Book of Blues
Page 9
Looked & fooled in the mirror
Went out, I hocked those two
41ST CHORUS
XI
Next day like a damn fool
go out to the same store
but I got a newspaper
instead of a suitbox
thought I’d try
a new routine
Two guys kinda watchin me
I went in wrapped myself up
two suits
went in the elevator
bottom gentleman
tapped me on the arm
‘Will you come with me
please?’
And the County Jail they ate
breakfast and got oatmeal
with one spoonful of molasses,
for lunch stew, mostly bones,
Graveyard Stew, and for supper
dinner at night
Beans—and you couldnt smoke
42ND CHORUS
Kayo Mullins is always yelling
and stealing old men’s shoes
Moon comes home drunk, kerplunk,
Somebody hit him with a pisspot
Major Hoople’s always harrumfing
Egad kaff kaff all that
Showing little kids fly kites right
And breaking windows of fame
Blemish me Lil Abner is gone
His brother is okay, Daisy Mae
and the Wolf-Gal
Ah who cares?
Subjects make me sick
all I want is C’est Foi
Hope one time
bullshit in the tree
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I’ve had enough of foolin me
And making silly imagery
Harrumph me katt
I think I’ll take off
For Cat and fish
43RD CHORUS
Well & well well, so that’s
The ancient fainter, the painter
Who tied up blue balloons
—Globas azul—and threw
Them asunder in the thunder
Of the ul—Ur—Obi—Ob-
Fuscate me no more travails,
Pardy hard, this rock mine
We’re workin’ll yield up diamond
hard
And then we’ll cut thru conceptions
And come with answer pard
And what twill it be, sorry pard,
Aint never no mystery
Was imparted to me
Lessn you wanta try Roy McGoon
Who learned it in Innisfree
Or old Yow O Yeats, Blake,
We havent got the diamond tho
That freed Dipankara Buddha
In the Palaeolithic morning
And made him make faces
In Samapattis at me
Let’s free
44TH CHORUS
High Cascades or Mexico—
headaches
Travel everywhere
Forms and costumes and noses
All this changing literature
Cyrano de Bergerac, King
of the French underworld
King for a day, Henry V,
Falstaff his father, Henry IV,
Warlike stools frowning in
‘We have no more use
For your caisson iron,
It’s too fat
and the water too vile,
I’ll vouch for the master
but water your while
had better be bile
to judge from the green
of the innocent liquid’
Reading, naught, words, styles
The only thing matter is otay
45TH CHORUS
English Literature
a School of Writing
French Literature
was closed off
How tight the lips of Zola the
Master
Wont tell how he grips his pen
To consorts of learners
English, Old Shakespeare gathered
bout him minor figures
like Ben Jonson
Maurie O’Tay
Henry Fenelon
And Molly O’Day
Irish Literature—that was
where the brabac originated
from
Wood cracking in the sea
46TH CHORUS
And what is God?
The unspeakable, the untellable,
—
Rejoice in the Lamb, sang
Christopher Smart, who
drives me crazy, because
he’s so smart, and I’m
so smart, and both of us
are crazy
No,—what is God?
The impossible, the impeachable
Unimpeachable Prezi-dent
of the Pepsodent Universe
but with no body & no brain
no business and no tie
no candle and no high
no wise and no smart guy
no nothing, no no nothing,
no anything, no-word, yes-word,
everything, anything, God,
the guy that aint a guy,
the thing that cant be
and can
and is
and isnt
47TH CHORUS
Beverly Dickinson, wasnt it,
the distraught perfect poetess
who lived in New Hampshire
and wrote about roots & roses
Sweet old Beverly I remember her well
and her attic was fragrant,
her Attican divine
her storm bird
her fence story
her bee inside
her butterfly
her broom
her Majesty
the Queen
Said, “Emily Dickinson is as great
as Shakespeare sometimes,”
said T. S. Eliot’s editor
Robert Giroux, swell fellow—
Her Attic divine, her antic,
—her
Sang in the blue hill
her larks and mimes
And died all a silent
in her prophecy tomb
48TH CHORUS
Dans son tombeau
Elle a gagnée
Toutes les lignes noires
D’Eternité
Que’ s’ trouve dans la terre
Quand qu’l mouille dans l’Hiver
Salonge!—Mompress!
Traboune!—Partance!
Elle a trouvée dejas
L’ange d’Archanciel
Couchez dans la mer
D’été d’nuée
Aye, oui, mes Anges toutes Francais
Mes tours d’ircanciel
Ma miel, mon or,
Mes ames deshonorées,
Mes troublages, mes lignes,
Mon vin sur la table
Ou sur le plancher
49TH CHORUS
Book of Dreams
(Written in dream language)
Old Hosapho we wont let up
And hear me sing the
hm—Ole Hosapho
he wont let me record
me dream language
Ooogh! he upped & come back
Ole Hosapho
But now he’s down’s
Gone down boy again
Hay Hosapho, say sumpt
in!
Hoy Hosapho, Roil!
