Conyus: THE GREAT SANTA BARBARA OIL DISASTER
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To skip the run-up and go straight to the poem, scroll 
The oil spill and the food web
By Dan Brennan
30 June 2010
© World Socialist Web Site
The ecological destruction of the oil disaster in the Gulf is perhaps most aptly embodied in the pictures of brown pelicans made lifeless by a thick coating of toxic sludge. However, the true toll may spread far beyond these dreadful images. Scientists warn that the gravest threat, including possible ecosystem collapse, is posed by the poisoning of organisms at the base of the food chain.
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Lessons learned from the Santa Barbara Oil Spill of January 1969
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Ripples of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill
L.A. Times | September 7, 2008
© L.A. Times
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© 1969 Associated Press
The Great Santa Barbara Oil Disaster, Or: A Diary
a poem by Conyus
Day one
We ride down the coast hwy
through the heavy rain
to a beach that sits in a rocky cove
hidden from the eye.
I sit in the rear of the bus
where the shadows pass
over cold metal walls
& window screens,
looking through dirty glass
at the somber scenery.
A young Mexican girl stands in the muddy debris
of her home, rummaging through the mud.
The river flooded suddenly two days ago
after a torrential rain & shifted the terrain.
Overhead the clouds mount menacingly
in small squalls, prostituting themselves again
against the sky, & we turn left off the freeway
into the spent community of Carpinteria
like a funeral procession on a grey Saturday,
heading to the bone yard in tandem.
Beyond the border of thin sidewalks,
sit bleached out houses on paper stilts
with tattered venetian blinds & curtains
barely moving on the stiff ocean breeze.
We walk beneath the bleeding sky
single file to the oily beach in perfect silence;
everything around us is a chemical foundry.
Day two
The 1st. night
we arrived,
the college girls
in the dormitory
across from us
paraded before
their window in
bras & panties,
being friendly.
The people
came to watch us work,
in hip boots & work gloves,
cleaning oil & shoveling straw.
Some said, “my! don’t they look almost human?”
Others said, “a convict is a crime. don’t forget that!”
Sometimes the children’s ball
bounded in our area,
& the Spanish inmates
soccer kicked it back lightly.
We all laughed
& smiled a lot
the first day.
The sunset & the night
came on slowly.
From out of the night
came gargoyles
with church fathers
& concerned parents
to tell the children
not to play
within the border of red flags
& the fence of thick cane around us.
Because,
the sky would fall
& hell would follow,
if they instilled
licentious ambitions
in our minds.
& so
we didn’t laugh
anymore, or smile
at all the second day.
From that day forward,
we just worked,
hard & steady,
with our heads
low & our eyes
to the ground,
so the sky
wouldn’t fall,
& the people
wouldn’t know,
& the world
wouldn’t burn.
Day three
All day we work behind the sea breaker
in the black sand, shoveling straw
& thick lumps of oil
into the mouth of the skip loader,
while the cat skinner rides high
in the driver’s seat with a hole for his eye.
On the beach,
in the window
of the Santa Barbara Yacht Club,
Black servants watch us
swing picks & shovels
in the wet sand
like machetes
clearing a cane field
on their small island
in the Caribbean.
On a concrete wall
below this Diaspora
i sit & swing my legs over the ice plants
& puddles of oil where sand crabs,
& small fish lie dead
& stinking in the sun.
Beneath my work jacket
i touch the crushed sandwich
of white bread & yellow cheese
& think of the young Chinese girl
in the pink hairnet with braces.
After lunch we return with rakes & hip booths,
wading through the constant tide
of thick oil & grey foam,
to gather balls of sticky oil
stuck between rocks,
& place them in yellow plastic bags.
Along the beach
the tide falls back out to sea,
taking with it the trail of our feet
that follows us like a shadow.
I turn my back to the Santa Barbara Sound
& pull the weather jacket tight
to shield against the cold & damp air.
Over my shoulder,
past the far islands near the horizon,
someone is singing a song,
that i can barely hear,
in a voice
that i cannot recognize.
