New Book Excerpt!

The Best of San Francisco’s Lost Beat Poet Marty Matz

IN THE SEASONS OF MY EYE
By Marty Matz
Panther Books

$18.00
ISBN 0-9708476-3-7
Buy It

Marty Matz rose to the top alongside Jack Kerouac, Bob Kaufman and Ginsberg in the San Francisco Beat scene, only to leave for Mexico months before the Beat explosion. Now you can read what you missed.

IN THE SEASONS OF MY EYE

By Marty Matz

For Roger and Irvyne Richards

I CARRY A WOUNDED HORIZON
              IN THE SEASONS OF MY EYE
   AND STAND IN A DOORWAY
                   BETWEEN WORLDS
       LISTENING TO OWLS HOOT
           THEIR MESSAGES OF DEATH
   SILENT ORACLES
        THAT FLIT THROUGH
   THE WINE COLORED HOURS
               OF A CRAPULOUS DAWN
              AND FOLLOW A RIVER
                   OF LOST INSULTS
       TO THE RUSTING LATITUDES OF OUTRAGE
   WHERE A RAZOR SHARP SNICKERSNEE
           DISEMBOWLS THE RAINBOW
        AND CARVES A SMOKING SUTRA
           FOR THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF POPPIES
I HAVE MUMBLED SECRET MANTRAS
               AT THE SHADOWY EDGE
    OF TEAK TIERED TOWERS
                   AND GILDED SHRINES
       WHERE BURMESE NATS
                   SHELTER AND WATCH
   AS I ARRIVE AT DESTINATIONS
         BEFORE DEPARTING FROM ANYWHERE
LIKE VAGABOND DARTS THAT RANDOMLY GLOW
            THROUGH ETERNITY'S SONG
WHERE THE JADE TREE SINGS

NEAR THE TEMPLE ON HIGH
       WHERE THE JADE TREE SINGS
   AND THE FLOWERING QUETZAL SPREADS ITS ROOTS
         STANDS A GRAVEYARD OF TOBACCO STAINED WHISPERS
                                          AND RUPTURED DREAMS
          WHERE MORIBUND CLOCKS
                            DECOMPOSE
           AS ECSTATIC EPIPHANIES
                          DANCE
               ABOVE VISIONS OF DAWN
               TO THE TANGO OF YEARS
               WHOSE LUMINOUS CHORDS
          RESOUND THROUGH OBSIDIAN MIRRORS
               THAT OBSCURE
                         NOT REFLECT
                   THE THEN
                              THAT IS NOW
       WHEN THE MOVEMENT STOPS
           TIME BECOMES SPACE
        ROCKS AND CRYSTALS SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF ART
                         AND LIFE UNFOLDS
           UNDER A SHADOW OF STRANGLED ECLIPSES
                   AND MUMMIFIED STARS
               BENEATH THE DEEPEST UMBRA
         CAST BY DEATH¹S UNCHARTED GEOMETRY
           LIES THE WOMB
                   WHERE MAGIC IS BORN
                 AND THE WINDS SILVER BONES
                         EMERGE
             TO CARRY THE RINGING VIBRATIONS
               THAT ANNOUNCE
                       TO THE GALAXY¹S END
                   A NEW GENESIS
                 OF COSMIC ILLUSIONS
ODE FOR FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

WHO SHALL BE CALLED POET AFTER YOU ILLUSTRISSIMO
             WHO SHALL STAND WITH BARED CHEST
           TO THE PURE COLD
           DRINKING THE MUSIC OF THE GUADALQUIVER
PATRIOT
         SPANIARD
           MAN OF THE TENDER EYES
    WHO SHALL HAVE SO GREAT A HEART
           SO SOFT A TONGUE
               SUCH A VOICE SUNLIGHT
       TO SING THE CARESSES OF THE WARM WIND
                       TO THE DREAMING CORN
THEY HAVE COME WITH TONGUES OF BRASS
           WITH TWENTY SMALL KNIVES
               THEY HAVE PUT OUT YOUR EYES
THEY HAVE COME IN THEIR LEATHER HATS
                        WITH THEIR RIFLES
           AT THE COUNT OF THREE
            HAVE CLOSED THE DOORS OF ETERNITY BEHIND YOU
YET
   THE ANDALUCIA YOU WARMED
                     WITH THE PETALS OF YOUR SOUL
           WEARS YOUR GREEN STRENGTH WITH REVERENCE
              AS YOU WORE THE BLOOD OF IGNACIO
        YOUR HEART SMOKES IN THE THIN AIR OF PACIFICATION
         YOUR BROKEN ARMS HANG BEWILDEREDLY
                 MADE IMPOTENT
                   BY THE CONSTRICTIONS
                                 OF BEING A ROSE

Note from the Editor and Publisher of Panther Books on Marty Matz and the making of his book, In the Seasons of My Eye

Marty was like a trip to Coney Island, full of excitement and ruin in equal measure, and friendship with him was a roller coaster of steep drops, exhilarating highs and whiplash at the end. As a poet, Marty was a dazzling one-man sideshow in the great tent of his performing dashiki.

