[Originally written as a Not Honolulu Weekly column in the Honolulu Weekly, it ended up far too long. Kids, don't write drunk unless you're a professional like me. Uncle Doug]
CORDOBA, ARGENTINA. Okay, I’m not really in Cordoba, but with everything coming and going via email these days maybe I could say I am and no one would be the wiser. (Stu: If you’re really in Cordoba, describe the place. Me: Let’s see, from left to right I see a wall, I see a wall, I see a wall, and I see a wall. With a door. But the door’s locked…) Hey I’m a writer after all, what do you want me to do, go outside? Besides, like all good writers, I’m in exile.
Be advised, though, that this column’s got authentic Latin American content by way of Augusto. More about him (and from him) later.
I really wanted to start this column: "’Live by the sword, die by the sword.’ True that, most of the time. And, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’ That’s true too. That’s ‘PEN’ y’all, not the crayons most of you ‘writers’ use. ‘Pen’ is something with a sharp point. That’s right, I’m yelling at you ‘writers’ (notice the quotation marks around ‘writers’). If you’re not a writer just turn the page and check out the ad with the postage-stamp-size photo of the lady with the fat butt. If you are a ‘writer’ read on. And shut up while I’m yelling at you. Please be advised, if you live by the pen, you may die by the sword…"
Then I was gonna launch into a rant about how some writers here in Hawaii try to be "writers" and get so good at it they end up how? Writing for one of the dailies? The Honolulu Advertiser? Ha ha! Go looking for dough and end up the Pillsbury Doughboy, ground up flour, walking talking no flavah sliced whitebread nothings that can’t say fucking shit. Literally can’t say "fucking shit." I can. Ha ha!
But that’s just small time. You could fiend for more green and get yourself a gig at an in-flight magazine. The boss (that would be the editor, you’re just the writer) walks in and gives you this month’s gig, "Pretty this up and make it sound nice: We here in Hawaii love to kiss tourists’ assholes. We are all friendly dumb brown people who will pretty much do anything for a dollar, including pretend we like you." And you’re the writer, so your job is to plump it up, cover up the nasty stank with cheap perfume words, squeeze everything into a tight wrapper perched on stilettos, and march yourself -- I mean "it" -- up and down the corner. (To the nonwriters still following along, I’m saying that this lucky writer has mastered his craft well enough to be a whore.)
Or what? Take advantage of being in Hawaii, immersed in its history, culture, and drama, surrounded by its many peoples and then write a novel making caricature characters of Filipinos?
Or be a professor of literature and make farts very very silently? [You greybeards are supposed to be using your position at the center of learning and information to help the community shake up the status quo! Man the baricades and the banners, instigate unrest, occupy buildings, stir up shit…jeez! So many of you take your tenure as licenses to engage in social, political, and cultural inconsequentiality. This is a bonus rant within a rant, y’all!]
If you wanna fit in the writer wrapper, these are the gigs. The good gigs at that. But if you actually want to write something glorious and consequential, why not use fewer words and just write a lot bigger with a can of Krylon? Why not write something beautifully inflammatory and pass it out on street corners and post it on telephone poles? And whatever happened to catchin a good-ol' fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin your shoes coat and your hat tooken? Whoops! Listening to too much Eminem. Well, he’s a rapper, and my rap is asking how can a writer really write about rappers, recidivists, or Republicans while wrapped in a writer wrapper that ain’t the right wrap for writers?
That’s why I’m in exile here in Latin America (ha ha!). We got Writers here. Tough, mustachio-ed, tequila drinking, tango dancing, cigar smoking writers! Watch what you write, though. Being loved by the people may be reason enough for the police to come knocking. Get thrown in jail and tortured.
But write something good here and maybe some pretty girl will stand up in the streetcar and read it to the other passengers. That's what happened with Eduardo Galeano's history of South America, Memory of Fire. Your words get on streetcars and go home in hearts.
If you’re a good enough poet maybe some other poet will write something about YOU. That’s worth something, right writer?
So here’s a poem my drinking buddy Augusto in Cordoba wrote about poet Juan Gelman who this past March was awarded the national poetry prize of Argentina. Gelman is one of the writers who had to suffer the kind of state-sanctioned brutality above described. Many such writers in what Augusto calls "Aina Latino" must suffer as much. Writers in jail. Writers dead. Writers "disappeared" for what they wrote. That’s part of the "writer wrapper" here so don’t one of you chicken-shits even think of moving.
What passed as the "Authorities" at the time (70's "Dirty War") went looking for Gelman, found his son and his pregnant daughter-in-law instead. Murdured him, imprisoned her where she gave birth to a child before being tortured to death. But you know something? Gelman recently found that child.
A HAPPY POET by Augusto Al Q'adi Alcalde (translated from Spanish by the author) 24 years ago, under military dictatorship of rape, murder and immense gray sadness, They went in search of him, Juan Gelman the Poet, That night he was not a home, so, with death logic and claws, they went and picked up his son instead. Happened that his son had a wife, and the girl was pregnant, both in their twenties, so they took her too, what the fuck! He was tortured and killed, His grandfather, Juan, searched for him or his bones found them, kinda twenty years after, and a bit of peace came to his heart. His son's wife, was too tortured, and gave birth under it in a concentration camp, then, after, of course, with death logic, tortured her a bit more then killed her and her bones were never found, But the grandfather the poet the Man kept on searching from exile, from wherever, from nowhere, and twenty four years after, he found the baby, that is today, She's 24, he? I do not know ageless oldancient but never rusty. Saw the man on tv, telling the news to all of us that found in her in him our own beloved never lost compañeros/as. Saw the Man, a tear a single teardrop falling from his voice who can say of happiness or pain, a single, only, tear, the source of all poetry, all dignity all struggle all finding all walking all loving all living are contained in this, this, this, tear mixing with this red wine glass raised with salud! cheers! for life for revolution for the One Love Dead can really dance. Autumn has definitely come as every year and sometimes days as leaves dancing and nights as days years nights leaves running slow like a snail a heart a love a missing a hole dressed in poetry in faith in the word that calling the true name sings bringing forth the mistery of life the pain the heart the memory the walk pathless deep track blood searching blood pulse searching pulse and nothing no one not the nobodies that disappeared tortured killed and many other names that i'll spare the ear of has stopped, arrested, polluted, weakened the autumn eyes the poetry dressed heart the nights the missing the love today great day humble day justice day this pulse searching palpitating the hole has found his blood that is to saysingcry has found his seed his flower found her wind and the seed, of all of us seed search flies fertilized in this sea in which at least this time this laughter tear is resting is dancing is shining the past is unpredictable the future is less misty like the trees flying as the birds unclouding the red oceans. Augusto Alcalde 3/31/2000
Yeah, man. I’ll knock back a shot of tequila for that one. Salud!
Okay, I’m tired of yelling at you guys. I was gonna end this rant by saying, "So drop your crayons and pick up a pen." But I’ll end it, "Drop your crayons," and just leave it at that.
-- H. Doug Matsuoka
[The original Spanish version of "Happy Poet"]
[The shorter published (10/25/00 Honolulu Weekly) version of this article]
For another writer to writer tribute, read Richard Hamasaki's "For He Who Wears the Sea Like a Malo," for Wayne Westlake (1946 - 1984)
This is a page from the official vanity site of H. Doug Matsuoka. To go there (if you didn't come in from the front door to begin with) click DougWords. You don't have to if you don't want to and I'm not promising anything. I'm not your mom or dad. Doug.
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