Philip
K. Dick
and
Other Poems
Anne
Dick
(A
Preliminary Note on Anne Dick�s Philip
K. Dick and Other Poems)
Equestrian,
avid reader (at times she has read five novels a day), sculptor, jewelry and graphics designer, business woman, mother and
grandmother (and a friend whose generosity is unlimited), writer Anne Dick has
lived since 1955 on Mesa Road in Point Reyes Station, a small town in
northwest Marin County, on the coast of Northern California, in the same house
which she shared
�Is
the omphalos, the center of the world
(...)
with
Philip K. Dick
for
five years while he finished writing the novel Time out of Joint, and wrote
Confessions of a Crap Artist, The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, The
Man In the High Castle, We Can Build You, Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney,
or How We Got Along After the Bomb, The Game-Players of Titan, The Simulacra,
Now Wait For Last Year, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and wrote part
of Clans of the Alphane Moon, The Crack in Space, The Zap Gun and The
Penultimate Truth.
Though
we lived in different universes
Phil
and Anne met in October 1958 and were married in Mexico the 1st of April,1959*
the
majority of these poems written by Anne after Phil�s death, after time
and space and other crazinesses tore him from her side, restore for us now
the old
cracked mirror of
her bedroom in front of which, like Orpheus, she asked:
how
can I get to the other side.
Search
for Philip K. Dick** and
Philip
K. Dick and Other Poems
are
the words
�I
descended with you down towards death
(...)
of
her memory: the answers of her vigil , of her dreams, of her visions, of the
poems that guide those of us who have been abandoned by the divinity on this
side of the mirror
�God�s
thought words sprang into being as whole universes�
to
be again with Phil.
�Miguel Díaz Fernández,
Segovia,
Spain,
July
2001
(Translated
from the Spanish
by Anne Dick)
[*:
The following year Laura Archer Dick was born, Phil�s first child and Anne�s
fourth (Hatte, Jayne and Tandy were daughters from her marriage to poet
Richard Rubenstein who had died on 1958�s Yom Kippur day from an allergy to
strong tranquilizers.)
]**:
Search
for Philip K. Dick, 1928-1982: A Memoir and Biography of the Science Fiction
Writer
(1995, The Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter)]
Philip
K. Dick and Other Poems
My
Very Own Personal Dark Wood
(When?...Where?)
Requiem
for a Dead and/or Divorced Husband
Sun
I love you sun, warming me
Baking away inner mists
For a while I forget
Wind
Blow harder wind
I am ready to spread my arms
and sail with you
Winter
A gale blows through the trees
all night
It sounds like a train rushing
by
In my bed I can feel the wind
blowing through me
Rain
Great rains come in winter
The air is not air but water
falling for days weeks
Sometimes months
My Very Own Personal Dark Wood
a will-of-the wisp
momentarily illuminates
my dark wood
why am I here?
is this the path to Paradise?
No guide meets me
I remain alone
in this lifeless forest
among the obscure tree trunks
shall I press on further into the wood
should I go back
I can�t decide
I�m sitting here drinking
Korbel�s and eating an apple
by the light of two candles
The power is out
The wind is blowing hard,
harder than it has for many years
and earlier it was hailing and
raining great sheets of water
But now the moon has appeared
I remember when we sat around
the fire together and my house had a hearth
we watched the rain then too
and later the full moon shone though the windows
Tonight I don�t weep for that
phantom husband or my brother Robert and perhaps Richard too...and Arthur (King
Arthur?)
my father who loved me and went
on a journey long ago...a quest perhaps
for the holy grail
Death is not overcoming me in
fact vice versa
All those years I could not
weep
all those girls to raise to be
archaeologists
linguists, designers,
accountants, mothers, friends...
I beg only a few tears for
dreams undone
for blazing hearths, true
knights, just kings...
king to knight�s pawn...was
it all just a game?
Moon shining on me says,
�Yes, dream and weep a little...�
tomorrow back to the
quest, the
fray, another day, another year
another life with tap roots
deep in the past
On April 1, 1983 my anniversary
fell on Good Friday,
But I have had enough of a Good
Friday life
I will no longer descend into
the grave
to be with him I loved so long
ago
But why does my heart still
twist?
Why is the sunlight gray?
