...and don't miss
John & Philomene
Poetry and Prose from John Thomas and Philomene Long
The Beats: an Existential Comedy
by Philomene Long
Lynne Bronstein's Venice Poems
John O'Kane
Eavesdropping on the Boardwalk
by Anne Alexander
Zendik poem:
Buck-or-Two Blues Rap
Gas House beat HQ
Clair Horner
Clair Horner self-published his booklets of poetry, aphorisms, and Carlinesque linguistic conundrums (along with some really dumb puns) in batches of 1000 copies. "If you want a castle in the air, you must look up someone in the false estate business," is a good example of the fun he had with the language.
He used to frequent the Boardwalk, selling his books to tourists, especially around Dudley, because he was an habitué of the Venice West Café. We know he was in Venice in 1960, because one of the first things Vaughn Marlowe did when he arrived, was listen to Horner, who would have been almost 40 then, read at the Gas House.
Apparently he read on KPFK radio at least once. John OBrien also mentions knowing Horner, back in the day, and his memoir includes a photo which is actually a still from Leland Auslender's film, Venice Beach in the Sixties: A Celebration of Creativity.
The books included:
Please Don't Step on the Bacon, published in Venice in 1963
Please Don't Step on the Eggs, Either, published in Venice in 1964
Please Don't Tread on the Bread, published in Venice in 1969, with
silk-screened psychedelic lettering on cover
Please Don't Trudge on the Fudge, published in 1979 after Horner
had moved to Oregon. A copy of this book graces the Bruce Pelz Fanzine
Collection at the University of California, Riverside.
I was fortunate enough to get hold of a copy of Please Don't Trudge on the Fudge. I say fortunate, because I collect quotations, and this little book is a gold mine of them. It provides eminently quotable lines on the subjects of pets, relationships, politics, sex, genius, humor, age, suicide, creativity, racism, money and more. Horner was a hard-core atheist, so of course he had a lot to say about religion - a veritable storehouse of one-liners any anti-religionist would be proud to repeat.
I don't totally endorse a lot of what he says, but then, that's true of anybody. He had disagreeable opinions about homosexuality, feminism, the penal system, and a few other subjects. He also mined an unhappy marriage for subject matter.
Some people spell Horner's first name with an E at the end, but in his own books he spelled it with no E, so I expect that's the right way. By all accounts he was a fun guy to hang out with, possessing a quick wit and a raunchy sense of humor. He lived to be at least 58, because that's mentioned as his age in the 1979 book.
I live on a planet full
of
walking corpses.
Clair Horner
Horner in 1979
It's well to know what's
going on,
just in case it goes on you.
Clair Horner
FOR MY FRIEND
I'd like to put everything I have
Into or around anything you have
In order to say that
whyever
whatever
whenever
wherever
however
Or whoever you are,
I'd just like to be there.
Clair Horner