by Amiri Baraka
Yrs t.,
Caiaphas
Thieves
(Was I to have made this far journey,
only to find the very thing which I had
fled?—Gauguin/Noa Noa)
Space is cheap salves. A trombone in a penthouse. Madness over the phone. Dispute, if the thief live. If he be climbing thru our smashed windows his voice dragged in silk stockings on the radio; Greasy Head? The metal can clunks in the head, the radio says “duh, duh, duh-duh.” Soft, tho. As pure impression—pure distinction.
The three pigs. The three Suns. Three Blind mice. Three of a Kind. To make ready. witches. B. for five. wives. letters. strikes. bases. women. The Magi, are popular. Are broken glass. vases, crisp, some soft faggot voice drowning the night.
It was a hall. Jazz, is that vulgar. Hooks, in the air, like sun. Tuesday’s blue metal adolescence. Mutt the zipper, again, the fireplaces. Guns on Christmas. Strange vanishing toys. The brown house. Registers (old new? a closet behind the red chair.
* * *
The room was deformed. A heavy jowl, smell, softer hands than streets. The moon is bitter. crushing the banister.
A girl named Lorraine who used to go as our cousin—and then her tits came. She was a tall “zaaroom” face. Zebra. Mattie McClean. Her blouse back was loose. She had another name. Thin glasses, like some oyster ostrich humping. A gray house, next to Lorraine’s red johns manville. Her mother and she looked the same except her mother was quieter, but they had the same hair. Lorraine smiled nasty. And smelled up the pool. Even lied about the nature of dances. And fumbled excitement near the park. (Lies or ignorance) birds like tar smile.
This jumble of houses’ collars. Shined shoes. Show biz. BILLY— “O.K. vibe player, Blow!” ARNIE— Years later, the drain glows. Rhythms. Passports. We take our train to your astronomies. We evacuate sound. THE PAINTER— You Rat!
It could be run out. It could be yellow & black. It could have garages. It could be disinterested in its cement (or the years of cars that roll over my grandfather’s grave.
PEGGY ANN— pigtails are for ugly girls. Snapshots, cotton dresses. To buy is to listen. To be had/caught/applauded in the smoke of our sound. In our Negro ulsters selling pot. In our language scared at the shadows of our crimes. DONALD— You’re listening to the Symphony Sid Program.
But that, I told you musicians, the rooms we spoke of, that wind, Mere purity and light. This is sudden. Her red fingers. This is slanting here. To me (houses tilt down into my memory. Cars. Insides of mouths. I WANT YOU TO MEET MY FAMILY.
(rooms, aside, as this is. The door stands open. It did then and my fat uncle strides in. He is 6 ft 4" and knew these things in the spring of my thoughts.
Cardboard suitcases, essays. Walked in broke and humble. On Cornelia St. “She looks like a little mouse.” Larry or I made that remark. The windows were dull. Cold slush in their mouths. Nothing got thru those clubs. The street would flow black, and a moon.
Trees wherever you are is irrelevant. TALLEY— Muscles, some biographies. Nobody knows nuthin. You got nuthin on me, but my upbringing.
Which in effect, is where we come in. To prefer phone calls, tassels on their shades (even from the street in Gramercy). Bohemians around too. Certainly she is beautiful, to be a lesbian, to be in stone, to be so close to my house.
Violence to my body. To my mind. Closed in. To begin at the limit. Work in to the core. Center. At which there is—nothing. The surface of thought. Pure undulation at the midyear, turned yellow as deserts, suns.
Cement room. stones, in place. Fell there, perfect. For echoes, murders. Blood looked strange on the street.
And there was that guy who wanted to fight my father about the game. Spencer, his name was. Tall & agile & dark. Skinny with long legs, low dangling hands on third base. I heard the language when I ran down to coach. Right near the fence, I could look across the street, and sometimes Danny would be out there, and I call him to the game. Usually the Davises (secret gypsies later making it as respectable shades). Algernon or Lonel(lionel), or pooky or fat (Jerome). Frank was the oldest, went away to Japan & got married. One girl, Evelyn, got fat and was transferred near the golf courses.
The woman, “Miss Davis” was the cruelest woman I know. Like Puerto Rican old women, the lower lip curls like dogs. Hatred or pure sight. Beast Fucci, wait like rachitic Algy for my baseball suit. Brown coarse gravel (if he thot my life was chrome. The orange house (Rev. Red’s) large and not that first plunge into scum. Dead allies.
