Vladamir Mayakovksy, 1924 photo by Rodchenko

Poem by E-Man

In 1984, I moved back into 2 Garden Terrace after a few years in Portland, OR and got a job at the Coffee Connection in Harvard Sq. Those who knew the Coffee Connection will remember that it was full of "local color"--bag ladies, Harvard law professors, Reichian therapists, self-taught cryptologists, dark-horse candidates, runaway cult members and Friends of Bill W jockeying for position at the bar, etc. A certain number of the more noteworthy customers--the sort who were given sobriquets like 'The Belcher' and 'Liquid Man'--were current or former tenants at the Terrace.

There was one guy who turned up as a tenant AFTER I first encountered him at the Coffee Connection. I'd dubbed him E-Man for his habit of ordering triple espressos at the take-out register and belting them in one swig. He was a soft-spoken guy, polite but nervous and bug-eyed, always wore a black motorcycle jacket. He worked at Mystery Train records, and we used to chat about girl groups. Then one day, there he was at Garden Terrace visiting someone; and then he moved in. He had a little yellow kitten. The main thing I remember about him living there was that every day he would eat a head of iceberg lettuce and half a can of tuna for dinner, giving the other half of the can to his kitten.

E-Man--his name was really Dave--was not around very long. In another unexamined coincidence, he married the sister of an ex-boyfriend of mine and moved to the Midwest. Here is a poem he wrote, a record of his first visit to Garden Terrace. It was passed on by a friend. Dave, if you're out there, I hope you're doing well, and I hope the lineation is right, and that the scattering of letters in the first few lines was intentional.

--Mimi

    AT    (for Christina)
        H H 
        ENTRANCE   damp night in Cambridge
                                O    A
        V    leaves rain heavy
        E
    N  blurred lights in mist

    the Troll leading the way--to a large house on a 
    corner--near the Observatory--beside tennis courts--
    fences ghostly in fog--smell of October--leaf mold--
    brilliance of oil slicks in puddles gleaming--
    picked out by passing lights--

      the Troll could be--
         a well meaning friend . . .

      --you'll like this guy--he reads books--does some
         drugs--works for the Party at his job at the 
           Globe

   Party guys ain't supposed--

      --yeah but he's a writer, too, see--gotta
        experience everything

   he writes for the Globe--

      --Nah--works in the baling room--Union gig--lotta 
        dough

    what's he write--

      --stories about the working man Jack

      and drugs on the side--

      --yeah he's a good shit--needs somebody to talk to

        talk's cheap enough--

    inside a long stair way mezzanine to mezzanine--a few 
   girls sitting in a darkened glassed in porch--looking 
  sideways--

         --at the top of the stairs, doors and corridors--
   books on
   shelves
   heaped--smell of a recent shower--dim sounds in rooms--

     KNOCKING on the door . . . a muffled voice--

    the Troll stood patiently--looking at his new boots--
   scuffing a spot of leaf--a scrap of paper--a hint of 
  mud . . .

             . . . door opening
           a
             crack

      sleepy eyes looking out--handsome face--dark hair
   in dim light had a sheen to it

      --yo I boughtcha a friend--he's cool--reads a lot
      man--has a lotta books anyway--the guy i told you 
      about


    long pause . . . eyes focusing . . . head turning 
          cautious to check the room . . .


    Finally . . . the head moved behind the door--door 
    swung open slowly--

    a nice room--desk with lamp, big armchairs, shelves 
    of books, big bay window looking out to rainy night--
    trees, tennis court, distant street lights--giant 
    bed--boxes of records--

    the handsome man moved catlike--flicked with his 
    foot a syringe under covers hanging from the bed--
    looked as though he'd been long dozing--

    rain picked up--the Troll lit a cigarette--floppied
    in a chair--stared out the window--

    moving through the dim lit room--looking at the walls,
    the books--

    a giant photo of Mayakovsky staring from a corner--

     "Four words,
      heavy as a blow:
      ' . . . unto Caesar . . . unto God . . . '
      But where can a man
      like me
      bury his head?
      Where is there shelter for me?"

    the Troll sat impassive in shadows--smoking--the 
   handsome man sat slowly down on the bed--his eyes 
  gleamed--coming awake--catlike movement
   coiled in attention--

     "I yelled at the sun point-blank:
      'Get down!
      Stop crawling into that hellhole!'
      At the sun I yelled:
      'You shiftless lump!
      You're caressed by the clouds,
      while here--winter and summer--
      I must sit and draw these posters!'"
   

