Well, the LA Weekly article Paul Cullum wrote about Peter’s slaying was finally published and I guess you could say I am gobsmacked, the fallout coming down heavily now, a week later, scab of grief picked open, bleeding all over the place. It’s also a relief in a way, after having discussed the story for the past year.

The editors cut it nearly in half and called it Beautiful Loser-Tortured Killer which offended Peter’s mother. Anything to sell the paper. Many people have asked, “What did you think?” I think Paul did a good job. It was well researched, and he brought out stuff about the circumstances I was unaware of, essentially razing Kalberg’s story about Peter breaking in. It would seem that Peter was in the loft for hours—placing phone calls to friends—before being shot. And the article suggests he was dead much longer than Kalberg claimed. Other friends I have discussed it with suggest that perhaps it was Peter who was provoked; lunging at Kalberg unaware he was concealing a deadly weapon.

Friends and family are campaigning the LA DA’s office to re-open the case but it remains to be seen whether that will be part of the fallout. They don’t seem too responsive. I remember when it happened, thinking Kalberg is going to get off with manslaughter. It didn’t occur to me that he would be charged with nothing and released four days later! Is life so cheap in LA? Yes, I think I am upset.

Some people don’t know our history, are curious as to why I still care after all this time. Yes, sadly Peter and I broke up but we still loved each other, remained kindred spirits and had reconnected in recent years, enjoying our bond, friendship renewed. We take so much for granted when we are young, especially each other. I’ve said it before, I didn’t realize how much he meant to me until he was gone, and it was too late. We were together during a critical time in my life, he coaxed me out of a deep depression, showed me how to be an artist. Now, nearly a year later and as I prepare to attend a memorial for Peter, it’s still all so sad it still makes me sick. I wish he had slowed down long enough to see the writing on the wall, the malice in his killer’s heart.

Soldier on? ‘Tis true Peter would want us to. Recently saw a call somewhere for artists “who identify as bisexual or with a label inclusive of bisexuality, such as Pansexual, Omnisexual, Ambisexual or Queer.” A label. Yeah, sounds great. Is it not possible to have an identity without a label attached?

I was talking to my friend Shane Hollands in New Zealand, host of Dirty Wordz. He said he went to see their poet laureate read. She left right after, didn’t stay to hear anyone else. Strikes me she should be impeached. Isn’t a poet laureate rather expected to encourage others? I told him Vancouver had a great one, the kind and generous George McWhirter. Wish I’d had him for a teacher, envy those that did.

Monday, July 6

Finally getting down to business here, cleared away as much crap and details as I can in order to work on my workshop and now I have a headache! I informed Josef that I am not cooking this week. Usually I just get some momentum going, then have to quit in order to go downstairs and prepare dinner. I know it sounds like I’m complaining but I’m not. I realize I’m blessed to have a family to cook for and clean up after.  I have presented variations of this but SIDEWAYS-Alternatives To Print is new. Preparations entail some composition and a lot of compiling of information, eliminating anything that isn’t relevant. I need to walk through it, plot the projections, time it, really nail it. Painful as it is I only have to do it this one time, create a template so it will be worth it.

Okay, what’s that about? I just opened up my Sideways-Alternatives to Print event page at Facebook to do some promotion and just as I glanced at the cover of my book “Sideways,” a dude on internet radio show, Soma FM’s Groove Salad-a group called Crazy Penis-said in a tune called 3 Play it Cool, “Sideways” Ah, synchronicity! Keeps us on our toes, don’t it? I have four sections to my talk, or four alternatives: performance-spoken word, music, the Internet—blogging and podcasting and finally video, or videopoetry. I get sidetracked so easily, start listening to Anne Sexton’s mellifluous voice during a search for her experimental band, Anne Sexton and Her Kind. I wonder if such recordings exist. I can’t find any at the moment. Slogging on…

Seems like forever ago I drove my buddy Pete Trower to Port Alberni for his Cork Boots & Marlin Spikes show/revue or what’s left of it. He said several of the original members have died. Well, no one gets out of here alive Pete. He’s funny, I asked him for his DOB and he told me the month, day but not the year, adding, “Don’t ask me how old I am.” I agreed and said, “Don’t ask me.” He and his friend Howard White of Harbour Publishing had discussed their friend, renowned logger poet, Bob Swanson, how he was self-conscious about his age and refused to reveal it, dying  his hair, trying to “dress young.” And they laugh at women for such vanity as though it were folly.

Took all day to get there—get up, catch the Capilano Queen to Horseshoe Bay, drive up the highway, turn around at Exit 4—such bullshit and a waste of time—go back to Horseshoe Bay, pay an astronomical amount to sit in a ferry line-up for two hours, having just missed a sailing. Can’t reach Pete, he’s not calling. I have no idea where he is. I watch a pair of young dudes in the beat up Toyota in front of me cavort, read, fume. Finally Pete calls me from the boat, keeps getting cut off by a female operator voice commanding him to put more money into the phone. I’m still stuck in the line up, I explain, we were supposed to me at my car. Another miscommunication. Seems to happen with ole Pete a lot. These thwarted phone calls from pay phones continue until I connect with him in Nanaimo after yelling at a moronic parking lot attendant who was insisting that I park and pay when all I wanted to do was finally pick the poet up and drive to Port Alberni and deliver him to his show. “There is no Pick Up,” he said, “only Drop off.” “How retarded is that?” Guess they don’t make enough money on the ferry fare; they have to gouge us on terminal parking too.

It was hot, my car’s air conditioner is broken and my mood was about as black as its interior. CD player is busted too, so I’m manning the radio all the way to Port Alberni, trying to hear it above the wind noise, have to have the windows down naturally. Guess my 96 Volvo is starting to resemble a beater. But that’s a whole other can of yearns. So we make it to the Inn—Pete is also really bad with directions—and miss the free dinner. I am introduced to his friends and they say, we were about to send out a posse to look for you.

Enjoyed the show. They had a musician, Roy Ashdown in the line up, a guy named Bob Collins, a local logger and storyteller, Howard White of Harbour Publishing, reading-performing really his stories of having grown up in a logging operation and Pete. I love Pete’s voice and he performs his poetry quite compellingly. Howard told a hilarious story about the Finnish couple that lived up the way and their roaming cow that produced “queer-tasting milk” due its diet of salal and seaweed.

The next day we took a train up to McLean Mill and saw a real steam donkey in action. Pete has many hairy tales to tell, told him I’m glad he survived to share them. It’s true that his writings go way beyond the previous logger-storytellers. They are nuanced and edgy in comparison, lyrical as well.