Authors: Frederick Seidel
Poems 1959-2009 (2 page)
Freedom Bombs for Vietnam (1967)
The Last Entries in Mayakovsky's Notebook
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Sixty years after, I can see their smiles,
White with Negro teeth, and big with good,
When one or the other brought my father's Cadillac out
For us at the Gatesworth Garage.
RG and MC were the godhead,
The older brothers I dreamed I had.
I didn't notice they were colored,
Because older boys capable of being kind
To a younger boy are God.
It is absolutely odd
To be able to be with God.
I can almost see their faces, but can't quite.
I remember how blazingly graceful they were,
And that they offered to get me a girl so I could meet God.
I have an early memory of a black chauffeur,
Out of his livery,
Hosing down a long black Packard sedan, sobbing.
Did it happen? It took place
In Portland Place.
I remember the pink-soled gum boots
That went with the fellow's very pink gums
And very white teeth, while he washed
The Packard's whitewalls white
And let them dry, sobbing,
Painting on liquid white with an applicator afterward.
Later that afternoon he resumed his chauffeur costume,
A darky clad in black under the staring sun.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died.
On the other hand, Ronny Banks was light-skinned.
He worked as a carhop at Medart's drive-in.
He was well-spoken, gently friendly.
He was giving a party, but I didn't go.
I actually drove there, but something told me no.
I suddenly thought he was probably a homo.
I drank my face off, age fifteen.
I hit the bars
In the colored section to hear jazz.
I raved around the city in my father's cars,
A straight razor who, wherever he kissed, left scars.
I was violently heterosexual and bad.
I used every bit of energy I had.
Where, I wonder, is Ronny Banks now?
I remember a young man, whose name I have forgotten,
Who was exceedingly neat,
Always wearing a white shirt,
Always standing there jet-black in our living room.
How had this been allowed to happen?
Who doesn't hate a goody-goody young Christian?
My father and uncle underwrote the boy's education.
He was the orphaned son of a minister.
He sang in the church choir.
He was exemplary, an exemplar.
But justice was far away, very far.
Justice was really an ashtray to display
The lynched carcass of a stubbed-out cigar,
Part brown, part black, part stink, part ash.
When I was a little boy,
My father had beautiful manners,
A perfect haughty gentleman,
Impeccable with everyone.
In labor relations with the various unions,
For example, he apparently had no peer.
It was not so much that he was generous,
I gather, but rather that he was fair.
So it was a jolt, a jolt of joy,
To hear him cut the shit
And call a black man Boy.
The white-haired old Negro was a shoeshine boy.
One of the sovereign experiences of my life was my joy
Hearing my father in a fury call the man Boy.
Ronny Banks, faggot prince, where are you now?
RG and MC, are you already under headstones
That will finally reveal your full
Names, whatever they were?
RG, the younger brother, was my hero who was my friend.
I remember our playing
Catch in the rain for hours on a rainy weekend.
It is a question
Of when, not a question of whether,
The glory of the Lord shall be revealed
And all flesh shall cease together.
A black woman came up to my father.
All the colored people in this city know who you are.
God sent you to us. Thank God for your daddy, boy.
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My face had been sliced off
And lay there on the ground like a washcloth
With my testicles and penis
Next to it.
The car had Wyoming plates.
I'd been to Colorado but not Wyoming,
Which I gather is beautiful.
The other one I hadn't seen was Utah.
Someone had carefully cut under it and lifted it off,
I suppose to obliterate the identity,
Except had left it out in the open.
It looked like a latex glove but also someone's face.
She told me she had always loved me.
I was the happy ending of a fairy tale.
She would recognize my penis anywhere,
Even on the ground.
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I'm back at Claridge's, room 427,
And in the mirror find a bit of heaven.
It isn't plastic surgery that makes
Me look like youâtwo heartless dashing rakes!
You're me, not youâyou're me but modified
To look like you and in the throes of. Why'd
I ever think that we were ocean waves?
We're stingrays winging through the warmth with raves
From every mermaid who reviews us.
Hush!
There's someone coming! Hamlet talking lush
Escape routes to the upper world. The ray,
Whose stinger walks behind, doth kneel and pray.
Art deco Claridge's is Fred Astaire's
Lighthearted bee sting love affairs. She cares!
The stinger sticking out from Baudelaire's
Check trousers is a poem that despairs.
His pain is palpable. It can't be pain,
This gentle sound of sweetly London rain.
I wouldn't dream of plastic surgery
Unless it somehow helped the poetry.
Prince Hamlet's dressed in flowing black. The black
Is doubled over, having an attack.
The man is standing up, but bent in two
To put his contacts in. He looks at you
Because you're looking in the mirror, too.
You want to see what Baudelaire will do.
Lenticular astigmatism makes
His fangs squirt sperm and what a pair of snakes,
Blue eyes that bite through lenses tinted blue!
