For more of Rob Woodard's writing and links to his work on line check out King of Long Beach, his blog.

Four Poems from King Of Long Beach

Farewell Letter To Edvard Munch
Roadrunner West Coast - 2007
My Life So Far
Each Love Means Everything

An Excerpt from "History Lesson-Part 1," Chapter Four of the Novel What Love Is
An Excerpt from "History Lesson-Part 3 (A Star is Born)," Chapter Six of the novel What Love Is
Chapter 8 from the novel Heaping Stones

Read the first three poems of the "Munch Cycle" at Dogmatika

Read the fourth poem of the "Munch Cycle" at Dogmatika.

I'm in love with California -

and as I'm realizing this
I'm becoming saturated with a slowly diffusing joy,
while Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers'
first album is playing on the stereo,
as I drive my truck down 7th Street on this cool night ... past Rivera's Mexican Restaurant
and now the Substance Abuse Foundation
just west of Obispo ...

But my love isn't doing much to reduce
the forever growing traffic of east Long Beach
or the pavement that's being laid down
everywhere in my home state,
nor is it quite helping me to accept that
the two dark labyrinth novels I wrote
of difficult women, love, hate, need, loneliness,
and epic self-betrayal are fundamentally accurate,
are pulsating and grinding with a life that is,
or at least was,
truly mine ...

But I've made my decisions and it's
way too late for me to change,
even if I wanted to,
which I don't -

Because there are days here and there
when my love can make the traffic
vanish in my heart and cause
the people coming out of the sad rehab clinic
to smile at me in my soul no matter
what their ravaged lives might
be saying on the surface ...

Plus, if I change I'll never get the chance
to write a counterpoint to my novels:

a book that features a modestly pretty girlfriend
of clean 1950's sweater and smart-girl glasses
sitting in this truck cab with me,
enjoying the drive
as much as I am,
pavement
music
words
and all

My Life So Far

A dream told in paint and rhyme
and comic
Chaplin
dance
to
the
stars

DENIED

(DOOR SLAMMING)

that of course had no option but
to become a living
nightmare -

I begged the world to hold
me,
but there was no me
to hold:

For
I
died
each
morn-
ing
with
the
sun

Now roses
grow wild
by the roadside
and I cannot touch them,
and love grows wild
in my heart
and dies there
as if in an asylum
interned
and
forgotten ...

For I have lacked the courage
to fail
and therefore have become
a reader
instead
of a doer,

while boats
sail
down
the
San
Gabriel
River
smoke
trailing
and
I
cry
for
them
alone

Each Love Means Everything

It's easy to think about love
in the abstract,
to understand that no matter
what happens at this moment
you will love again, that there
will someday be a new different
person you care for as much as
the person occupying your heart
during this time ...

But that doesn't change the fact
that she's standing before you now,
and that for you the universe has narrowed
to her face, her movements, her smell,
to dreams that revolve only
around her ... That doesn't change the fact
that there's only one of her and that her love
is unique and can never be replaced; that doesn't
change the fact that the you that exists with her
is a creature who could not exist with anyone else
because of what she gives you; that doesn't change
the fact that she may not really love you back ...

And with this realization,
the desperation begins ...

© 2007 Rob Woodard. All Rights Reserved.
May not be reprinted in whole or in part
without written consent from Burning Shore Press.

An Excerpt from "History Lesson-Part 1," Chapter Four of the Novel What Love Is

Maggie didn't make another appearance in the restaurant for at least a couple of months And as the days and weeks passed my memories of her, the feelings she'd inspired in me, began to fade. But they never went away entirely: she was still lurking around in my head, just waiting for something to bring her to the surface-and that something was of course usually [her boyfriend] Aaron, with whom I was at that point working three nights a week.

And so, unable to contain my curiosity and simmering passion for Maggie, I began asking Aaron questions about her during our shifts, casually, here and there over the days and weeks, in a way that was hopefully so spread out and seemingly random that it would keep Aaron from becoming suspicious about the true nature of my interest. So slowly I began learning about this girl, began piecing together what seemed like a pretty decent sketch of the Maggie story. She was only sixteen, as I'd guessed, and was in her junior year at Long Beach Poly High, where Aaron was a senior (she and Aaron hadn't met at school, though, but thru Aaron's sister Angela, who took classes at the same dance studio as Maggie). I also learned that even though Aaron and Maggie had only been going out for a few months she had already moved in with him, was sharing with him the studio apartment over the garage of his family's house.

