Book of Sketches (14 page)

“What do you mean,
There are no people?
Isnt Hawk people?
Isnt Dove people?
And Rat
And Flint
And all the rest?”
— Jaime d Angulo

My father in his dying
1945 year thought Danny
Kaye was funny — we’d
listen to the radio, go to
shows — how humble in
eternity can you get?
— We’d sit in the Ozone Pk
parlor on Fri nites listening
to the Pabst Blue Ribbon
Ads between Danny’s
jokes like O Really?
No O Reilly! —
& Hal Chase thot
Danny was funny too
& that too is a strange
humility in eternity
— that these gigantic
hearts shd. have latched

 

onto such a stale &
narrow clown —
& all for what?
— for waste of time —
I even used to
listen to Jas Melton,
dreaming of SERENADE
by James M Cain,
just as today I waste
time on boxscores, on
Philley’s last hit
or Greengrass’s
homer — or on
TV stupidities —
how mediocre everything’s
got since 10 years!

Intensity must be all
Ripeness
Intensity is all
All night eager pale
face Chinatown talk
in eternity weary
mystery
Health is for clams
snails & shells
Intensity & sorrow
is for Geo Martins
of Time
For Zagg Big O’Zaggus

O Allen Dear Allen
Ah Allen Poor Me
Walked the streets of
Ee ter ni Tee
With me —
O Allen Sad Allen Ah
Mystery — Ah Me
Ghettos
East Sides
Denver Pigeons
Doldrums of Coasts
Suicides of Seas
& Hart Crane Sub
Sea Deities
And Corals & Shelves
Immemorial
Hallos

 

I have nothing to
say to ye
Except
Dont trod the wrong
tightrope
Weird Mind will wrassle
Thee
To a meet in the
Hole of Destiny
With an Angel White
as Heaven
Gold
Snow
Cobalt Pearl
And Fires of Rose
Then remember me
long dead.

Stormy mad
Irish Sea
Sex and bone
Cane pipe peat
Death stone
Constantinople
Dostoevsky of Machree
Patriarch of Mayo
Pard of Innisfree
Isle of Imagery
A.E.
James J.
Leopold Bloom
Curmudgeon Connaught
Patrick O Gogarty Bemulligan
Silt throat

Long dead’s longevity
Coyote Viejo
Ugly un handsome old
puff chin eye crack
Bone fat face McGee
In older rains sat by
new fires
Plotting unwanted pre
doomed presupposing
Odes — long dead
Riverbottom bum
Raunchy
Scrounge
Brakeman bum
Wine cans sand sexless
Silence die tomb
Pyramid cave snake Satan

I was a naive
overbelieving type

Half wanting to live
Full having to work

 

Sketching is successful
but not fun — not
artistically
absorbing,
like making jerky
or building a fire
or writing a
Cody Pomeray in
The Poolhalls
or sketching from the mad mind itself

 

The metaphysical mayor
broke down

 

That which has not
long to live, frets —
That which lives
forever
Is full of peace
And there
is no man who’ll
live forever
Here it is California,
little young girls going to
school in the fresh &
dewy sidewalks of sleepy
San Luis — birds are
noising up & down —
a mist sweetens the
mountains — the cool
sea beyond the hills
has been all night
& will be all day —
ever eating sand, creaming
rocks, washing worlds —
The rail is sticky, wet,
dewy — clean architectural
trains & perfect red &
black signals —

 

my life so lonely &
empty without someone
to love & lay, & without
a work to surpass
myself with, that I
have nothing nothing
to write about even
in the first clear joy
of morning — Today
May 5 1953 I’m
going to decide on my
next book — the
idleness is killing —
WILL to decide —

 

The pristine leader who
made & lost this house
has none of my sympathy.

In the desert there was
a sign that said
“SNAKE CHEF’S
DAUGHTER DOVE
XND
JOSEPH CHARLES BRETON
HERE RECOMMENCED
THE WORLD
FROM THE GREAT FIRE OF
JULY 1845
URP RAIN AGAIN”
though no one had seen
it except the father
of the later generation
Bretons, John.
“Urp
what
again?”
“Rain”
“What’s that mean.”
“Nobody knows Looks
like urp. It might
be something else.
It looks like Snake
Chef’s Daughter Dove.
It might be something
else.”
“When did you see
this sign? Why didnt
you bring it with you?”
“I saw it in 1895
with Uncle Bull Balloon
I didnt bring it I didnt

 

even touch it. That was
my father’s sign your
grandfather He was
given the name Silver
Fox by the Indians His
son his eldest son his
first was called Coyote
& is now somewhere in
the Mexican desert or
walking along a railroad
track in California
& known as Whitey to
the bums & Coyote
Viejo to the Mexicans
& has a flowing white
beard. That is your
uncle Samuel He is
I believe in the
Zacatecan Desert &

 

like a ghost.”
“How old were you in
1895?”
“How should I know?”
“How old are you now?”
“I ceased I dont
count any more I
ceased & deceased . . .
And that little hotbox
in yr car wasnt
even formed in yr
unborn brain cells
when I made my first
payment on this
farce — & you, but
just an idea buried in
dirt at the back of
my brain.”
“I remember Old
Jim when his eyes
were moist — ”

