Pleading for the Desert (1961)

Pleading for the Desert (1961)

With your sand-pills
plant pricks
and tonic winds
I long to crawl along
your filthy midnights
stare at myself
missing
in mirages and mirrors
chased by casinos
driven by cadillacs,
to have you
travel up your down sandsteps
onto fertile land that's mine.
I long for looking up at
stars from car hoods
realize wrong rituals
bathe my wishes off with water
imported from tenement
buckets and tubs.
Drag myself
along your dryways
ride all of your ripe cacti
'til I empty the flood.


Pleading for the Desert (1961)
from 'Portrait of a Mantrap'
Starring Mathilda 'Tiddy' Rockchester
who likes to cause an entrance before she makes a disturbance - or appearance, rather.

The above words came right off of the liner notes included on Mathilda's 'Tiddy' Rockchester's 4th album, 'Revolution My Ass, Pour me some Rum.' She didn't write this plea as if it were a poem (I took that liberty) she wrote it this way, instead:

"Listen here, Desert-honey:
I long for your sand-pills, plant pricks, and tonic winds. I long to crawl along your filthy midnights, stare at myself missing in mirages and mirrors - chased by casinos, driven by cadillacs, to have you travel up your down sand-steps onto fertile land that's mine." She broke it off here, and included the above picture, whose author, (undoubtedly a beatnik-hippie or a freak of jazz) is unknown.

This album was produced and distributed posthumously by her former manager, Wellington Daniel Waters (aka Wellwater) who branded himself sole proprietor of her estate, after discovering the location of her unmarked grave on a map which provided a most disturbing backdrop (according to Wellwater) to the most vivid dream he had.

Her liner note continued after the picture, with the rest of her plea:
"I long for looking up at stars from car hoods, realize wrong rituals, bathe my wishes off with water, imported from tenement buckets and tubs, then drag myself along your dryways, ride all of your ripe cacti, 'til I empty the flood."

Wellwater swore the note was meant for him but still dedicated the album to Tiddy (as she liked to be called), writing, in his own hand:
'This album is dedicated to the memory of Mathilda 'Tiddy' Rockchester, which does not necessarily mean that the lady is dead. '

After the album's release, Wellwater spent that winter waiting for one conjugal visitation from - at the very least - (according to him) her wicked, wicked soul. When the Spring of 1962 came and Wellwater was forced to realize that though he had aged, he could detect inside of him little growth, he hydrated himself with water, then whiskey and wrote down these lines to the beginning of an account in which he denigrated, then elevated, then denigrated, again, the myth of Mathilda:

'I have always loathed Mathilda - and not because she was ruthless or manipulative or that she sold to the public the image of herself as a prostitute and genius. I loathed Matilda simply because I created her - and though it is no comfort at all that she allowed me to ruin her with every act of my creation, I have been destroying myself ever since."

From 'Portrait of a Mantrap' excerpt #1 by Tiffany Osedra Miller