A NOTE ABOUT THESE WRITINGS: I did not spell-check or grammar-check these poems when I wrote them, nor have I done so now. They are reproduced here exactly as I wrote them at the time—in their original words, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, format, and layout. Nothing has been cleaned up or rewritten. What you are reading is the nineteen-year-old me as he put these thoughts on paper, with the exception of the final piece, which I wrote in 1976 at the age of thirty-four.
LIFE IS A SIXTYFOURTHOUSANDDOLLAR QUESTION!
COLLECTED POEMS OF
IRA H. BLACKER AS A TEENAGERThe First True Life Stories I Put On Paper
Long before I ever thought about writing a memoir, I was writing about my life. At nineteen, I had begun to think about moving on from the dysfunction of my own family and was grasping at the hope that better things might be waiting somewhere ahead. I didn’t know where I was going, and I certainly hadn’t figured out how to get there, but something inside me had begun to stir.
These early poems are some of the first true life stories I ever committed to paper. I didn’t think of them that way at the time. They weren’t written for publication or for an audience. They were simply the thoughts of a nineteen-year-old trying to understand where he had come from, what it was doing to him, and whether he could somehow choose a different direction.
Looking back more than sixty years later, I can see themes that would continue through many of the stories from my life: family, anger, despair, hope, self-reliance, imagination, the need to create, and the belief that somehow I could make something different of myself.
What I cannot do is pretend that these poems represented some miraculous turning point. They didn’t. It would take decades before I really started getting my act together, and I am still working on it today. What they do show is an awakening—the beginning of an awareness that the story about family I had inherited did not necessarily have to become the entire story of my life.
A Product Of…? — The Story About Family Begins
Written on March 23, 1965, this may be the most direct of these early true life stories. At nineteen I was already arguing with the idea that I had to become the inevitable product of the people, personalities, and circumstances around me.
3/23/65
" A Product Of....?"
Okey, so I was a product of the times
But I overcame that;
So, they erred in their ways, The crime
Is to follow and sink with them into
Their depths!
Why should I be the result
Of their colliding personalities,
The shallow or chaotic emotions, the tumult
Of their minds?
I couldn't care less about what
The Freudians had destined me for,
Or seeing others vegetate nearby, The rut
My benevolent benefactors are in
Shall end with them!
I don't worry about any of these
Things,
I'll chart my own direction, Please
Don't feel sorry for me,
I don't!There is a lot of nineteen-year-old certainty in those words. I was declaring independence long before I really understood what emotional independence required. Still, “I’ll chart my own direction” says something important about where my head was beginning to go.
I wanted the dysfunction to end with them.
Whether I yet knew how to accomplish that was another matter entirely.
But For Bread — Looking Beyond Survival
This was written a few weeks earlier, on February 9, 1965. It seems simple on its surface, but when I read it today I can see myself reaching for something beyond simply getting through another day. Food fills a stomach. Vision, meaning, and purpose feed something else.
"BUT FOR BREAD-but for bread." 2/9/65
He came to me and asked tor naught;
BUT FOR BREAD,
Yet he left with Vision-
He came to me and asked tor naught;
But for something to eat,
Yet he left with Mean1ng-
He came to me and asked for naught;
But to fill his stomach.
Yet he left with a Purpose-
Now he does not search
but for bread!It would be easy to give the nineteen-year-old who wrote this more wisdom than he actually possessed. I won’t do that. I was searching. That is enough.
And searching itself would become part of many of my later true life stories.
Search Not For Eldorado — Stories From My Life Before I Had Lived Them
In the same file was “Search Not For Eldorado.” The young man writing it insisted that dreams alone weren’t enough. Whatever I wanted from life had to be taken, shaped, and built through my own effort.
"Search Not For Eldorado"
Search not for Eldorado 'because;
There exists no such place.
It lies only in the m1nds of the frail;
And those who dream--those who disown
Reality!
Who do not forge ahead
on their own--
Eldorado can be obtained, But;
Not in dreams,
For life does not give unto you, therefore;
You must take from 1t, And;
Mold your life from a substance other;
Than Dreams--There is an interesting contradiction here that I recognize much more clearly today. I was a dreamer telling myself not to dream. I wanted Eldorado while insisting that Eldorado didn’t exist.
The conflict between imagination and reality would return years later in the final piece in this collection. It was already part of the story of my life, even if I couldn’t yet see it.
Now Is A Time Of Building — True Life Stories Of Becoming
On February 16, 1965, I wrote about constructing an invisible monument out of sweat, toil, perseverance, beliefs, goals, and confidence. The monument was not a career, money, recognition, or something other people could admire.
It was the self.
