{"id":64598,"date":"2015-10-27T19:00:39","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T19:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=64598"},"modified":"2015-10-27T21:10:27","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T21:10:27","slug":"the-dick-tropp-poems","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=64598","title":{"rendered":"The Dick Tropp Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tropp\"<\/a>I met Dick Tropp when we were both students at the University of Rochester. Our friendship continued in Italy and when both of us ended up in Berkeley. Dick went to work for my brother who had a California jade operation in Ukiah, not far from Redwood Valley and Jim Jones. For years I blamed myself for their meeting. Eventually I realized that Dick would have found Jones without my help \u2013 it just might have taken a little longer. I moved to Canada around the time Dick joined Peoples Temple. I never heard from him again. At the time of the thirtieth anniversary of the deaths, I began thinking and writing about our friendship \u2013 a memoir in poetry, my attempt to understand what drew Dick and what kept him. I\u2019m currently looking for a publisher for this work. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. As always, many thanks to Kathy Barbour for her help with this project.<\/p>\n

Some of my Dick Tropp poems follow:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Seeing Dick<\/strong><\/p>\n

I saw you for the last time
\n1970, eight years
\nbefore you died.
\nYou\u2019d come for dinner
\nto the big Berkeley house
\non Piedmont I shared
\nwith a bunch of radical lefties.
\nYou were down from Mendocino
\nto buy jute for your wife\u2019s
\nmacrame. The shop owner told you
\nhow talented she was.
\nI was jealous. I was doing
\n\u201cserious\u201d work, an MA in Design,
\nweaving. You never looked
\nat my work. By then you\u2019d
\nhooked up with Jim Jones.
\nI was getting ready to move
\nnorth to Canada to join the man
\nI loved. He\u2019d fled the violence
\nthat was America.
\nI was worried he wouldn\u2019t wait for me.
\nYou said, If he really loves you <\/em>
\nhe\u2019ll wait. <\/em>
\nI was angry. I knew
\nyou were right.
\nAnd I was right.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jonestown\u2019s Thirtieth Anniversary, November 18, 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n

Days before the thirtieth anniversary, I turn on the CBC, half listen to the morning news, quarter an orange, pour cereal into a bowl, then stop, riveted, a piece about a stash of letters in an old attach\u00e9 case forgotten in a Pasadena garage, letters from a young couple and their kids sent from Guyana to parents in California, how the couple, Jews, red diaper babies, had joined Jim Jones, become his closest aides. How the marriage broke down, the husband, fed up with Jones\u2019 control and paranoia, left Jonestown, then returned for his kids. But Jones had his food drugged, left him in semi-stupor. His wife was one of those who prepared the final poison.<\/p>\n

In one breath I\u2019m shanghai-ed
\ninto the story, yours, Dick, as well as theirs,
\nhostage to you and Jim Jones. In this darker world
\nI raven, against sense and better judgement,
\nread everything I can find \u2013 on the web, in books,
\ngrow used to a sickness in my gut.<\/p>\n

The question like bile rising in my throat, the one
\nI\u2019d asked myself years before when first I knew
\nyou were there:<\/p>\n

How could you, Dick, how could you be
\nso stupid?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Puppetry Workshop<\/strong><\/p>\n

I make a Dick puppet out of
\nnewspaper and masking tape \u2013
\nlarge head, high forehead, glasses,
\nbody tilted forward, arms
\nbehind its back, string bean legs.
\nMouth doesn\u2019t open. Fingers can\u2019t
\nhold a pen, hit typewriter keys.<\/p>\n

Still it feels like you.<\/p>\n

The teacher has us ask our puppets
\nthree questions.<\/p>\n

What do you like?
\nThe Dick puppet answers, voice
\nreedy as a bamboo flute:
\nSleeping beside the open cabin window<\/em>
\nwatching toucans cross the sky <\/em>
\nWhat don\u2019t you like?
\nThe puppet leans backs a bit
\nnot liking to criticize:
\nAll these beans <\/em>
\nendless stickiness on my skin <\/em>
\nhow fast the sun sinks <\/em>
\nbehind the trees, no long summer evenings <\/em>
\nno seasons <\/em>
\nthe fear that it\u2019s not going to work <\/em>
\nWhat do you want?
\nDeep breath, then:
\nAnother chance. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dick\u2019s Wife Kathy Speaks #3<\/strong><\/p>\n

