Book of Sketches (20 page)

 

voyeuring Americans &
heroboy queers of
Lower 2nd Avenue comes in
for big exciting afterwork
meal of Chicken Croquettes
with Sauce & will be
here T’Giving day for big
Turkey with works —
sad to live, quick to
eat, early to work,
slow to sleep, long to
die — Now so the
girl uncaring of old men
& pain has her fore finger
against her temple
while listening to other girl
speak & therefore in
nodding seriousness has
ravelled all her eyebone
skin up in a mask
of ark ugly furrow
destiny having no relation
to the hazel glitter,
the nutty mystery of
her sweet eyes & suckkiss
lips & long drawndown
bosh flop
face discontorted
by further arrangements
of leanface on palm —
in her delicate edible
ear a dull metal thing —
her lips fully lipsticked
& curved like Cupid &
stain the coffee cup —
her eye on her girlfriend
cold, watchful, secretive,
pretending to be curious,
like she’ll make the
parody-story of this
gossip tonight in
earwigging dreams in
her fragrant thigh
sheets! whee

 

LATE AUTUMN afternoon,
the birds are whistle-singing zeet
feor in the dry tinder twig trees,
they ‘fleet’ & in the general
traffic (“Spr-r-e e e t”)
rush on Atlantic Ave. & the double
go ahead Diesel BOT - BOT in
the LIRR yards they wait
between calls as if, in the
activity of their own afternoon,
they had intervals too, time too
& orders from the parchesi chess
board to air conditioner machines
of the Glum Window World
make their little fluttery wait
wake, leaves falling not even
with you could hear the
tick
of their little fall on the concrete
ground beneath which Indians
lie ancestral bone by skull in

 

tomahawk New York —
the fishtail back end of
some new car parked beyond
the Eternity Porch (like the
one in San Jose where I was
so high at gray dawn I heard
between the vibrating yowls of
Neal’s baby the great rush
of wave sounds wave on wave
shuddering & Vibrating like one
vast electric or bio electric
or cosmic gravity “struay
ill” — — zoongg —
scared me & made me hear
the moment moth sound of
Time, good or bad old Time
I’m in, and’ll write
for — So now to
“INDIANS
IN THE
RAILROAD
EARTH”)

 

— late afternoon Autumn in
Long Island, the leaf slants
down in the wind & hits the
ground & bounces & goes ‘chuck’
— as dry as that — the others
already fallen lie heaped in
chlorophyll green grass between
driveway concretes — the
sky has a rose tint in its
gray demeanor — the leaves/rose brown yellow
transparent/& like drunken poets emptying/
uselessness in pages
Never did try to get
on a car via standing
on a journal box except
one time on a splintery
flatcar & even then
I was as helpless as
a baby, one slack
bang pop I’d have
been as helpless as
a bread bun rolling
off to get run over
& flattened in the
middle & be toast
by Fall — — —

America’s truck and car kick has
made it place twin radio antennas
on the last hill of hope overlooking
the Pacific to the Orient Sea.
Clouds of sorrow pass over and
into a nameless blue opening beyond
the storms of San Francisco. Lonely
men with open collars and gray
fedoras take long drear street
walks where oil trucks turn into
gray garage doorways at 2:30
Sunday afternoon. Wash hopelessly
flaps on the roofs of Skid Row
where the great Proletariat has
come to stake his claim, or
claim his stake, one.

 

Everything is taking place inside
dark windows that have the
quality of inky pools inside which
white fish are swimming motionlessly
across extended arm rests, now
and then peeking out to take a
quick look at the street, flapping
grayed muslin curtains back to
shield the furtive sorrow. Rain
spats across the scene in a sudden
shower from the tormented sky
all radiant with sun holes and
Frisco Gray and Black rain
clouds radiating from the sea
like a vast slow unfolding of
its rainy tragedy where driving
rains smash futilely on the
blank waving void.
Hopeless blue
boxes intended for plants or
for the outdoor coolness of
Spreckels’ Homo Milk and
8¢ cubes of Holiday Oleo-
margarine, stick out from
windowsills in and around what
the City Managers call the “blighted

 

area” that must be torn down
within 5, or even 3, years. Dispossession
and complete loneliness
haunt the empty sidewalks in
front of old stores for rent.
In a tenement a little Negro
girl in dumb thought at her
mother’s sofa alone in the
afternoon room reads “Hardened
vegetable oils (soybean & cottonseed),
skim milk, salt, monoglyceride,
lecithin; isopropyl citrate (0-01%)
to protect flavor, and vitamin
A and
artificial color
added.
2 oz. supplies 47% of adults
and 62% of child’s minimum
daily Vitamin A requirements,”
from the cube of oleo paper
and stares for 90 seconds in a
Buddhist-like trance at the
little ®(apparently meaning
‘registered’ trademark) at the
side of the brand name
Holiday,
wondering if the
little ® is meant to be a
secret of the recipe not mentioned
in the long paragraph, or a
sign of some authority hidden
behind the butter in a suit and
briefcase with
on it and
® on his Cadillac and he
drives around with bulging eyes
and a Texas Truman hat in
the streets of the City.