When we met him, Marty’s health was terrible and worsened day by day, although in the last two years of his life he blossomed with poetry and new friendships. He was a wonderful friend to have, but not an easy one by any means.

One day just before a reading Marty called to say that his toenails were so long he couldn’t get his shoes on. He couldn’t bend over to cut them. He wished he hadn’t taken his shoes off but he had, and now there was no getting them on again. So we went over to his place, a dreary, windowless pair of rooms way out in Crown Heights , Brooklyn .

There was garbage everywhere: Chinese takeout containers, empty booze bottles, spent scratch-off lottery tickets, cigarette butts spilling out of ashtrays, unidentifiable plates of petrified food, piles of mass market pulp novels, pill bottles and old newspapers, everything sticky with spilled soda and covered in cigarette ashes. We filled plastic bags with trash while Marty complained nonstop about us doing it. And then we clipped Marty’s long, dangerous toenails. It reminded us of hoof trimming. Marty was relieved and grateful as he put on his shoes for the first time in days. He also felt better when the place was cleaner, in spite of all his griping.

The landlord hated Marty’s boozing and slovenliness and decided to evict him. Marty had no place left to go so he decided to kill himself. It was August 3rd, 2001. He asked us to come over to work out some details about the book he wanted us to publish, so we went. His two rooms might have been a cave dug into the side of the Fresh Kills landfill. We set about filling trash bags while Marty laid out his plans. He would commit suicide with a bottle of cognac and fifteen bags of dope, which he would be getting by and by. "If I live through it they’ll probably put me in jail for trying to kill myself so I don’t want to mess it up," he said.

His dope guy was spending the weekend with his grandchildren so Marty was waiting to commit suicide on Monday. "I can’t expect him to ignore his grandchildren just because I want to kill myself," he said.

We asked Marty if he was afraid. "Not at all, man," he said. "I’m going out in a very pleasant way. And to fear something which is inevitable is ridiculous."

Marty was annoyed when he couldn’t find a lottery ticket he said was a two-dollar winner. "Did you throw it away?" He asked. "That’s why I didn’t want you to clean up, man!" He went out to cash his pension check and returned huffing and puffing with a bottle of cognac and twenty more lottery tickets. While he was out, we found the missing two-dollar winner in the chair where he had been sitting. He sat down and poured a big glass of cognac and scratched off the twenty tickets with no winners.

Marty told us he wanted to call his book In the Seasons of my Eye. We promised him that we would publish it and give it that title. He said he liked the idea of the landlord finding his huge dead body in the apartment. His friend Michel came by wanting to lend him a book on the Kabbala, which he said he wanted back. "Well then don’t give it to me, man," Marty said. "I’m going to kill myself on Monday."

Then on the evening of August 5th, Marty called to say that the suicide was off. Bobby Yarra had given in and told him that he could stay at his apartment downtown, which is something we knew Bobby had wanted to avoid if at all possible. The neighbors were already harassing him about letting friends stay there, and Marty was not a low-profile kind of person. Marty moved in and immediately flooded the bathroom onto the downstairs neighbor. Soon after, he was diagnosed with an incurable illness, which he called "Yellow Leaf Elephant’s Disease," and given a short time to live.

On September 11, he watched the twin towers fall and said he was glad he wouldn’t be around much longer. In October he went into a hospice where they shot him full of stuff to erase all pain and worry, and he died very pleasantly surrounded by friends.

While cleaning up for Marty in Brooklyn that August 3rd, we found a little scribble on an envelope in his handwriting and read it aloud. We all laughed. "Should we put it in your book?" We asked him. " Sure, man, go ahead," said Marty. It was one of the last little verses Marty wrote:

Show me your toenail mask
Your twisted brick rivers
Your raging green eyelid
Winking
At the iridescent enameled memory
Of an insect moon
For I have come
To engrave cobwebs
On your armpits.

For this collection we carefully chose from the piles of work given to us both by Marty, his wife Barbara and numerous friends. A good number of the poems were published in the limited edition chapbook called Time Waits although we did not keep to the same order. We kept the poems published as the chapbook Pipe Dreams intact. It would be impossible to put forth "The complete works of Marty Matz," since no doubt there are poems floating around all over the world that we don’t know about. So we gathered up what we thought would make a very nice collection and made it.

At long last, Marty’s book. Enjoy it.

Romy Ashby & Foxy Kidd

Panther Books
New York City