Book of Sketches (18 page)

 

The long blood dozes

Oceans Kiss in
Land that lips
Encompass with suck
Of love Immortal
Under the moon
Of America sick
And pale blond
Ashen tuberculosis
In Sanatoriums of
Colorado
Far in the Wild
Essential Indian

Dawn’s gray birds
Herald hoppéd Angels
Broken-backed
From fucking all night
With San Remo
Queers Intense
And Eager to learn
The latest Literary
Avidity — Came
Chirping to Envision
Horror, Teach it to
The Millionaire in
The Rail road Hair

Poets were Glad
When Success a Smile
Sent Wine-like
Smile Warming
Their way but when
Dross Failure Rain
& Doom of Exciting
Gray Day Coal Chutes
Enveloped Again
They thought they
Had to Go to Work
Instead — a
Successful American

Let us see which of
these leads writes best
in the softly applied lap
touch originated in 1912
by Swim Ward B. Thabo —
President of the Acme
Industrial Foundation
makers of Corsets for
Model T Fords in the
Nebraska Primavery —
For by applying the light
touch in the manner which
you see here prescribed
something of the Primavery
is retained & pre
served like Pen
shades

The great bulk of Wall
St you’d think’d make
the lower tip of Manhattantoes
sink is rising pink as
salmon on the edge of the
blue mouth harbor waters
as you see it from the sad
Jersey Central Ferry — about
4:30 PM, long sorrow rays
hide between the cold
uncaring-of-human walls
of Wall St but there’s a
heart beating in the rock
somewhere — in the
breasts of little girls coming
on the ferry in little

 

ribboned hats & lacy
drawers & Go to Communion
shoes their eyes avid wild
to see the big world & learn
& to understand how their
happiness is to be secured
from the Macrocosmic Stone
of Awful Real, how at
least they can adjust to
it just as the dying fish adjusts
itself to the swerve
& swerveback of the waves
— awright so we’re all
gonna die but now is the
time to sing & see, to be
humble, sacrificed, late,
crazy, talkative, foolish,
mailteinnottond,

 

crawdedommeeng,
all the cross megoney’s
& followsuits to be
mardabonelated or Bug,
— they’ll be saying you
lost yr touch & you’re only
a one day old Balzac
on Sun Oct 18 1953
balls

 

Time, rather, to be proud,
indispensable, early,
sane, silent, serious,
not mailteinnottond at all

The original late afternoon
of Fall when I was in
a wicker basket crib
& parked on dusty skinny
wheels at that long gray
concrete garage with edible
looking blockstones creme
puffed & as if puddinged
to cook & eat & unforgettable
in the One Reality,
the sun has warmth in
it (& the single twick
of a little November
bird hid in the twiggish
branch on the other
side of the cool
redpink lateday

 

air) — & I’m swaddled
to the eartips in pink
Fellaheen swaddling clothes
with rose cheeks & poor
morf mouth muxed to
see the day — a drone
of 1922 Fall airplanes
in that unrecoverable bleak
& the river’s old man
in the valley bed wailing
arms out elbowed to
swell the muff of
shore aside & on, carrying
junk fenders to
the cundrom’s drowned
immaculate cove
of oil sticks under
the Boott mill door

 

walls where eyes of
drowned boys mix with
ink rags & sweat of
dye vat devils with aged
mothers at home dependent
& enduring like yon
sadchild in basket the
wait of the late red
afternoon to see what
Paradise will bring — the
sun fairly warm, the
air cooling to supper —
the pines scenting toward
winter where black
sledders will swirl
the dizzy sticks

in traceried Netherlander
fields & I shall see
Gerard float down
pinkhappy to yipe in
the few-year’d
mystery of his days,
Nin behind him — the
heat of the faint red
sun on the garage wall,
on my basket, & I
lay in T like awe
eyes fixed on the incredible
immortality
of fadebrown almost
pink clouds salmoning
motionless in their
singed Nov. blue —

 

simultaneous with voices
from a passing car &
the croo croo ack sudden
yark yipe bark of
a big pup attendant
on some turmoil in his
sight & part of plain,
so I lie there (& far
off now, antique fire
crackers of last July
of back fart of pipes
of trucks or torpedoes
on rr track, echoing
far, like skaters near
Lakeview Ave. ) —
all Lowell waits,
the Kingdom, all

 

earth, for the babe’s
comprehension — for
someday I shall be
king, & lord over the
hollows & corridors
of my mind in
divine memory’s
sincere recall
Prince of my own Peace
& Darkness — cultivator
of old soils for
new reasons — here
comes my mother, the
basket quivers to
roll — the wheels do
sweetly crunch

 

familiar Autumnal
dry ground of little
leaves & dry sticks
of grass & flattened
containers & cellophane
crumples & coal pebbles
& shinyrocks & dusty
old graydirt scraggles
pebbly gritty like
the living ground I
would get to see 3000
miles & 30 years later
in the railroad earth
of California — home
we roll to supper —
I see a redbrick wall
before returning little

 

face to final pillows
so by the time I’m
undone out of the basket
& put to bed in the
house I’m asleep &
dont know & the
world goes on without
me, as it will
forever soon —
My sweet Father
with sincere eyes &
out stuck ears is
in a tight dark
suit hurrying beneath
the filament tracery
blacktrees in
pale blue time

 

to get to the last
client & hurry on
home — Nin’s on
the porch, red cheeked,
playing with splinters —
Gerard broods in the
dank parlor in brown
swarm holy late
day dimness, thinking,
“Gerard whom
the angels of paradise
shall save from the
iron cross & make
friends with God, on
his side, hero, saved,
despite all sins of
dizzy now” —

 