You defend them. But it is not the alley, or Elaine Charles. (She backed down, in some kind of pit. “It’s too big.” And I thought from that that white women had small holes. Racing car drivers. Pooky had the correct helmet, and Orlando would threaten him with it. He (Orlando) led the outriders. But merely elements of the street’s imagination. I was center. He had strength and hair that would lay flat under tonics. And he rages with his snakes. His dirtiness. His pretenses at fucking. “Board” (Bud) was his other name. And I called him board and found out only later it was his mother’s twisted lips. Even after they caught him with that loot.
THE SECRET SEVEN: (met under our porch and gave parties—eating kits among the wet earth odors, rusted wet nails, footsteps.)
EDDIE CLARK (cf. Vestibule) ALGERNON DAVIS (Board’s brother) NORMAN SCOTT (cd run even with saddle head. Complete dust. Loosing, a slum in my own fingers. Earlier he made us laugh . . . “You mean those lidda mens?” Elks, we’d said. He was good w/ the little boys in Ringaleerio (as the whites say they sd different. Not our fays, they took their mark from us. Pooky wd say “rigaleerio” because his nose was stuffed. Dried snot on its edges. But Augie would say “ringy.” Let’s play ringy. He played w/ norfolk & Jay St. white factions as Keneir, Herbie Teufel, Johnny (who had strange staring fits the negroes were scared of), “White Norman” (to differentiate between him and Scotty) & sometimes the Zarros Bros. Charlie Johnny William and Frank. Frank was little for a long time but suddenly grew up big. Up thru the silent pavements. His brother I always had to watch. Augie idolized him. He was tough & fast & silent. Charlie Zarros was a scary name then.
My sister Cassandra ELAINE. A confederate, lankier, bulging knees. Fast & that bitter decision to resist sweet life. Stale as death, her tears clog the hours.
The scar (a flab of cut skin like a halfmoon on her cheek. Like a photo a dead girl would clutch. Cry, those stale tears of time. An inch. A sudden light collapses around us. Illuminated we are “Dr. Caligari” or Orlando Davis. Beasts among reptiles. The huge flame of blasphemed God. Fucci screams from his lair, and we know, finally, his hurt name.
But she made good on all levels, except her lips were cold. And pouted—never like me, laughing wildly—or losing fights to J.D. in thick winter cold. (My father was ashamed that day. My hands were cold. “Frozen” Lois Jones screamed. Roy, his hands are frozen. Angel love him. Type. Move the blue file cabinets. She breaks down under pressure. Under this pressure (cool as blue steel in life and to the others, like Algy’s—cruel. That power necessary—To Sustain Life. (Forever.
ORLANDO & ME. (Pre-conscious era. Bones of lost civilizations: the weird car I said I “built.” Cd repair, from sheer radios. Listening to my lips chap. Wet patches on the paper factory. All the alleys back there. A maze. To disappear was what we wanted. To go out from here. Romantics. We wanted to split, the porch, even then. Beneath to caverns, slim romances.
The seventh person never came. Oh, of course, it was DANNY WILSON. (and his mother sad & cruel as italians. Hunted & hurt by perverted sons.)
LEROI, ELAINE, ORLANDO, NORMAN, EDDIE, ALGY & DANNY WILSON. (Fat afternoon saint. Eater of peanut butter & visitor at his sister’s myriad “wettins.”
THE EARLY PRE-DIASPORA CLAN (removed now from its beginnings. To the splints, slants, lies of later times. From that, e.g., KICK THE CAN. RED ROVER (the theme “Red Rover, Red Rover, I dare you to come over”) usually at night, the moon low, a telephone pole just in front of our steps. The Center. 19 Dey St. W
ith a pole, right there, for Hi-Go-Seek.
HI-GO-SEEK. WAR. (i.e., not the cards, but the street game where you mark the streets into countries. MITCHELL 25921. (call me!) poor boy never had no phone till then. About the time the money vanished off the buffet & I sat weeping and peeing thru all the showings of THE FIGHTING SULLIVANS.) That’s how Algy got my suit, my mother’s wrath.
I * DECLARE * WAR * ON * ETHIOPIA! (cd be anybody. Peggy Davis even, when she played. They took names of anywhere. Augie wd take Italy sometimes. But everybody wanted to be America.)
