On a recent Sunday evening in
El Paso, about 30 young folks from Basketball in the Barrio followed
a musician to a small house on Louisville Avenue. Just outside the
bedroom door they read a poem, “Basketball Is a Holy Way to Grow
Old,” to the man lying inside who had written it. As they read the
poem, thunder and rain shook the windows.
The
man lying in the bedroom was Bobby Byrd. A few months ago, he’d
celebrated his 80th birthday in the backyard of that
house, with live music and poetry. The day after they read his poem
to him, he died.
With
a perpetual attitude of bemused surprise over how
it all happened, he had
led a hell of a good life. Happily, lovingly, productively married
for decades; the father of three
wonderful kids, one of
whom was an El Paso City
Council Representative
for years. Lee and Bobby had not only produced a fine family, but
also created in 1985 Cinco Puntos Press. Cinco Puntos (named for
their neighborhood) mattered, because it published many Borderland
writers, often Hispanic or indigenous, whom the world had ignored but
to whom the world now gave prizes. Many fine voices we’ve heard
only because of Lee and
Bobby, and their
bookstore was a great feature of their neighborhood. The National
Endowment for the Arts once promised them a $7,500 grant to publish a
children’s book by the leader of an indigenous uprising in Chiapas
– then cravenly withdrew it for fear of offending the Mexican
Government. They published i
anyway.
Long
ago, I knew the Byrds slightly, as mutual friends of poets Keith and
Heloise Wilson. The last decade or so, I’ve known (and loved) them
better, and, since COVID, Bobby has been a welcome addition to our
(ZOOM) poetry workshop. I hope Bobby wouldn’t mind my reprinting
here the middle of one of his poems, “What’s it Like Not Being
Here?”
And
what’s it like not even being here?—
this
here would not be here,
no
here, no now, my world, all
gone
away, nothing, empty,
the
darkness my mother’s womb
pushed
me through, a burst
of
amniotic fluid into light,
like
this light here, like this now,
a
dream, which is not a dream,
the
same dream my father whispered
in
my little boy ears, the day
so
many years ago, his plane flew
too
close to the earth,
crashed
and erupted into flames,
Clarksdale,
Mississippi,
goodbye,
he said, maybe he said,
maybe
he didn’t say, leaving this light,
this
earth light, this human light.
And
now you are not here, my friend! Wonderful kids and grandkids miss
your touch, your laughter, your easy delight in their quirks and
yours. You ambled
through life in your own way, doggedly loyal to truth, beauty,
family, and friends, and managed to do a lot of good while staying
humble and spontaneous.
Is
that Ferlinghetti’s dog howling?
–
30 --
[The
above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 17
July
2022,
in
the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on
the
newspaper’s website
(We
Will Miss Bobby Byrd - Poet, Publisher, Friend) and
KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week
on KRWG (90.7
FM)
and
on KTAL (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/)
and
be
available
on both
station’s websites.]
[A
poem by Bobby that I particularly liked was “Ferlinghetti’s
Goddamned Dog.”
Ferlinghetti's
poem, "Dog,"
was
one of the first Beat poems Bobby heard and loved as a kid, as he
recounts in this May 2021 blog post:
“When
I was 16 or 17, like in 1958 or 1959, my
friend Harvey Goldner, my first mentor in the community of
poets, guided
me to a basement listening room in the Memphis Public Library. There
we listened to the San Francisco Renaissance poets—Rexroth,
Ginsberg, Snyder, Whalen, Lew Welch, Spicer, Ferlinghetti, and all
the rest. We spent the whole afternoon there, the 78rpm records
spinning round and round. The poem that opened my heart the widest
was Ferlinghetti’s
“Dog.” (Please
listen before reading my poems.) That poem, with its street-talking
wisdom, was revelatory for me, a young man wanting to be a poet. I
keep it in my heart and mind all these years. Likewise, his City
Lights Bookstore and City Lights Publishing were also inspiration for
me when Lee and I began Cinco Puntos Press in 1985 and then in 2001
when we bought our own storefront in downtown El Paso. Around the
time of his 100th birthday, thanks to our friend Elaine Katzenberger
(publisher, City Lights Publishing), I met and talked with him at the
Poetry Project at St. Mark’s. He was like an old friend. Indeed, he
was an old friend.”
[What
I’ve called Bobby’s “bemused surprise” at his successful life
was evident in his manner, whenever we talked, but also in his
introduction to Otherwise,
My Life Is Ordinary,
a book of his poems: "This
poetics of mine is like a three-legged donkey. A goofy-looking pack
animal that stumbles along beside me. Damn thing just materialized
haphazardly when I was growing up.” His 80th
birthday party, with live music and poetry, was a wonderful evening.
]
By
the way, Susie Byrd says that anyone who wants to “do something to
help” or mark Bobby’s passing donate to the
Both Sides / No Sides Community (El Paso Zen Buddhist Center for
Engaged Practice), where
Bobby was
a founder and a teacher. He
found much peace there and helped others find more, and would love
for his passing to help sustain
the
community that was holy for him. You can make a PayPal donation to
bothsidesnosides@gmail.com or send a check.
http://www.elpasozen.org/
The
Both Sides / No Sides El Paso Zen Buddhist Center is a community of
people who come together to practice the dharma in the Soto Zen
Buddhist tradition.
[The
full text of the poem quoted in
the column is:
What’s
It Like Not Being Here?
Waking
up groggy, dream-heavy,
the
driver’s seat tilted backwards,
the
Subaru in the shade of an oak tree,
windows
open, a hot summer day,
the
Sprout’s parking lot,
4:08PM,
Memorial Day 2019—
I
can’t remember why I am here.
And
what’s it like not even being here?—
this
here would not be here,
no
here, no now, my world, all
gone
away, nothing, empty,
the
darkness my mother’s womb
pushed
me through, a burst
of
amniotic fluid into light,
like
this light here, like this now,
a
dream, which is not a dream,
the
same dream my father whispered
in
my little boy ears, the day
so
many years ago, his plane flew
too
close to the earth,
crashed
and erupted into flames,
Clarksdale,
Mississippi,
goodbye,
he said, maybe he said,
maybe
he didn’t say, leaving this light,
this
earth light, this human light
and
it makes perfect sense—
these
cars going back and forth,
Fords,
Hondas, Chevys, so many cars,
so
many people inside those cars,
inside
those buildings, walking the sidewalks,
huddled
in the shade, hot desert wind,
dust
and more dust,
a
mountain over there
at
the edge of Mexico, topped
with
dead Jesus on the Cross, stars
and
planets spinning round, fucking Trump
in
Japan making a mess of things,
humanity
on the brink.
