RIP, Brother Man, Jack Micheline
Dateline: 3/3/98On hearing the sad news that Jack Micheline died Friday morning, alone on a BART train to Orinda. . .
Jack Micheline, painter, poet, the guy next to you at the bar, boho, true spirit, grizzled guzzler of all U.S. could offer, pappy, sappy, smart sass and free-flow po. RIP, Brother Man. No one can keep you out of Heaven.
Here's an unpublished poem (far as our eye can see), handed over at... God, what's the name of that bar in Soho, the Last Bar in Soho? Fanelli's, that's it, I'd run into Jack there occasionally. Jack loved the performance, the pizzazz. He loved Bob Kaufman, and I was working on a Kaufman reading then, and he said, "I've got this poem," and he spontaneously bopped it, I wrote it down, quickly, like a painting, or a drawing of a poem. A typical Micheline move, beatitudinous spring day, poems everywhere, couldn't help but trip over one.
Thank You, Bob Kaufman Thank you, Jack Micheline.
--Bob Holman * * * * * * * Sometimes when I saw Jack Micheline in recent years he seemed just an old, boozy blowhard, all disappointed ego & nothing to say. . . but when he was taken with the poetry, chanting, singing, tapping, knee slapping, Jack was an angel of the word. I'm glad I got to bask in his glow a few times back when so many poets were crowding every week into the tiny back room at the Cafe Babar, warming each other with our words.
--Margery Snyder * * * * * * * * * * * * * * --Ed Buryn
* * * * * * * --Kathy GossJack rides last train to Orinda
Sweet sleep (free fare!), ne'er surrender
The artful codger, origibeat
Pure poet, soulful, now complete
by Jack Micheline
That day in the Marina we threw your ashes in the Bay
You made the rainbows come
Not even the Pope could do that
From Coit Tower to Angel Island to Sausalito
You sent us a signal
A love call in the sky
Thank you, Bob Kaufman
Father Murphy
a painting by Jack Micheline
Father Murphy's lit up
Like a lost lighthouse
A hotel for good ghostsDrinking in the Park
July 1974
Crazy Jack and I got drunk in the park today
He's always angry and I'm always sad
He does the talking and I the listening
We cry inside and keep on drinking.
I sell truth, he said. Who'll trade me
Some truth for a sandwich?
Jack is always hungry--
For food, for women, for booze.
We are torn men, inside and out
Screaming to be seen, to be loved
We sell our philosophies in the street
Where we learned them, and we drink.
Jack and I are not alike at all
But we are brothers in our flesh
There are eagles inside our eyes
We flap and we fly and we drink.FOR JACK
A rough and necessary noise
Your foghorn voice
shouting of birdsong and butterflies
Telling off the dogshit blocks
in a muttered rosary
of poems and imprecations
Wringing yourhands
in Tourettish mudras
Eggstained anchorite
commended by whisperings of angels
to narrow cells in derelict hotels
and reluctant suburban sofas
Making something beautiful
where there was nothing before
Crawling bareassed
across the sunroom floor
painting the sweaty wind of horses
While the Chinese landlady
Curtainpeeks in horror
Dispatching flotillas of envelopes
to lonelyhearts newspapers
Begging women of substance
to send big ass shots
to a Tenderloin mail drop
Pissing free wine
on the Carmel gallery sidewalk
Despising the shipwrecks
and storms at sea
that pushed your mystic portraits
off the walls
You paraded your broken heart
across a Greyhound maze of country
Spirit sagging but defiant
We celebrate life at your behest
as the sharks circle
and swallow the bait of death
Dollar signs on crustless sandwiches
A river of red wine
washed up on collectors' walls
What a ragged emptiness
echoes through the gut
of the lost cities
A last lodestar gutters and fades
No longer possible
to triangulate our outrage
on a roiling sea of malls
and airport corridors
You never will consent
to join the ranks
of the Dead.
3/2/98
Did you know Jack Micheline? Have a memory you'd like to share? Write a poem for him? Come to our online wake at the Poetry Bulletin Board.
More from the Net about Jack. . .
- A brief bio with a photo of the young Jack is at Levi Asher's Literary Kicks.
- Jack's "A Poet of the Streets" appears on The Perimeter's Beatnik poetry page.
- The UC Berkeley Library offers a list of Micheline's work they have collected on video and audiotape.
- The Sacramento Poetry Center's Poetry Now has two poems from Jack's most recent book, Sixty Seven Poems for Downtrodden Saints (scroll down to the end of the Dorianne Laux interview to see them).
- Jack was a "Local Howler" for citysearch7.com, San Francisco's ABC affiliate Web site, which published "Poem" with a brief bio & a bibliography.
- At Amazon.com* you can find River of Red Wine and Other Poems available on special order from Water Row Press (which reissued it in 1986) & a performance videotape called Poet of Sound Poet of the Cities, also on special order. Skinny Dynamite (Second Coming Press), Imaginary Conversation with Jack Kerouac (Zeitgeist Press, 1989) & Last House in America (Second Coming Press, 1976) are all listed as "hard to find" (= out of print, but they will try to locate a used copy for you).
*As a result of a commercial relationship between About.com, its Guides and Amazon.com online booksellers, these titles can be purchased directly from Amazon.com by following the links above. (Note: Amazon.com is solely responsible for fulfillment of book orders placed through these links.)
