Book of Sketches (15 page)

 

All is I want
Love when I want it
Rest when I want it
Food when I want it
Drink when I want it
Drugs when I want it
The rest is bullshit
I am now going out
to meditate in the
grass of San Luis Creek
& talk to hoboes &
get some sun & worry
where my soul is going
& what to do & why
as ever
& ever
shit

 

So that writing will finally
in me end up to be the
working out of the burden
of my education
for personal Surrealistic
self-therapeutic education-
burden time-fillers in
Agrarian & Fellaheen Peace

 

No radio TV education or
papers — a sombrero, a
mujer, goats, weed & guitars

 

 

 

I blame God for
making life so
boring —

Drink is good for
love — good for
music — let it
be good for
writing —

 

This drinking is my
alternative to suicide,
& all that’s left

 

And marijuana
the holy weed
It isnt anybody’s fault
that I am bored —
it’s the condition of
time — the burden
of putting up & filling
in with tick tack
time in dull dull day
— How humorous it
is that I am bored,
that it’s no one’s
fault, that time
is a drag — that I
would rather commit
suicide than go on
being bored —
Men are new creatures
not built for this old
earth — the lizard yes

 

The lizard lost all
his children long before
men began being bored
in this Eden of Harshness

 

 

Alcohol, weed, peotl —
bring em on — &
bring on bodies —
Why does the Indian
drink?
Because he never knew
how to make himself
drunk with weeds &
brews — only stoned

 

Every year be writing 3
books simultaneously
— a morning sober book
— an afternoon high book
(the greatest)
— a night drunk book

 

hee hee hee!
& girl
& friends
& universal tippling
forgiveness
WRITE IN SMALL PRINT WHEN YR. DRUNK
The charm of the original drunk —
Vermont — the mtns. of Manchester
& we all got drunk — Kids — tore
up trees — the earth got drunk with
us as I remember — weaving, swaying —

 

THERE WERE OUTCRIES***NASCENCES
OF LOVE***I FELL HEADFIRST
out of the car to greet the
ladies — GJ protected me
& goofed with me in the romantic
American starlit nite of
youth — G.J. — still great
is G.J. — huge-in-eternity GJ —
Goodbye, San Luis Obispo

 

 

 

July 1953
One of those downtown
Manhattan cobble corners
on a gray afternoon
given so much more gloom
to its already gloomy
dimness — the big
busy trucks of commerce
& even occasional horse
teams clattering & booming
by — The corner where
the old 1860 redbrick
now weatherbrick bldg
sags, with Mexican like
sagging black sad broken
sidewalk roof suspended
by bars attached to the
wallfront — it’s like

 

a vision of the old Buenos
Aires waterfront & beater
still & like the bleak
merceds of So America
but the heart of modern
sophisticated Rome-New
York — A rain of
plips & day-mosquitos
falls across the black
dank gloom of the
corner — profoundly hidden
within is an almost
unnamable man on
a crate bent & thought-
ful in the day dark
over his order book &
by mountains of
cabbage crates — The
gray sky above has a
hurting luminosity to the
eye & also rains with
tiny nameless annoying
flips & orgones —
life dusts of Time —
beyond is the vast
arcadium green Erie
pier, a piece of it,
with you sense the
scummy river beyond —
The West Side hiway,
gray, riveted, steel,
with automobiles crisscrossing
in the narrow scene
to destinations like
bright silver ribbons

 

North & South in the
city & no regard, no
time for the dark sad
little corner with its white
oneway arrow, blue St.
Sign (Washington & Murray)
leany lamppost, litter
of gutter, curb as if
pressed down by years
of trucks backing up —
The lone blue pigeon
trucking along, the
squad copcar stopping
momentarily to think —
a scene wherein in
some darkfog midnight
2 seamen stagger, or
an anonymous clerk

 

in rumpled July summer-
shirt hurries meek
with Daily News —
or by gray hot noon
of dogday August some
small merchant in
brown coat, whitehaired,
clutching a box underarm
slowly walks — on
late October afternoon
a rusted & forgotten spot
in the great joysplash
of Manhattan with
its glittering band
of rivers, ships exuding
booms, shrouds —
smoke, of railroads,
trucks, boom of time
Closer up you see the
actual pockmarked grime
of this sad Manhattan
scene, an old hydrant
with 2 black iron stanchions
beside it as if
obsolete ruins of old
water or horsetrough
equipments of 1870
when where you now see
Erie Pier’s green parthenonish
front was the jibbooms
of great sailing vessels,
the boom of wagon wheels
& barrels — Overwritten
doublepainted all-lost
writing friezing around
the crumbling warehouse

 

says BABE HYMAN & SONS
& also DAVE KLYDAN SPE
interwritten
On the 4th floor, corner
window, a black hall
where a pane of less
blackdusty glass is missing —
the 5th floor itself is
home of a savage
poet who lies on his
back all day staring
at cobwebs above,
fingering his beard only
to — poems on the
floor covered with dust,
black dust — his shoes
a half inch deep in
dust — not dead —
yes dead — a Bartleby
so beat that it

 

is inconceivable to see
how he can live much
more than 5 minutes —
The bldg. is for rent —
The sun comes out,
illuminating the cobbles
but the grim edifice stays
gray & wears the
aspect of the city’s
grave — There
is no poet up there, just
rats

 

& a few sacks
of nibbled-into onion

 

urg

 

LONG ISLAND WAREHOUSE
In the night it’s the
great sad orangeness
of lights shining on
orange backgrounds for
red letters, like a
sideshow poster
the colors but nothing