The 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill viewed by satellite
Day four
The children
come down
to the beach
with their dogs
barking happily
at their feet.
They watch us
rake the debris
in huge piles
for the cat skinner
to eat with his shovel.
The surf around us
is a gumbo of sludge, oil,
& dead birds cooking in the sun
& salt air.
The children
throw
enormous
blocks of blue ice
into the ocean
to cleanse our sins
& methodically
the night descends
like a curtain.
Day five
The women of Santa Barbara
watch us drag driftwood
across the rocky beach
to the gas chamber at San Quentin.
They protest
against the death sentence
& the inhumanity,
of humanity,
then go home
to husbands
& kill babies
in the morning
with a small pill
while we sleep.
Day six
Green toads
croak
on the black
asphalt
rain pond.
Dawn opens
with tenderness
from the sky.
A white gull
floats face upward
in the murky surf;
i watch the tide
push the gull
against the rocks,
again & again,
& again & again.
Day seven
Pearl crack
the dawning day
is all about
the tar marred
beach.
Favonian winds
gently caresses
a face beaten
by sun & surf.
Later,
the sunset on the ocean
& there wasn’t
any confusion.
Day eight
The citizens
of Santa Barbara
brought rags
for us to wipe
our oily
black hands on.
They were in small
woven baskets of tule reed
& filled with rags & apples.
I found a red one
& wore it around my neck,
to either
love
or eat
when
i
was
alone.
Day nine
Crickets
in
the vacant field
across from us
sing the loudest
late at night
when the oil slick
devours the seacoast
like
a
blanket
of
death
in its murkiness
of
thick oil
& caskets
of
beautiful
Cadillac’s.
Day ten
(Poem to the girl seen walking
below my window at 4:00 a.m.)
I see you there
walking
on the freshly
cut grass
in bare feet.
Uncertain
about
your decision
to either
avoid
the
dark
shadows
or run
into
the kerosene night.
Day eleven
for Kiyono
All
night
i
touched
your
breast,
kissed
your
neck,
letting
the
long
black
hair
cover
me
thickly.
&
when
i
awoke,
alone,
with
only
a
love
stain
on
the
sheet
next
to
me,
i
fell
in
love
with
dreaming.
Courtesy of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara
Day twelve
All these men
were standing
on tiers of confession.
Shouting at each other
from above & below,
across concrete & steel.
About injustice,
incarceration,
lock-up & lock-down.
For many years,
for many many years;
a lifetime of years,
in fact.
They stood
it seemed
forever,
hiding & laughing,
laughing & hiding,
the hatred,
the pain,
the sorrow,
the lament,
beneath
their chest.
Young men,
in cells
so dark
& lonely
at midnight
that the shadow
cast against the wall
from a bare bulb
at the end of the hall
is their only refuge
from the moans
& muffled cries
that call out
like beacons
beckoning
strangers.
Day thirteen
Wednesday
the rain
fell heavily
& the beach
is specked
with piles
of straw & driftwood.
In the afternoon
we throw cans
of gasoline
onto the piles
& watch them
evaporate
like the happiest
years of our life.
Day fourteen
We pick up the sky
& move the oil slick
like a giant anaconda’s
head;
they sit on the beach
watching us.
We place a hot badger’s claw
in the cool ashes
near the cat skinner.
They watch & move their lips slowly.
We part the tar-marred sand
& bury ourselves
in a canal of lilies & lilacs.
They turn to face each other
in bewilderment & awe
pretending they don’t see us.
Day fifteen
Beneath
the house
shadows
hide
till
dawn
comes
knocking
with death
on her arm
putting out
candles
that burn
too low.
Day sixteen
All night you can hear
the ocean cough
& spit-up oil,
like a young child
lying on its back
with pneumonia.
We clear as much phlegm
& muck from its throat as we can,
& mop his sweaty head
with oily red rags.
For thirty miles along the beach
dead bodies of sea mammals
float up & beach themselves like dominoes.
We cut the larger ones up
with chain saws & axes,
& loaded them into the
jaw of the skip loader for the cat skinner.
