the moment.

 

It never works.

 

Never.

 

That's why we die so young

and it is also why I was,

on a foggy evening OFF OFF Broadway

in a little theatre in the year 1959,

 

I was, simply put,

 

 

the best Hamlet of my generation.

New York City -- Towards Night

 

When I reflect how that

My little light went out

Then I find my mind returning ever

To the Golden Retrievers

Of Manhattan

Forced into the indignity

Of limping beside

The jogging wife

Of the Day Trader

With her highlighted tresses

And DKNY shirt

And her pierced low carb belly

Exposed and that bitter breed

Chained next to her

Desiring only, perhaps,

To die

Then only then

Am I at peace with Death.

 

 

In Loneliest Country

 

In Loneliest Country

I remember that

The philosopher Berdyaev wrote

About how when he

Was little and it was night

And he was with his mother

Wanting to get to Moscow

In a bolshoy hurry whizzing under

The stars in a sleigh the kind

Dear to the memory of Nabokov

That is a sort of unreal sleigh

As he was whizzing past all

Those wretched villages maybe

Seeing only a dog shivering

Before some wretched hut that

He thought  “All over.

All over.  No More.  All lost.”

He would never see that dog again.

 

But I was worried there

In Loneliest Country

Coatesville, PA turning

The corner of Second Avenue

Noticing a three legged dog

Following me and seeing it all

Someone’s dead grandmother

Passed me and I was looking

For the Loneliest Ranger wondering who is

That lonely and restless man

Behind that swinging facade?

The dog following me the American Icon

And no Mister though

You never asked you smoking

A Pall Mall in front of the

Furniture store across from

Lipkins I don’t need a 21 Inch

Magnavox Color TV or a bedroom soot.

And where was Loneliest I’ll bet

In Cuernavaca or Taxco

Up the street I am wearing my

Sheep shirt the one with all

The sheep on it.  Damn dog.

Turning up the “Knowledge of Death

Is the Source of our Praise Avenue.”

Unreal city and there he is

But I don’t even have to ask

He says  “Behind that swinging facade

Is another swinging façade.” And then

“Do you remember the little cake shop

On the Neva the one Pound mentions

Where he never was where I never was

Where you never was” and I say

“Damn right I do.”

And he is gone and I turn to

The little three legged dog

Running TOWARDS me and

I am happy and call

“Here, Hoppy! Come here, boy!”

 

 

1953

1953 was a hard year for me.

Sad. I don't know why.

I had work. Me and Bob Mitchum

Were friends at last.  After all

Those misunderstandings.  "You want to

Break out?" I asked him.  "Then forget

All this crap about being a natural actor."

I took his drink away.  Got his attention.

"Acting is a craft. Don't scowl at me.

You know I'm right.  You'll never

Do Shakespeare unless…"  He eyed me warily.

"Yo, Rinty," he said. "You have Billie"

(I had told him) "What do I have?"

He fired up another Chesterfield.

Squinted through the smoke.

"Nothing happens anyway."

 

Nothing happens?

I knew what he meant.

I was getting there.

 

He grinned. "How the Hell did you

Do that to McCarthy?"

I gave him back his drink.

"Told him I was a commie, that's how.

"I'm an American Icon, Bob.  It was too much for him.

Goodbye Tailgunner Joe."

 

Bob laughed but he didn't believe me.

He was really quite a charming man

Guys who don't believe in anything often are.

So he could be a gentleman to Rita Hayworth

Down in Mexico, her mind gone.  But…

A bastard to everyone else.

Nothing in his eyes.

 

And I was sad there.

It was New York.  September 13, 1953.

Another dive,  another gig.

Bob left with a blonde before I began to play.

I started to play but just walked out.

It was the night Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey had

Finally gotten together again.

They kept playing while I put down my guitar.

 

They never forgave me.

 

"A" train to Harlem.

Got in Billie's DeSota and drove.

 

In a few hours

Lost in Pennsylvania.

Stopped.  Don't know why.

Got out.  Looked up.  Falling star.

Not me.  Something from forever.

 

Finally found a town.

Asked a little guy outside a hospital for directions.

"We just had a baby girl," he said.

 

I drove back to my life.

 

 

L.A. Song

 

It's all pre-need as they say.

I knew it when I went to L.A.

To lend my peculiar grace

To that particular place.

I'm sorry that I had to stay.

 

It's the wanting it all that kills.

Still, I wish I had one of them stills

Of me "In the Yukon"

With that little toucan.

I'll never see it and no-one else will.

 

I had a few drinks with my pals.

We wished we knew more of those gals.

Those gals who are sad

And wasted and bad.

The gals who were just like my pals.

