Journey of the White Bear 2024

In the Fall of 1987, when I was working at the AFA as the newsletter editor and photographer, a woman walked in one day.  She was there to interview to be our new receptionist.  She was tall, voluptuous, beautiful, the singer in a rock band, 25 -years old, and experienced in many ways.  I was a shorter, 21-year-old BMX freestyle dork, really naive, and still a virgin.  She got the job, we started dating, and she broke me in and taught me many things.  I decided to write her a hit song, and I started writing all kinds of "song lyrics," which eventually turned into poetry.  

About nine months later she dumped me, because I was a clingy dork, and too hung up on her, after our relationship had run its course.  I was crushed.  The night she dumped me, I listened to Don McClean's "American Pie" over and over and over, and I wrote a poem called "Journey of the White Bear."  It was, by far, the best poem I had written.  Even she liked it, and the poem scored me a couple weeks worth of post break-up sex.  The chorus of the poem/song went:

Nothing's right or wrong

In this world today

Nothing's black or white

It's all shades of grey

She shattered my semi-autistic world, where everything was black and white, right or wrong, and showed me at least a dozen shades of grey.  We soon went our separate ways, and I kept writing poems, and not telling anyone about them.  By then I figured out poetry is the cheapest form of therapy.

In 1992, living on the floor of Chris Moeller's tiny "Winnebago" apartment in Huntington Beach, Chris showed me a book of Henry Rollins' poetry.  It was called Black Coffee Blues.  I read it and thought, "Shit, I can do this.  Hell, I already have done this."  I started going through the notebooks of poems I'd written, that no one knew existed.  

Over the course of about three months, I took my 200+ poems, read through them, and picked the best ones.  I typed them up on my typewriter, and made a HUGE zine.  It was 80 zine pages thick or so.  I had to bind it together with duct tape, it was so thick.  I published around 90 of my poems, written from 1987 to 1992.  

The zine was called We're on the Same Mental Plane... and it's Crashing.  The first poem in it was "Journey of the White Bear."  In the poem I called myself the White Bear (naive goofy oaf), and that girlfriend from 1987-88 was the Black Leopard (experienced older woman).  The term "cougar" for an older woman dating younger men hadn't been coined yet.  She wasn't black, she was white, the poem had nothing to do with race.  It was about a naive dork meeting a woman who schooled him in the ways of life and love.  

All copies of that original zine, and the original poem, that I know of, have been lost.  Last month I started working on a writing project that I hope will be a "real," printed book, someday.  I'm calling it "The Poet."  That first poem, once Chris Moeller read it, led to him calling me The White Bear.  Soon nearly everyone else called me that, too.  So I took that as my poetry pen name, on the next two poetry zines I published.  

A couple weeks ago, after digging into memories, I wrote a new version, a 2024 version, of "Journey of The White Bear."  Here it is.  You are the first to see it.

Journey of The White Bear 2024

A long time ago

In a northern land

A white bear left

For the place of man

He went to seek fame

He sought fortune and truth

High standards and intentions

He wouldn't be uncouth

It was two little wheels

That set him on his quest

In BMX freestyle

He wanted to be the best

That's how it starts

These travels through time

Bright lights catch our eyes

But we really seek the sublime

Doing tricks on a bike

The Universe's ruse

That drew me into

Some crazy poet's shoes

A woman more experienced

A singer of songs

Made me question the answers

And experience rights and wrongs

Black Leopard, White Bear

Found passion and lust

I gained a poet's pen

And learned when not to trust

Hundreds of hours

In parking lots I rode

Seeking out the stoke

Struggling with my emotional load

The baggage of childhood

Of times bad and worse

Began to trickle out

In verse after verse

The Black Leopard faded

Into memory's twilight

The songs turned to poems

And I continued to write

In time I did share them

Which scared me to death

My pen name got christened

Another step on my path

The mysteries of life

I dug into deep

One by one, little insights

Into my poems, they did creep

I worked jobs, rode my bike

Read books, fasted at times

When twenty years had passed

I'd written hundreds of rhymes

The path of a poet

Screaming into God's ears

Dives into the depths

And swims among all fears

I wrestled with my demons

Sometimes with success

To all of those watching

My life sure looked a mess

It took 40 years

From the first haiku I wrote

Until the Universe gave in

And let me cross the moat

From high on a spire

In wisdom's castle seldom seen

I glimpsed the Great Story

Playing out, scene after scene

A short, but timeless moment

The answer to my quest's call

I was shown the inner workings

There's an order to it all

And then everything was different

Yet the same, just as intense

Precious things lost all worth

But life, it now made sense

The seeker's rebirth

Catapulted back to my life

It was just another day

There was no end to strife

My troubles still existed

But fear held far less sway

I began to rebuild my life

Moment by moment, day by day

The Great Play goes on

And still I play my part

But now I know why

I must write and I must make art

-The White Bear