The altar is stripped
Bone crunching gavel clacks
The darkness is so familiar
(I dream of hills, flowers,
bird calls)
Vaporized rock becomes motes
In the light which streams,
warms, dazzles,
and etches sun on convoluted
gray
I
When I was growing up
What we now call �our galaxy�
�the local system�
was THE UNIVERSE
with a little fuzzy star
in the constellation
Andromeda
possibly outside it
(you could just barely see it
with the naked eye
below the third star of the
handle
of the big dipper)
That was all there was
until Hubble came along
II
Then we learned that the
universe
was an immense collection
of billions of galaxies
of many sizes and shapes
some colliding with each other
all fleeing from us
and we personally
were not even dust motes
in fact
our whole solar system was
hardly even
a dust mote
in this immensity
III
Lately they�ve taken pictures
of the edge of the universe
and disproved the theory
that at the end of time
The Universe
will collapse into itself
thereby
ruining my earlier poem
about
love
I was lying on my side
in my bed
not yet asleep
a narrow strip of space
and a face
appeared
ten inches above me
he was pressed to the ground
there
looking at me
I could see a desert
behind
a hood on his robe
like those of the desert
fathers
he had admired
that face
I knew so well
smiled at me
tenderly
Eyes
Glinting
green eyes
leading far
into the
years
perhaps
forever
wherever
forever
happens to
be
He came to me only in the night
but once when it was almost
dawn
I saw his face
It was a mask
he had been compelled to wear
as a child
it had fused to the skin of his
cheeks,
his forehead, his brow
his jaw
he had tried all his life to
remove it
after that dawn
he never returned
He turned on the myth machine
and the opera machine
He directed the passion play
but he didn�t stay until the
end
Pale
My pale little anglo soul
could not be embraced
it slipped out of his arms
like fog
like Homer�s wraiths
I and universe are one
She dreamed of making love to
the universe
he came to her as a beautiful
man
with long golden quasar hair
his irises were exploding stars
his pupils black holes
his saliva galactic foam
billion of galaxies whirled
around him, through him
when he embraced her his
fingers sank deep between her ribs
sank into her body cavity
into her lungs
into her heart
his head sank into her head
his torso sank into her torso
he became her
she became him
H
Dumpty
Though we lived in different
universes
We met for a moment
in
friendship and love
But it was like loving Peter
Pan
or the Gingerbread boy
or maybe Humpty Dumpty
Did I push him off that wall?
Could I have kept him from
falling?
The pieces would not fit
together
I tried very hard
I�ll read another book by
Jung
to find the answer
In my dream I opened the
refrigerator
to cook dinner for Herr Jung
but all the meat was rotten
Is the
omphalos, the center of
the world
really on Mount Parnassus
We were only fragments
of the archetype
husband-and-wife
On the Quay I told you to go
away
But instead we got married on
April fool�s day
Someone turned off the gas jet
I stepped out of the ring of
flames
Fully clothed but not yet in my
right mind
Let the storybook romance
begin:
We played endless games of
baseball and monopoly,
Bought a dog and found a cat
Grew roses and planted a
Japanese pine
That had been trained to grow
sideways
Two feet above the ground.
We swam in Tomales Bay until
cold November came
I sunbathed naked until the day
the postman rang twice.
I was sure of your love
Years later I was near Jericho
where Bishop Pike dried up in
the Judean desert
the temperature was a hundred
and twenty
I was afraid to leave the
shadow of the restaurant
where we had eaten falafel
and cross the street to get
back to the car
a little red ford escort I had
rented
to drive in Israel
with my daughter and her lover
Bishop Pike changed the rules
of the game
�Forget about that
death-do-us-part bit
II
Headlines in the Point Reyes
Light read
�Perfect husband remarries�
He no longer mops the floors
and seasons the wild mushrooms
In the black iron frying pan
With ginger and soy and garlic
and red wine
He no longer
Ties the children�s shoes
and drives them to modern dance
class
We broke the lamp
We broke the ebony okapi
It even dented the concrete
floor
We threw all the dishes.
and scared the children
we had to take them to
Disneyland
to make it up to them
The sun shone above the clouds
during that winter
when the rains never stopped
When spring came
I dug up your roses,
�Peace� and �Charlotte Armstrong�,
and gave them to my neighbor
I gave away all your books
I burnt your letters
The garden turned to weeds
On the way to Petaluma there
was
a rock shrine with a poppy
offering
I thought God had left a
bouquet for me
in that field beside the road
(When?...Where?)
Surrounded by Revelation�s
creatures I broke the seal...
