smCOLUMN SEVENTY-FOUR, AUGUST 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 Al Aronowitz)
RAY BREMSER MEMORIAL
SECTION EIGHT
sm
COLUMN
SEVENTY-FOUR, AUGUST 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 Al Aronowitz)
EXCERPTS
FROM:
POEMS OF MADNESS
(Adapted from Tom Clark's drawing for the cover of the WATER ROW PRESS
edition of POEMS OF MADNESS & ANGEL)
[POEMS OF MADNESS was originally published in 1965 by PAPER BOOK GALLERY and reprinted by WATER ROW PRESS, PO Box 438, Sudbury, MA 01776. These excerpts from POEMS OF MADNESS appears here with the permission of Jeffrey Weinberg, publisher of WATER ROW PRESS and literary executor of the poet's estate.]
1.
CITY MADNESS
I
used to sit often composing the manuscript
never
denouncing and therefore not to be written
without
preparation for trial.
I'd
sit contemplating unobvious thoughts without poetry,
being
the poet of adequate life
on
broken brick steps full of contractions
of
piles and pimply sores from the stone
and
syphilis-eyed hypochondria sleep-thinking germs
bringing
flu
and
I caught my first cold fifteen histories ago
in
the maggoty festering garbage-can alley
back
of my mother's rear room.
I
used to sit dreaming the dreams of accomplishment
marching
in questionable cadences down to the foot
of
the Harborside Terminal
into
the emptying carrying cars of Spry and Colgate
Mullers
outgoing spaghetti and infinite
meatballs!
counting
the black-balled parolees and broken-backed
spics,
Italian laborers, Polacks and sweaty
old
terminal boss,
whose
unknotted tie and left-wide-agape collar
was
motive enough to imagine the noose.
When
I was ten I discovered the poet and quick
circulated
great novels of spy and adventure
and
killer police, whose murderous face
I
didn't at first grasp
until
I discovered a cop humping some young
indiscernable
girl in the park.
She
addressed him with delicate fits from her lips
which
turned ghostly and blue and the dress tore away
and
he popped with a joy every cop in New Jersey recalls.
Since
then I have hated what passes as law
and
the ten-year-old grew but the poet did not
and
the novels fell off into idiot poems
and
madness and sight of my city,
the
city of squares and the city of Pharisees
all
mobbed into a mass of the lewdest advertisement,
tight
demin levis - buck shoes for the silent
and
cardigan jitterbug jackets with saddle stitched pockets
of
rubber ...
I've
never been ready for trial.
But
Carole Fugate has!
Sweet
youngest ever martyr
City
killer high accomplishment "
"in
her peaceful, pensive, elemental face
the
Virgin Mary ended indecision
and
elected to abide
in
every sinew's whore-mastered inch
of
Charlie's sweet
and
favored yards of flesh.
How
did he do it to you? Whispering
'mother'?
or
'little sister'? What of your
idiot's eyes?
Now
it is more than Charlie's, sweet "
now
it is every lecherous penis
legality
has - every sensuous
prick
of old righteousness! Lord, how
they're prodding,
those
moot prosecutors!
In love with your lips and in love with your belly's
white warmth, 0 human - 0 animal "heavenly
screwed little girl - in love with your crying's pure
succulent salt of the heart - hot heart of the
murderess "
heart of the victim, whispering 'love' and whispering
"please' -
and
the minor-thief's heart in my own hunting skin
corresponds
to your sexual lips of immaculate
white
-
in
your mouth, eat your tears, taste your difficult
washmachine
beauty!
My
city envisions your breast beneath which
is
the heart that addresses itself,
and
the answers?
definite
crazy
-
and
love!
No;
it wasn't odd
that
night
when
I went
alone
-
into
the streets
and
out of my home,
so
long out of sorts -
was
I out of my mind, too,
with
the dread melancholy
stuck
edgewise into my brain
and
into my guts,
only
man-guts, not pig-iron
but
twisted and flanged
and
eroded with rust?