2/16/65
"NOW IS A TIME OF BUILDING"
Now is a time of building;
Of building great things
And unseen monuments;
With oh so visible building blocks of;
Sweat and Toil and Perseverance—
The foundation is there, yet it is;
Weak,
We must continue and reinforce it;
With beliefs and goals and confidence,
Their is progress; the progress of laying
Grain of sand upon grain of sand to build;
One block,
One lousy block for the;
Foundation,
But oh what a precious piece of "material"—
Some day the building shall be;
Complete,
Yet no one shall see the monuments;
And no one will praise The;
Architecture—
Is it therefore worth it to create an;
Invisible building, an;
Unseen monument, with;
Those oh so visible building blocks;
Sweat and Toil and Perseverance—
But you shall have created a great edifice;
Through your perseverance and toil,
You will have created the greatest;
Monument
that anyone can create in honor of
Thyself—The irony is not lost on me. I wrote about building a self at nineteen, yet the actual construction would take most of a lifetime.
Maybe it always does.
One of the things these true life stories make clear to me now is that awareness and change are not the same thing. You can recognize something about yourself long before you are capable of doing anything meaningful about it.
Life Is! — Creativity And The Story Of My Life
Written on the same day, “LIFE IS!” shows another piece of me that would survive everything that came afterward: the need to create.
"LIFE IS!" 2/16/65
Life is not that which is contained
On a Blackboard,
Life is living!
Life is not a thirtyfivecent
Magazine,
Life is creativity!
Life is not something that begins
With birth,
And ends with death, and with
Nothing in between—
Life is the feeling of rapture and
Sensuality when you bare your soul in
What you create!I could not possibly have known that writing would someday become one of the principal ways I would try to make sense of the stories from my life. I couldn’t have known that a journal would eventually become a memoir.
But I was already writing about the connection between living and creating.
That connection never went away.
I And II — Despair, Eldorado And Finding My Own Way
These two sections were also written on February 16, 1965. The first confronts despair almost as though it were a physical thing living inside me. The second returns again to Eldorado and my insistence that no one else could take me there.
I 2/16/65
Oh wretched blotch of slithering and crawling;
Despair,
Rid yourself from my person, for;
I shall quench your miserable existence;
Forever;
If you persist to maintain your;
Present abode—
Oh lowly and lecherous parasite on
My soul;
You shall drain me of Life no longer,
I shall stamp you out as nature;
Stamps out a pestilence;
And after you've gone; there will be;
Beauty—
II 2/16/65
I can sense Eldorado and its;
Self attained surroundings,
I can imagine what shall stem;
From my labors,
Oh how I yearn for my Eldorado, yet;
I shall hew my own path to
reach it,
NO ONE
shall guide me;
To Eldorado!
NO ONE
shall give me the key;
To that fabled city of yore!
Yet I shall reach Eldorado;
But by my own hand;
Not yours—“No one shall give me the key.”
At nineteen I desperately wanted to believe that.
These weren’t predictions of the future. They weren’t proof that I had conquered despair or escaped the damage done by my dysfunctional family. They were expressions of what I hoped I could become. That distinction matters when I look back at these true life stories today.
Feeling Blue Is Not As Black As It Seems — Holding On To Hope
By June 5, 1965, I was looking at darkness through color. Blue was not simply black. Black was not the only possible ending. Good, hope, gain, or learning might come from a bad experience.
June 5,1965
"Feeling Blue Is Not As Black As It Seems"
Feeling Blue is not as Black
As it seems.
Color schemes
Are not purely Black
Or White
Blue is not just an
isolated Color,
But a shade;
A shade which can be lightened,
Or darkened
By combination with other Hues.
The sky is Blue
But not sad.
Death is White
But not pleasant
Or hopeful.
There is a blending of the Colors
Like a rainbow, and
As in all bad there is surely
Some good.
For where there isn't
Any good
Or any hope
Or some sort of gain
Or learning from a
Black experience
Life ceases to exist.That may be one of the clearest links between these early poems and the memoir that came so much later. The story about family was painful, but the pain was not all there was. Neither were the mistakes that followed.
If there was something to be learned from the black experiences, perhaps they did not have to be wasted.
That thought would stay with me through many more true life stories yet to come.
Monday, 1:59pm, April 24, 1967 — An Awakening
Two years later I recorded not simply a day, but a precise time.
At exactly 1:59pm on Monday, April 24, 1967, I believed I had discovered something about myself—who I was and what I was doing to myself and the people around me.
4/24/67
"MONDAY, 1:59pm, April 24, 1967"
Although I have given much thought to this matter
Prior to now
At exactly 1:59pm, on Monday, April 24, 1967
I Found who I was
And more Important
What I was doing
To myself
And Those Around me!
Show me The Truth -
And I would shout back defiance,
For you have penetrated my self imposed shell -
I wanted you to, Really -
Yet I didn't know it
At The Time.
Show me Love -
And I conspired with my imagination, Thinking
That you were scheming against me And
You Really didn't Like me at all.