I ask your wife the questions that gnaw.
\nWe\u2019re eating cheeseburgers in a funky cafe
\nwhere grease and gluten reign:<\/p>\n

\u201cSure, we were infamous. A cult.
\nA bunch of lunatics and losers.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s just half the story.
\nThe other half was the joy
\nwhen work set us free.
\nWe were high-octane, fuelled by
\nutopian vision and our belief
\nin our own strength. For years
\nI worked all day in the press room
\nputting out the Peoples Forum,<\/em> 7am
\nto midnight, then sleeping on the floor
\nbetween the presses, all of us
\nstacked like cord wood, rising
\nthe next morning to start again,
\nproud of our tired bodies \u2013
\nyou think I\u2019m exaggerating but
\nthat\u2019s how it was \u2013 drunk on each other,
\ntalking deep into the night, all of us
\nmisfits, ugly ducklings who\u2019d finally
\nfound our pond \u2013 all these people
\nwho spoke our language. Even
\nJim\u2019s paranoia helped
\nbind us. We knew we were up against
\nevil forces that hated our purity
\nof purpose, turning
\nthe brutality of the US of A
\non its head. This was revolution
\nand we would be the ones to make it happen.
\nLike Moses when he climbed the mountain
\nand looked across to the promised land
\nspread below. To know we were the cogs
\nthat would turn the wheel, the ones
\nto teach lions to lie with lambs,
\nwhite and black building together.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Listening to Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

I listen to an early tape, 1972, Jim Jones
\nin Redwood Valley, two years after you
\njoined. He\u2019s high-brow, smooth, speedy, talking
\n\u201cepistemological\u201d, \u201cpara-psychological\u201d,
\nhe\u2019s tough, ungrammatical, how things will be
\nblowed up, a nuclear holocaust, seven years from now,
\nonly seven. He\u2019s a lowly preacher, he says,
\nbut all his prophecies so far have come to pass.
\nSlight southern drawl in his sarcasm, cutting everyone else
\ndown to size. He\u2019s relevant, on target, talking
\nsocialism and justice, before he wanders
\ninto lala-land as if he\u2019s lost interest
\nin his sermon. Tells his audience,
\nDon\u2019t clap, takes up the time you need <\/em>
\nto hear the truth. <\/em>His truth, voice dipping
\nthen rising, cadence he\u2019s learned from itinerant
\npreachers when he was a kid. He\u2019s experienced
\nthe extra-terrestrial, knows the very date
\nthe world will end, though he hopes<\/p>\n

he\u2019s proven wrong. Before this, I\u2019d only heard
\nthe late tapes, Jones addled and slow. I\u2019d wondered why
\nyour Jonestown writings were so pretentious,
\nfreighted with too much meaning and
\nbad grammar.<\/p>\n

Now I hear your model, sense how much
\nyou longed to sing with the choir.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kelp Song<\/strong><\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve cobbled together:
\nThat you, like most of the people we hung with, were Jewish
\nbut we never spoke of it and we didn\u2019t
\ndo anything Jewish because we just were Jewish \u2013
\nThat you traded your cello for a sarod \u2013 though I never saw it,
\nnever heard you play.
\nThat you got yourself kicked out of Berkeley
\ndismissed from Fisk
\nmarried a non-Jewish woman you didn\u2019t want your family
\nto meet \u2013 meeting her again, I understand
\nwhy you fell for her.
\nThat Jones described you (falsely) as the son
\nof Holocaust survivors, presumably to up the pathos.
\nThat you were a loner, before the Temple and during.
\nThat you followed Jones\u2019 orders though
\nyou\u2019d never followed orders before.
\nI saw your aloneness but never the lost person
\nyou say you were. With me
\nyou were unadulterated energy, bursting with plans.<\/p>\n