    the Troll despite himself stared--cigerette close to 
   burning clenched fingers--the handsome man's eyes 
   smoldered--a convulsion slowly rippled his body--he 
   fumbled for a glass--

    (and very cliche
     shall have its day
         its effects tried and true . . .

      the mind wandering . . . has at hand
           its few crutches
        in a pinch)

    girls voices in the hall--windows rain blurred light
   streaked--the handsome man--
          the Troll had said--
         needed someone to talk to--

    & so had dug up for him from a basement room near 
   the Mt. Auburn Cemetery a ghost--
       to ventriloquise--for the benefit--of whom?

    the Party man--the writer in search of experiences--

    a dizzying labyrinth
     an abcess in the labyrinth

      erupted in space


    (--turning eyes to avert the collision--so as not to 
      untidy the room . . .
      an incessant voice shadowing remnants of a life . . .

      no desire to leave its corpse on clean rugs--
        in a warm room--cozy among covers--
        desk lamps and padded chairs--)

   the Troll on the way over--had recounted--a confused 
    story--a labored parable--of "Protective Custody" . . .
       

     "In your
      cozy
      little apartment world,
      curly-heded lyricists sprout in bedrooms.
      What do you find in these lapdog lyricists?!
      As for me,
      I learned about love
      In Butryiki . . .


     "I
      fell in love
      with the keyhole of Cell 103
      Staring at the daily sun,
             people ask:
            'How much do they cost, those little sunbeams?'
      But I
      for a yellow patch
             of light jumping on the wall
      would thenhave given everything in the world."

     the Troll jumped--the cigerette had singed his
     fingers--he cursed softly--the handsome man rose 
     slowly from the bed--his arms arcing 
     as he moved forwards--

       --Comrade! you know Mayakovsky!--
   he knows a lot of weird shit--

     the Troll was pleased with himself . . . he prided
     himself on his surprises--he had a reputation 
     to keep up--and there might be 
     something in it for him . . .

     the handsome man put out his hands--to shake--and
     embrace--he seemed at once solid--and hollow--
     a large construction in balsa wood--

     the Troll sat perched expectantly--the handsome
     man--noticing--turned to a cabinet--pulled out 
     bottles of imported beer--an opener--
     moving to the desk--sliding open a
     slim concealed drawer--produced two ampules--

      Coversations-- may be worked like toy racing
     cars--their speeds controlled--on a plastic track--
     with each voice competing--

     into the curve the handsome man went--excitedly--
     steadying on the straightaway--

     the Troll enjoyed such sports--was a one man crowd--

     Mayakovsky's photo--large--glowered on the wall--
     stop watches in his eyes

     the handsome man explained his mission, his work, 
     his readings--his writings--his  
     collections of pornography and O!! music--
     his car moving fast, lap after lap--curve,
     straightaway, curve, straightaway--

     the Troll supplied with beers 
     urging on the drivers--

     the photo Mayakovsky's stop watch eyes whirring . . . 
     rain on windows--girls' voices--warm room--
     ampules broken--a red dot on arm--

     But the Third Writers' Congress wa troubling--
     historical facts muddy myths--and vice versa--
     the handsome man revealed--he was a Trotskyite

     he had struggles reconciling his duties and his 
     desires--which he thought could be justified--
     by writing--by being an observer and worker 
     at the front lines--of Party and prose--

     
           --so--and you Comrade--
            how do you know Mayakovsky?--
            how do you reconcile duties and desires--
            do you write--are you political--
   my duties and desires
            are the same--
                     --but where did you learn all this--
            do you write--do you study--
            do you believe in commitment--

    the Troll stirred restlessly--uncertain of the 
    speeding cars--a yellow caution flag in his hands--
    gesturing for another beer--

          --I was committed--to Protective Custody--
            he laughed nervously--

     the handsome man waited patiently--serving drinks--
     cleaning ashtrays--putting away syringes and spoons--

            --pretty good stuff-
     -he said--his eyes pinned, a slight smile--I only 
     get the best anymore--stolen from a hospital--

     the hospital heist was legendary--the handsome man 
     knew someone who knew someone who knew . . .