So
I had to walk
and
I walked, way outward
onto
the unfamiliar street
where
people are not always people -
And
I. took in my hand
in
my coat and conjoined
a
pistol, in case -
to
decide things
best
for
myself!
But
the dreary, unfluctuables pinioned me
stiff-columned
into my shoes. The trigger-taut
sinewous
spindle stood me up clotheslessly still
to
suffer the bearable whipping of fingers
over
the mutable flesh -
sonofabitching flac "
the criminal shots, were
pinned, like medals of thievery,
onto my breast;
and my waxworkwings
found Icarus's pool;
and I'm here now,
changelessly dressed!
It
is sometimes the way our necessity balks
at
a curve, to be tried.
To
be taken in dubious custody, chained
to
a chair in the precinct called lst
and
allowed the due processes up to the neck
of
the fist and the shattering bludgeoning hard?-
rubber
hose of an arm's length.
question
and answer and hate
for
the acne-nervousness paused on the face
and
the please-leave-me-alone in the watery eyes
that
were blue turning black from the law's
dark
insensible glare "
whose
brute badges of courage and bravery stare,
because
Hart Crane might have had one of the heads
that
was cracked by the graces
of
nightstick and sailor Bayonne!
How
their foolish pomposity walks in the streets!
At
the Hoboken wharves and the West New York Hills,
over Palisade plumage of rock and the Fort Lee
nest
of the eagle - Washington Bridge Riviera "?
doubtful
escape on the harlotted Hudson Expressways!
One
thing I found in the handcuffs was this:
Great
fear of the law!
of my own Jersey Cityite's farce
gone beyond the impossible truss
of a sentence too large
to impress any boy with its complex
of God!
I will
sign the confession of monsterous crime
I will
sign
I will
sign
I will
sign
I WILL SIGN! ##
* * *
BLUES FOR BONNIE - TAKE 1, JANUARY 1960
"these
blues broke out in a gallery,
on
9th street..."
"no.
"
"9th
avenue ... 43rd street."
"hell
- it's hell's kitchen again."
funny
blues ...
bonnie in Washington
waiting for march
cummings coming
bringing glad tidings.
"of 9th avenue?"
ZOO.
a dam-giraff.
whallop, a
lalapalooza floozie
on via flamina piazza
masticating a ruddy pizza
pie -
pie-pie.
bye-bye,
baby.
off to Riker a foodery...
(i dig food - soup.)
(if i dont get straight quick
the fuzz ll bust me sure
as i reek o reefer.
Rio Rita - that's as far as i'm
taking it.)
... i would eat the food
instead, oney this stud
along side me pounces eyeball
gawks as if to say,
"high as rat-shit."
and 2 fried eggs in my plate
the same thing.
how do you eat
the accuser?
and which one first?
Rio Rita
peter out, slip away, do a go "
politely tip my hat and split is
oney thing - likewise.
i'm sure
that is what you might call
scat.
but
a hubbalubba drum, hellofa biff-bam hallabaloo
(fontainebleu in the
background.)
dribble sinbah,
tic.
"you gotta drink yo drink
and get yo that thunk..."
"wumphead ...
the girl wanneda get waid,
not weighed."
chuckles. yoks
i know a chick collects em,
oney the greatest tho ...
(RIFF HERE)
ie:
herry sucton.
yiddish eactor.
out of work 4 months ...
agent calls, "herry?"
"yo ..."
"wanna work?"
'shee."
... and so on, or
ie: daddy
moody, baptist,
little abraham, age 5, getting
baptized in the muddy Mississippi.
daddy moody get the lil boy
by the belt ... sticks him in
the river - pulls him out and
looks brimstone and fire on his face...
"does yo believe?"
"i believes..."
and so on till
whut
- and I BELIEVES YO
hyar hyar yok, i said,
and split that scene also -
some idea when i'm stoned
people trying to make me
laugh myself dead ... this
works with my wife also, too...
fer
instance: a game
phenomenoes ...
they played high and by and
large by
phenomenophobes.