 

So I stay in the Hollywood Hills.

And dream of the ghosts of those pills.

The kind you would take

At the Sir Francis Drake

And wait while the emptiness fills.

 

 

Breakfast at Tiffany's

And Capote there.  Drunk in the morning.

That light is really what I remember

Through the window the jewels there.

Who was he anyway?  Killings in Kansas.

"This is big, Rinty. I'm going to write about it.

Something new.  Show them all."

Looking around tee he

To see who else was there.

Me looking at that light

"Look. Are you going to interview me or not?"

"A whole family. They killed them all.

Look I have a picture."

"I'm not looking at that," I said

And I was gone.

 

**********************

We were talking about Indians.

At the highway rest stop

You saw a stellar jay

Flying into the dark.

 

All these towns built on the bones

Of sleepy children!

Families hauling European clocks

Over the hourless prairie.

 

Into the dark again and the moon.

We stop even though it is below zero.

Something blows through our bodies.

Ghosts fleeing us. They can do this easily.

 

Tonight we finally see our bodies.

The moon's moon floats in the sky.

All night this happens!

 

****************************

What do you hear on the radio radio?

What do you hear on the radio, dear?

 

*****************************

 

It was Christmas on Fifth Avenue

Ghost dog.  Ghost dog.

I do this a lot.

I would save them all if I could.

 

Then I remember I left Capote with the check.

And I am happy again!

 

The green so green tree at Rockefeller Center.

Some guy telling a joke.

And I'm still hungry.

A Reuben and an egg cream.

The little waiter looking like God

His wife dead

Everyone a stranger forever.

What a Little Moonlight Can Do

 

Three days after Bastille day

Behind the shut up café

In a broke down car

(Hard to gas yourself

If the car won’t start)

In Cross Plains, Texas

Thinking I saw nothing

More than myself

Reflected in my Les Paul

Black Beauty that night

I step out of my 1971

Ford Maverick the

Door operated courtesy

Light snicking on and

Look up at the sky

At all the tired animals

Stars bluewhitelonely

Thinking of that night

At the Three Deuces so

Long Ago and playing at

The Famous Door

The night Billie died

Errol Garner, Me, Oscar

Pettiford, Errol saying

You better than Django

But nobody will ever say it.

Not knowing Billie was dead

I was happy. Looking up

I say at the skyey animals

The old dog in the moon

Ending like this

Saying to the drunks

In the cowboy bar

This riff is based on Les Negres

By Jean Genet laughing

At myself really and now

Wanting it to end but

The car won’t start. Looking

Up I remember I told Billie

Radiance is the dealbreaker

And heard, radio definably off

Her singing “What a Little

Moonlight Can Do” and

That was the last time

I was truly happy and

I was there knowing

I would never try

To find the music again

 

Tired.

 

Pancake

 

Levelland

 

Mule Shoe

 

Sonora

 

Meadow

 

What vistas of hidden forgetfulness

Exhaustively at hand!

 

 

After the First Death, Well….

 

The collies yapped outside the funeral home

The whole world it seemed was sinking, sinking

I illumed the lamp, read a curious tome

Minnie Cheevied it and kept on drinking.

Damned hard to do with the goblins chuckling.

Ah, yes they won’t get no satisfaction.

No swoons, or faints, and no knees buckling:

I read, and drink and choose inaction.

“More Ovaltine?”  Lassie draws near.

“And tell me, Rinty, what are you reading?”

“It’s only Captain Midnight, dear

Poor guy, he’s taking quite a beating.”

I kissed her, then said, “I won’t forget

Though really screwed, he’s not dead yet.”

 

 

Road Kill

 

I ignore them.

The possum squashed on the macadam.

The unprophetic  groundhog, in Texas

A holocaust of Armadillos, the skunk

“Skunk.  God!” you say.

Driving on, a snake absolutely flat on the road.

 

There is no heaven of animals

A rabbit.  A black and white cat.

A small dog stinking in the sun.

 

You see them and you make up a story.

The dog setting out to warn us all:

Fire, fire in the forest! The turtle there

100 years old!... what thoughts there, Rinty?

And what innocence for all of them.

 

I’m glad one of us knows the signs

To find our home.

 

 

The Thing

 

The Thing that

Is really

Quite unrepresentable

I represent anyway

It’s really

Quite tenable

Just like a lawyer

Whose client

Unkennable

Testified awfully

Horribly unmendable

Admitting something

Really unpennable

An unkennable, unfencible

Horrible thing.

Really quite venerable

Completely unlexible

Sadly unhexible.

You say that I represent nothing at all?

Please, make yourself comfortable.

I’ll go make a call.