“Gerard qu on va
amenez aux anges
avec des lapins,
des moutons, des loups,
de tite filles, des
tite souris, des
morceau d’terre,
Ti Jean, Ti Nin,
Papa, Mama, les
anges de la souterre,
les anges cachez dans
cave, les giboux dans
l’cemetierre entour
du sidewalk, les
giboux dans la
lune Indian, toute

 

ensemble avec
les crapauds au
ciel et on
va toute chantez —
je sera mou pour
prier dans la
creme au pied
dun throne de Dieu,
ma tete pendu sur
un aile chaude
toujours pi apres
Mama viendra me
cherchez joindre
tous — ”

“Gerard whom we shall
bring to the angels
with rabbits,
lambs, wolves,
little girls,
little mice,
pieces of earth,
Ti Jean, Ti Nin,
Papa, Mama, the
subterranean angels,
the angels hidden in
the cellar, the gibberers in
the cemetery beneath
the sidewalk, the
gibberers in the
moon, all

 

together with
the frogs to
heaven and we
shall all sing —
I’ll be soft for
praying in the
cream at the foot
of the throne of God,
my head leaning on
a warm wing
forever and then
Mama’ll come
find me joining
all — ”

Along the rusty track in
throbbing pink twilight that
casts a faint veil glow on
the iron blackbound soot &
coal, 2 tank cars & 4 coal
hoppers tied in one unmoving
drag, waiting mute under
the soft November moon of
New York for voyages that will
take them to nostalgic plains
of snow in the great land
west — those same rust
bottomed wheels will roll
& clack over switchpoint
ticks of other rails, drive
hard rust mass to new
Idalias somewhere &
where you’ll see the rose
jawed freezing brakeman
standing by a North Dakota
spur in a blizzard with
his gloved hand momentarily
at rest on the old hopper
handrail, spitting, cursing
“When the hell they coming
back anyways! I got
to put a meal of pork
chops inside my belly before
this local Godforsaken takes
us further away from the
last restaurant — ” — he
wants to eat, be warm,
drink coffee — but

 

stands in great weary
America which I see now
haunted redpink in the
west & a parade of shadowy
boys handsapockets walking
along the boxcar tops
in the vast delicate dusk
traceried by trees of the
living looking like little
jigglets & little Coolie
Chinamen howling for
the Formosa, their feet
topping down the singsong
walkways along which I
used to run puttin pops
up & down — As
if this was what a

 

man would want to write
who has nothing left to do
in his life but keep his
joy in secret scribbled note-
books — no, I’ll have
to try again, start all over,
again — Enthusiasm
is a design that has to
be re-woven in this
bare barking heart, I
hate my life now not
love it, damn
Leaves dont respond,
sticks lie broken,
dead leaves gather dust,
the West reddens
& narrows cold
the moon mawks to
purse her still lips —
lavender over the lights
of supper home, — wind
sweet memoried of
California, I die, I die
when I am not enthused
& full of meek ragged
joy, please dear God again!
The prayer of my
mother that I need
a father, answered!

 

“Enthusiasm is a design
that has to be re-woven
in this bare branch heart”
says the Goddam
motherforsaken fop
who calls himself Kerouac
& cant even slurk up & slack
slop out them old jaw crack
& spit, flurp, I’m gonna be a
writer if I have to be a
goadamn bom bum mopping
up the shithouses — of —
Ah — go on with it, Jean,
Jack Kerouac, & no more
foppery, jess plain western
talk is what I say &
let me see them boxcars
in the moon of real N
Mexico — fags hanking
back their asses in Sunday
afternoon ballets, to
show they aint just
cocksuckers but know all
about art & studied —
(advertise themselves as
coming from Europe, to
impress old Queens of Ozone
Park Ladies, & have Bach
& Shakespeare to Back
their shaky spears up)
The old Chinaman of Richmond
Hill who’s been in his
little brown store for God
knows how long before we
got here & for 4 years since
& never have I seen him
unalone, with a friend,
looking sometimes out the
window with those crazy
red sploshes of paint
making a rail-off-effect
3 feet from bottom, he
has his face over there
& is contentedly puffing his
pipe not with opium somnolence
but like an
ordinary Bourgeois

 

tradesman at the end of day
& he’s digging that dismal
little 95th St with its
fewtrees & the redbrick
side of the bar & the few
dull lamp homes where in
the evening old walkers of
dogs mop up the last TV
news bdcast with a cup
of tea — The bare bulb
that hangs from his ceiling
is so bright it lights
to the other side of 55th
St on a dark night —
you see the red paneglass
wainscot, the washed
strokes of red Spush
— then the little
alarm clock on the back
shelf — bundles of
finished shirts in shelves —

 

I’m
bored

 

— the gray brown
lace in the windows of TV
parlors & he sees the shadows
therein of a race of
nabors he does not speak
with — at night you
sense his presence anyway
in the brown backroom,
a solitary white China
teapot on a shelf —
The sadness & brown
loss of his sonless
daughterless &

 

exile from Fellaheen
days indicated by the
little narrow mirror to
the right which has a
Joshua Reynolds
Blue Boy
in its upper half panel,
now faded into a greener
blue of mouldy time,
& the mirror surface
itself impossibly smokied
by ghosts of time — the
poor sad calendar
finally, with month
flap under a great
golden breasted woman
with gold velvet
low cut gown — I
see the piles of white
laundry bags on floor,
the sad slant boards,
the counter — & the
huge guillotine like shadow
thrown by the parcel wrapper
& string-feeder gadget
5 feet (much higher than
Won Ming) high, casting
on the wall from the
Frisco forlorn bulb a
monstrous China shadow
& prophecy of more
patience, more fires —
somewhere brown opium
lurks — & nightcapped
death