Show me A Road -
And I Chose The downhill Fork.
"I'll tangle with life when
I'm hit in The Face with it" I said, Although
Not in so many words -
Not Realizing, Then That -
It might be too late And
My Face To be disfigured
Forever?
Show me God -
And I laughed nervously, Telling you That
I AM God -
Then shivering in my self imposed
Silence
From The Thought That
God
might have heard
Show me Life - And I have scorned it. -
But - only Till Now -
IT IS NOT TOO LATE - I have NOT yet
Passed All by because -
At exactly 1:59pm, on Monday, April 24, 1967
I Found who I was -
And more Important,
What I was doing
To myself
And Those Around meThis is where it would be very easy to manufacture a satisfying ending: nineteen became twenty-one, there was an awakening, and from that moment forward everything changed.
That isn’t what happened.
Recognition wasn’t recovery. Awareness wasn’t transformation. I still had decades ahead of me before I really began getting my act together.
That is one reason I wanted these writings presented as they were, rather than polishing them with the benefit of hindsight. True life stories aren’t always neat. Real life doesn’t arrange itself into convenient chapters with lessons arriving precisely when we need them.
Sometimes we understand something and then spend half a lifetime learning what that understanding actually meant.
Going To Los Angeles With Return Ticket — Seventeen Years Later
The final piece is different.
I wrote it in 1976, at thirty-four, not nineteen. By then I had lived a great deal more of the story of my life. I was thinking again about fantasy and reality, and whether becoming an adult meant giving up the imagination that had once helped sustain me.
Then came something brutally real.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer. She died in August 1976.
GOING TO LOS ANGELES WITH RETURN TICKET 3-4/76
As I sit mulling over my past and present being, I remember, thanks to B.L. friend and W. G. writer. The fantasies of my earliest years. Then, they were all consuming. For the last eight years or so, they were suppressed by me. Something I needed to then do, yet while doing so, I tended to lose sight of my fancies from the fear of relapsing inward.
Now, after staring at the harshness of reality in the face, I found that it is not just pleasant enough to be there all of the time; something of which I suspected all along. Yes, I do miss my tilts at imagined windmills and lazing in the autumn sun dreaming of fair maidens who I would save from all sorts of evils, and in return would be mine forever and ever and we would be oh so happy in our dreams. Yes, the epitome is to accept the best of both heads. Let your head deal effectively and logically for you and with it. But, let us not lose sight of those windmills. And… by the way, thank you again B.L. and W.G. for opening up my mind, and my heart to those fanciful days under the autumn sun once again.
Poscript:
Written prior to period of fantasizing and thinking, while more than occasionally turning on yet a productive period evolving through thought, necessary evolution. 6/17/76
7-9-76 Note: My mother was just diagnosed with Cancer and died 8/76.There is something very different about reading this now. At nineteen I was trying to move away from the dysfunction of my family and imagine what might exist beyond it. At thirty-four, with my mother sliding down the road toward death from that insidious monster called cancer, family had acquired another meaning altogether.
The stories from my life were accumulating whether I intended to write them or not.
From True Life Stories To A Journal
Decades would pass before I began to get my act together in any meaningful way. I don’t want to rewrite that history into a cleaner story of my life than the one I actually lived. These poems show an awakening. They do not show a cure.
Much later, I began writing a journal. That journal wasn’t begun as a book proposal or with any thought of becoming an author. It was catharsis through the written word. I was trying to put things somewhere—to examine memories, family, relationships, mistakes, accomplishments, pain, the music business, and the countless other stories from my life that had accumulated along the way.
Writing allowed me to look at things differently. Sometimes it allowed me to look at things I might otherwise have preferred not to look at at all.
Only years later, after encouragement from friends, did I even begin to consider turning that journal into a memoir.
The Story Of My Life Was Already Being Written
That is what makes finding and rereading these early writings so interesting to me now.
The memoir may have started as a journal, but perhaps the instinct behind it had begun much earlier. At nineteen I was already using words to wrestle with the story about family into which I had been born. I was trying to understand despair, independence, hope, creativity, dreams, reality, and what kind of person I might someday become.
I had no idea where those true life stories would lead.
I certainly had no idea that decades later I would look back across a life in the music business and beyond it and turn a private journal into Once A King, Now A Prince.
These poems do not prove that I knew where I was going.
Quite the opposite.
They show a young man trying to find out.
And maybe that is why they belong here. They are not polished memories reconstructed after the fact. They are the words I actually wrote while I was living through the beginning of the struggle.
For me, that makes them true life stories in perhaps their purest form.
They are pieces of the story of my life written before I knew there would ever be a memoir—and long before I understood how much more of that life I still had to live.
And, even now, how much work on myself remains to be done. The dysfunctional family story I was trying to escape at nineteen eventually became part of the memoir, along with the other dysfunctional family stories that shaped so much of my life.
