Book of Sketches (5 page)

 

Sooty old woodwarp
ramp — in weeds —
fat RR clerk with
baseball hat walking
across, cigar, scratching
head, removing hat —
will go home to dogs,
radio, wife, blond boy
on a tricycle in white
bungalow — Old A.C.L.
Railway Exp Ag. 441
weather-brown
Cracked cars — 2, 3
of them — nameless
parts arranged in
weeds by tired Negro
workers — Puff sweet
Carolina clouds in sultry
blue over head — my
eyes smarting from fresh
paint in office, from
no sleep — drowsy
office like school days,
with sleepy rustles of
desk papers & lunch-in-
the-belly — hate it —
SP is in cool, dry
Western, romantic Frisco
of bays — with —
hills of purple eve &
mystery — & Neal
— — here is fuzzy,
unclear, hot, South,
hot turpentined poles
at tracks that lead

 

to Morehead City, Sea &
Africa — &
impossible
lead
tho — just dull
fat cops & people in
heat — Easonburg is
better.

 

DIDNT HAVE PENCIL with
me to sketch the
bluebells that climb
up from beautiful
fields of weeds to
curl around the old
dead cornstalk that
is rattly crackly
deadbone & wreaths
it purple, softens it,
gives it a juicier
(THE WOODS ARE SHINING)
sound in the wind,
droops it, embraces
it, gives it the
Autumn kiss for
harvest stack farewell
— old Melancholy Frowse
is wound round in
Carolina in the
Morning —
The piercing blue of
the first Autumn
day, the woods
are shining, the
Nor’east wind making
ripples in the
flooded tarns — all
is lovely this Sunday morn.
The Weeping Willow
no longer hangs but
waves ten thousand
goodbyes in the
direction of the wind
— The clean
little tele. pole without
crossbars stands lost
in Carolina vegetations,
some of the corn half
its height, & that
lush forest of
Carolina backs it
solemnly & with
a promise — that
was here for boys killed
in Palau in 1944, boys —

 

that had sisters who
yet mourn this Sun.
morning — hope
that was there for
the strange Cherokee
— & now for me
that wanders round
my earth — amen.

 

Sitting in the middle
of the woods with
Little Paul, Princey
& Bob — Little foxy
Prince sits panting
— big mosquitos —
Big Bob panting
hard, tongue out,
licks his mouth,
blinks eye, big
tongue flapping over
sharp teeth —
drooling — Pine
needle floor is
brown, dry cracky
odorless —
blue sky
is sieve above
tangled dry
vining green heart
leafing trunking
cobwebbing —
now & then sway
massedly in upper
winds — Sun
makes joy gold
spots all over

 

The sand road
is blinding old —
many gnats —
cars raise storms
of dust — wind
sways grass

 

in ditch ridges —
straight thinpines
stand in vaulty
raw blue, clean —
Negroboys bike
by smiling —
Princey’s little
wet nose —
no more — no more —
Oh Princey, Bob,
Little Paul, woods
of Easonburg, no more
— (freedom of
the blue cities calls
me.)

(1)
Hartford
— when I was
a boy poet & wrote
for myself — no
frantic fear of “not
being published,” but
the joy, the shining
morning, “This love
of mine” — leaves,
houses, Autumn — and
Immortality
(2) Hospital, 1951, letting
the images overwhelm
me, not rushing out
to lasso them &
getting all pooped
out —
NOW
Coach
(3) Oh when I was young &
had a pretty little Edie
in bright lavender
sweater to hug to
me — big breasts, thighs
warm, bending-to-me waist,
— now I’m cold as
the moon . . . no more women
for puffy-eyed Jack —
who once posed in a
button-down boy sweater
for a picture — When —
O when, reading the N.Y.
Times, he thought he
was learning everything —
& has learned but decay
only — & sadness of partings —

 

(4) Mr Whatsisname
in beat ragged coat
in r.r. office, has same
haggard anxious soulneglected
sorrow as
he searches among
ledgers, mouth open,
as my father in his
shop of old yore —
with glasses on
nose, blue eyes, —
O doom, death,
come get me! I cannot
live but to remember
— old puff lined
Jack, go put a
poor blanket of
dirt over your
noble nose.
Last night, under the
stars, I saw I belonged
among the big poets
(did I read that somewhere?)