     --but back to Mayakovsky!--he's pretty good stuff 
      too--

     Mayakovsky on the wall--fine bottled beer--the best 
     of morphine--a slight odor of perfume--nice hardbound 
     books--comfortable chairs--a big bed--rain rolling 
     on window pane--outside the Observatory 
     and tennis courts--

   Gorky means the bitter one--
          --but Gorky's realism is not developed enough--
   it is not easy to develop
      bitterness--
                 --it can be channeled for use--my area of
          interest--

     the race cars went round and round--no one 
     would be at the Observatory on a night like this--
     the Cemetery leaves must be heavy to brush against 
     tonight--the tennis courts slippery--

     the Third Congress--festered--a scab the handsome man 
     dug at--morphine and and warmth stirred his 
     rhetoric--he spoke with lazy passion--
     a fascination with distant deaths moved him--

     in his panoramic view of history--of literature--
     mythological battles were translated into 
     the facts of everyday struggles--his job--his 
     writing--myth and history speeding on a plastic
     track--competing--for a drunken crowd--

     the Observatory this night--had no panoramic view--
     the domed roof closed against the rain--only a 
     seismograph inside registering planetary movements--
     dim jottings of fault lines--

     through an abcess in time--space rushed in--and in it 
     time whirred in photographed eyes--a record of light 
     once there--reprojected in a dim lit room--

     through an abcess in skin--a liquid rained in--
     mixing in veins to a pumping heart--
     the lungs contracted--projecting dreamed images--

     wet windows--blurred lights--a mirror on a half 
     opened closet door presenting their reflections--

     room full of images--

     --later

     the Troll was standing by the door--giving his 
     customary word of parting--a leap in time seemed 
     to have occurred--outside the wind had picked up--
     the leaves gesturing frantically--making a 
     transient script of shadows on walls--

     writing went on all around--signs everywhere--their
     significances muted in wind--among leaves--

     an old empty house stood on a corner where two 
     streets joined in a haphazard diagonal--the railings 
     of a metal fence punctuated by rust and dents--
     its gate held by a padlocked chain--signs plastered 
     on boarded windows--

      --they say it's haunted--

      the Troll walked faster when passing it--he had a
     few bottles in his pockets--that wouldn't be missed 
     for a day or tow--all in an evening's work--for the 
     middleman--

     the Troll dropped off and headed North--

               --later

           --his eyes
     asked for a thanks--his hands received opther bottles
     not to be missed for a day or two--

     the Cemetery with its hill looked like the hump of 
     the Observatory--surmounted by its tower--a telescope
     stretched to clouds--a telescope stretched to clouds--

     "If you wish.
      I shall rage on raw meat:
      or, as the sky changes its hue,
      if you wish,
      I shall grow irrepraachably tender:
      not a man, but a cloud in trousers!"

     leaves heavy with rain rustling restlessly--the 
     night patrol car's lights scribbling tree branches' 
     shadowed calligraphies on headstones--
     among the famous and statued dead--

     and far away the State statues of 
        suicided Mayakovsky stood--

     "I feel
      my 'I'
      is much too small for me.
      Stubbornly a body pushes out of me."

Dave Baptiste Chirot

Atlantis

I’m running the circuit: from the foyer through the little hallway—the one with the high shelf of books about Eastern Orthodox iconography and Turkomen rugs—and through the kitchen (the vinyl floor looks like a brick patio; a red stepstool sits under the shelf of hippie cookbooks), through the pantry with its weird little sink and its glass-paned cabinets (our family’s food is on the lower right shelves), and into the dining room, where spider plants hang over a newspaper-strewn table . I’m running with all the speed I can manage, but it’s like I’m running through sand. My muscles strain but I’m barely moving. It’s a dream, of course. Forgive the creaky narrative device. I make it though the double doors into the living room and through the other double doors, back into the foyer. That’s the circuit. I look over my shoulder and see what’s chasing me. It’s an angel, a cherub--a fat, winged baby hovering behind me like a hummingbird.

This was a recurring dream in my childhood, mysteriously linked in my mind to the fire that Nate started in the crawl space under the roof when I was five or six years old. It’s just one of many recurring dreams I used to have about 2 Garden Terrace.




Firemen on the roof

It’s been over twenty years since I last slept in the house, but I still dream there—less frequently as time passes, but surprisingly often. And when I wake up, it’s like I’ve been dreaming of a lost civilization… an Atlantis… and I feel a pang of grief and longing. The place was so vast, so baroque, so variously populated and complete. I know everyone feels the loss of their childhood in some way; thus the question that pursues me like the fat, winged baby: Am I just feeling what everyone feels? Or is it something more epic? Because the Terrace was not just our house. It was an institution supporting a now-extinct way of life. Now that we’ve lost Desch, it’s really truly good and gone. But the fire cherub still hovers, and it wants stories. And pictures. Calling all Atlantians.