Who lets their sixteen-year-old daughter move in with her boyfriend? I remember asking myself. What kind of bullshit white-trash family does she come from? But she isn't quite white, is she? I then thought. It's like, she talked like a Long Beach white girl and acted like one, but her looks were a different matter, what with her darkish skin, her funky slanting eyes, and those cherubic cheeks that looked almost, I don't know, German or something in their fresh farm-girl plumpness. I mean, what was her ancestry exactly? Mexican? Asian? Native American? Northern Indian? Italian? Greek? Portuguese? Was there a Norwegian or an African ancestor somewhere deep in her family's murky past as well? "Her full name is Magdalena Rose Ortiz," Aaron told me at some early point in my inquiries. OK, that explains some of it, I thought, while noticing certain classic Latina features in my memory of her that I hadn't really picked up on before. "Her mom's white," he then quickly added, as if he knew what I was thinking. Fine, enough of that mystery had been solved for the time being, I decided. "But what else, what else can you tell me, Aaron?" my heart probably begged at that moment, as it usually did whenever we discussed Maggie, as the basic Maggie information I was getting began mixing with my innate attraction for her and turned me, for several moments at least, into a love-addled dork. "What does she think? What does she dream? Does she paint or write or play a musical instrument? Tell me about her dancing, her passion for it ... about how she just seemingly floats like an angel across some cold studio's bare wooden floor ... Tell me about her favorite movies and the bands she likes and her favorite writers and her favorite foods and how much she loves rich chocolate (all women love chocolate) ... Tell me whether she sleeps on her stomach or her back or her side and about how cute she looks when she first gets up in the morning with her sleepy sleepy eyes and her messy messy hair ... Tell me how she attains a Degas-like beauty whenever she bathes and how she moans like a perfect combination of knowing woman and overwhelmed little girl when her legs are opened to your touch ... And especially tell me, please please tell me, with a deep sensual deliberateness, that you think she could love me, that somewhere deep in her heart there's a place you're sure is reserved for me, a place from which I will for once in my life experience hope and warmth and feelings of love for another and myself thru another, from which I will finally be able to touch beauty and find it as forgiving and all enveloping as I pray and dream it must be ..."

© 2006 Rob Woodard. All Rights Reserved.
May not be reprinted in whole or in part
without written consent from Burning Shore Press.

An Excerpt from "History Lesson-Part 3 (A Star is Born)," Chapter Six of the novel What Love Is

Cloudy three-thirty A.M. night, silent except for the crackling of the fire and our near-whispering voices. Our lawn chairs as close to each other as possible, to the point where our thighs are pressing tightly against each other thru the aluminum bars. Sipping our beers and occasionally getting up to head over to the still-flowing kegs about twenty feet away to replenish our plastic cups. Drunken tickling, reaching over and poking each other in the stomach or under the armpits. Giggling Maggie, stifling her screams, while getting more aggressive in her tickling, to the point where she's leaving her seat and all but crawling into my lap. Finally she does crawl into my lap, and I wrap my arms around her waist to keep her there. Squirly Maggie, throwing her arms around my neck, while showing me some fire in her eyes. I try to kiss her lips, but she turns her head away and gives me her neck instead. Kissing her neck, biting it playfully, which makes her laugh and become more fidgety. Maggie freeing her neck from my mouth while cuddling closer to me, to the point where soon she's pulled my head into her breasts and is stroking my hair. The soft warmth of Maggie's breasts contrasting with the cool night air. The beating of her heart reminding me that she is a living being, not just an ideal, a frustrating not-quite-obtainable ideal ...

"I've been thinking a lot about you lately," she then told me.

"Yeah?" I said.

"Uh huh."

"What have you been thinking?"

"I've been thinking about how I don't know what to do with you."

Neither of us said anything for several seconds.

"I love you," I finally said, lifting my face from her breasts and looking up at her.

"I know," she answered, looking down at me with an expression that could almost be described as compassionate.

"I've always loved you-my letter didn't tell you even the half of it."

I then once more professed the grinding, beautifully endless details of my love for her, as she continued stroking my hair, while looking down on me with a mysterious smile, like the Mona Lisa's.

Silence again for a while, while I again lay my head on her breasts.

"I usually only go out with guys who aren't as smart as me," she eventually said. "That way I know I'm in charge, that I can control them."

