Suicide Rock Base Holds Huge Amount Of Garbage

It is an icon that most Utahns know or have at least heard about.  Suicide Rock rises majestically out of the mouth of Parley’s Canyon, and is covered in paint and graffiti.
 
Myth surrounds the painted rock.  According to legend, a Native-American maiden stood upon the sheer cliff waiting for her beloved brave to return from battle.  When she learned of his death she leapt to her death. 
 
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s it stood sentry over the old Parley’s Canyon Reservoir, until it was drained at the beginning of the 20th century.  It has been tagged, painted, and sprayed for years and years by graffiti artist, teenage lovers, and fraternity pledges.  
 
For many, the graffiti is harmless, even entertaining, but if you look below the surface you will see what amounts to a modern day tragedy.  At the base of the rock are hundreds and hundreds of discarded paint cans and other garbage thrown without care any and everywhere around Suicide Rock.
 
There are cans in the grass, cans floating in the creek, even cans dangling from the trees.  Take a trip off of the Bonneville Shoreline trail and you find empty 5 and 10 gallon paint cans, the twisted remains of an old bike drifting in Parley’s Creek, and where the creek flows the heaviest an abandoned shopping cart blocks the water.

I wonder how many, if any, bags of garbage and empty spray paint cans Chris Johnson (the KUTV reporter) and the rest of the remote crew hauled away after they finished the story … or do you suppose they just threw it all back down on the ground for the rest of us to clean up?

SHADWELL STAIR

I am the ghost of Shadwell Stair.
       Along the wharves by the water-house,
       And through the cavernous slaughter-house,
I am the shadow that walks there.

Yet I have flesh both firm and cool,
       And eyes tumultuous as the gems
       Of moons and lamps in the full Thames
When dusk sails wavering down the pool.

Shuddering the purple street-arc burns
       Where I watch always; from the banks
       Dolorously the shipping clanks
And after me a strange tide turns.

I walk till the stars of London wane
       And dawn creeps up the Shadwell Stair.
       But when the crowing syrens blare
I with another ghost am lain.

BATS

Bats

unveil themselves in dark.
They hang, each a jagged,

silken sleeve, from moonlit rafters bright
as polished knives. They swim

the muddled air and keen
like supersonic babies, the sound

we imagine empty wombs might make
in women who can’t fill them up.

A clasp, a scratch, a sigh.
They drink fruit dry.

And wheel, against feverish light flung hard
upon their faces,

in circles that nauseate.
Imagine one at breast or neck,

Patterning a name in driblets of iodine
that spatter your skin stars.

They flutter, shake like mystics.
They materialize. Revelatory

as a stranger’s underthings found tossed
upon the marital bed, you tremble

even at the thought. Asleep,
you tear your fingers

and search the sheets all night.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

these quiet nights

after the storm
there is a hush.

a held breath
in moist silences.

after the storm,
these quiet nights
are all that remain.

we work hard all our lives
battling forces
we cannot defeat,

our voices mingling
with the roar of passing time.

but after the storm
there are
chances to wipe the water
from our eyes and
see with
uncertain clarity,
to rest our ragged throats,
to hope.

these quiet nights
refuel us

as
            dark clouds
gather

in
threatening
skies.

  — christopher cunningham.

From the GPP Reader: Selections from the poets of the Guerilla Poetics Project.

CC will have a new chapbook published by Kendra Steiner Editions within the next few weeks, as well as a limited edition broadside from 10pt Press. Both are bound to be outstanding.

THE STORM

1

Against the stone breakwater,
Only an ominous lapping,
While the wind whines overhead,
Coming down from the mountain,
Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces;
A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,
And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against
        the lamp pole.

Where have the people gone?
There is one light on the mountain.

2

Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,
The waves not yet high, but even,
Coming closer and closer upon each other;
A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,
Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,
The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,
Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness.

A time to go home!—
And a child’s dirty shift billows upward out of an alley,
A cat runs from the wind as we do,
Between the whitening trees, up Santa Lucia,
Where the heavy door unlocks,
And our breath comes more easy,—
Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
The walls, the slatted windows, driving
The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer
To their cards, their anisette.

3

We creep to our bed, and its straw mattress.
We wait; we listen.
The storm lulls off, then redoubles,
Bending the trees half-way down to the ground,
Shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard,
Flattening the limber carnations.

A spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb,
Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead.
The bulb goes on and off, weakly.
Water roars into the cistern.

We lie closer on the gritty pillow,
Breathing heavily, hoping—
For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater,
The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell,
The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses,
And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree.

  — Theodore Roethke (1908 - 1963), American Poet.

Stopped at Christine’s Fountain while out for my ride today. It’s in a perfect place to stop and rest a bit and refill bottles at the mouth of Parley’s Canyon on Foothill.

I never met Christine Brimley, but many thanks for inspiring so many people, and many thanks to Marit Fischer for letting people know about Christine’s incredible life, which allowed me (amongst others) to help make this memorial a reality.

View Larger Map

It looks the same as so many others, but it’s not … I swear! I did the loop BACKWARDS today. So there. Nyah nyah nyah.

It was freakin’ hot, too. Saw Fastgrrrl and Dr. Clay (I think) out there coming south on 20th East as I was headed north. Good thing we were going opposite directions. Wouldn’t wanna get chicked, or grrrled, or bitched.

Stopped and refilled bottles at the new Christine Brimley Memorial water fountain at the south end of Foothill, by the YESCO building just before crossing Parley’s/I-80 to get back to Wasatch. Good, cool water … yum.

Now, for a Mexi-Coke and some squeaky cheese curds.

And then a shower.

TO THE PRESENT TENSE

By the time you are
by the time you come to be
by the time you read this
by the time you are written
by the time you forget
by the time you are water through fingers
by the time you are taken for granted
by the time it hurts
by the time it goes on hurting
by the time there are no words for you
by the time you remember
but without the names
by the time you are in the papers
and on the telephone
passing unnoticed there too

who is it
to whom you come
before whose very eyes
you are disappearing
without making yourself known

  — W.S. Merwin (b. 1927), American poet, Pulitzer Prize winner