On
phenomenamphetamines!
phenomenablute.
phenomenaquate.
phenomenammonia.
phenomenomnipotent.
phenomenanonymous ... and
phenomenamamma...
phenomenapoppa...
phenomena
who? phenomenayou.
phenomename ...
phenomenallusion
to a common phenominator,
thank you,
james
fenomenimore cooper.
Phenomenamamma mia.
or to, now want
to, explain what is
funk.
(the first funk we're familiar with
is our own, provided for us by glands
thru the olfactory nerves
enveloped by that precipitous lump
of the face called proboscus.)
otherwise, what is funk?
"well now, dad, " the
goatee on the wall sd, "it
rhymes w-Monk."...the
goatee was, of course, a-
breviated. weird Boo!
anyway, funk is when
thelonious monk peeps
above the bamboo shades
to see the piana setting there,
bald and bold ... monk looks at it,
while the bass run and the drummer
bugs him with the cymbal ... 6 days sleepless ...
monk looks ... perfectly zonked and
loafing
on the stool ... he looks
and
looks
and
the bass and drummer meet
like
flys making it on the mid-air,
attracting,
(at least,) the ears
of
monk, who lifts his hands
and
lets them fall on the keys in
commentary;
with whut's funk.
or:
the
intellectual explains for an hour
the
asymmetrical underlying connotations
and
multimillion minor philosophical edicts and
principles
involved in Sartre's considerable
system
of phenomenological ontology to
the
big colored-feller, high on pot
on
the nod, listening - who con-
siders
... thinks a bit,
concluding
slowly
SHHIIIT.
and that's a funk.
or
funk is easily personified immemorially in
Coltrane
Cecil Taylor,
Ray Charles,
Ornette,
see Charlie Haydn,
sometime Gillespie,
rarely Miles and
never the Boston
Pops
... hardly
rebops.
funk
is exemplified in speech.
ie: let's eat.
let's
split. (when you're bugged.)
let's
cop. (when you're just high enuf to want more.)
let's
score. (when you're not high.)
let's
ball. (when you're not bugged.)
KEROUAC:
on funk.
"you jus don know."
"what don i know?"
"how good them bacon
and them eggs is..."
or,
"DARLING."
that kind of camping
i dont object to
unless it's kept within reason.
ROI
JONES: on funk
...but them colored guys
with the big dicks ...
or,
those wicker-baskets would make
wild-ass
trees.
or
PETER ORLOVSKY:
pissed your pants again, huh,
morris?
GREGORY CORSO:
radiator soup.
kangaroonian weep.
PHILIP
WHALEN:
(2 lines, canceled...)
MICHAEL
McCLURE:
whap whap
whap whap whap whap whap
whap
whap ... do you believe me
now?
funk
is;
a.b. blowing mouth and roi
snickering, white yakkin, yakkity
glee - me too - me high.
grasshoppers - cummings
driving us to Maryland or
the grave, and it makes me no mind
as long as there's beer ...
(here ... here ... )
cummings sd-does
it
mean
you're
high
when your thots
are,
slow...
man? O/
course not." i spat
and we took off, jus like that.
a dam near dozzen stoned
maniacs and rode the island
on the Baltimore Thruway
80 miles per hour... slow.
that was the last time
we were all together in Washington.
and the first ... heralded in behind
Prokoffiev and herded out by
daughter's mothers, drags and the police.
(i later returned and married bonnie
frazer, angel of God and witching
devil to the core ...
but
to
hell with Zarathustra,
cecil
taylor says - skiddy - WHAM,
going
thelonius a better.
"knocked
me out."
the
marijuana eater,
blind,
crawling on the floor,
catching
fibrous vibrations and
acoustics
off the wood and
thinking
he's slick, digging
my
wife's full-lotus, sitting
in
panties - thighs like you
never
seen them before, or ever
will
see since ...
we fall
in the blues ...
caught
up.
toned
down.
the
blue,
connieving
blue and
conical
blues.
these
blues,
for
bonnie.
GOD
GAVE ME TO BONNIE
AND
THAT'S
COOL ENUF FOR ME... ##
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