 

 

 

(5) Raw, almost childlike
slowmotion dinosaur
ideas of 1947
bop on So. Main
L.A. — “You Came
To Me From out of
Nowhere” — The
ideas of serious basic
thinkers, young, energetic,
powerful — joy comes
from the really new —
Bird was like that, but
more
&
most complex

 

Be like Bird, find y.self
little story tunes to
string yr. complexities
along a wellknown line
or you will sound like
a crazy Tristano of
the Seymour-record
(Bartok — Bar Talk)
( Bela BarTalk)
— Bird has visions between
bridges — So do you
in visions between chapter
lines — — !!!
Shakespeare, Giroux’s
Shakespeare Opera
Books —
simple
— not
that
simple but use
story-forms — or phooey,
do what you please —

 

Never will be bored in the
bottom — at the hut, the
secret room, the weed,
the mind — the daVinci
series —

 

I was in my mother’s
house, in winter — I was
writing “The Sea is My
Brother” — what have
I learned since then?
I have written
Doctor
Sax
since last prattling
like this —

Quiet shady
sand road at
late afternoon, a
crick pool-like
& ripple reflecting
& brown with
froth spit motionless,
& exotic
underwater leaves,
& tangled jungly
banks under dry
old board bridge
— vined sides of it
— a wild claw
tree protruding from
silent greeneries —
with 12 agonies

 

of fingers, & one
twisted guilty body,
the weatherbeaten bark
as clean as a
woman’s good thigh,
with a climb of
vines on it — The
brown & tragic
cornfield shining in
the late sun up the
road — The clearing,
the negros, the
flu barn, the white
horse nibbling —
Coca Cola sign at
the lonely golden
little bend — a cricket
I got up this road
into my Maturity

 

And what will that
corn do for you?
— will it soothe you
& put you to bed
at night? Will
it call yr name
when winter blows?
Or will it just
mock the bones
of yr. skeleton,
when August
browning breaks
its Silence camp,
& blows —
Immortality just
passed over me
— in these woods
— as it cooled —
& darked — at
6 PM —
The Angel visited me &
told me to go on

 

THESE Mornings in A.C.L.
office will be remembered
as happy — the visionary
tics, the dreams, the delicate
sensations — must be
that way on the road
of rock & rail.

 

Repeat — let it come
to you, dont run after it
— It would be and
is
like
running after sea waves —
to embrace them up where
you stand when you catch
them — aïe —
TICS
The long dismal winter
street where I’d go to see
Grace Buchanan — & Mary —
(The prophet is without
honor in his own family.)
A “tic” is a sudden thought
that inflames & immediately
disappears —
The Indians see a Little
Cloud a Shining Traveller
in the Blue Sky

 

TIC
The yard with the
brothers & dogs in the
rickety back of Ozone
Park back of Aqueduct track
— Why’ is it have to be Kentucky?

 

 

The Time-type executive
— “Ahuh, — yeah —
That would be about
500 kegs a month —
Well alright if
that takes care of
yr situation thats
what they want I
expect — Yeah —
hm — We’ll try to do
that this afternoon
— anything you want
just holler — ah huh —
— bye — same to
you” — click —

 

TICS
O fogs of South City,
the rumble of the drag,
outside, chicory coffee,
the doom-wind-sheds
of Armour & Swift —
waybills in the Night —
the clean mystery
of California — these
sensations — Why makes
it me shudder to remember,
if it aint
hanted
—

 

The exams in University
Gym — Bill Birt, morning —
those
smells, sensations,

 

rise to me from just
standing at requisition
shelf where fresh paint
& cool breeze blow — usually
rouses Frisco RR work —
Why? — if not hanted,
charged materially with
substances that are
locked in (and as
Proust says waiting to be
unlocked.) Ah I’m
happy — Yet it’s only
11:30 & Time Crawls —
& I’m so sick of the
burden time, everything’s
already happened, why
not
happen
all at
once, the charge in
one shot —
Old clerk to other old
clerk — 25 yrs. same
place — “What are you
today, Columbus?” —
as he searches lost ledger
— Sad? It’s abominable

