I

pretty much lived on, off, and from the street when I was a kid and I stole lots of shit and the things I loved to steal most were wanted posters right off the post office walls. They were always stapled to a bulletin board near the front door so I had to time the act of ripping one off just right so that I wouldn’t be seen by anyone entering or leaving the building. Usually, the clerks were so busy weighing packages they didn’t realize what was going on. The strange thing about this ritual is that those old wanted posters somehow reminded me of movie stills, guys with guns in their hands, women whose long hair was a long dark slash across the eyes. Some of those wanted men might have been Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Cagney or George Raft wannabes. But, their eyes always seemed a little off center or cockeyed and the expressions on their faces were strangely frozen, maybe even a little grotesque, almost always fuck you. Maybe that’s really why I liked them so much. These were the poses of bank robbers and murderers and they reminded me so much of men who lived from time to time at the Clifton Hotel.

I can no longer recall the names of the outlaws on those posters anymore. Maybe I was never so much interested in their names as I was in what they did, the mayhem they created. It’s very possible that I stole a Willie Sutton handbill without realizing who he was. And, it seems as though I do recall seeing one of John Dillinger nailed on a wall somewhere. Maybe, in the police station where my old man used to hang out when he wasn’t on duty as a fireman. He more often than not had a bottle or a flask with him and he’d pass it around to the guys in the station and pretty soon everyone was feeling good. In those days, liquor was just part of a working cop or fireman’s job. It was the promise and juice of shit going up or going off.

I didn’t know it then but I was going to meet the outlaw. And, the reason I didn’t know it was I was also growing up around outlaws. They were everywhere, electric and anonymous. They were my old man’s friends as well as his enemies. They were the drifters who slid off the freight cars down in the yards. They were the ex bootleggers who had become cops or low level gangsters who ran slots, back room poker games, or hookers in the neighborhood. Yet, somehow stealing those wanted posters was my way of connecting gangster movies to the streets that I knew. The one thing I definitely figured out was the dark side even before George Lucas made it part of the lingo. I met the outlaws long before I wrote my first story. And, many of my early stories were really about outlaws. They were the meat and potatoes of all of my dreams. They bled out in the movies that were always looping around just inside my shadow.

Glenn Cooper reminded me of everything all over again when he recently emailed me of his intentions to go see Neddy Smith who is doing life in prison. Smith is Australia’s version of Dillinger and Cooper had written OUTRUN YOUR FATE: THE STORY OF NEDDY SMITH, a sequence of poems about Smith’s criminal adventures. What Cooper essentially asked me in his email was should he go to see Smith. He knew deep down that he had to go but believed that the experience might be difficult. Going to meet the outlaw is always trouble and suddenly I realized that Cooper was standing at the threshold to the outlaw world and was asking whether or not he should actually cross over, go inside, make blood contact.

Personally, I think I’ve spent my whole life crossing over, making blood contact. I crossed over when I was sixteen and ran with a kid who was destined to shotgun an Iowa sheriff. I crossed over when I used to hang out with kids who routinely burglarized homes in the area. I lost count of how many times I crossed over and back at that old hotel. I had already known the dark side by the time I was twelve. And, in ways I didn’t understand then or totally understand now, I was hooked.

What I told Cooper was he had to go, he had to meet Neddy Smith because by writing OUTRUN YOUR FATE, he had somehow formed a secret psychic bond with the man. He had claimed Neddy Smith as his nightmare twin, his shadow, his dangerous other. The fact is you can’t just simply write a book about a gangster, a desperado, an outlaw and walk away. What happens is you form secret and sometimes deadly alliances with them. You dance in the darkness of their shadows. You die in their fears and rejoice in their violences. I would be willing to bet that Warren Beatty still dreams of being Cyde Barrow and Bugsy Siegel. When you play them you are them. I would put money on the table that James Caan and Al Pacino are still Sonny and Michael Corleone. When you play them you become them dream them you can’t walk away. Ever.

The same thing holds true for writers and poets. Somewhere in his dreams Tony Moffeit is Billy the Kid. He even looks like the Kid. Somewhere in his dreams Kell Robertson is John Wesley Hardin. The interesting thing is that Kell has all the right outlaw moves. Secretly, I have often wondered if he might have killed a man. Maybe in Mexico. And, somewhere in his dreams Glenn Cooper is Neddy Smith. And, somewhere in his dreams Cormac McCarthy is Chigurh, the contract killer in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. The reason I can say this with such certainty is that the bargain with the dark side has already been made, there is no going back because this is an archetypal agreement which cannot be abrogated or broken in any way. You are locked into it all the way to the end.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Tony Moffeit engages in gunfights or that Cormac McCarthy is an actual killer. What it essentially means is that the writer or the poet who writes about an outlaw, enters into a peculiar arrangement with his shadow. And, in that blood marriage, in that dance around the homicidal bonfire, he begins to endow his shadow with all of Billy the Kid’s or John Wesley Hardin’s or Chigurh’s deadliest and scariest qualities. In effect, he conjures and creates a special duende that connects with the Kid’s darkest of dark sides. He absolutely is required to do this. Otherwise, his character is going to become two dimensional, a comic book bad guy, a graphic novel creation. The only exception I can think of is Heath Ledger’s take on the Joker. Ledger came very close to transforming a comic book character into a tragic hero. Or, tragic outlaw. Take your pick. Either way, he will always be The Joker.