An amazing admission, one that hit me like a sledgehammer, even though I was extremely drunk and finding myself becoming even more drunk from the warmth and scent of Maggie's body. I mean, I'd always pretty much known that that's how it was, but I couldn't believe she was actually saying it, that she was so baldy admitting such a horrible thing about herself, admitting that she was such a weak, frightened person.

My God, I thought, that's so sad, so pathetic. It made sense, though. I mean, Aaron, Conrad, James, and most likely Ariel were all such mental lightweights compared to her-and she had used them all, for emotional and material support, while keeping them under her iron fist. Whether Maggie loved me or not, I thought, one thing was now certain: the main reason that she has thus far only played around the edges with me is because she doesn't feel that she can ultimately keep me in line. That look I saw in her eyes while I was reading wasn't my imagination; she knows in the long run how much I have going for me, how strong I am, how much I would ultimately demand from her-and that obviously scares her big time.

I should just walk away from her right now, I continued thinking; we'll never work, she'll always be fighting me, which will force me to fight back. Shit, in one way or another, that's what's been happening this whole time! ... But even as I was thinking these kind of thoughts my heart was also melting for her, oozing with pity and the beginnings of compassion. Sad lost Maggie-what happened to you? Who hurt you? Who broke your little heart and took all the light out of your world? Who killed your dreams and left you in this completely paranoid defensive mode? Who stole your life from you, Maggie, and what's keeping you from finding the strength to take it back? ...

And suddenly I loved her more than ever. Suddenly I wanted to give her everything I had, all the strength she needed to defeat her demons. I now wanted nothing more than to hold her in my arms and tell her that everything would be all right and that she didn't need to be afraid anymore-because I would be there for her, because I would always love her and protect her no matter what. "I'll be your rock, Maggie," I felt like telling her. "I'll be your rock, your anchor ... and your machine gun, or even your B-1 Bomber, if a strong offense is what we determine you need-and together we'll fight 'em off, Maggie, together we'll do whatever it takes to set us both free ..."

Inspired by these warm thoughts and feelings, I wrapped my arms more tightly around Maggie's waist and pulled her closer, buried my face in between the cleft in her breasts, and began kissing her soft skin just above the line of her plunging top, while she lay her cheek on the top of my head and pulled me more deeply into her, pressing my face more tightly against her cleavage. "I love you, Maggie," I repeated, into her chest. "I love you so much ..."

"I know," she softly told me again, "I know you do, Rob ..."

Kissing my way back up her breasts, up her neck to her cheek, where my mouth begins searching for her mouth, which it finds, but for only a second-because Maggie suddenly pulls away from me, stares back down at me with an insane glare in her eyes, while emitting a chilling laugh, the kind of laugh you'd expect to hear echoing thru the corridors in some psychiatric ward on an especially lonely night. Scared and confused, I go for her mouth again, mainly because I don't know what else to do. She pulls away once more and lets out that same laugh, only louder this time. Then she suddenly lunges for my throat, into which she sinks her teeth, deeply, far beyond any love bite, to the point where it really hurts, to the point where she's probably breaking the skin. And she holds this bite, doesn't release me, even as she starts giggling thru her attacking teeth. Finally she relents, pulls back, and again begins stroking my hair, while still looking down at me with a crazy gleam in her eyes. Staring up at her with what I hope is a look of calming compassion, I begin stroking some stray curls that have fallen down across her forehead. She lets me do this for a couple of seconds before she grabs my hand and starts biting my fingers, hard, at least as hard as she was biting my neck. I successfully pull my hand away when she losens her teeth for a second to get a better grip and then instinctively try to get up, to get away from her; but she won't let me budge, just keeps her weight hard against me, as she cuddles up against me tightly, while again inviting me to lay my head upon her breasts, which I reluctantly and cautiously do ...

And for a long time, several minutes at least, we just sat there in silence, while I nuzzled Maggie's breasts and she lightly stroked my hair and rocked softly back and forth in my lap. Finally, I broke this spell, raising my head and lightly kissing her neck, as a way hopefully of sealing the new state of tenderness we've found in a very non-threatening way. Maggie seemed to understand what I was doing and to be going along with it, as she tilted her head back slightly, opening her neck up a bit for my kiss. But then she suddenly switched positions and once more began going for my neck, at first kissing it, then half kissing and biting it, and then finally just biting it again. She wasn't biting me as hard this time, but she wasn't exactly biting me softly either: her teeth were holding me halfway between a lover's nibble and a repeat of her earlier attack; it was as if she both wanted to entice and repel me at the same time. And since it wasn't hurting all that much, I just let her keep doing it, let her bite me all over my neck like that and then transfer her biting all along my shoulders, upper arms, upper back, chest, and even my nipples, which she eventually lashed onto hard thru my clothing ...