(His best friend dreaming while
he waited)
shifting images sharpened
only Greeks on Patmos to tell
the tale in their peculiar idiom
The prophesy arose from the
mountain
�I am a long and lonely
journey
What is true? What do you want
to do?�
In the night of wrong a bright
flash
shows the disciples on their
way
their number augmented by a
mighty one
who gave his dark and shattered
all
Shadowy visions of the
one-who-came back
bewilder and excite the lonely
child
was the journey to light and
life?
not the tomb?
not grey depression?
Only the slain lamb
no hedgerows around his
windswept field
can open the scroll
Blackface lamb pulls me back
through the years
friend of my heart were you
really there?
�Come out, come out, wherever
your are...
�Olly olly oxen free...�
The babes have flown, grown
but though they speak in
tongues, Aramaic, Hebrew, Italian and Spanish
they do not speak the language
we knew
back in 1962
Words
Words spoken years ago sometimes echo in my brain
Sometimes they take on a different meaning
Words make poems, novels, conversations.
Words make conversation
God�s thought words sprang into being as whole universes
Words let people tell each other of love
Words keep people apart
Wrap it all up with words and
throw it in the void
Meet me at the divorce court at
3:30 April 23rd
Buy that rifle on the wall of
the Palace Meat Market
Who is the target, you or me
Seven
He sat on the white naugahyde
couch
after seven years of wandering
and cried as the children
skipped and played outside.
My would be lovers had all
disappeared into smoky bars
sitting at round rickety tables
endlessly sipping glasses of
Chardonnay
His was an act too hard to
follow.
I had to leave
I had to run along the beach.
The wind threw the stinging
sand in my face
white foam shuddered at the
ocean's edge.
Human
Most of us
don�t make it,
Stay
primates
Exiled
Exiled by my sex
by cities crushing weight
(all those souls!)
dead asphalt, killing concrete,
exiled by my mind
exiled from the company of like
expatriates
themselves
in lands
shown on no maps
exiled by my words
exiled by my song
where are you my love
exiled
That connection
at the bottom of the soul
at a depth seldom reached
that longing
that need
that total giving
of the ocean-bottom soul
the �not I�?
unknown, mysterious
forms a bond
unbreakable
to tear free from that bond
means leaving
part of your soul behind
and
a heart writhing in pain
the torn �I� becomes
fractured
diminished
its life and power slowly
slipping away
beware: danger
don�t dive that deep
unless you plan to stay
the rewards are great
life!
beware of a mermaid
or merman
who will drag you under
and leave you
torn
bleeding
Love = anxiety
anxiety = rejection
rejection = departure
going leaving withdrawal exodus
leave leaving
going running
going away
running away
gone
absent
far off
elsewhere
for reasons
wrong false mistaken erroneous
inaccurate incorrect untrue
you
exited quit departed died
expired perished succumbed
fell toppled caved in plunged
tumbled down dropped slid
declined descended to death
rejection
no
nay
extinction
Dirty dishwater, children
screaming
tired feet, haze in brain
never stopped me dreaming
Where is the answer?
The family? The church? time?
All of the above?
None of the above?
God told me
But I didn�t want to hear
I struggled to live on
In the same old self
I
Take the Fruitvale exit
I passed magnificent stinking
mudflat museums
they changed their exhibits
each week
When I went to visit the
enchanted knight in the Dolorous Castle
Oakland to you
He grew old my knight so bold
and over his heart a shadow
fell
II
although the cherry plums are
covered with small white blossoms
and tiny rain drops fall from a
light grey sky
years of tears remain unshed
The answer wasn�t in Jung
or books about philosophy
psychology, Buddhism, or the I
Ching
There was no answer
I struggled to live on
but I had died
Did you every read Marion
Zimmer Bradley?
There were huge mountain ranges
on her cold dark planet
bigger than the Himalayas
I dreamt about a cable train
running above a mountain valley
on Darkover
another cable train suspended
below it
The lower one was a funeral
train
for Philip K Dick
swinging over a valley
between great snow covered
mountains
No people were there
To watch the train go by
I rode in that lower train
with the coffin
for a while
Then I went up to the upper
train
Do not exist
But when they do
it is because
feelings are so strong
that an image
is produced in the brain
and projected into our earthly
space
looking just as real
as that tree or your dog
(also just images
in the brain)
Philip
even more than my father,
Agamemnon
even more than my brother,
Robert
(at least I thought I did
I�m very confused)
ran off
and then he died too
(One isn�t supposed
to love a husband
who has deserted you cruelly)
Nice photo
of him, my late ex
at a later
geologic time
after the
only time that was a time
the
time that was ended by the meteor�s strike
Requiem
for a Dead and/or Divorced Husband
At the farmhouse café we both
wore white jerseys with blood red numbers
we watched a pigeon with an
iridescent neck walk on the grass below our window
sitting in creaking chairs
we ate well-done roast beef
words, insights, nuances
engraved themselves on our conversation
�The approaching games will
be held at scorching midday�
(I will drink many styrofoam
cups of spring water at the half)
I will try to kick the ball
past the terrorist and his black grenade
�Not much fun,� I said
I forgot how lucky I was to make
the team
Did I tell you of my
appreciation?