I’m listening to Kell Robertson read The Gunfighter, a poem from his book A HORSE CALLED DESPERADO in Silva’s Saloon. The voice is thick and slurred with booze but the slow and deliberate way that he reads gives the performance the kind of gravelly sound that the poem requires and this poem is the outlaw soul of Robertson’s work. While he reads, I am imagining the last gunfight in the film APPALOOSA where Vigo Mortenson kills the saloon owner. Mortenson stands across the street. He is calm almost relaxed. We know he is waiting for the gunfight to begin but he is also waiting for something else, maybe death is his gunfighter muse. The way Kell reads becomes a voice over for the film, the killer narrator a film like this needs. It has a bourbon back twang to it and sounds even more natural than music. In fact, it becomes the primary soundtrack for my version of the film.

& if he dies
he’ll shit all over himself
even as you or I
but while he lives
he’s clean
clean.

When Kell finishes the poem he steps away and walks toward the murderous dead center of his shadow where he crosses over.

I’m listening to Jerome Rothenberg read Murder Incorporated Sutra from his book POLAND 1931 and while he reads I get a picture of Robert De Niro shooting the fat Italian capo in the scene from THE GODFATHER. The gangster is standing just inside his apartment, De Niro is out in the hall. He has the revolver wrapped up in a towel and it makes me think that this is going to be a massage, the only difference is it’s a death massage. And, somehow I have mixed Rothenberg’s voice into THE GODFATHER except that this is my version now and Rothenberg’s voice builds to a crescendo while the fat Italian gangster is shitting his pants. And, when that revolver goes off, we all cross over.

And, it’s in that moment which is all nitro glycerined with so much murder and heat that I realize this is really what the dark side of america is all about. A contract killing is the partial fulfillment of a national death wish. It’s a down payment, the homicidal coin pressed deeply into the shooter’s hand. The only thing is it has to be reenacted again and again in all of its infinite variations to complete the dark american dream. While inscribing a copy of THE BIG SLEEP for William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler wrote, The genius of America is murder. Chandler crossed over. Faulkner was waiting.

Once you have gone to meet the outlaw, you almost have to claim him. Either you claim him or he claims you. One way or the other, it’s a fifty fifty mix.. Because you can no more disown him than he can disown you. It is a jump over the witch’s broomstick and then the ride to hell.

Sometimes I like to imagine Dostoevsky going to meet Raskolnikov. And R already has the axe and Dostoevsky knows it and he’s getting this strange feeling in the pit of his stomach because he knows what’s coming. He knows that if he creates this man there will be blood on the floor and secretly Dostoevsky needs to have mayhem helongs for it and he can hear R sharpening the axe against the smooth surface of bone.

Imagine Melville going to meet Ahab. The Captain has rooms over a sailors’ taproom where a group of men have huddled around to watch two harpooners throwing bowie knives at each other’s feet to see who can come the closest to taking off a toe. Upstairs, Ahab sits staring out the window at the harbor. He is holding a harpoon fashioned from the steel of a meteor and the harpoon’s blade is so sharp that even its slightest touch will draw blood from the most calloused of skin. And, when Melville enters, he immediately offers Ahab his arm to test the harpoon on.

Consider the strange case of Isaac Babel, a Russian Jew assigned as a war correspondent for The Red Cavalryman to a Cossack cavalry unit. Imagine that when Babel hears this piece of news, he conjures up Commander Trunov who initiates Babel into the troop by placing a revolver to Babel’s head and pulling the trigger six times on empty chambers. Then laughing all the way to a fat piss in a ditch. And, subsequently, Babel has his main character Lyutov carry an unloaded revolver into battle. Babel may even have invented the men who shot him. Murder might just be the most natural fantasy of all.