The rest, left bloated & stinking,
we burn with gasoline & torches
to let the fire free them.
High in the sky turkey vultures soar
above the spiraling smoke
of sweet crude oil clouds,
looking for baby seals
that have suffocated
in the thick water.
When night comes,
walking like a gravedigger,
& we have retired
for the evening,
the dead carcasses
float back out to sea,
& are torn apart
by sharks,
who die
weeks later,
from petroleum poison
along the shore
of Oregon,
& Washington.
Day seventeen
The Chinese girl
served us
the insipid
tasting food at 6:00 a.m.
in plastic gloves
& a pink hairnet
across the stainless steel
counter.
The sky
was just beginning
to show traces Aurora
in
the east,
& the country
lowered
its embattled head
in Vietnam.
Later,
when the sun
came up
on the beach,
& i was
cleaning oil, tar
& salt spume
from the beach furniture
at the yacht club.
I ate the apple
she had given me
& thought of her
in that Christian white uniform;
so pure & sterile.
Thought
that she probably
felt that she was ugly
because she wasn’t
Caucasian, light of skin,
& had blue eyes.
& so
when i took
another bowl of corn flakes
& told her that
i didn’t want the meat,
do you think,
she understood
that I was
a vegetarian?
&
that
i
loved her.
Photo: Bob Duncan
Day eighteen
The fog is thick
& cutting like a
guard’s stare
this Monday dawn.
We board the bus
in the grey light
with backpacks,
baloney sandwiches,
& lasting memories.
The young girls
in the windows
of the dormitory at UCSB
wave goodbye to us in clothes
with big smiles & sadness.
We take seats
next to a window
or aisle, in total silence
& head North out of Santa Barbara
in the wake of working nine to fivers
on a freeway that looked
like a used car lot
in Los Angeles,
spotted with potholes
& spilled oil.
We pass through small towns
on our way North
where old men
sit in bleached overalls
on dusty porches
beneath worn hats,
& hard lives.
Nondescript daughters
in faded dresses
hang work shirts
& thick quilts
in backyards to dry
while old dogs
watch us with regard.
& we pass
slowly
like a full moon
eclipse,
before them.
Day nineteen
In Morgan Hill
sitting next to
a fence post
with gray clouds
clipping the mountain
& hawks soaring
above the crest,
reminded me of freedom,
reminded me of home.
Free of oil,
free of tar,
& free.
And so when i sat back
& closed my eyes
i felt like i was dreaming
& i thought that i was free,
& i thought that i was running
& that we all were free.
Day twenty
We’re back
at the work camp
in the deep redwood forest.
Behind us is the
oil, thick tar,
& stained beaches
of Santa Barbara.
All the young girls
are already
a distant memory
& before we know it
the days will become years
& the years decades.
We measure time
in years here,
not hours,
nor months
or visits.
Some of us get stored
in cardboard & canvas,
others in cells
& dungeons,
until the next time,
when the fires come,
the earthquake hits,
or the Great Santa Barbara Oil Disaster / Or:
Conyus
February 1969
Santa Barbara, CA
Copyright © 1970, 2009 and 2010 by Conyus
Photo: Kaz Tsuruta
This celebrated poem, praised by poet Philip Levine for its powerful narrative lyricism, has been newly revised by the author. Conyus, like Levine, is a native-born Detroiter emigrĂ© to California. “The Great Santa Barbara Oil Disaster” was anthologized in Abraham Chapman’s New Black Voices (New American Library, 1972) and Daniel Halpern’s The American Poetry Anthology: Poets Under 40 (Avon Books, 1975). Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing, Conyus — a former poetry editor at The Black Scholar and the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal — lives and works in San Francisco. “Wormwood,” his hilarious short story, appears in POW WOW: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience — Short Fiction from Then to Now, edited by Ishmael Reed and Carla Blank (Da Capo Press, 2009).
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From McCovey’s Cove, a reflective Conyus takes in the scene at San Francisco’s now historic Pac Bell Stadium, circa 2000. | © Belle Tuten
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