*MENU*
14 packs of Kits
3 packages of Kool-Aid (grape or orange)
7 chocolate-covered graham crackers
7 Mary Janes
(these were staples. And the parties were well planned usually by Elaine, or Orlando who liked to eat. A few outsiders got invited.
Junior Bell— O.K., you got me! I’m dead & a black myth. Poems should be written about me. The myth of the cities Rise. (Black shadow against blue lake, floats face down in the eternity of condoms.)
RISE. against their dead bones. Restored to corridors, bus rides. The simple dark.
Eunice Reardon— Of course I know what happened. And I know that we weren’t fucking (you & I) that night in Charlie’s yard. We had on all our clothes. You pulled that stunt on your cousin. And used Jr.’s name as some “symbol” of all evil. The black arts.
NEWARK ST. (snakes writhe in the ditch, binding our
arms. Our minds are strong. Our minds)
From one end to the other (Thos. Hardy begins, beneath chains, shaking off sun, appearing a huge pier where our brains are loaded.)
Its boundaries were Central Ave. To Sussex Ave. (1 block.) This is center I mean. Where it all, came on. The rest is suburb. The rest is outside this hole. Snakes die past this block. Flames subside.
(Add Sussex Ave. To Orange St. . . . because of Jim Jam & Ronnie & the cross-eyed girl who asked all new jersey to “do nasty.”
(The slum LeRoy lived there also. 3 other Leroys. Two Griffiths (who sd they were cousins. One, the tall dark one, had a brother Robert who went from wet cowardice—which never completely subsided—to hipster violence. THE GEEKS. As some liaison or at least someone who wdn’t get done in. Like Murray. THE DUKES.
Where television and wine were invented. That strange wrecked house Carl (beautiful praxiteles) lived. Strange his life twisted. Charlie & he (& me too that warm summer we played & walked stiff legged). But they split up because he moved to a strange sad place. Made new friends. Treated us offhandedly. We never forgave him.
Carl Howard, his brothers, one of whom played brilliant ball. The short one with the bullet head. And for the great BURRY’S CO. team. He pitched. Carl played 3rd base for us. But he fell in with the Robt. Treat Crowd.
(Where they all teach now.)
In silence at the leaves. In deference to their mad forgotten lover.
* * *
JD STARLING, “STARING” JOHNNY, EUNICE & BILLY REARDON, JR. BELL, (old drunks 25, who still played on occasion & heroes to us, i.e., CHARLIE BOOZE & his brother, the slick head, Calvin. No, something else. A fabled pitcher, FRANK CUMMINGS (tucked his legs up but never made first string Central. Academic player for the playgrounds. I was faster & got more long gainers down the sides. “Comstu here” he said in “german” to impress us.
CHARLIE (and helen) PETERSEN. He was legendary black, but somehow made stupid awkward slow. Good natured but rusty. Disappeared when the new generation (Slanty eyes who had it in for me & his sister Spotty Mae). Cambell their name was. Fast and southern.
THE ALDRIGES—Vivian (ubangi lips, later a tart, stupid whore. Rubber lips I called her also), Lawrence, the smart one. He probably works in the post office or collects debts for jews. Sammy (I hated. I wanted to blot out & kill when J.D. found out I was afraid of him (Sammy). Because the bigboys let me sit with them on the steps because I could insult anybody & win dozens constantly. “Your Mother’s A Man.” Separate, and sometimes abstruse. My symbols hung unblinked at. The surface appreciated, and I, sometimes, frustrated because the whole idea didn’t get in . . . only the profanity.
And Lafayette, who set cats on fire.
That section of the street changed. Sociologists! Morons! Just past those cherry trees. Mary Ann Notare lived at the corner. & from there on Italians. Suddenly & without warning, they were all over. Those clean houses at the corner. How it slipped past me. What could they have said about me. Those old women sitting on the porch. The pizzeria on Sussex & Norfolk I never understood. (Until Morris moved there later.) The Armory was a block away from that bus stop. Years later I met Morris in his house after the summer cotillion. Respectable distance of years, educations. He had his finger cut off while I was in school. I saw him again crippled . . . wanting to know my new friend. Bumbling because he still wanted to play first base and by then we (the swag wearing middleclass spades of the town) were dancing. He (& Leon & Snooky & Love & Earl) had come into it late. They were around the early belly-rubbing days & only earl, because he bought a cadillac, could begin to understand our stance. Our new heads.
