tony r. rodriguez

The 50th Anniversary of BEATITUDE MAGAZINE

2009-11-25T21:41:00.000-08:00

Writer, poet and Tibetan Buddhist scholar Latif Harris, author of "Bodhisattva’s Busted Truth", is the proud editor of the highly anticipated "Beatitude Golden Anniversary". Harris has teamed up with writer, poet and Beat historian Neeli Cherkovski, author of From the Canyon Outward, who proudly served as co-editor on the "Beatitude Golden Anniversary" literary project. Together, Harris and Cherkovski have brought a shiny gem to the literary world by compiling a 50th year anniversary edition of "Beatitude", which was the well-respected literary journal founded in 1959 by Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, John Kelley, and William Margolis. Originally, Beatitude assisted in unveiling the literary talents of many aspiring poets of the early Beat Movement. And to honor that tradition, Harris and Cherkovski have released "Beatitude Golden Anniversary" to the eager masses of Beat enthusiasts.

In this anniversary edition, readers will come to explore the works of many iconic writers of the original Beat Movement, considerable thinkers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, ruth weiss, Bob Kaufman and many others. But it doesn’t end there. Harris and Cherkovski have also included some vivacious work from many of the Latter-day Beats of the 60s and 70s, important names such as Charles Bukowski, H.D. Moe, Gerald Nicosia, Janine Pommy Vega, A.D. Winans and so on. The Modern-day Beats, writers like Patrick Carrington, Katherine Hastings, Alejandro Murguia, W.J. Ray, and others, are also proudly showcased in this explosive publication of hard core beatitude.

This is a must-have anthology, one put together with literary love and years of diligent planning. Nearly 500 pages in length, "Beatitude Golden Anniversary" promises readers a preeminent collection of pulsating works from numerous writers of the ever-thriving literary movement many proudly identify as Beat.

Beatitude Golden Anniversary
Edited by Latif Harris & co-edited by Neeli Cherkovski
Published December 2009
ISBN 978-0-615-29394-3, paper trade, $25.00 (USA)
471 pages (plus 111 additional pages reprinted from the 1960 City Lights Issue of Beatitude)
1,000 copies in print
America’s Press

Two New Publications

2009-05-23T21:47:00.000-07:00

If you have the time, check out these two plublications that graciously provided some of my work with a nice literay home. The first would include a short story of mine that is published in the Winter 2008/2009 edition of FALLING STAR MAGAZINE. Editor Matt McGee is still making some strong literary waves with his reputable publication. In fact, FALLING STAR MAGAZINE still participates in the annual Los Angeles Times book convention. Moreover, you can even find FALLING STAR MAGAZINE shelved in San Francisco's famous City Lights Bookstore. Secondly, I participated in the Las Positas College Literary contest. And as luck would have it, I was awarded "Honorable Mention" for my short story, which soon enough made it into their yearly anthology ESCAPE.

2008-11-22T21:15:00.000-08:00

David Barringer, author of Twisted Fun and American Home Life, has edited an anthology of effect entitled What Happened To Us These Last Couple Years? Barringer included an essay of mine that depicts views on the unchallenged rhetoric commonly found in both of today's political parties.

The anthology is published through his personal publication, Elope Press, as well as being in conjunction with So New Publishing. The anthology discusses a multitude of events and feelings that screamed from the souls of over thirty Americans during the eight years of the Bush Administration. Many suffered. Many celebrated. But through stories, essays, poems, artwork and more, we come to find that all were truly living life in their own fashion. The anthology respectfully includes the works of Paul A. Toth, Amy Guth, Spencer Dew, Jennifer Prado, Lee Klein, David Erlewine, among others.

Consider picking up a copy. Here's a link to the online "virtual" book excerpts:
http://issuu.com/dlbarringer/docs/whathappenedtous

What Happened To Us These Last Couple Years?
ISBN: 978-0-977-81518-8
$20.00

A Dangerous Spirit Called Soul

2008-10-13T20:06:00.000-07:00

"Jesus Coyote" by Harold Jaffe,
Raw Dog Screaming Press, April 2008, 150 pages, paperback, $13.95
ISBN 978-1-933293-63-5

“Look down at me and you see a fool;

look up at me and you see a god;

look straight at me and you see yourself.”
—Charles Manson

One of the true architects behind the “docufiction” genre, Harold Jaffe again injects and paralyzes his readers with infectious prose in his most recent novel Jesus Coyote. Though the novel is of course fiction, readers are artistically placed in the middle of a tightly interwoven story that appears all too salient and real. Jesus Coyote is rich in destructive malice, relentless truth, and well-sought-after justice. Jaffe presents to his readers a fascinating look into the horrible atrocities surrounding the barbaric escapades of the Charles Manson cult from the late 1960s in and around Los Angeles, California.

