|
|
|
PHILOMENE LONG
ZEN HERMITS IN GREATER LOS ANGELES Los Angeles has its hermits Some take to Disneyland For their annual retreat But they never return One hermit is a Los Angeles Laker basketball player The best kind of hermits are those That don’t know they are hermits There are those who lose their voice If they look hard enough they’ll find it In their second pocket of their second suit Then earthquakes come, jumbling it up again Like a residential milk shake so that it Takes an act of faith to believe in sunrise Philomene Long was born in Greenwich Village and cut her literary teeth listening to poets verbally sear the paint off the walls of their private hells. Later, after escaping a five-year sentence in a Los Angeles convent, she migrated to Venice, California, wrote poems and was crowned Queen of Bohemia. Author John Maynard, in his book Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California, describes Philomene as mercurial and very Irish. "She was a regular feature of the Ocean Front in her tennis shoes, black thrift-shopdresses, long, straight hair, alarm-clock pendant, and heavy silver cross." Still, somehow, considering herself a nun, she joined the world and still lives the old ethic and upholds the old dream of salvation through creativity and counts poverty as a sign of grace. Her books of poems include The Book of Sleep, The Ghosts of Venice West, and Great Zen Masters & Other Holy Fools. |
|
© 2003 Underground Voices |
|
|