Happy Birthday Pasha

Pasha would be 67 today.

This is part 3, from Asa Jesus Proveda, one of my favorite of his poems:

in the dry creek bed where asa laid his heart
to rest where they found his daughter
in two inches of red mud

a rose grew there like a sweet black fist

it only opens at night
someone planted a simple cross
of leaves and ash in the month of October.
they say you can hear singing there, soft
joyous noises & the sweet sigh of the soul's
release. leaves are drawn to this place,
leaves & black roses. they say if you sit
there your eyes will close of their own according
to each is seen the singular
fruit of this place.

in time some thirteen moons
three in total eclipse
two old homeless Chicanos
built there shelters there because they said
at night there are unlimited stars,
'cept they said it in Spanish—it's
a peaceful place for dominoes and the water—
when it runs—tastes like sweet bright fire.
& they call the creek Theresa
after Asa's daughter. To this day it runs
sweet & clear, cool & clean beneath
the evening sky
rare black roses
open every night. save one. that would
be the day asa blew his head away.

life—this creek fragile. fragrant
hard to believe yes. hard & delicate
as ever
but if you come the old men say bring
your heart for there will be
no more

merciful beheadings.


I was faithful as possible reproducing this poem; never fully understood Pasha's theory of capitalization (or periods, commas, or linebreaks). He printed these poems off to be read by himself at a poetry event, probably never imagining that others would look at it. Nevertheless, since he's not here to ask, I let it alone.

"life—this creek fragile. fragrant hard to believe yes. hard & delicate as ever"

Goddamn, Pasha...So very true, and so very you. And it gets me every blessed time...

A Poem by Pasha Allsup

(This is actually the last page of a longer poem. It was untitled.)


Below the level of the sea I vomitted up a towel and spat fevers.
the weathering rock of logic crumbling
center to circumference more insubstantial ephemeral
shadows arose where once stood human form. They all seem like shadows
to me now. I passed inside to out and only an inch away,
I passed the heat of living bodies with every breath I chose to take.

Glacial slow growth
of the soul unto God handwritten & castaway
it's the vigilant & patient nature of my individual pain.
I don't know who told me
there are no telephones where I'm going.
The desert remains unfaithful & clearly, clearly ahead of its game.
A disturbing absence
of simple explanations & setting impossible moons like earthen-ware bowls
suddenly at ease & gratefully so.
I returned the sticky sweet smell of a neighboring well.
Inescapable teeth of shimmering, heat-hungering knocking holes
the sand cascades, the sand howls & sleeps steals and marches
in parade.
Leave it to its own fierce device, the message high grade
stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
is an ennobling gift from the Angel of Pointless Causes
I've been passing for human all these years "front to back".

It's just like me & those like me we fancy life near
the closer edge—the dunes vaguely smell of juniper & burning pinon
near the alder thicket. We smell of poverty, injustice, & fried-white bread.
We smell of squalor & a crushing xenophobia of the outside world—its
undocumented dreams.

Lately, I never wander far from the miserable road signboard sucking
ramada brush & the creosote slick rock sandstone domes & delicate
arches rent & overgrazing.
Life is a simple stake fool's gold devotion
just work up your claim rosetta laughter & the occasional
"I vomitted up a towel" to work my claim
first & last. I mean there's not much else to do.

I was born 8 Ahua Pop 11 Yax handshield—
mmm...You can call me Pasha—& moved into the desert eleven centuries ago
from Yaxchilain, a long dead sparrow to the wringing weather.
Uchribi chokokolat harbor lagging in the misted garden.
Round buttons I have for eyes. Still the water stone the tide I turn
pithekoussai'ee brown as my November garden, dead squashes, dead
waterlopes & stringy bean shells lathed from solid granite pews like
obsidian flake leg & limb, & long forgotten talks with God who
read & always reads me like ox scapulae liberated from its host oracle
bone by a righteous blade.

& might I say God—Good Lord Jesus—
it's good
to be alive.

Pasha Allsup, Poet: Sept. 27, 1943-Sept. 19, 2005

Paula Jane and I met Pasha in 2003, at a poetry reading at the old Sacred Cup coffee house in Austin, on Manor Road at Salina Street. Thom the World Poet introduced us, and for that I'll always be grateful. I'll never forget his reading that night—it was a poem called There Is No God But God, and it sent shivers down my spine, as so many of his poems did. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of it. Pasha rarely had his work appear in print, although it was better than nearly everything I read. From then on, though, after becoming his friend and feeling free to purloin, I would abscond with his copy of everything he read, so I have a small archive of his poems.

Pasha was originally from the flat earth and big sky of Amarillo, and arrived in Austin in the 80's. He was a regular at the old Chicago House, and the founding member of the Blue Plate Poets, who also included Mike Henry, Robert Lee, Marlys West, Alicia Erian, Joe Hoppe, and later Tammy Gomez. Pasha performed often at the Slam, but I believe he transcended that form and its limits; he was a terrific reader, though, and I will never forget the deftness and sensitivity and sometime ferocity of his delivery. He was an absolute original, and a poet to his core.

All the time we knew Pasha, he was dying from Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Paula Jane performed with him a number of times, at various venues, usually hosted by our friend (and local poetry impresario) George Leake. I remember one event in particular, in '03 at Quack's on Duval Street, where Paula Jane and Pasha and another friend, Steve Pressler, were all on their game and rolling, each taking turns firing off their poems in a kind of rite of celebration of poetry's joy and possibility—one of those moments when you know you're seeing something astonishing (George Leake is responsible for providing the forum for a number of those moments, and everyone who loves poetry in Austin is indebted to him—I know Pasha was, as are Paula Jane and I). It was at one of George's events that Pasha performed for the last time, late in '04, at Spider House, outside on the patio. He was wobbling quite a bit that night, and I was worried that he wouldn't make it through, but he did, as always, and he was fantastic. Hospice care came soon after, although not long before he died, he was removed from it—"Not dying fast enough," he said, with a wry smile and a laugh. The worst part was that they took his morphine away, and the pain was pretty bad, as you can imagine. The cancer was eating his bones, it had metasticized all through his body. The end came quickly, certainly too quick for me. I'd seen him about a week before, and he seemed to be rallying a bit. When I left, he got up from bed, and walked me out—he usually wasn't able to do that—and we lingered there at the door, and talked about his new guitar. As I hugged him before going, he seemed more vital than I had seen him in more that a year, and I permitted myself to hope the impossible. He gave me that smile, the one you see in the picture, and that's the last time I saw him.

In an earlier entry, I asked you to look in the eyes of another poet, and I ask you to do that again—look into Pasha's eyes, and look also at his smile. You can feel the gentleness and the humor and the light emanate from him, like a great wave of humanity, safe from the encroachments of darkness, whether it comes from people or from events or from motherfucking Non-Hodgkins stage 4 lymphoma. It is the light of our being, it is the kindness we are capable of being, and the good we can find in ordinary things, if we will just see it.

That's what I see, anyway...