 

so flimsy or entertaining —
White creamy huge stucco
warehouse of Kew Gardens
movers, the back of the
bldg. has silent stairs
with no one on them
never at night if ever
at all, iron stairs that
lead to a green door
in the whiteness of the
stucco wall just by the
orange & red writing, huge
half seen half lit
picture of a truck,
Chelsea, moving
phone numbers —
territorial towers of
a inexistent Kingdom

 

that once lived but
had to be embalmed
to survive the ages
& but now in our
age finds itself
misplaced as a
moving company &
no one notices
the Algerian splendor
of those walls
ramparts creamyness
& disk Mayan
designs scrollpainted
by union brush saw
hacks on board
platforms hung up
& rolled by ropes

 

2.15 an hour but
not knowing the
Egyptian Kingdom
splendor of their
work now in the
misty Rich Hill
night, the
Proustian Goof of
that thing

 

Evening, aftersupper
evening in Richmond Hill —
the cool sweet sky is full
of fine little white puffs
separated angelically
in regular
— over the tree the
pink hint sensation white
is calm, the tree quivers
at the leaf — sweet
is the coolness, even the
filmy wire on my TV antenna,
the new transparent aerial
curve is cool, white, blue —
but in the sound & the
sensation the crickets
muscle whistle, others
repeat the idiot creek
creek from denser yards,
cats lap & lick,
bugs hover, night breathes
sweet soft vastness
into heaven —

 

the motionless green
grass is like iron, chlorophyll,
Chinese, densely
personalized, rugged, almost
pockmarked, rich, as
if chewed — hanging
pajamas & rugs on
lines move majestic
& slow in a cross
movement, now they
hustle a little up —
flowers blaze in their
own radium world —
in night they aureate
to no human eyes
unseen magical darts
of prismatic Violet
light, for mosquitos

 

to whir in front of —
Huge purple transparent
phosphorescent night
fall now pinks the
white page of life,
faces lost in hate
& personal pitbottom
dislikes, hasseled heavy
footed too-much-with
himself man fawdling
in yards of pride,
whining at the dogs
of time, overhead
groans the airplane
of his far reached
folly —

 

and so the crickets
creek, cree, cree —
eaves darken & get
inky gainst whitened
dusk — the pale
dawn dusk clouds
move not but silent
in a mass advance
somewhere slowly —
it was in evenings like
this I’d lie in my skin
& jeans in California
waiting for the Apocalypse
& for Armageddon,
ready, head on lamp,
feet in big shoes,
pants tight, wallet
hanky knife tight,

 

no money no home
no need but a can
of beans & the
responsibility of engines
on the sticky steel
rail — As now the
grape of that
California Wine spread
in the West, shooting
phosphor glory over
the Come of the
World — The
green weeds like
with glaze on them
tough skin as now did
communicate with
me a vegetative
friendliness

Mardou’s — the gray light
of Paradise Alley falls
down the draining gray stained
wall with old gray paint
churred windows, outside’s
the scream of a little
girl — The hum big buzz
city flowing in by thousandmoth
waves — The
silence of Mardou’s
clothes, the water bottle,
rumpled bed — face
American goofing in
sheets — little sweet
sad radio — Love
shoulders of Mardou
Little tree & bush buds on
the screen outside — some
are dead little dry ravelled
quiverers in a dry void —
some almost that way
but still organically
vine likely tangled by strings
of green life to the twig
bough of the bush & will
receive their comedownance
come October soon —
some still green & juicy
lifed, twirled lifelikely
around on a yellow
Lonestem to droop in
the August sorrow of
peace & gas fumes from
hiway — some twig

 

ends are so small almost
unseeable & bear nothing
but dead leaves who not
only sucked it dry but
had taken a chance &
pitched a mansion of
life there but father-
twig missed, castrated,
cancered out & done
did
die
so now it’s a
pale Indian sticklet
with rorfled dood
leaves bup to dooded
no-life & shake to
quiver of earth on a
general bush bearing
no relation to world
— insignificant, skinny
as sticks in graves —

 

the big healthy deep
green leaves have et
up all the juice of the
bush, they spring from
elastic stems straight
from the gnarly roothowa’d
bough bone of
the bush-proper &
shake to the wind with
heavy weight & thru
then see the pale
day light in veins
absorbed to suck
blushing phosphor greens
like chlorophyll
— the one recently
stillgreen deadleave
dangling on a broken stem —

 

The old blackgarbed
watcher of cities sitting
on the Live Oak Jim
NewYork barge in the
dry cool afternoon —
watching tugs warp in
finished excursion boats, river
tankers, barges pass —
his interest in the river,
the names of Tug Captains
& Excursion Steamer deck-
hands, the arrival &
departure of great
ocean going orange masted
like the Waterman
Liberty today docked
at Jack Frost Sugars

 

across the river in L I City
— This old guy, with
whitefringe hair around
baldspot but wearing his
black soothat, sits on
the bit on the swaying barge,
smoking, — to him the
city & the world is such
a different thing as it is
just across the Drive in
Bellevue Hospital where
in density of world interest
now gloomy psychiatrists
consult with patients &
aint interested in the sun
on the river, the free
gulls floating in the
sleepy tide, the
gay littleboats,
but in problems of
marriage & emotional adjustment
& all such dark,
gloomy, indoor preoccupations
& with such contempt for
those like those on the
river who dont interiorate
with them in this Byzantine
Vault of Mind Horror —
the walls of Bellevue,
dirty rosebrick grim beneath
shining purities of clearday
heaven, the ink of
the windows, the soot
darkness of the bars in
the windows, the formidable
mass & camp
& hangup of the