© 2006 Rob Woodard. All Rights Reserved.
May not be reprinted in whole or in part
without written consent from Burning Shore Press.

Chapter 8 from the novel Heaping Stones

Veronica worked at the Financial Aid Office at Cal State Long Beach and had to be there the next morning at nine, so she left my place around seven in order have time to go home and clean up beforehand. I drifted in and out of sleep until around ten. When I finally made the decision to get up I felt good, rested, despite the fact that we had stayed up until almost three fucking and talking and playing around. After eating some breakfast and taking a huge shit, I decided that I wanted to get out of the house, that I needed to move my muscles. I thought about going surfing, but there hadn't been much surf for weeks and I was sure I would have heard if that had changed. As I was getting dressed I noticed my bike leaning up against the wall next to my desk. I decided that a long bike ride was exactly what I needed.

I started riding south on Temple, towards the water. Fifteen minutes later I was down by the Belmont Pier, on the cement path that runs almost the length of the beach, on which I began riding west towards the Queen Mary. It was a nice day, I noticed. A light offshore wind was blowing and the gray marine layer and cool air of the day before had been replaced by clear blue sky and warm sunshine. Even though it was summer, it was the morning and a weekday, so there weren't too many people around, just a few sunbathers scattered here and there on the sand and the occasional jogger, rollerblader, or fellow cyclist on the path. This relative emptiness made the whole scene seem wonderfully spacious, made me feel almost as if both my body and mind could splay out infinitely in any direction. Drawing from this rush of freedom, I began riding fast, crazy fast, as if some great calamity would befall me if I didn't make it to the Queen Mary in as short of time as possible. I had always been a very active person, at various points in my life seriously into baseball, running, tennis, hiking, and in recent years, surfing; but over the previous year or so my level of physical activity had dropped thru the floor. I really missed it, I realized, as I sped down the beach path. It felt great to stretch out my muscles, to feel my heart beating and the blood moving thru my body. I was still in good shape, I decided, as I pumped my legs harder and harder; no matter how fucked up I'd become emotionally at least that hadn't yet been taken from me ...

I quickly built up a ridiculous head of steam and kept it up for as long as I could, before dropping down to a speed that was simply fast. At that clip it only took me about five more minutes to reach the parking lot down by the Queen Mary. Once I got there I stopped and looked at all the smaller boats in the marina and in the direction hulking old British ship itself, which from my current position I could no longer quite see. Mostly, though, I was lost in the feel of my beating heart, of the glorious biomechanics of my revived sweating body. It didn't take me too long to recover from my ride, though, and as I did I became restless; so I soon jumped back up on my bike seat and started peddling in the direction from which I'd come, though at a much slower and relaxed pace than before.

It really was a beautiful day, I began to more fully notice, as I cruised back over the ground I'd just torn thru. Beautiful enough, I decided, to cancel out the fact that the actual beach in Long Beach is a truly ugly stretch of sand. Back around World War II the federal government built a huge breakwater to protect the Naval Shipyard just up the coast. In addition to protecting the Shipyard, however, the breakwater killed the surf along the entire length of Long Beach and began acting as a kind of garbage collector, holding most of the refuse that makes it to the ocean near shore. Because of this, the beach is always kind of dirty, and often smells a little weird. Plus, the lack of surf is so obviously unnatural that it makes the place seem sort of emasculated, defiled and wrong. To make matters worse, at some point, in the early sixties, I think, offshore oil platforms were allowed to go up very close to the shore, closer than anyplace else in California, and maybe the world (I could easily swim to the nearest of these platforms). In order to help disguise what these things are, the two closest of these islands were given these weird beige facades that at night are lit up with these trippy pastel lights, which has left coastal Long Beach trapped in a kind of bizarre Art-Deco hell. I don't know who authorized these fuckers, the Feds, the State, the County, or the City, but somebody should have been put up against the wall over these monstrosities, or at least been forced to spend the rest of his days living on one of these industrial Gilligan's Islands, waking up each morning to the sight of some tower of arty stucco or steel and being lulled to sleep each night by the sounds of the grinding stinking oil rig that it so lamely tries to hide ...