Rather than use the direct name of Charles Manson, Jaffe births the fervently fanatical antagonist, yet wannabe righteous hero, Jesus Coyote. This exceedingly disturbed cult agitator is a perplexed man in his mid-thirties who is considered a god and possibly the Second Coming of Christ by his cult followers. Fondly, his tribe of free-spirited acolytes refers to him as “Soul”. This warm title may allude to a decent and pure “soul” of a man, but readers quickly become exposed to the self-destructive and power-seeking side of Jesus Coyote. His cult rhetoric, devious mannerisms and explicit actions are shocking. Soul has visions of robbing desert towns on dune buggies. Soul greatly encourages dangerous amounts of illegal drug use. When a cult member gives birth in Death Valley, Soul bites off the umbilical cord, binds it with his guitar string, and then encourages his tribe women to continue to have babies in order to build their cult numbers. Soul promotes a disturbed form of sexual liberation many liberal, free-thinking minds of today would deem insane. During some of the police interrogation scenes in Jesus Coyote, readers learn very quickly of Soul allegedly inviting his tribe to engage in repulsive and disconcerting acts of sexual perversion: Soul binding himself to a makeshift cross while his cult followers connected in an orgy beneath him; Soul later entices the cult to bring the babies of the cult women into their orgies to promote sexual freedom; Soul performing oral sex on a young girl; Soul sodomizing all cult members, particularly the men in order to show his dominance over them. This horrific and unsettling list of assumed sexual deviances goes on . . . and on . . . and on . . . When interrogated by officials, many of Soul’s tribe members never deny these allegations. Moreover and more disturbing, one tribe member named Hedda, an attractive twenty-year-old ex-lingerie model, calmly and methodically tells a detective that Soul “never did anything against anyone’s will.”

The Coyote tribe then enters into one of the darkest levels of human dealings—the brutal cult murders of many innocents. If readers don’t cringe while learning of the cult’s involvement with grotesque sexual experimentations, they’ll surely wish to spew once they read the horrors of the savage murders committed by the tribe members.

Thankfully, Soul eventually gets taken into custody, along with some of his acolytes. But he still manages to create havoc when he convinces some his female tribe members to protest even while they’re imprisoned. And those not imprisoned protest directly in the public’s eye. These devout believers get swastikas tattooed on their foreheads. They protest Soul’s incarceration by lifting their all-black dresses and howling like coyotes while urinating on the concrete sidewalk. TV news cameras catch it all, cars pass and honk, and the madness continues in the usual Coyote fashion.

Chapter by chapter and moment by moment, Jaffe unthreads his tightly interwoven story, and soon the greater truth surfaces for all—even for some of Soul’s ex-cult members. One in particular is Roxanne Bakramp, also known as “Roxi”, the ex-porn actress and prostitute. Roxi gets convicted of murder, and nineteen years later while serving her sentence in the California Institute for Women, she very openly wishes she had been more aware of the dangerous path she was on while she was with Soul. Here, Jaffe quite poetically opens up to readers through Roxi’s reflection on her barbaric escapades of the past. Being a convert to Christianity, Roxi candidly states:

“How could I know then that what I needed to fill the black hole was total submission to the true Jesus? How much torment would I have to go through to know it? How much torment would I have to inflict on others before I learned to love Him?” (Jesus Coyote, page 65)

Like Roxi, other once-cult members find their own personal salvation and worldly peace. They liberate themselves and find their own truth through their many reflections on the agony of their past choices. Here we see Jesus Coyote in its finest literary moments. Only a craftsman like Harold Jaffe can pull off such provocative and enlightening narration in the “docufiction” approach to story-telling.

Jaffe composes his narration in a matchless style that allows readers to fully experience the research one would do when investigating such barbaric atrocities. Jesus Coyote is a fast, one-sitting read. It is broken into three sections: (1) the Massacres, where readers learn of the crimes (2) the Transcripts, which would include the detailed confessionals and perspectives of what happened and (3) the Tribe of Coyote, an account of the aftermath of the Jesus Coyote cult murders told from various viewpoints. The novel closes with the most intriguing aftermath story, the account of Jesus Coyote himself. Here we find Soul shackled thirty-one years after the events in Pelican State Prison. And it’s here that Soul opens himself up to the reader in the most alarming of ways. The last sentence of the novel alone will make readers cringe and shake their heads in sorrowful shame.

"City Lights"

2008-07-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

Transients read those signs you place in your second story windows, though I’m not convinced they fully understand their meanings. Some transients say you’re too far Left, but it doesn’t matter. Those signs are still public.