“I, poor French Canadian Ti Jean become
a big sophisticated hipster esthete in
the homosexual arts, I, mutterer to
myself in childhood French, I, Indian-
head, I, Mogloo, I the wild one,
the “wild boy,” I, Claudius Brutus
McGonigle Mckarroquack, hopper
of freights, Skid Row habituee,
railroad Buddhist, New England Modernist,
20th Century Storywriter, Crum, Krap,
dope, divorcee, hype, type; sitter in windows
of life; idiot far from home; no
wood in my stove, no potatoes in my
field, no field; hepcat, howler, wailer,
waiter in the line of time; lazy
washed-out, workless; yearner after
Europe, poet manquée;
pas tough!
stool gatherer, food destroyer, war
evader, nightmare dreamer, angel
be-er, wisdom seer, fool, bird, cocacola
bottle — I, am in need of advice
from God and will not get it, not
likely, nor soon, nor ever — sad saha
world, we were born for nothing from
nothing — Respects to our sensitive
Keeners up & down the crime.”

 

O Melville! thy Soul
Sustains me
More than all the Buddhas
That have passed
With the water
Under the Brooklyn Bridge

NY

Dont let your New York be modified &
shrunken by local transitory dislikes (such
as Tony Bennett-Laurels-bleak N.Y.) (in
all this Applish Apple) — but the Liberté
steaming in in brightgold afternoon, of
the Daily News, 4 AM bars, Birdland,
Jackie Gleason, Italian restaurants,
5th Avenue, Lucien, Wolfe, Charley
Vackner the race results, West St. water-
front, Friday night fights in the TV saloon,
the Columbia Campus in May, the Remo, hep-
cats on corners bent, Pastrami at the Gaiety,
an ice cream soda at midnight on Broadway,
beautiful gorgeous blondes, brunettes, —
But I hate the fumes of 34th St.
A strange aura of masochism
and even of homosexuality
in Christian Catholicism
— “He will give you a
taste of joys & delights that
transcend anything” — etc —
. . . That’s the homosexuality . . .
“praying to God to rid you of
your desires and
abase
you thus”
the masochism —
Why?
You cant beat the Tao —
the Buddha — the Guru of
the Far East — “and Jesus
will make it
easy”
—
Really
my dear — Nothin’s easy.

 

TANGIERS 1957

Blowing in an afternoon wind,
on a white fence,
A cobweb

 

March wind from the sea — a lonely dobe house
with red tiled roof, on a highway boulevard,
by white garages and new apartment buildings
in ruined field — everything in place in the inscrutable
sunny air, no meaning in the sky and
a girl running by coughing! It is very strange how
the green hills are full of trees and white houses
without comment. I think Tangiers is some kind
of city. Man and son cross road, wearing
green Sabbath fez caps, like papercup cakes
good nuf to eat — I think I’m sposed to be
alive — I dont see anything around — Drops
of whitewash on this red concrete plaza with
the whitewashed tower by the sea for
Muezzins of the Sherifian Star — The
other night, here, Arab bagpipes —

a weird Sunday in Fellaheen
Arabland with you’d expect
mystery white windows &
do see but b God the broad
up there in whiten
my-veil is sitting & peering
by a Red Cross, above a lil
sign says PRACTICANTES
Servicio Permanente
TF NO.
9766
the cross being red — this
is over a tobacco shop
with luggage & pictures,
a little barelegged boy
leaning on counter with a
family of wristwatched
Spaniards — Limey sailors
from the submarines pass
trying to get drunker & drunker
yet quiet & lost in home
regret & two little Arab
hepcats have a brief musical
confab (boys of 10) & they
part with a push of arms
& wheeling of arms, the cat
has a yellow skullcap &
a blue zoot suit

 

I am now hi on
MAHOUN
MAHOUN
Cakes of kief boiled with
spices & candies —
eaten with hot tea —
the black & white tiles
of the outdoor cafe
are soiled by lonely
Tangiers time — A
little bald cropped
boy walks by, goes
to men at table,
says “Yo!” then
the waiter throws
him out, “Yig” —
A brown ragged robe
priest sits with me at
table, but looks
off with hands
on lap at brilliant
red fez & red girl
sweater & red boy
shirt green scene