The Big Cheese

I went to school in an idyllic Midwestern small town. It was doubly idyllic because a nuclear power plant had just been built there and the tax revnue allowed us to have an Olympic sized pool, a state of the art computer center, and just about anything else we wanted.

It was right after the Dazed and Confused era had ended, and the Revenge of the Nerds every 80′s movie you can think of had started. I had spent the summer before I entered high school playing Dungeons and Dragons, which had become my new obsession. There was a small hobby shop on Main Street, and I was able to buy everything I needed to develop a healthy obsession there.

I joined the cross country team with all my friends, and introduced them to Dungeons and Dragons. They were taken with it, too, and we began playing in each other’s basements when we had free time.

But one time we made the mistake of trying to play in the school commissary after practice. There was a holy shitstorm of a backlash which led to all role playing games being banned on school premises and several supposedly Satanic books being pulled from the library.

It was the height of the Satanic Panic, and even the Attorney General seemed to be taking Geraldo Rivera seriously when he said Satanic cults were everywhere. Several people were wrongly prosecuted, and many lives were ruined by the hysteria.

As for me, my mother took my books one day while I was at school and I never saw them again. My friends had no real desire to become pariahs, so they gave the game up. I did, too, at least outwardly, but I was always thinking about it in the places where no one could see.

All these years later I am now collecting some of the books and modules I bought for a fraction of the price there at Claire’s thirty years ago.

I was fortunate that I had several obsessions developing in me. Another was horror movies, and Elvira’s Movie Macabre was my respite from the hysteria that was going on around me every week. I saw movies like Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, The Monster Club, Pigs, and Blood Bath for the first time on Movie Macabre. 

I was a bad cross country runner. I discovered a few years ago why: genetic heart abnormalities. I feel fortunate to have survived major heart surgery and to be here on Earth to see all the things I was crucified socially for in high school become popular and accepted. 

Recently I read an article that Outsider Art is a trendy investment idea. Art collectors, and just speculators are snapping it up. I didn’t read this in an art publication, but an economic magazine. 

It made me angry.

And sad.

For reasons I will no doubt be insufficient in explaining, but the heart of the sadness and anger is this: most Outsider Art is created from intense suffering and sadness by those who never profit from it, or even receive the help their work may be crying out for. To make the matter worse, it is often those who would have the money to buy their trendy work who were the ones who denied them access to that help in the first place. 

Dovetailing with these thoughts are two stories I read this month. Both astounding and fascinating. The first is of the Dunning House in Chicago. A story done in 2013 by Robert Loerzel, but just came to my attention last week. 

The opening line, “For a long time, Chicagoans were scared of Dunning. The very name “Dunning” gave them chills. People were afraid they would end up in that place” rings true, because here in Rockford the threat to the unruly was “You’ll end up in Singer.” You’ll end up in a place of unholy despair from which there is no escape and where they can do whatever they want to you without anyone to intervene on your behalf because you have been forsaken. 

I know people who make their living and sell their books exploiting places like this with “ghost tours” and so-called psychics retelling the stories of those who died in hellholes like this. These are people who suffered and died, often forsaken and at the mercy of those who showed none. To profiteer from that seem like another betrayel of what they went through. 

The second story was about the Henry Darger Room. A man who lived a lonely life in a Chicago apartment for forty years, creating an amazing assembly of paintings, collages, and stories about the fictional Vivian Girls. His early life was much like the one of those at Dunning House, and what is astonishing about Darger is that he was able to maintain his autonomy for those forty years while he made his art. Very few Outsider Artists can.

They are very rarely able to use their own creations to enrich their own lives, let alone even sustain basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter, but long after their deaths these vultures swoop in and profit from their work. To me this seems like a second atrocity. 

I believe the work of these artists needs to be preserved and honored, but profited on like rice, oil, or cotton? That seems distasteful and wrong. I know a few dozen Outsider artists who create without much acclaim or recognition, and seldom make any profit from their work. Many have been institutionalized, homeless, and gone without treatment and the barest human essentials. It makes me sad to think only their death will allow them to be recognized. 