When I'm goose-stepping down the avenue,
My other self is with me. Here's a clueâ
The one with the umbrella is the Jew.
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Freddy Dew was Portia's younger brother.
Lord Dew was just eighteen.
Last year they lost their father and their mother,
A cousin of the queen.
They had the house in Mayfair on their own,
Right out of Henry James.
A brother/sister strangeness set the tone,
Blonds wrapped in icy flames.
The English are so goddamn glamorous,
Too fucking much to bear.
The women are both cold and amorous.
One almost doesn't dare.
“Dewy” had the most amazing tits
And lots of love down there.
One-size-fits-all loved lots of boys to bits,
And coldly couldn't care.
Of course she had her ignorance to thank.
Her sort was all she knew.
Freddy's friends read Chairman Mao and drank
Champagne from her shoe.
“Bloodies” were aristocratic brutesâ
Not Freddy's cut of meat!
They liked to beat up whores and beat up fruits,
And drink and barf and eat.
To Portia they were lovely penises,
Fox hunters fucking fox.
She thought of them as English Venuses,
But with outrageous cocks.
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The tennis ball is in the air to be struck.
Thwock.
The dove is in the air to be shot.
Bam.
The fuzz will come off the white, off-white.
You always leave me.
Soft is whack.
It's completely a sign of age
That suddenly I have breasts.
Mine are as big as my girlfriend's.
Yes, hers are small.
I have so many girlfriends.
It's endocrinal. It's disgusting. It's de-lovely.
She always says, “You always leave me.”
True, me and my breasts leave town.
I have so many girlfriends.
But one's the one.
I for years was unable to decide,
Tits or ass? And don't forget legs.
Which one do you think is the best?
My choice would vary. Who would
you
choose?
It was all too good to be true. Then came you!
Everyone's a sexual object.
Everyone is something to use.
Everyone is something good.
I'm her vibratorâbut believe me,
Everyone is something unphysical also.
I'm so coolâI'm so
hot!
I make her oink when we fuck.
Me and my breasts, we're leaving town.
We're going to Montana to throw the houlihan.
Ride around, little dogies, ride around them slow.
For everyone's a sexual object.
Everyone is something to use.
Everyone is something good.
I oink when I fuck but have feelings and wings.
Pigs can fly.
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Women have a playground slide
That wraps you in monsoon and takes you for a ride.
The English girl Louise, his latest squeeze, was being snide.
Easy to deride
The way he stayed alive to stay inside
His women with his puffed-up pride.
The pharmacy supplied
The rising fire truck ladder that the fire did not provide.
The toothless carnivore devoured Viagra and Finasteride
(Which is the one that shrinks the American prostate nationwide
And at a higher dosage grows hair on the bald) to stem the tide.
Not to die had been his way to hide
The fact that he was terrified.
He could not tell them that, it would be suicide.
It would make them even
more
humidified.
The women wrapped monsoon around him, thunder-thighed.
They guide his acetone to their formaldehyde.
Now Alpha will commit Omegacide.
He made them, like a doctor looking down a throat, open wide,
Say Ah; and
Ah
, they sighed;
And out came sighing amplified
To fill a stadium with cyanide.
He filled the women with rodenticide.
He tied
Their wrists behind them, tried
Ball gags in their mouths, and was not satisfied.
The whole room when the dancing started clapped and cried.
The bomber was the bomb, and many died.
The unshod got their feet back on and ran outside.
The wedding party bled around the dying groom and bride.
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I get a phone call from my dog who died,
But I don't really.
I don't hear anything.
Dear Jimmy, it is hard.
Dear dog, you were just a dog.
I am returning your call.
I have nothing to say.
I have nothing to add.
I have nothing to add to that.
I am saying hello to no.
How do you do, no!
I am returning your call.
I rode a bubble to the surface just now.
I unthawed the unthawed.
I said yes. Yes, yes,
How do you do?
I called to say hello
But am happy.
Today it is spring in November.
The weather opens the windows.
The windows look pretty dirty.
I go to my computer to see.
The six-day forecast calls
For happy haze for six days.
The trees look like they're budding.
They can't be in late November.
It is mucilaginous springtime.
It is all beginning all over.
The warplanes levitate
To take another crack at Iraq.
Hey, Mr. Big Shot!
I bet you went to Harvard.
Leaves are still on the trees.
The trees are wearing fine shoes.
Everything is handmade.
Everything believes.
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And the angel of the Lord came to Mary and said:
You have cancer.
Mary could not think how.
No man had been with her.
And then there was the other time.
Remember how happy we were.
You were in my arms.
I still had arms.
The rain fell on upturned faces.
Stars rained down on the desert.
Everybody was body temperature.
Everywhere was temperate.
It was raining and global warming.
Spiritual renewal made it beautiful.