Sun Apr 26
SWING THE HILL

(The railroad is a steely
proposition)

 

Animals dont have pride
Men shouldnt — healthy
men have no peacock
pride
I’ve been imitating Gerard
in reverence since he
died — his death was
my one real tragedy
more than Pa — his
death my death — But
imitating & adoring him
I grew exclusive, special,
prideful, found
Turf,
later
“literature”
to do
in my room

 

— in fact life insulting me
because it no longer
included Gerard —
Get rid of
pride
Get rid of
sorrow
Mix with the People
Go among the People,
the Fellaheen not the
American Bourgeois Middle-
class World of neurosis
nor the Catholic French
Canadian European World
— the People —
Indians, Arabs, the
Fellaheen in country, village,
of City slums — an
essential World Dostoevsky
if you want to Gauguin on —
but mainly, fulfill yr.
needs,
live,
— sit staring
in the yard all day, if
the other men laugh at
you challenge them
& ask them if “you would
like it if I laugh at
you” — Screw, drink,
be lazy, roam, do
nothing . . . gather yr.
food — Get out of
America for good, it’s
a Culture holding you,
no
Life —
The People
of No Good & Evil —
of No Culture, no
Prophets — nothing but
essential politics & literature
as Tales of the People —

 

Gauguin practised a
neurotic civilization
impressionism among
primitive fellaheen
people — is his
art so good as they
say? — is it better
really
than all-out
culture bourgeois dutch
come-&-honey Rembrandt?
— of course not — Impressionism
is & has always been
a breakup & compromise
in the art of picturing
nature & is now a
wild scatalogical paint
blur call’d Surrealism etc

 

Primitive art nevertheless
is closer to Surrealism
than “Naturalism”
(which is unnaturally technical)
— but primitive
art does not consider
Subconsciousness or
Primitivism — & is in
any case Decoration
for Utilitarian Purposes,
not so called “expression
for expression’s sake”
& the difference is
millionfold down deep —
Gauguin would have done
better decorating their pots
& boats — This humility
is the true artist’s —

 

& explains the vast
greatness of Bach writing
for the Sunday Service,
Raphael painting for
the church wall, —
the essential uselessness
of Goethe — Shakespeare
writing to fill the
theater seats — (a
shoddy purpose) —
Homer singing to his
listeners is the essential
fellaheen poet —
There are 3 basic
possibilities in fellaheen
Hunter, Priest, Warrior
The hunter has to be experienced,
the priest political, the warrior
mindless — I’ll have to
learn to be a hunter

 

The railroad is the hunt
in America, for me (&
Neal & Hinkle) — hunt
down the rail for bread —
I gotta learn many
essential things now
Hit my natural male
level after awhile —
It aint easy to get
away from the inworked
influence of Civilization
— which is an avoidance
of
reality
finding its
greatest symbol in
embalming fluid —
Sad that even the fella-
heen are stupid — want
radios & soap operas —
Thoreau made the 19th
century intellectual mistake
of reading the
Koran & the Bible instead
of following his
soul to ultimate . . . the
tales of creation among
the Indians & even
further the methods
of hunting & nomadry
— instead he pored over
the stale Goy Hatreds
of the Old Testament,
the aristocratic “middle-
class” Arabic cultisms
of Mohammed —
The People Need no
Religion, no Art, no War

 

A healthy man imitating
an invalid —
me imitating Gerard —
men imitating Christ
Cockless Christ —

 

Culture, & Civilization
its later millionfold
subdivision into
technicalities red tape
& by laws, is an
incredibly useless clutter
of substitutes for
sex & real life —
Anyone interested in
the million details &
sensations of a Culture
is interested in clutter &

 

is now (sic) longer in contact
with the Life Flow underneath
this junk & therefore
Neurotic &
Dead in Life —
Reich’s Orgone Box
doesnt compare to a screw
in the noonday sun — nor
Bogomolets’ serum
to sexual & therefore
spiritual (
joie de vivre)
longevity —
Needs from the
earth bleeding — pulque,
cocaine, marijuana,
peotl, gangee, herbs,
woods, vegetables, acorns,
greens, & the rabbit

 

Remember that everything
is alive — the Spider,
the Rattlesnake, the Tree
Wish no harm &
none will come yr way
& tell it to the
world alive,
the Animal, the People

 

I shall become a
goatherd — goat
milk, goat butter, &
tortillas & beans
with goat cheese

 

And yet most of these observations
arise from the fact I
cant get a woman anyhow —
too “bashful,” too “scowling” —

 

Tho it would be hard
to surpass the profound
nostalgia of the smoke
of an American cigar,
you would have to surpass
it. — To find the
Fellaheen Reality
means to find a
primitive country life
with no morals —
Country life with
morals, as in North
Carolina, is the most
destructive life on
earth — City life with
morals offers a few
diversions more, nothing more.

 

Yet whenever I get the
most rigid & philosophising
& dualizing as now,
is when I most weakly
feel like reacting to
the allurements of
what I seek to cast
out —

 

I dont know when
this eternal dual
circle will end —
In 1949 it was
Homestead vs. Decadence
1951
Mexico City vs. Work in U.S.
1953
Fellaheen vs. America
Be decadent, work in U S &
Have a Fellaheen Homestead too