Nope Hosapho stay lead down
—A mani a Gloria—
Tinkle tinkle laughter
Dingle little pretties
everything’s happening everywhere
50TH CHORUS
My real choice was to go
to Princeton—I wanted
to be orange and black
on the football field
and orange Varsity letters
on black wool jackets
with buttons, and elm trees
and Sunday afternoon
the swish of the snow
and Einstein in his yard
and All’s Well with
the Emily Dickinson world
And drive to New Hope
for a drink
or lobster
And take the sad train
on the platform of night
And ride into riot New York
On a Saturday Night
To go see Count Basie
Baying at the Lincoln
With Lester Otay Young
On Tenor Saxophone
51ST CHORUS
Boy, sa den du coeur, sa, le bon
vin—Mama, c’est’l’port
si fort, le vin divin—
Aye, oui, mais écoute—dans
les milieus de les nuits,
tu wé, sa den du coeur,
sa den du coeur
Ca fa du bien au beson
Besoigne?—Di mué pas la
besogne maudit, la bédenne,
maudit, la bédenne,
sa fa du bien a bédenne
pauvr’ bédenne
A, y parle tu aussi bien
q’ca
a Milan
les Italiens a gueules
Nous autres aussi on a une
belle lagne qui clacke
52ND CHORUS
Dog with mouths, in Navajoa,
bent down to the mud
and slippered shining entrails
in the morning Sinaloa sun
of a dead rabbit
Then the bus come and run
it over, the rabbit, sullen
dog skimpered off a minute,
came back to repeat his
refection
Oh well, shiney priests
eat goodies
in every store they see
Old Navajoa shit dog, you,
your goodies are the goodiest
goodies I ever did see, how
dog you shore look mad
when yer bayin
Hoo Hound-dog!
dont eat that dead rabbit
in front of my face raw
—cook it a lil bit
53RD CHORUS
I had a scrap with a doctor
one night
We were both drunk
I said “Just because you’re
a doctor you think you’re
so smart, if you’re
going to report me go
ahead you prick”
And I fell off the stool
I was fulla goofballs
He went to the other doctor
“You better look this guy
up, he must be some kind
of a phoney”
Pony the pony the pony
the pra
Pony the pony the pony
the pra
54TH CHORUS
I got a grass jaw, boys,
I say, and knock out Ray
Robinson in the first minute
of the first round
Then they bring in Tiger Jones
because I made no bones
about how I was out to
Kayo Robinson, moonbless him
Tiger Jones comes on me all
fists, hard puncher, I got
nothing to do but retreat
or turn into grass, so
I dance
right in
to his arms
reach
and plow him all over
with crazy little punches
some of which are hard
and we wake up
55TH CHORUS
Someday they’ll have monuments
set up to reverend the mad
people of today in madhouses
As early pioneers in the knowing
that when you lose your reason
you attain highest perfect knowing
Which is devoid of predicates
such as: “I am, I will, I reason—”
—devoid of saying:-“I will do it”
—devoid
Devoid of insanity as well by virtue
of no contact
But meanwhile these deterministic
doctors really do believe that mad
is mad—
And have erected a billion-dollar
religion to it, called, Psycho-medicine,
and ah—
Well we’ll know the sanity
of Ard Bar
In the morning, some time, alone
56TH CHORUS
Some’ll go mad with numbers
Some’ll go mad with words
Some’ll pretend to lose reason
And lose reason anyway
Some wont, some’ll be secret,
Some’ll screw in long black
rooms
With the fantastic short-haired
Beauty who lies on the bed
listening
To Sinatra—some’ll be candleflame
jiggling gently in the night
Some’ll be racetrack operators,
some’ll have soap in their pockets
Some’ll sing in the Bronx Jail
and some wont sing in Riker’s
Some’ll come out of it
with iron heads
Some’ll wear coats
and hard of it
57TH CHORUS
The monstrous jailer, he wouldnt let me
outa that jailhouse—
till I had smoked all the tea
I could smoke, ‘Finish up!’
he said, & prodded me
And I gotta take big long hikes
of draw on that cigarette tree
How’d I get outa that jail?
By forgetting all about me
Which was the best rasperry tree
They ever ternevented in ole
Donnesfree
Cause I figure there’s no difference
twixt me and dead dog mud
Made of bones and take your pick,
sulphur or Innisfree
How’d they ever get that tap
outa me?
Wasnt I tired givin?
hard tap
Family tree.
I wasnt sweet givin.
58TH CHORUS
Las ombras vengadora
they say in little taco joints
when the shadows are coming
at about dusk-time, in Azteca,
modern Fellaheena Mexico,
Las ombras vengadora
Lass ombras venga dora
Most beautiful sound in the world
hep!
Swing up the team, bring up
the gangs, say, didnt I yell
at you a minute ago?
Hoy!
Las ombras vengadora
&n
bsp; in little taco sad joints
on Sunday Afternoon
and fathers are home
honoring their sons
59TH CHORUS
Fantasm crazam crazam
Joe Kennedy stops me on
the sidewalk of the Immemorial
University—ack hook
You got your prick out.
I look down, no such thing
What are your two balls
doing hanging on the sidewalk?
I think I’ll squat & shit—
We both squat facing each
other on the campus
If ya know what I mean,
cream, we squat
practice ‘mitate Aristophanes
and sit there too laughing
and talking, Kennedy,
one of my first mature
Irishmen
Face each other with feet
partly out, like in Esquire
the phonies showing their shoes
Squat n Shit!
60TH CHORUS
I purified language early in my
young days, I purified & squatted
& beshitted on pages, sophomore,
on my typewriter, all the dirty
words I could think of
squrify & squat & shit
And slit—and finally I’m
in history class & the professor
says ‘Kerouac—what you
dreamin about?’
And I shhoudda said Ack—
Pack—Squrify and squat
and shit, who wants to hear
about the aniards and breast
plates of warriors of the
Medieval Ages
I wanta know about the people
on the street, what they doin?
And what the high art
hark squambling in his quiet
temple moonlit gambymoon
writing jingles & jongles
for the pretties on the square
61ST CHORUS
Orizaba Rooftop blues
Listenin to the street news
Saturday night down there
Pleep! went the new little bike
horn
As the cat pleeped it with his
Foot zinging the bike across
the fantastic bus-driven corners
Barging everywhere, he just angles
and amples
like Stan Getz on tenor