Sometime in the bitter godless morning of winter,
well before sunrise in the godless waste of the
early 21st Century America; Cheney’s America…
where the highs are always second class but the
hangovers last for months; a tall, dark and bed-
-raggled figure stops in front of a non-descript
storefront and awning on the Southwest corner
of 22nd and Guerrero in San Francisco’s Mission
District.

Soon enough, the initial sting and rush of the rotgut begins
its slide back down into the familiar stupor, and the vision all
too predictably fades. And the tall, dark and bedraggled figure
limps on down the street, his cane ready for any action that
may target him, but with just enough of the memory to keep
him warm enough to the next pull or the next bed.

…

Long before it became cool, yea even trendy to be a
trailer park pirate or an “Outlaw Poet” with an intellect,
there was Vampyre Mike Kassel openly admitting he read
the old texts and the old myths (The Iliad, the Torah)
…not in school, but on his own time while in-between
recovering from another epic hangover, dueling with an
old lover or visiting yet another death bed strapped friend/fiend.

Kassel the spoken-word artist walked the walk as a low maint-
-enance, heavy laboring couch surfer who could embed (and bed)
himself perfectly amongst not just the Babarians but also the
hard edged (at least then) Bay Area punk scene during the eighties
and nineties. But Michael Alan Kassel was also a gifted musician,
a theatrical prankster impresario, and a genuine pagan, comfort-
-ably rubbing shoulders with Norse gods and Jungian archetypes
at the same time; a truly, uniquely American renaissance artist,
meeting Thoreau’s charge and manifesting Whitman’s ideal.

Vampyre Mike finally had his meeting with the reaper, many
versions of which he wise-assedly (and smartly) wrote about
in his career on March 22, 2008.

And the hard truth is that there just haven’t been that many
rock & roll poets before Kassel, and being the real deal, he has
in turn set an incredibly high bar for any “counter-cultural” poet
who might casually ponder taking the road of D.A. Levy, Jim
Morrision and now Vampyre Mike.

He took many cliché poetry moves, such as overuse of capital-
-ization, Romantic pretense, numbered verses, blues ballads &
naturally sea shanty’s, and reinvented them as his own…as an
uncompromising rock & roll poet. And nowhere is this on better
display than in Toxic Vaudeville (Ajax Press of San Francisco).
On the cover is a picture of the Vampyre Mike I remember from the
90’s, a comfortable unapologetic member of the first generation of
40 year old punks, who could dominate a high maintenance night-
-club with sheer personality.

The poems in this collection were not written for the page, but
primarily for performance, and while I confess to my supposedly
hardened, supposedly “literate” inner poetry editor wincing while
reading some of these pieces, I also had the advantage of having
seen Mike perform Above Paradise (yes, a high-maintenance night
club) with David Lerner over ten years ago. When I found my own
inner curmudgeon rising up in protest while reading pieces like
“Johnny’s Going Down”, “The Hungry Season” and particularly “Aren’t
You Getting Too Old For This?” I made myself picture Mike, not as I
remembered him in his later years, but as the iconoclastic tour guide
of Hades, leather jacket, freak-out long hair and Beelzebub goatee
stomping in his boots on a stage, bleeding out the lines through an
amplifier. These were poems meant to be heard with a crude fuzz
guitar riff backing them and filtered through a drunken haze:

MAN, I WAS AT THE PARTY LAST NIGHT
I BORRROWED SOMEBODY’S VINTAGE ’57 MARTIN GUITAR.
BROKE THREE STRINGS
AND PUT A DING IN THE NECK.
I THINK I INSULTED THE EDITOR OF A MAGAZINE
THAT WAS CONSIDERING PUBLISHING A POEM OF MINE,
I KNOW I ACCIDENTALLY BARGED INTO THE BATHROOM
IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMEONE’S BLOWJOB
AND STAYED TO PISS ANYWAY.
I ARGUED POLITICS WITH A COMMUNIST,
DANCED THE FUNKY CHICKEN WITH A GIRL ON CRUTCHES
(I THINK I WAS TRYING TO FAITH HEAL HER)
AND ACCIDENTALLY SPILLED BEER IN THE AQUARIUM
I TOLD A FRIEND WHO WAS WORRYING ABOUT GETTING OLD
THAT HE WAS BORN TO BE MIDDLE AGED,
I PUT THE CHIPMUNKS SING THE BEATLES ON THE STEREO
CRANKED THE VOLUME UP TO 11, AND THREATENED TO
PUNCH OUT
ANYONE WHO TRIED TO TAKE IT OFF,
I FOUND THE ROOM WHERE EVERYBODY TOSSED THEIR COATS
AND SWITCHED EVERYONE’S CAR KEYS.
I PHONED IN A NOISE COMPLAINT TO THE POLICE
I PUT A FIFTH OF VODKA IN THE NON-ALCOHOLIC PUNCH
I STUCK MY NOSE DOWN EVERY WOMAN’S DECOLLETAGE
RANG THE NEIGHBORS’ DOORBEL AND RAN AWAY,
AND ACCIDENTALLY SAT IN THE LASAGNA.
I FOUND THE EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD CHICK WHO WAS ALL
BROKEN UP
BECAUSE HER FIRST ONE TRUE LOVE HAD LEFT HER AND I
TOLD HER IT MEANT
SHE WAS PROBABLY A LESBIAN.
I PUMPED UP THE KEG, STUCK THE NOZZLE IN MY MOUTH
AND GUZZLED TILL SOMEONE THREW ME OFF THE BACK PORCH.
THEN I WENT OUT AND COPPED SOME RUM
WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE PARTY
SOME JERK TRIED TO KEEP ME OUT
BUT I JUST BROKE A WINDOW AND CLIMBED BACK IN.
I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT
UNTIL THE FIREMEN SHOWED UP.
THEN I JUST GRABBED MY GUITAR AND MY RUM AND SPLIT.
I WAITED TWO HOURS FOR A BUS THAT STOPPED RUNNING
AT MIDNIGHT
THEN LURCHED A BROKEN THREE MILE TRIP HOME
PAUSING ONLY TO PISS ON CERTAIN RICH BASTARDS’
WELCOME HOME MATS,
I WAS A HIT IN CLOWN ALLEY HAMBURGER HELL
WHEN I GAVE THEM A TWENTY UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THAT
IT WAS A ONE.
THEY KEPT THE CHANGE,
THEN I WOKE UP EVERYONE IN MY HOTEL
WHEN I DROPPED MY GUITAR DOWN THE LIGHTWELL
BUT I NEVER PUKED ONCE.
SO, LIKE, SO MUCH FOR FRIDAY NIGHT.
HEY DUDE, IT’S LIKE, SATURDAY NIGHT, MAN…
WHERE THE HELL IS THE FUCKING PARTY?!

…

I remember watching Mike perform that same poem through
my own blithering, drunken agenda all those years ago and
realized with something between fascination and horror that
I wanted to be him, and realized, with even greater anguish,
that I never would be.

Toxic Vaudeville was published mere months before Vampyre
Mike’s passing. It is a collection of later career poems, many
of which were written for, performed for and only experienced
by Café Babar audience members until now.

There is a 90 page section of Kassel’s prankster stories at the
end of the book, and truthfully the poems are stronger. Kassel
treated fiction like tall tales with extended jokes and put-ons,
his flash prose frequently ending in a punch line. He was not
going for the deep, intellectual musing like one would find in
the pages of Glimmer Train (in fact, one of his early books with
Manic D Press was titled Going for the Low Blow.) Like his hero
Jim Morrison, Kassel seemed to want to be something other
than what his reputation was built on, always more interested
in the most outrageous stories possible. In fact, many of Kassel’s
stories are simply characters from his life sitting around a bar
sharing stories, and a more effective collection of these works
can be found in Graveyard Golf & Other Stories
(Manic D Press). Many of the characters who are met in
Graveyard Golf show up in the stories in Toxic Vaudeville, unfor-
-gettable low life’s like Stevie Malone, The Worst Person In The
World, and Freddie the Weasel, as well as The Radium Pit, the
most incredible dive blues/punk bar in Oakland which serves as
the setting for Kassel’s tall tales.

The tales are sometimes hilarious, serving as rock & roll analogies
or low satire, but more frequently having the beer drenched scent
of “ya had to be there” hanging on them…Mike wouldn’t have had
it any other way. He didn’t pretend to be a serious fiction writer
…he was an extremely serious poet, a serious jester, and a serious
prankster who wrote unabashedly for the masses. He still throws
out the same punch lines in his poems that he does in his stories,
but the difference is that in Kassel’s poems, the effect is as profound
a stumbling upon the truth as any reader could ask for:

I wanted to write something serious,
a page that would ignite when exposed to air.
I wanted to dive deep into my soul
and swim back to the surface
with some big bloody truth clenched between my teeth.
I wanted something that would burn in the mind
like a malarial fever
you could never quite put out.
Something that would inspire
lust and revulsion simultaneously.
Something so dangerous
that Bush would have to send an invasion force
deep into my head.
Something that would replace the Gideon Bible
in the hotel drawers of the world.
Something so big, so beautiful and so true
that the sun would immediately eclipse himself
because he knew we were onto him.
I wanted to write something more addictive than crack,
more debilitating than love,
and more destructive than religion.
I wanted to make the moon weep.
I wanted to build a mirror so cruelly true
that it would send all the yuppie lawyers
and investment bankers
howling into the bush to make honest livings
as highwaymen, headhunters and horse thieves.
I wanted to write something that Ringo would understand,
something God would not forgive,
something the Weekly World News would refuse to print
because it was in bad taste.
I wanted to write something that would make
Rimbaud and Baudelaire
grind their teeth in envy
and throw their pens at the moon.
I wanted to give Poe the willies.
I wanted to make nuns wet their pants.
I wanted to make dogs howl, highways tremble,
and hair grow on grandma’s bald head.
I wanted to write something
that would make everyone illiterate.
I wanted to write something so beautiful
that it would make every woman in the world
fall in love with me
so I could break their hearts simultaneously.
I wanted to write something that would make money chuckle.
I wanted to write something that would cure cancer
and then kill you anyways.
I wanted a poem
A real poem.
A Robert Graves spit in the eye
this is the way the Iliad goes
so early in the morning dance round the campfire
roses are red barnburner of a walloping good God
did he really say that
motherfucking mouthful of meat
bad ass bitch of a poem
poem.
Know what I mean?
But
just as I got the paper in the machine
Della switched on “The Flintstones”
And all that came out of the typewriter
Was
Yabba dabba doo.

-I WANTED TO WRITE SOMETHING SERIOUS
(from “Wild Kingdom”, Zeitgeist Press, 1992) posted at http://www.sfheart.com/sfpoets/kassel/mcCowen.html)

The above poem was posted by Kassel’s friend and fellow
freak Babarian Whitman McGowan at the SF Heart site,
in conjunction with a powerful memorial service held for
Vampyre on the Lower Haight’s Café International. Mike’s
reputation (and I don’t use the word “career” because the
mere concept of a “Career” is something he was genuinely
allergic too) was cemented in performing pieces like this
one at the Café Babar, which one could argue would not
have been as compelling a scene as it was without him.
Mike saved his most powerful proclamations for the very
act of poetry, or impassioned creation in general; the jester
is never wiser than when justifying his existence in the sheer
contradiction of all reality and pretension to “civility.”

McGowan’s bio at the SF Heart site is invaluable because it
shows that, of course, there wasn’t always a Vampyre Mike,
but a series of personae that were a musician, a theatrical
performer…in essence a genuine troubadour of the underworld
whose sole mission is to keep anyone from getting too serious
about anything when it isn’t warranted, which mostly it isn’t.
And the funny thing about it is, Vampyre Mike could point this
out to you and make you come away not feeling so bad about
it, maybe even laughing about it.

Toast one for the Vampyre this All Hallow’s Eve, this Day of the
Dead…Halloween was his season, his favorite part of the year
(Freddie The Weasel’s Halloween, Cub Scouts from Hell from
Graveyard Golf and The Lords of Halloween from Toxic Vaudeville)
…he was the best of us who like to consider ourselves “under-
-ground” or “counter-cultural”; someone who lived what those
words really meant, for better or worse.

Discussed in this benediction:

Toxic Vaudeville; Ajax Press, 2007, 188 pages
(http://www.ajaxpresssf.com/)

Graveyard Golf & Other Stories; Manic D Press, 1991, 63 pages
(http://www.manicdpress.com/)

Wild Kingdom; Zeitgeist Press, 1992, 25 pages
(http://www.zeitgeist-press.com/)

http://www.sfheart.com/sfpoets/kassel/mcCowen.html)

Bruce Issacson and MK Chavez could teach slam poets a thing or two about content.

Issacson is the main man at Zeitgeist Press, the legendary indie that has published Julia Vinograd, David Lerner, MK Chavez and a host of other legends (Danielle Willis, Joie Cook.)

Last night at the Poetry and Pizza series at Escape From New York (in San Francisco of course.) Chavez (nee: Maria Kaylib)read from her new book “Virgin Eyes” along with a host of newly written poems, and the good Mr. Isaacson read from his new tome, “Dumbstruck At The Lights,” perhaps indicative of his residence in the forever neon oasis/hell known as Las Vegas.

Issacson has a way of making poems about his father and his son sound edgy, while a passion about Rimbaud gives the old commune peripheral scalawag a “holy” sort of feel. Like a slam poet, he keeps his notes firmly in hand without ever really looking at them, subtly displaying his comfort and familiarity with his own material, but unlike a slam poet, not spending a lot of his alloted performance time trying to prove his cred or his mad skills or his alienated uniqueness…truth is, he’s just too grown up for all that. And it’s entertaining as hell to hear in poesy.

Chavez is too grown up for the young slammers too, not in terms of content but in terms of emotional maturity:

I’m in bed with the wrong man.

but it’s so human.

The poetry & pizza series at Escape from New York is a seriously hot SF reading, and always packs a full house which is an impressive accomplishment on a Friday Night in the Financial District for an establishment that is not a bar. Good on them for featuring two heavy hitting Zeitgeist poets last night.

Links:

http://littlebrownsparrow.com/

http://www.zeitgeist-press.com/