Some transients hold within themselves visions of literary fame. They hail the building in highest regard. They lecture about your history with the Beats and the post-Beat thinkers who preach unrestrained truths. These transients gather to you and pour through your books to see who’s made their mark in print, who perhaps may have begun a possible legacy.

Other transients flock to you merely to read and become enlightened with fiery new concepts and perceptions of our world. These transients are the apostles for both our secular and religious ways of thinking.

And these are the reasons why you endure, dear City Lights: You are the pusher of literary dreams, the provider of much-needed insight, and the haven for the artistic hoards of geniuses and the masses of insane fame-seekers. And for all this, you are celebrated.

Perhaps one day you’ll place a new sign in one of the second story windows that reads:

[ . . . be limitless . . . ]

"Each Year" by Ra Ra Riot

2008-03-01T21:43:00.000-08:00

I'm captivated from New York's recent worthwhile contribution to alternative music. Here's some poetry I can't shake . . .

"Each Year" by Ra Ra Riot

C’mon, force it down
I’m a‘magining
C’mon, force it down
I’m a‘magining
Imaging a place where homes are built on frames
And where they plant new bulbs along our graves—

Each year
With the fall each year
With the fall each year

And if you think you might—
Yes, but if it’s not so bright—
But if you’re a part of my whole life . . .

Silhouettes in a window frame
Better run if he’s a boozed-up man
He won’t know if you’re white,
Oh . . . in the night

Coverin' a fault with
trials and court displays
Coverin' a fault with
trials and court displays
If it is worth the time to find the Holy Coup
about recalling all the ways and the reasons I fall—

Each year
With the fall each year
With the fall each year

And if you think you might—
Yes, but if it’s not so bright—
But if you’re a part of my whole life . . .

Silhouettes in a window frame
Better run if he’s a boozed-up man
He won’t know if you’re white,
Oh . . . in the night

Paper lamps in the parking light
You can’t see when it’s much too dark—
All that mist in your eyes
Oh . . . in the night

And maybe is it in enough time
Or fifty more is more enough—oh
To right the wrongs—what you’re hiding in your backyard
Is standing in there since apathy
And accusations that another man—oh
‘Cuz you don’t have a plan
To put your life into a Christian’s hands
Never mind what your daughter is taught in school
What she remembers is what she has learned from you

[Silhouettes in a window frame]
Better run if he’s a boozed-up man
He won’t know if you’re white,
Oh . . . in the night

Paper lamps in the parking light
You can’t see when it’s much too dark—
All that mist in your eyes
Oh . . . in the night

I'd Rather Smile With You

2007-12-31T12:42:00.000-08:00

I heard apathy ooze from your insecure lips.

Sure—
I can’t prove His existence,
But—
You can’t disprove it either.

Yet . . .

even though you don’t believe,
I’m quite sure He still believes in you.

No more debates.

You’ve set your mind closed.

[But how great it would be to smile as one.]

With arms in the air and heads bent back in sacred veneration,
many pray for your salvation and hopeful enlightenment.

But . . .

I don’t anymore:
Those who want to be Saved get Saved.
Those who don’t don’t.

You make your own choices.
You make your own belief a reality.

I just sit back and examine my own consciousness—
smiling all the while.

"I Wonder Who Really Scares Joe Klein?"

2007-10-17T17:33:00.000-07:00

You got to read this short article in a recent TIME issue:

"Inflating A Little Man" by Joe Klein [October 8th]:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1665905,00.html

Joe Klein isn’t afraid of big, bad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—but he’s certainly afraid of whoever has real power in Iran. In his commentary “Inflating A Little Man” [Oct. 8], Klein manages his rhetoric with attention-grabbing zeal that displays Ahmadinejad as a cynical leader with very little political muscle. Yet, Klein’s remarks still add fuel to the over-hyped neoconservative fire he’s allegedly trying to put out. Surprisingly, Klein clamorously writes that Iran does arm Hizballah; Iran does have an active nuclear program that may have hostile intent; and that Iran does supply weapons to U.S. enemies. These are all regurgitated statements that allow neocons to nod their head in palpable agreement. The U.S. has ceaselessly tried to handle these disturbing items through sober and productive means, but no success has been ascertained. So if Ahmadinejad has very little real power in Iran, who does? And whoever it is must be the one who really scares Joe Klein.

"A Brief Wistfulness Of High School Nostalgia"

2007-09-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

My line of sight blends well with the West Wind.
These pre-college adolescents thrive during gym class—
each projecting elated moments of perpetual wonder
as they sprint along the frigid concrete.
The prescience of my dwindling mind continues to
focus toward them—
each running in their school wear
that bears the colors of
forest green and daffodil gold and ashen gray.

Beneath me are the jigsaw puzzle pieces of dried leaves—
crumpled miracles in their own Divine Right,
who like my sight blends well with the West Wind.