 

— The names of old
lost Bigleaguers Cudworth
used to paste in his books —
1934, 1933 — Dusty Cooke,
lost names — lost suns —
as more sad than rain —
— those 2 men drinking
at the old bar on Third
& alley — old Meeks
Bar 1882 — why do I think
of them? — Pa & Charley
Morrissette spectralizing
Frisco-Lowell —

 

ROCKY MOUNT oldstreet
with 90 year old Buffalo
Bill housepainter spitting
brown ’bacca juice on
roof, — & younger painter
who heartbreakingly white-
washes that part near the
porch reminds me of poor
lost Lowell — And old
lady sewing little boy
bluepants on historic
porch breaks my heart —
& old black bucket &
fire in negroyard & little
gal in scrabble reminds
me Mexico & the Fella-
heen peoples I love —
for old retired couple on
that porch aint just
sittin in the sun, sit
in judgment & Western
hatred — not all
of em —

 

I am alone
in Eternity with my Work
For
as I sat on the
burnt out stump on
the Concord River bank
staring into the flawless
blue & thinking of
earth as a stain,
suddenly I realized
the utter absurdity of
my squatting assy
humanity too, the
infinitely empty
crock of form, like
suddenly hearing myself
sneeze in the quiet
Street night & it
sounds like somebody
else — Therefore, is
my pelvic ambition
for girl’s bone-cover
the True Me? — or
is it not, like the
sneeze & the ass,
absurd
, like the
smell of the shit
of a saint

 

THE GREAT FALL is
rumbling in America —
in back of the Telephone
office in R.M. you
can see it in the profounder
blue of the late aft sky
as seen from among
the downtown Southern
redbricks — in the
brown tips of leaves
on trees over the garage
wall — The wholesale
hardware wall — in the
particular cold deep red
that has suddenly
come into the tobacco
warehouse roof with
its spotted loft-
windows — inside,
faintly in the

 

brown like Autumn tobacco
brown, the piles
of bacco baskets —
Here watching Paul’s car I
sit — poised for the
continent again, Aug. 27 ’52
And in San Jose the
Great Fall is tangled
brown among the
greens of sun valley
trees, deep shadows
of morning make the
woodfence black
against the golden
flares of sere grass —
California is always
morning, sun, & shade
— & clean —

 

lovely motionless green
leaves — vague
plaster rocks lost in
fields — the dazzling
white sides of houses
seen thru the tangly
glade branches —
the dry solemn ground
of California fit for
Indians to sleep on
— the cardboard
beds of hoboes along
the S.P. track up at
Milpitas — & the
clean blue deep
night at Permanente,
the dogs barking under
clear stars, the

locomotive flares
his big hot orange
fire on sleeping
houses in the glade
— sweet California —
memories of Marin
& the California night
are true & real —
& were right
And then I went
South to Mexico

 

And then I went North
to New York

 

To New York, to the
Apple, New York

 

(Remember, this isnt chronological)
Mexico December ’52

 

Plant without growth
in Vegetable bleakness
The thirst, the mournfulness

 

The terrible benzedrine
depression after big
night of drinking on
Organo St. with
La Negra & the
courtdancer queer
children after whore
sluffed me & I lost
brakeman’s lantern,
French dictionary,

 

earmuff hat, money,
pages of writing,
left piss in my
new pots & walked
off — long rides
in perfect Mexico
on bus, sad — but
at Tamazunchale
begin to feel good &
see Kingdoms & homes
& heavy syrup air
of jungle —
& at Brownsville
Missouri Pacific bus — &
then VICTORIA

 

“SIRONIA” —
my walk — miss’t
bus — saw Xmas
in rose brown
r.r. track
windows —
Sweet stars —
presaging months
in Winter 1953
Richmond Hill at
Ma’s house writing
gemlike
LOVE
IS
SIXTEEN

 

After which flew
back to Coast to
work mountains
at San Luis Obispo
puttin up & down
pops — ending I
sail out the Golden
Gate on a Japan
bound freighter that
first goes to New
Orleans where I
drink & take off
(“Worlds Champion
shipjumper,” says
Burroughs) & return
NY in summer, to
heat & Subterraneans