Over the years I’ve often wished that Joseph Campbell had written a chapter in THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES that covers the anti hero or the outlaw. Many of the hero’s trials and adventures can be manipulated and adapted to the outlaw’s quest as well but only with a certain amount of distortion. You have to keep in mind, Campbell was dealing with the archetypal hero, someone who never intentionally opposes the system. Billy the Kid, Don Corleone, Neddy Smith, Dillinger, Jesse James, Al Capone all opposed the system in their own individual ways. And, by opposing the system, they all invented worlds of their own. What is needed is for someone to write THE OUTLAW WITH A THOUSAND FACES, a complete archetypal study of outlaw heroes.

However, we don’t need a Joseph Campbell or a mythological investigation of the outlaw as a variation of the hero to explain the subterranean relationship between the poet and the outlaw. But, it is necessary to understand where the poet fits into this mythos, what his role is in the criminal wreckage and the natural anarchy of things. The poet provides the electricity for a Billy the Kid or a Dillinger to continue to exist. The stories about the Kid will always be with us but it takes a Tony Moffeit or a Michael Ondaatje to give those stories fire, form, frenzy, and meaning. And, by meeting this test, the poet gambles his blood and psyche against god’s blow hole in the void.

Going to meet the outlaw is one of the great archetypal challenges in the history of poetry. It is the big throwdown, the ultimate test for any poet. However, before you set off for that fateful meeting, the thing you need to ask yourself is are you up to it and is the outlaw mythologically large enough to encompass all the stories that you will be required to tell about him? And, do you possess the requisite genius to tell them and survive the telling? If he contains all the dark dreams of the world and you fall head over heels in love with that darkness, then he’s your man.

Todd Moore books are available here…

some related articles are listed below:

1. todd moore | outlaw
2. todd moore | the sign of the outlaw
3. todd moore | shadow of the outlaw
4. todd moore | outlaw poetry
5. todd moore | working the outlaw wind
6. todd moore | stealing dillinger, becoming an outlaw
7. todd moore | washed in the blood of the outlaw moon
8. todd moore | falling asleep in outlaw country
9. todd moore | the outlaw poet and those killer eyes
10. todd moore | coyote death mask outlaw
11. todd moore | outlaw bonfires and dillinger’s blood
12. todd moore | the last good reading from the outlaw dark
13. todd moore | the dillinger convergence: three ways of dreaming the outlaw
14. todd moore | machine guns, guernica, and the outlaw poem
15. todd moore | mythic blood, psychic movies, outlaw dreams
16. todd moore | danger beyond danger, where the outlaw lives
17. todd moore | outlaw poetry, psychic damage, the survival of wounds
18. todd moore | the second
19. todd moore | i was
20. todd moore | when…
21. todd moore | just before
22. todd moore | i want it all and i want it now
23. todd moore | we cut
24. todd moore | how come
25. todd moore | i don’t want
26. todd moore | I don’t
27. todd moore | this
28. todd moore | red
29. todd moore | what I want to know
30. todd moore | right after…
31. todd moore | the kid
32. todd moore | just
33. todd moore | when dillinger
34. todd moore | i love
35. todd moore | cindy was
36. todd moore | what haunted
37. todd moore | dynamite
38. todd moore | the mystery
39. todd moore | peckinpah took…
40. todd moore | the perfect
41. todd moore | the bank…
42. todd moore | lucky
43. todd moore | fucking
44. todd moore | burning the…
45. todd moore | dillinger was
46. todd moore | the question
47. todd moore | coleman is
48. todd moore | the bottle
49. todd moore | they’re coming
50. todd moore | the house
51. todd moore | reading
52. todd moore | hemingway
53. todd moore | tyler’s
54. todd moore | burning
55. todd moore | all the way to the fame
56. todd moore | lisa was…
57. todd moore | the name is dillinger
58. todd moore | frito stopped…
59. todd moore | dillinger stood…
60. todd moore | parker shot
61. todd moore | rd armstrong | reads
62. todd moore | taking on bukowski
63. todd moore | i write in the blood
64. todd moore | the sentences are burning
65. todd moore | walking around in the blood
66. todd moore | the blood of america
67. todd moore | jack wilson
68. todd moore | the nightmare talking
69. todd moore | devouring the shadow
70. todd moore | the nightmare of poetry is war
71. todd moore | working on my duende
72. todd moore | billie licked…
73. todd moore | shotgun blues
74. todd moore | dillinger stepped
75. todd moore | geeshie wiley
76. todd moore | the blood of the poet
77. todd moore | the old man’s waiting
78. todd moore | nightmare frenzy
79. todd moore | donny shot…
80. todd moore | the treehouse reading
81. todd moore | a conversation with raindog
82. todd moore | i’ll play dillinger
83. todd moore | black rain
84. todd moore | everything changes when dillinger arrives
85. todd moore | inventing the nightmare
86. todd moore | gimme a shotgun
87. todd moore | road testing the kid
88. todd moore | nightmare splender
89. todd moore | largo slapped
90. todd moore | dillinger posed
91. todd moore | gimme danger
92. todd moore | the dark country
93. todd moore | tasting the blood
94. todd moore | reading the dark
95. todd moore | dillinger, the coyote, and the wolf
96. todd moore | blood and fate under mad stars
97. todd moore | I work the shattered line
98. todd moore | and the gunfight at dodge city
99. todd moore | leaving a little blood on the floor
100. todd moore | fighting death for the poem
101. todd moore | the machine gun blood of the poem
102. todd moore | the dark side of america
103. todd moore | death rides the blood
104. todd moore | that terrible shaking in the blood
105. mera wolf & todd moore | read
106. todd moore | what are the stakes in american poetry?
107. todd moore | damage, genius, courage
108. todd moore | the coyote trickster and the wooden gun
109. todd moore | night blood, red hands
110. todd moore | writing dillinger in the eye of the hurricane
111. todd moore | billy the kid in the theater of blood
112. todd moore | falling in love with danger
113. todd moore | cold fire, molten ice
114. todd moore | the great american poem
115. todd moore | writing poetry, burning the house
116. todd moore | patrick mckinnon and the drunken shamanic
117. todd moore | scratching it out street level for the poem
118. todd moore & Lawrence welsh | poetry reading
119. todd moore | dillinger, outlaws, writing, and murder
120. todd moore | hustling for drinks, praying for lines
121. todd moore | the long way home and the blood on the floor
122. todd moore | dave roskos, the editor’s editor
123. todd moore | all the dark talking to the angel of death
124. todd moore | the fevers and sweats of the nightmare poem
125. todd moore | reading the movies, watching the poems
126. todd moore | love, longing, dillinger, disaster
127. todd moore | dreaming the dream, paying the price
128. todd moore | the murder and the ecstasy of the everlasting dream
129. todd moore | love & death & teeth in the blood
130. todd moore | american metaphors, visions, and nightmares
131. todd moore | the exalted scar and the annointed cure
132. Todd Moore (1937 – 2010) | A Memorial Reading | Vox Audio
133. todd moore | machine guns, movies, culture, dreams
134. todd moore | gary goude and that crushed rotting dawg
135. todd moore | into the open madness: the poetry of kell robertson
136. todd moore | blind whiskey and the straight razor blues
137. todd moore | the rat’s blood had glued my hand shut
138. tony moffeit | american blues outlaw poetry anarchic dream
139. todd moore | pure blood primal: the poetry of kell robertson
140. todd moore | the volcanic death song of baby face nelson
141. todd moore | scorched trinity: dillinger, billie, and machine gun love
142. todd moore | blood calls to blood
143. todd moore | what’s
144. todd moore | burning
145. todd moore | 45 auto
146. todd moore | coming out of…
147. todd moore | jerry’s old
148. todd moore | the fever of writing
149. todd moore | the nightmare of reading
150. todd moore | doing shots with ben smith in air à boire
151. todd moore | play it & judy christopher
152. todd moore | dillinger and the riddle of the wooden gun
153. todd moore | stories, ashes, and fire
154. bone | poetry by todd moore & rd armstrong
155. todd moore | dancing in the fire with s.a. griffin
156. todd moore | dillinger, death, and the high mountain air
157. todd moore | living at the movies with dillinger and depp
158. todd moore | the last good movie I made was a poem
159. todd moore | chasing jack micheline’s shadow
160. todd moore & dennis gulling | shotgun weather
161. bill nevin | todd moore, cinematic poet on the outlaw’s trail
162. todd moore | stealing the fire, stealing the shadow
163. todd moore
164. tony moffeit | outlaw
165. lawrence welsh | outlaw waiting
166. tony moffeit | outlaw consciousness
167. tony moffeit | the outlaw revolution
168. the outlaw bible of american poetry
169. tony moffeit | outlaw: the roots
170. wolfgang carstens | for todd moore
171. todd moore & john macker
172. rd armstrong | todd moore and lummox press
173. daryl rogers | near full moon | …for todd moore
174. todd moore | dying with dillinger in the corpse is dreaming
175. todd moore | las montanas de santa fe: visions of the spirit country
176. todd moore | the sea, the poem, and the house of all possible myths: the poetry of milner place
177. todd moore | the central avenue rundown jazz radio show
178. john dorsey & s.a. griffin | the dead zone trilogy by todd moore
179. todd moore | how to survive the coming night: the poetry of john yamrus
180. todd moore | the gold cane, van gogh’s ear, and the gun in the casket: wandering down this crooked road
181. todd moore | saturday night desperate, don winter, and the black mitten of poetry