Ellipse. These sudden autumns.
THE EIGHTH DITCH (IS DRAMA
(Your tongues are fire
& your stratagems hell
itself.)
Narrator—Tent among tents. Inner tent, dark/blaring sounds from outside. Too dark for shadows. Tho the moon is heavy, large, upon the outside of the outside tents. A wood floor. Beds strewn about, beneath the inner tent. Cries outside. Deaf ears sleep, heavy ruffling sounds. Men asleep inside. Four men asleep.
This is the first scene. Tho it is the end. Show it first, to give it light. As it shd be seen (BEFORE) as some justification. Some mortal suffering; slant the scene toward its hero’s life. His black trusts. Together, we look in.
First Scene: Same as above only afternoon. Two men sit on bunks. One is reading, the other stares at the book from across the room. The flaps of the tent are up, & we are looking in, at the two.
46—(Young, smooth-faced turning pages slowly. Absently) Brittle youth, they say, I am dead america. And they know the season’s change. I am as I am. Young, from sidewalks of wind. I think nothing of you, or myself, who has not yet come out. We wait. (Looks up) You & I, somewhere, to hear!
64—Call me Herman. (Now at reader) What do you feel. Grass? Games? False muscles cut thru water, thru precious sanity. Your earth is round & sits outside the world. You have millions of words to read. And you will read them. (Loudly) So buy expensive clothes and become middleclass that summer after college. But don’t sneak away! You can’t. I’ll never know you, as some adventurer, but only as chattel. Sheep. A “turkey,” in our vernacular.
46—(Puzzled, looking up) Things are joys even cut off from our lives. This was a field. A rough wood, they cut off. For loot mostly, impersonal. Buses of young sinister shadows herded into summer. So much of this will get lost. These pictures, of what sadness?
Who are you really?
64—The Street! Things around you. Even noises at night, or smells you are afraid of. I am a maelstrom of definitions. I can even fly. But as you must know, whatever, poorer than yrself. In hell, for it. If there is God. Or roofs where we lay under summer burning our minds. (64 rises slowly, taking out cigarette, unbuttoning his shirt)
46—You’re not Grimsley. You don’t shit under houses. I mean, you don’t lie about who you are. I don’t recognize you as anything. Just dust, as it must be thrown into the air. You’ll disappear so fast. (Sadly) Can we talk about movies? What is it I shd talk about now? What shd I be thinking up? My uniform is pressed and ready. I sit, abstracted, suckling my thots. This is a siesta they told me.
64—(Shirt open, crossing toward 46’s bunk) Forget your draperies. Your wallpaper. Television is not yet common. I love what is in me. These hours control our speech. You speak some other tongue. I understand your gestures. Your shadow on the pavement. Your strangeness.
46—What else can I give you? Wh
at else is as strong in me now. Bridges, smells. (Pause, looking out the tent flap, smiling) I delivered papers to some people like you. And got trapped in it; those streets. Their mouths stank of urine, black women with huge breasts lay naked in their beds. Filthy mounds of magazines, cakeboxes, children. I cd walk out of yr life as simply as I tossed newspapers down the sewer. It was Nassau St., mostly, and later the street where Skippy lived. Also Johnny Holmes. But that was cross town so I don’t know if you know. I used to live in the insurance projects, right across from Tolchinskies pickle works. I almost killed myself twice around there. But we moved a couple of times since then. Even back here. Dey St. is where I live now & I control the Secret Seven.
64—Rarities. Elegance. Foppishness. Not really knowledge . . . tho I guess I wdn’t know . . . actually. I take it as aggression . . . and hate you for it.
46—Do you think I’m rich?
64—It makes no difference. When you move to my neighborhood it’ll be with a trumpet & school jacket. I have to make my move. I want to last, & this is the only way.
46—What do you mean? You want to last. How?
64—I want you to remember me . . . forever.
46—Remember you?? Why?
64—(Smiles, now without shirt, and sitting on edge of cot) I want you to remember me . . . so you can narrate the sorrow of my life. (Laughs) My inadequacies . . . and yr own. I want to sit inside yr head & scream obscenities into your speech. I want my life forever wrought up with yours!