 

 

RinTinTology

 

I never met Django

Never really wanted too, I guess

We would have “eyed each other warily”

Like the time I met Senator Jack Kennedy

Was it 57?

In the Cozy Cole me playing there

Jack with Sammy

Sammy told me he was nervous.

Jack working on his charisma thing

And me... height of my fame

Billie there Jack wanting her to come to his table

Her not noticing and me looking at her

Playing “Vous et Moi”

Sammy said “Man, come on down see who’s here.”

So afterwards I sit down next to the Senator

He in black glasses smoking a Kool

Undercover or something

Billie came over. She said she liked the man

Afterwards, knew his Daddy… called him

Mr. Death. “That boy has troubles.”

She said. “He was just nervous meeting me.”

I told her. She could see that.

Anybody could. “He eyed you warily

Behind those shades” We laughed.

Forgot about it. I had something he wanted.

And he had something…something…

Held back… connection to... as if he knew

About us, about me and Billie,

Something he said. Joking about Howard Hughes.

Sammy told me Jack laughed afterwards.

“Said he was nervous. Something strange. Didn’t

Know why.”

 

In 63 in August Castro “eyed me warily.”

A little moonlight, bourbon on his breath,

Backstage, the little moon a paper one

For “Midsummers Night Dream.” A wood near

Athens and I had transformed it, a bit of Brecht,

All of Shakespeare, Theseus nervous knowing

That Quince knew, Flute knew, Bottom breaking

the frame, declaring the revolution and me as Puck

Leaping, flying off that stage, like Peter Pan

TO FIDEL he standing up, smiling,

Me kneeling with the flowers but he

Afterwards backstage distant and cold wondering I thought

If the applause was for him or me.

Che was very nice, however.

Speaking one word… one word.

And I was in Dallas next was in Dallas then.

If I could play great jazz guitar

No hand…only paws.

Why couldn’t I

Slowly, hold breath, there he is

Pull the trigger

Of a Manlicher-Carcano 6.5mm rifle?

 

 

The Platinum Goddess

 

Stepping into

Her room

I see

What should

Not be seen.

Beauty is sleeping.

Beauty is sleeping.

Nice work, my friends.

In Texas

Driving through

West Texas there

Ahead a silver trailer.

“Good Sam Club.”

A dolt with a halo.

Passing on

The shoulder going

Nowhere I look up.

American dolt behind

the wheel.

Going nowhere.

Like me.

I can do nothing for him.

Arlington

Me standing before

The eternal flame.

Photogs.

Speed graphic cameras.

One tear.

Saluting Jack.

“American Icon”

Cover of Life

Yes, one wants life.

Nou goeth sonne under wod.

 

 

Boulez, Bloch, Maurice Ravel

 

Boulez, Bloch, Maurice Ravel

Tell me. Are you doing well?

I seem to hear a faint demurral.

Is that you?

Or just this squirrel

Shivering in my winter garden

While I stand here like Sydney Carlton?

 

Mercy for all in fall of sparrow?

Do I hear a faint Bolero?

 

 

Letter from a Dog Before Troy

 

Dear Penelope,

It's windy here. Nine years in a tent on the beach.

Ulysses says they know what they're doing.

 

Right.

Nine years and for what?

What’s nine years to them?

Most of my life.

I’m tired. Don’t even ask me about the gods.

There’s a limit to loyalty.

But you already know that.

I know about the puppies.

You should have told me.

She told me, of course.

I don’t care.

Just get them out of Ithaca.

By the time you read this

I’ll be gone.  I have...what...four more years?

Going to someplace where there are no men.

No gods.

Maybe a few rabbits.

 

 

All the Starry Animals

 

Looking up

I love them too --

All the starry animals.

Looking down

Or not.

Not saying anything.

Not saying nothing either.

 

 

Old Dog: A Villanelle

 

I am an old dog and am gently trying,

To meekly go to the difficult dark..

Alone, alone I am slowly dying.

The slow snow drifts down and no wind sighing.

Take out a Zippo and light up a Lark.

No regrets none. No who and no whying.

Sad ghosts outside I hear them all crying.

Mort Sahl’s on TV. Makes a funny remark.

No, thanks Time/Life I guess I’m not buying.

Death’s at the door. The bastard is lying.

“Hey, Rinty! It’s Lassie!”  One small sad bark.

Wilder wind now.  The snowflakes are flying.

Good Night has come. There is no denying.

Unknown is that country. Stark is the bark.

I am an old dog and am dying, dying.

And you, who haunt me forever sighing,

Crying my name in the difficult dark.

I am an old dog and am dying, dying.

I am alone and am dying, dying.

I am an old dog and am dying, dying.