But the day was simply too beautiful for my mind to really start veering into such angry political rants. At least I have a beach, I thought. Think of all those unfortunate souls living in places like San Bernardino or Idaho or Kentucky. As a native coastal southern Californian I knew what having access to an ocean meant: expanded horizons: the understanding that there was a beyond across all the blue-green water, where people spoke different languages, thought different thoughts, dreamed different dreams ... The knowledge, in other words, that I was only one of many and that there was a whole world from which to choose and the choices my ancestors made may not necessarily have been the best ones ... And it worked the other way too: this "beyond" also came to me. Long Beach is a porous port town, thru which just about everyone and everything passes eventually. To be from Long Beach then is to be from Marseilles, Venice, Durrell's Alexandria, Veracruz, New Orleans, Cape Town, Hong Kong, the Mekong Delta, Oakland, the Castro district, and an ancient Japanese fishing village all rolled into one. My ancestors came here from Ireland, Scandinavia, and northern France, via Canada and Michigan mostly, but I'm attracted almost exclusively to dusky women: Latinos, Africans, Mediterranean types, eastern European Jews ... How would that play in Tupelo or some northern Norwegian farming village? Not well, I'd guess. But that's Long Beach in a nutshell: a fecund mix always on its way to becoming a hive of caramel colored denizens, overflowing with hybrid vigor and beauty. So what if the beach is dirty and sad? So what if our government officials are stupid enough to put oil rigs a stone's throw from our most precious environmental resource? Besides, maybe all this dirt and stupidity is a good thing: it helps keep the rents down, the poor interesting people in, and the mix of genes and ideas churning and churning and churning ...

I'm not sure if these kind of lofty thoughts were going thru my head as I peddled my bike back down the beach path that day; but I'm sure that I was experiencing their meaning, at least on some unconscious level: I was in too good of a mood, had been too completely popped out of the self-pitying malaise in which I'd been wallowing for so long, not to have been infused in some way with the wild dreams of all those around me. I decided that I was in such a good mood that I wanted to stop riding and just drink it all in for a while. I let my bike roll to a stop, got off, and carried it out to maybe six or seven feet away from the waterline, where I stood it up in the sand, and then sat down a few feet in front of it.

There was no one within probably fifty yards of me in either direction, and even though I was in the middle of a city of around four hundred thousand, which is part of a sprawling urban area of several million, I felt almost alone, as wonderfully alone as a person might on a summit in the high Sierras. I took off my shirt, laid it on the sand behind me, and then laid my head back onto it; and I immediately felt the warm rush of sun hitting my chest, entering my body, and then moving down thru my limbs, all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes ...

Then, for the first time since I'd left my apartment, Veronica began creeping into my mind-and I began tensing up, began feeling trapped by the emotional demands I knew she'd soon be making on me. What does she see in me anyway? I then asked myself. It's not like we have anything in common; we can barely even hold a conversation, unless it's based around sex, based around me laying down a bunch of semi-bullshit about how hot she is. I should just get rid of her before things get out of hand, before she gets hurt. She's so fucking horny, though, so easy. I mean, she practically begged me to come in her mouth last night. "I want to taste you," she kept saying between sucks. "I want to taste you bad." (That was so cool, if a bit weird.) How am I supposed to walk away from that? But she's so stupid, so annoying. I mean, what was that astrology shit she was talking about while she was getting dressed this morning? Endless blathering about her being a Virgo and me being a Scorpio and the time of the year and the planets aligning and how all this crap somehow meant that we were meant to be, that the forces of the universe wanted us to "join as one." Jesus Christ, how can anyone believe that shit? Fuck it. I should just be mellow, just be grateful that I'm getting some. I mean, she's giving me the only sex I've had since Maggie left-and it's good sex too. Nobody says you have to love her or anything, Rob. Besides, it's not your job to look out for her: she's a big girl and can take care of herself. It's like, don't make life so complicated. Don't ruin things by forever thinking about their ethical reverberations. This day's so awesome, the sun and the cloudless blue sky-don't let your jabbering mind cancel that out! For once in your life don't beat yourself up for having basic human needs. For once in your life just relax and enjoy things for what they are ...

© 2005 Rob Woodard. All Rights Reserved.
May not be reprinted in whole or in part
without written consent from Burning Shore Press.