Since Reagan de-institutionalized American mental health facilities in the 1980′s the mentally ill have had a diaspora, ending up in homeless shelters, church homes, prisons, and abandoned structures throughout America. Here several freeze and die every winter in the parking garages. These are people who have had their very humanity stripped from them. To steal the art that some of them make on top of this seems like a crime akin to stealing the fillings out of victims of genocide’s mouths. One can only hope these artifacts have some humanizing effect on those who are plundering them. 

Had a charity event tonight to raise money for the Meals on Wheels program that helps feed the elderly and disabled. Zombie Logic Press and Rockford Illustrating donated art and books for the silent auction, including a copy of our latest book, The Blood Dark Sea, by outlaw poet Dennis Gulling. Our basket did quite well, raising over $200 for Lifescape. I wish we could do that well in sales for ourselves, but it is nice to know at least one’s work benefits someone.

That “Downtown” art seems to appeal to the East Siders

So, here are a few more poems from Dennis Gulling’s book The Blood Dark Sea

HER FATHER

After her mother

Was killed in a car accident

Her father came quietly apart

At night she could hear him

Walking around downstairs

From room to room

Talking to himself and crying

He didn’t go bowling

Or turn on the tv anymore

Just sat in his chair

And looked out the window

She tried to be there for him

But there just wasn’t

Enough of him left to save

One night he drank a big glass of port

Got dressed in his only suit

Put her mother’s wedding ring in his pocket

And walked into Lake Wautoosa

He didn’t leave a note

Just an ace of hearts

Torn in half

On the kitchen table

JACK & KARL

When the cops pull them over

Jack and Karl are both wearing

Wedding gowns with swastikas

Painted on the sleeves

With day-glo orange paint

Calliope music blasted

From the tape deck

And the pig in the back seat

Was banging its snout

Against the window

Squealing to get out

Just before the officer

Reached the car

Jack leaned over and said to Karl

Now remember

Just act like nothing’s wrong

KNIFE

She saw the knife

In her dreams

Weeks before anything happened

It was a non-descript butcher knife

Sticky with blood

Like the one her father

Took in the heart

When he surprised a burglar

15 years before

She was the one who found him first

And was playing with his hair

When her mother came in the room and screamed

That’s all she remembers about that night

But the dreams keep it all alive

She woke up one morning

With a knife at her side

Her mouth was wet with a salty fire

Blood caked her lips and chin

She went into the bathroom

Stuck her tongue out at the mirror

And saw the gash she made

When she frenched the blade

KITTREY

Kittrey was laughing

When Doris pulled

A knife on him

She knew he’d

Just been paid

And had $600

In his pocket

She slashed the air blindly

Till the blade met its mark

He laughed harder then

And slapped the knife

From her hand

He grabbed her

With both arms

And kissed her hard

She could taste

His blood on her lips

And started laughing too

If a person has one of the more intractable personality disorders like Schizoid Personality Disorder, which I do, or is on the Autism Spectrum, which millions are, you might be very capable of writing and publishing a book. What might prove more difficult is that moment when you have to talk to other human beings about your book in an effort to promote and sell it. As both a writer and publisher of other writer’s books I find myself in a the very anxiety- laden position of being the point person in the organization in terms of dealing with the media. My default position in all things is to try and do it via email and electronic communication, but that is very limiting, and many people see it as a form of insult that you do not make either your voice or your physical presence available to them.

Press releases, book reviews, and getting your books listed on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Good Reads etc will help, but there’s no substitute for standing in front of an audience reading from your book, sitting down with an interviewer for a radio chat, doing a short stand up when the reporter from the local news shows up, or sitting there behind a table signing copies of your book at a bookstore. If there still are bookstores out there. The question is how can one do this when any one of these scenarios is likely to cause anxiety or panic.

No, seriously, I was asking.

I wish I had answers to these questions. I care immensely about the books I publish, and I work my butt off to promote them in all the ways I feel capable, but when the host of the morning show at NPR wants a guest to talk about The Rock River Literary Series he means me. Phone interviews? Podcasts? Me. Me. 

Me. 

But there really is no me. I can fake being human all I want, but the expenditure of energy it takes to do it repeatedly is exhausting. I suppose I could rehearse some talking points, pop a Xanax, and soldier through a few press appearances, but it would make my days and night miserable dreading it. Late at night I used to rehearse answers to various questions I anticipated a reporter would ask a poet, but I quit doing that years ago. 