I absorb the psyche of all these libido-driven post-cavemen
who swill in bizarre union
with the Catholic girls with ponytails
of effervescent life.

I inhale.

I scoop a handful of brown biometric pieces that rest
underneath me
and allow the Wind to do its duty.

I call to mind my four years of this life.

Finally, I exhale.

"i saw an angel today"

2007-09-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

I counted ninety-two cracks in the concrete near the corner of mission and tamarack I would have counted more but the concrete soon faded into a dirt path scourged with cigarette butts and crippled bottle caps and shards of glass Kids ride their bikes down this dirt path It leads to a cemetery where freemasons bury their own There’s a statue of an angel in the cemetery and the angel seems sad because her head is buried in her folded arms and her wings are bent toward the ground in perfect melancholy The angel hides from the dour reality of her fallen masons I’m not a freemason I only wish I could continue counting the cracks along mission street

Allison, My Aim Is True

2007-08-10T19:06:00.000-07:00

[August 8, 2007] After seeing my newborn’s name listed in the birth announcement of today’s ARGUS newspaper, I’ve come to share the same sentiment as the singer/songwriter Elvis Costello. My wife Helena and I proudly named our opus Allison Marie Rodriguez, a child brought into this world on July 30th. My wife’s labor was all so intense and shocking. Being a week overdue, Helena and I decided to induce. At the end of the fifteen hour labor, during the crowning portion of delivery, naturally the top of Allison’s head had surfaced. What made the situation shocking was that there were no medical workers around. Helena frantically pushed the nurse call button, whereupon one nurse and a midwife entered the labor room immediately. Baby Allison’s head was completely out by the time the nurse was able to stretch her arms and catch her. The nurse handed baby Allison to my wife, where she was immediately welcomed with tears and a warm embrace. After cutting the umbilical cord, it was my turn to hold baby Allison. Emotions were rampant within me. I was now officially a father. Baby Allison’s birth weight was 6 lbs. 2.2 oz., and her length was 19 inches. Since the birth, I am floored every time I stare deeply into Allison’s eyes. There’s poetic wisdom in knowing that being a father is a lifetime commitment filled with challenge, responsibility and interminable love. And just as Elvis Costello once ardently declared, I now humbly profess to my baby girl. Allison, when it comes to being your father, “my aim is true.”

"In Silence" by ANDREW DAVID KING

2007-08-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

[Though technically ANDREW DAVID KING was a student of mine during his freshman year in high school, the truth is I've been a student of his for the past month. I believe in his prosody and his future as a thinker.]

"In Silence"

For T.R.

with a shred of hope
my worn being remembers
that in the eternal forest
balance resides
the cycle brings one into another
and the circle is complete
the trunks of great oaks
knotted and tired
wind-caressed
roots morphed into
mouths open wide
but speak no language
human ears may understand

in the dying light of
forlorn incandescents
this cold house breeds ghosts
i write my own obituary
line by line
no sound in my cell, my cage
save for the rushed shallow breathing of the highway
a heartbeat that i know
like all
will one day come to an end

this portrait paints the wrong image
of the future
reflected in shattered glass
the smoke of burned books rising
spelling out each
and every
crucified letter
in ash
so that it may speak again
albeit through a broken and toothless mouth

the skies above offer me no answers
the door ahead offers me one choice
I have been here before in a faded photograph
unkempt thoughts are swarming bees
stingers bared

when the day has ended
when the universe has come to its last and final point
these words shall echo out
spilling into the endless abyss
just as before
their chaos searching for completion
madness, happiness, love, despair, hope
are all pieces of the puzzle
but it seems i will never find the last one: truth

there are two parts of one person
the inside
the outside
one is content to lay beaten into submission
the other is an open mouth greedily devouring
approval
in our world filled with a thousand soundtracks
to a thousand lives
the clash of these two titans
does not go unheard

II.

in the pale quiet of early morning
our bodies content to lay in rest
our minds desiring fulfillment in dreams
with meanings we will never completely understand
and there are so many people out there
this amazing globe of ours
so many voices that
in silence we find
the unspoken words
the hidden deities
the caged soul within us
all come alive

despite such belief
such trust in the unknown
the calculations of doubters
shall always prove me wrong on paper
but in their eyes i was never
pure anyways
i have held up these scars
opened these ears
to the universal heartbeat of humanity
the all-encompassing tongue
a dead language
murdered by
our new ever-changing dialect
of lies and war and greed and money
everything in between what we hoped to be
and what we have become
because of this
we have forgotten
good and evil
light and darkness

as the shadow is cast
and the warmth of the sun
becomes the cold embrace of the night
the statue of destiny weeping
begs us to remember that
this parasite
has written our past
in stone
but our future
in sand