All my life
was compressed into one year
boiled down
to an
essence
all this
infinitely long day
I have been
floating in an endless ocean of time
waiting only
for those moments
when at
nightfall
we will make
an island
that
dissolves again at dawn
in the night
our flesh melds, arm to arm
leg to leg
sex to sex
mouth to
mouth
endless
intimacy
will you be
there to night
after this
forever day?
*
leave an
image of yourself
for me to
love
in the night
I strain my
imagination to envision you
but in my
mind
I can only
see you entwined with that girl
Twice
I
The days you took to die
Heavy and grey
Lasted forever
I descended with you down
towards death
heartbeat slower
breath hard to draw
No new or happy thoughts could
exist
on that journey
But you had died so long ago!
I had to start mourning all
over again
My grief now illegitimate
Did I weep
for you or for me
Or for something necessary for
life
Gone from this lonely earth
II
Time and space and other
crazinesses
Remarriage, girlfriends,
poverty, middleage
you name it
Success/Failure
New friends/Old friends
Good health/Poor health
None of the above...
All of the above
made any difference
Eating a piece of chocolate
I lit the sullen stove
hoping the passionate kindling
could warm me
the flame hurled bits of sly
inspiration
radiated enthusiasm
then exploded
flinging extinguishing pitch
on
my dream
the melancholy moon
brilliantly musing
lit
the living room
and
I started fantasizing
creating
a true vision
beyond the illusion
longing for the ideal
in the midst of the real
but I caught a bad cold
instead
Remembering frees,
when I tried to forget
my heart was oppressed
the first time around
I was engulfed in a whirlwind
of confused and violent
emotions
I remembered
our life together:
music, poetry
games with the children
picnics, friends, books
endless amazing conversations.
He was the first person I ever
listened to.
Before I met him
I was too busy talking to
listen
*
later I had a vision of an
unraveling heart
all that was left, in the end,
was a lover�s knot
Love
Love can�t be washed away
with dishwater.
Love can�t be mopped up.
It can�t be vomited out,
either.
Screams of rage, in the end,
can�t drown out the murmurs of love.
Fatigue, craziness, death,
poverty
Time and Space
will all pass away
but not love.
Prestige, money, sex distract
only momentarily.
Ill health and old age don�t
affect love in the least.
In the end the whole world and
all the people in it
(except the ones that love)
will pass away.
The universe will collapse on
itself in a deafening black roar
that no person will hear
But one tiny gleam of love will
sneak through into the new universe that will arise,
A gleam that will grow brighter
and brighter until it outshines the new stars
and all their empty planets.
PKD
Light, light, light
No darkness
He only turned there to
make the light brighter
I know now
that you/he will/have/had to leave me
(Alone) (I
was alone)
alone,
always alone
he/she/it
you/me/I
amo amas
amat
Tears slip
from my eyes � I will lose you
You loved me
/ I loved you
My tears
comfort me in some strange manner
The pit of
grey depression is no longer at my feet
I weep for
him/them who left/died long ago
For this sad
beautiful world
I no longer
weep for myself
This is what
you taught me
I will not
sink again
You will go
on without me
Your life
with unfold beautifully
I smile as I
weep
I taste my
tears and
Patience
begins
Time
contracts
No longer do
I wait
forever
is
past
While
falling asleep
I
experienced a gap in Being
it wasn�t
just me that no longer existed
fearful,
trembling, I wondered
how can I
get to the other side
that
non-moment passed
and
I am
Again
I hadn�t seen him for a long
time
and only glimpsed his
reflection
in the mirror
as I walked into the room
The light was poor...I�d
forgotten my glasses
The silver was coming off the
back
of the dark, cracked mirror
Still
I was glad
to see him again
when I got closer
there was nothing there
but an old cracked mirror
Joyless events revolved until
The glass in my life�s
kaleidoscope broke,
All the little jagged bits
turned into tears
And fell on the sidewalk.
The wind rose.
Under grey clouds the landscape
devolved
To a time before life existed
Only grey rocks and dark plains
I force one foot to step
forward
...then the other