Gone South
by Barry McKinnon
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gone south: This expression is generally thought to allude to compasses and two–dimensional maps where north is up and south is down. However, among some Native Americans, the term was a euphemism for dying, and possibly this sense led to the present usage.
(also head south, take a turn south, go south) 1 v phr by 1940s To disappear; fail by or as if by vanishing [examples omitted] 2 v phr by 1925 To abscond with money loot, etc. [examples omitted] 3 v phr underworld by 1950 To cheat, esp to cheat at cards [examples omitted] 4 v phr by 1980s To lessen; diminish [examples omitted] Probably from the notion of disappearing south of the border, to Texas or to the Mexican border, to escape legal pursuit and responsibility; probably reinforced by the widespread Native American belief that the soul after death travels to the south, attested in American Colonial writing fr the middle 1700s; GTT, “Gone to Texas, absconded,” is found by 1839.
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0in Arizona
in Arizona
the desert — weather within
weather, no discernible season, sense of its ancient
growth — the Sequoia? tree, names I don’t know — the desert sans name /or taxonomy / but for this little burst, minute, pink to cactus red buds to take as measure. (what was or is it in a temporality /does not need us nor, without a mind, need itself. thus, . . . it’s worse than the puzzle it appears.
the desert
/no matter the temperature /cold sun stings. this0 /no meaning as is with any sensation being only itself in the same condition.
the desert
looking at an interior, not yrself exactly, — but a vast expanse that if you entered wld you be you? this was its fear, yr fear, all fear in whatever risk one or it takes.
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going north in Arizona
/get back to the literal — as communication:
was in a line–up in Basha’s with a young man ahead — as my dad once sd — whose head fell into a tackle box: nose rings, ear rings, tattoos, skate board pants, runners with special meanings and a toddler — not the toddler, but he was packing a gun exposed (AZ law). my sense, to put the grocs. down, and leave the provocation of threat and trouble. pat kid’s head. Blam! have nice day! Blam! whatever one cld say / taken the wrong way.
no caring in this separation
otherwise, the bartender at the Sultanas in Williams Arizona stiffed me for 15 bucks. I hesitate to say “America” in quotes when and all in all sense the largesse unless I be taken / fooled by a more subtle commerce–training that leads to belief of total sincerity.
too drunk anyway and missed Petie the dog (as the reason, not the Grand Canyon) to see him again — 100 pounds on the poolroom
table / & floor
and the quotidian 35 bucks motel, & owner Elton — and the line I use: “I like you” as a way to disarm the possibilities of its opposite.
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at the south end of /
the Grand Canyon, the drop / one mile down. fear starts.
I cldn’t look / went
into the forest stumbling / told me nothing more than it did. in
Arizona.
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dog minutes
“young old man” —
bent /wrinkles. my human dog age 10. then think “life is
like a river” ( a complex flow of . . . / mindless
flood /over Cottonwood Island while sun’s co–optive measure/
melts a
long sentence that precedes its meaning / leading to a bridge
that draws girders to let steamboats pass 100 years ago. old Fraser
bridge — preamble to the future — opening to what I was going to say
in dog years
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to sense a way — release tensions of fight and flight without fight or flight — a condition wielded then welded to all that angered me not forgiven! be without them!
in the dog minutes ahead.
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tinkered w/ a “poem” — & thot call it all “draft” to assume you’ll never
get it, sensing then no need to. think: how does taking care of the 88 Buick fit in — or sense of love lost ( when it never left? these double tangengential thots without recourse to one’s good sense and single meaning. what everyone dreads
is an end
resolve? dissolve? forcing oneself to happiness — a spectre out of the weight ( of weightless thot
thinking beauty of river tree and wind in no sentimental way — a kind of clarity without knowing but its moment.
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dead ends. senseless to go on to arrive at what? and then reminded / remembered my old anxieties not so strong — but a preoccupation of what you always knew as you — to find enough room between the ditch and bank to turn. more washouts! — holes and steeper edges — some road left.
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the accumulation of all that was — all that did not
change. the mind when it did not know its future stretched / a field / to darker clouds — when you’re wordless perplexity was the mind as body of the world’s impending exit
to what’s already gone
— the human embrace to leave who need it most
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the old farm gone. roads re graded. foolish act to go back — to what was there there. how to say “emptiness” in memory — in an insistence to imagine you were there. fear and what makes it less. terror of all else. in the Carsland bar where I used to wait. the past where I now await . . . we’re all related . . . leaving . . .
obsessive clouds to the east curved down to fields —
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the place where memory began /replaced — useless to name or describe — the past neutraled & what’s ahead the dread of what remains
heartbreak / — its infinite distance / hope to nothing / yet to believe in harsh oppositions gain truer self & being /