The serialized batches of poems from The Blood Dark Sea are almost gone. These start on page 89 of the 100 page book. The book release party is scheduled June 11th at J.R. Kortman Center For Design. Here are a few last poems from the book of Outlaw Poetry The Blood Dark Sea, by Rockford poet Dennis Gulling.

FRED CARVER

3 days after Fred Carver

Was shot dead

In a craps game

We all gathered

At Sparkman’s Funeral Home

For the visitation

I was standing

Behind Fred’s ex-wife Thelma

When she reached into her purse

And dropped something

In the casket

I leaned over her shoulder

And watched a black spider

Crawl up Fred’s face

And disappear in his hair

DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE

She’s standing next to the police car

A cop is slapping the cuffs on her

When the paramedics bring him out

With a screwdriver

Sticking out of his chest

He’s trying to sit up on the stretcher

But he’s strapped down

And all he can do

Is give her the finger

As they’re putting him in the ambulance

She blows him a kiss

And says to one of the cops

He doesn’t really mean it

He’s just having a bad day

JESSUP

Jessup lay curled up

On the back seat

Both hands pressed over

The bullet hole in his gut

Trying to keep the blood in

Katy was at the wheel

Doing 80 down the Daysville Blacktop

Sirens and flashing lights

A hundred yards behind her

He’s saying her name

Over and over again

As his life leaks away

But she can’t hear him

Over the roar of the engine

The bag of gas station cash

Is on the passenger seat

Loose bills falling out

When the car screams around curves

Her knuckles are white on the wheel

Her eyes locked

On a darkness

Beyond the headlights

LOVE HAPPY

She’s scratching at her chest

Digging her nails

Deep in the soft white space

Between her breasts

The red furrow gets wide

Longer

She looks at him

With dead baby doll eyes

And tells him

She’s trying to scrape

His poison love from her heart

Dennis Gulling is both an Outsider and Outlaw Poet. A resident of Rockford, Illinois, famously America’s 3rd most dangerous city, it is no surprise Gulling is an expert chronicler of true crime and noir poetry. His poems take a deadpan perspective of the awful decisions and bad behavior of a litany of characters just begging to be made an example of. The police blotter in America isn’t often amusing, but the poetry of Dennis Gulling is. However, the poems are not indictments of the people he observes. there is no condescension or judgement, simply unflinching storytelling by an expert observer of the human condition. 

BOBBY & FRANCINE Bobby cut x marks In his arm With a razor blade To make Francine wet Loved those little Squeals she’d make Watching blood chase blade Through sliced skin When he was through He took long drags On his cigarette And laughed While she licked Dark red candy Off his arm

Watercolor of Rockford by Jenny Mathews of Tiny Drawings

DONNA Donna the waitress At the High Top Showed me the tooth she found Under a bar stool At the Edgewater Tap After Mike Jaffney Shot Willy French in the face For knifing his brother It’s clean and white now she said I rubbed all the blood off Making wishes That never came true

SHE She kept Packing towels Over the hole in his belly But the bleeding Wouldn’t stop He wasn’t even moaning anymore When his breathing got Softer and softer And the blood Stopped coming out She picked the gun up From the corner where she threw it Turned off the tv And went dancing

WANT She boils in his blood Is a cut Somewhere deep inside him That never heals Just tears open A little wider With every breath he takes He has dreams about her Where he wakes up On all fours Stark naked and sweating If you ask him about her He won’t lie Won’t pretend he doesn’t care He’ll say he loves her More than anyone On this earth And would do anything To have her back And if you ask him What anything means He’ll just give you This small sad smile That could mean a million things And you just know He’s driving without headlights Down some dead end Street of desire The sweet fever of her kiss His only destination

105 year old aboriginal Australian artist Loongkoonan proves that it is never too late to become an Outsider artist, or to pursue your ambition to create a body of work that can become a source of inspiration for others. 

Born before official records were not even officially kept, Loongkoonan estimates she was born in 1910. She works in the traditional aboriginal style of acrylic dots on linen.

Perhaps the most incredible thing about Loongkoonan is that she didn’t even start painting until the age of 90. Here at the Journal of Outsider Poetry and Art we say rock on Ms. Loongkoonan. May you paint another 100 years.