Never at a loss for anything.<\/p>\n

Except maybe that night at Half Moon Bay
\nhot-poker sun sinking
\nthe rest of us involved with the fire, the hamburger patties,
\nputting out ketchup, onions, you<\/p>\n

separate, far down the beach, playing
\nlong sticky strands of
\nseaweed shofars<\/em>, kelp\u2019s wild song of
\nlostness and search.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WELCOME TO JONESTOWN<\/em><\/strong>
\nPeoples Temple Agricultural Project<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The sign over the entrance.
\nAnother world not far from the Kaituma River
\nringed by dense rainforest, hot as hell,
\ntwo wet seasons, always humid.<\/p>\n

Young people digging and building, standing
\nfor group shots, kids in school, babies in the nursery
\nwomen slicing vegetables in the kitchen
\nworking in the laundry, guys driving tractors
\nclearing land, people in the pavilion listening to the choir
\nyou, sideburns sometimes trim, sometimes flamboyant.<\/p>\n

I imagine the sounds:
\nbird song, sweet or raucous
\ngenerator noise
\nrasp of saws, percussion of hammers
\nthe warps and bleeps of short wave radio
\nJones\u2019 voice over the loudspeakers reading the news
\nranting politics early morning to late at night
\nand the smells:
\nthe spice of flowering shrubs
\nthe sulphurous stink of rotting vegetation
\nthe everyday rice beans greens
\nif a bigwig was visiting, eggs
\nsome meat sauce
\nthe rancid stench of sweat and hard work
\nthe odour of crowding
\ntoo many people in makeshift barracks
\npeople down with fever
\nand gut aches
\nthe hungry sound of weeds encroaching
\nnibbling determined at the edges of the fields
\nyou cleared by hand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n

What did you read in Jonestown?
\nWhat food filled your fantasies as you tossed
\nsleepless?
\nWhat did you miss?
\na door with a lock
\ngood grass
\nrevving the engine on a \u201858 convertible
\nor a VW van with psychedelic rainbows
\nseasons: autumn winter spring
\nyour mother\u2019s laugh
\nthe cocker spaniel who never stopped chewing
\nthe furniture
\nbeing free unwatched unmonitored uncensored
\nWhat did you dream?
\nsnow
\na day on the beach at Point Reyes
\na toilet full of shit and you can\u2019t flush it down
\na classroom of black ghetto kids and you\u2019re up front
\nthe hippest thing around
\ncutting your finger clean off and the blood flows
\nand flows and flows
\nWhat did you want to remember?
\nWhat were you there to forget?<\/p>\n

And you, Dick, Jonestown\u2019s Blind Tiresias
\non your self-made treadmill sitting
\nwith the old black ladies head bent
\ntaping their stories the Studs Terkel
\nof Jonestown you and Studs poets
\nof the vernacular running down home
\nvoices onto a reel-to-reel tape machine
\nyou with your over-sized earphones
\nto block the static around you
\nout of love for those voices the joy
\nof sitting with people you would
\nnever have touched if it hadn\u2019t been
\nfor Jones and the privilege of knowing
\nthe women who worked their butts off
\nso their kids might have a chance
\nthe old black men who started
\nin the South but refused
\nto stay you Dick there at that table you
\nwhose father plugged away so
\nyou could stand in front of
\na university classroom spouting
\nliterary theory to wide-eyed or
\nmaybe bored kids you whose mother
\njust wanted a chance at those seats and
\ninstead you sit typing stories of poverty
\nand persecution teaching the children
\nto read write think by then
\nJones was disruptive irrelevant
\na mouthy thorn only the old folks
\nand the kids held onto you now become
\nTiresias blinded by what you\u2019d seen
\nTiresias who was man then woman
\nthen man old too soon though you were
\nonly 36 wanting so much it was a pain
\nin your chest wanting liberty and justice
\nfor all like the words of the poisoned
\nrealm you\u2019d all left behind.<\/p>\n

(Dorothy Field lives in Victoria, Canada. She can be contacted at <\/em>dotter@uniserve.com<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I met Dick Tropp when we were both students at the University of Rochester. Our friendship continued in Italy and when both of us ended up in Berkeley. Dick went to work for my brother who had a California jade operation in Ukiah, not far from Redwood Valley and Jim Jones. For years I blamed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":64588,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-64598","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64598"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64611,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64598\/revisions\/64611"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}