I am an old dog and am dying, dying

Alone, alone I am slowly dying

I am alone and am dying, dying.

 

 

I Died In New York

 

I died in New York

At the shelter in Brighton beach.

My last silence.

I thought of Pound at Rapallo in the last years.

Silence.  He didn't speak to anyone.

He too had been in a cage.

Like him I wrote and wrote

It was all I had left.

1,673 pages of my life.

And this is how it ends.

The guy gave me part of his pastrami sandwich.

I had Lou Reed's number.

I had Woody's.

But I didn't ask the guy to call.

 

"Come, kindly death," I wrote.

Not without irony. it's a line I never got to say.

The kind of line that went to others.

 

I acted with my body one arf one twitch of the tail

and you knew what it meant to be with the 7th at Little Big Horn your little boy dead beside you with a hole in his neck and the bright blood and the blue sky above and

 

the

 

red

 

Indian

 

yowling and you running to tell someone, tell Custer

tear his throat out for he brought you to this

and then they'd say "CUT" and I would have a smoke and mess around with my stand-in and tell Jew jokes and then

 

I

 

WAS

 

ON

 

but I never even began to be what I was

 

Never

 

Never

 

Never

 

and yes I could have been Lear.

 

Oh you are men of stone!

 

 

But I said not a word.

 

It's cold with the breeze from the beach.

I was in Brighton Beach

I was dying.

 

At Sardi's in 57 I think with Capote I told him

everything Hollygolightly and he took it and

changed the name to Tiffanys just because no-one

would believe a dog could be so tender and gay...

 

But I loved the movie.

 

It was cold in Brighton Beach

The guy also gave me some knishes.

All of it lost. I should have been kinder.

 

At night I howled.

 

 

My Epitaph

 

How oft has the Banshee cried

O’er a poor dead dog’s grave?

Snow.  Silence.  Don’t ask why.

Nothing to save.

Yet, I loved you sweet passers by.

Dear Catchers in the Rye.

As you are so once was I.

 

 

Jazz Life/Afterlife

 

I went to Hell.

Never looked back.

Already been to Texas.

 

Talk about "Le Jazz Hot."

They were all there.

Of course.

The Hot Club.

 

Like before...they were ghosts.

 

I remember that time in the Four Aces

Errol saying. "You on tonight, my man"

Without irony.

I knew what he meant.

Laying down a line like Judassilver.

Wanting it all never getting it.

Missing that one chord.

 

He meant I wasn't perfect.

So perfect.  So trying...like we all did.

Him what...in a few years?

Dead.

Love in vain.

All in vain.

And not

 

There... not getting it all

Just missing.

Notes dying.

Only rain outside.

 

Talk about "Le Jazz Hot."

They were all there.

Of course.

The Hot Club.

 

 

Before Another Poetry Reading

 

1.

Just like Robert Lowell

Before he went definably mad

My “author” (let’s call him Joe) steps off the plane

Where he is met

With greasy servility

By a nervous graduate student

Who notes

Shaky hands

Red eyes

Too many whiskeys.

Into the car

“Reception at five, sir!”

“Five o’clock in the afternoon?”

Where are the great finned cars of yore?

Passels of Passats….only…

Joe eyes him warily.

“Take me to the Old Aquarium!”

“But…where?”

“I need to see the Colonel.”

Vonnegut on the car radio. Still alive then?

“South Boston. I wait

For the blessèd break.”

“Where…?”

“Drive,” he says and somehow

There.

 

2.

“I have been living at the Garden of Allah.

Yours, Scott Fitzgerald”

Then

in the Wordsworth Room

Of the Pierce Brothers mortuary

1941 720 West Washington Boulevard

Ghost Dog

Returning to where I never was

Where was I?

Scott there. No.

“His hands were horribly wrinkled and thin.”

At 44: “He actually had suffered and died an old man.”

Returning then.  Dorothy Parker remembers Gatsby.

Says “Poor son of a bitch.” to Scott Not Scott.

No there there as they say.

Seeing what?  Mystery.  Seeing what she wanted.

Ghost Dog.

“Scott, I will always remember looking in on

whatever it is that is to me, you.

Yours, Rin Tin Tin.”

 

3.

At the monument.

Remembering that line about Shaw’s father.

Looking for Loneliest there, perhaps.

Joe then back in the car.

“I’m ready,” he says.

Shaky hands, red eyes..

“It’s almost five. I don’t know if we’ll make it.”

“Skunk hour,” Joe thinks.

“Drive like the wind,” he says.

Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.

 

 

Epigraph

I bark at the dark until the darkness yields.

As you go stark. Babbling of green fields.

Yours,

Rinty