Not Quite Self Promotion
I posted the following letter on Facebook a while back. It is a piece about me by my friend and fellow writer Dennis Ray Powell, Jr. He is one of my favorite poets and writers, though you will be hard-pressed to find his writing published or online outside of notes posted on social networks. The piece was meant to be an introduction to one of my chapbooks. I don’t know why it didn’t go in. Perhaps I lost it. Perhaps he didn’t get it to me in time. There is no way to know; we were often quite drunk back in those days. I would feel a bit egotistical about posting it, except Dennis is an exceptional writer, and this piece is a small glimpse of what he is capable of. I find the beauty in his writing more than me as the subject:
–Dennis Ray Powell, Jr.
God, I first saw him at some broke neck poetry reading in Bloomington, Indiana. Not God. Ian Girdley. I had two shots of whiskey in me as we exchanged words which was a breathy precursor for all which was to come. That coffee shop(which we were both later banned from for life) was cluttered with relics of hipness, Scrabble boards, dingy mosaic lamps and black horned rim glasses. Ian read a poem about leaves on the sidewalk amongst a series of others, mostly about drinking and life’s problems. We discovered that the two tended to intertwine. I loved that leafy poem, though. Leaves on the sidewalk in the fall crackling beneathe his pistachio green Chuck Taylor clad feet. That’s how I see Ian, always.
Crackling down the sidewalks through the endless autumnal booze of this life eyes blaring out wildly at the sight of some beautiful woman in a swishy dress, he’s saying “excuse me, ma’am. You wouldn’t happen to have a buck I could borrow for a Den Pop, wouldja?” And then, “You’re beautiful, anyway. Have a nice day.” And he would smile at his own daring act, his scruffy beard of occasion winking the sunlight of the early evening as we sipped Shoplift Brand no.7 Whiskey. Without Den Pop for chaser.
And we would shuffle with silly jokes down the stinking Bloomington alleyways that always were so reminiscent of grease and collegiate overconsumption. “Give me another, dude…” And gulp, and gulp…Not talking about the whiskey but that too and the poetry and the crackling sidewalk leaves, the bottles of wine and the injury filled wrestling matches we would have with our bawdy brood of bungling wine sucking friends. Ian Girdley, Bastard Father Figure on Earth. I called him that as we stumbled to my apartment in November, 2003. We slept with beer breath and awoke to poetic omelettes impossible to flip.
Ian Girdley, his pants as holy as his theories, his soul as scarred as his forehead, his head as afire as his perpetual Camel cigarette.
He never had much but he gave it away for free nightly and in every one of those heartbroken headaches there was a love poem. A love poem written to hate, a love poem written to a strange smell, a love poem written to a sperm splattered bathroom stall, a love poem written to a sexy hypodermic needle. All of his poems always seemed like love poems to me but it was always a love that needed a cigarette and coughed hoarsely from some beautiful sky colored deathbed. Ian Girdley, a true Dharma Bum in the most genuine Kerouackian sense of that heretofore unknown word, he meditated to an invisible rheumy eyed Buddha bum that was carved not of gold but of sad bars of soap forever unused and dreams that were constantly flowing down the path of some golden whiskey river. But that Buddha bum was carved nevertheless and he worshipped it night after night while burning sticks of nicotine scented incense in it’s honor as he shouted to Taco Bell from the Video Saloon hoarse lovepoems lamenting the Last Call. Jesus had the Last Supper and Ian Girdley had the Last Call.
Finally I see him staring at flocks of beauties from the shade of the Soma tree, legs stretched out long and bony, eyes puffed with hazy adventures. Ian Girdley, love poet to all things holy or unholy. I watch him sleeping in the snowy doorways wrapped in blankets of bottles, cheeks flushed red for the love of the schizophrenic moment. Ian, I see you, your clothes more hole than anything else. The leaves crunch beneathe your feet, it’s always October for guys like us but he’ll never head south as long as some moment needs a couplet or a haiku to fall asleep to…
