Another Way to Play

by Michael Lally

  of some contemporary person in another poet’s poem.

  It made them seem they had a confidence I didn’t,

  elevating their friends to what had once been the domain

  of long dead famous cultural heroes and their kind.

  When I did it too I ended up feeling guilty for

  not including so-and-so instead of him or her and

  having so many references to what once were

  obscure jazz creators and rock n roll heroes of a time

  I thought would never be revived because I hated it.

  Now I can’t go out without

  running into someone I think I dated 20 years ago,

  only they wouldn’t look like that anymore,

  their style long since lost to the inevitable:

  cheap synthetic clothing, food, and hair.

  What does that mean? Now I can feel guilty

  for feeling so superior to the people I once knew

  who stayed behind to raise a normal family

  and grow old among the people who won’t care

  what kind of clothes they wear or who they know

  or what they’ve done with their potential.

  [ . . . ]

  Potential never filled my heart to bursting like new love,

  or stopped starvation in the world, or ended war,

  it never got me off incredibly intensely like new lust satisfied,

  or put my picture in the paper or my “dependents” food on

  the table or change in their pockets or braces in their mouths.

  God, my kids got braces already.

  I never knew anyone with braces when I was growing up.

  My sisters and brothers had terrible teeth.

  I was more fortunate.

  I avoided dentists like the Arabs avoid Jews.

  Although I’ve known some Arabs who were living as lovers with Jews

  and obviously vice versa.

  Braces sound so Waspy and middle-class.

  Have I become Waspy and middle-class without my realizing it?

  Or just my kids?

  I had them baptized Catholic, just in case.

  But the only time they’ve been to communion was by mistake

  and scandalized a church full of relatives and their friends

  who all suspected any kids of mine wouldn’t know what communion

  was all about. They didn’t, but just got on line with everybody else.

  I didn’t want to make a scene by yelling to them to come back,

  as I was already conspicuous as the only person still

  sitting in the pew and not on line to “eat god” as I remember

  hearing a “beatnik” poet put it in a poem about first communion

  ending with a line about a nun smacking him

  and saying something like “Don’t chew it, brat,”

  since that was against church regulations back then.

  At the time it seemed a pretty bold thing to write, to me,

  though the language, even then, made me want to do my own

  in words and rhythms I felt would be so much more real

  because I was so much more real to me than them.

  But since that time I’ve given up control to

  all kinds of things, like typing patterns and chance

  and a simple love of language’s hidden orders.

  It was easier then.

  I was all confidence, a kid in love with words and music

  if not entirely with myself, that came later when I found

  a way of getting rid of guilt. No shit.

  It didn’t last, but while it did . . .

  well, I was happy.

  What a wonderful word, who knows what it means.

  We do when we are.

  Though sometimes “it” seems almost childish, or backward.

  Is that just the times, or any time?

  That beatnik was reading his poem in The Gaslight Cafe

  on McDougal Street where I had taken one of my cousins

  who thought she wanted to be hip and a friend of the family

  so close I rarely realized she was only our friend.

  They were maybe in their early 20s and me in my mid-teens.

  But the Village was already my turf, so to speak

  at a time when the street living non-neighborhood teenagers

  were few, and most of us knew each other.

  It was maybe ’57 or so, me still spending afternoons

  after school fixing things for a price

  and my evenings and weekends and sometimes overnights

  on the streets of the Village feeling so hip

  I was sure this beatnik poet was really a fraud,

  that no true beat would be on display in such an obvious

  tourist trap as The Gaslight Café, just as a few years later

  when I met a newcomer to town, I thought he was too phony country

  and self-consciously folk to get any hipness renown.

  Show’s what I know.

  He became Bobby Dylan, while my cousin became one of those

  Catholics they didn’t allow back then, like

  fundamentalist holy roller or worse, believing in

  healing and tongues and eye contact.

  I just realized if Dylan’s new album is honest

  he’s somewhere close to my cousin’s position.

  [ . . . ]

  See what I mean about honesty?

  It’s only honesty, not necessarily right or accurate or

  precise or becoming or nice or bright. As Joe Brainard might write

  HONESTY

  Poetry is the best policy.

  Only I wrote that a while ago, not Joe, and I had something

  else to say about that day when my first professional movie role

  was screened and the friends who were having some trouble

  with their lives or careers or acceptance of something so

  obviously below their expectations for themselves and their arts

  and what they know or think I can do and should, and the friends

  who were at the time more secure in their own success and

  financial support were as generous as could be with me,

  knowing I’d made it over a hump that gave me a chance to

  keep going, no easier, even more risky, but now known,

  maybe the biggest hump of being grown up about ambitions.

  How should I know, I’d say to you,

  that Saturday morning, I knew I knew.

  DUES, BLUES, & ATTITUDES

  another fall in New York City

  another beautiful sunset over New Jersey

  another overwhelming emotional experience

  impossible to express accurately with

  the stupid language of my time and people

  well, limited language then

  and not “my people” but the ones who live and grew up here too

  only the darkness and coolness sets in

  and I’m fiercely pleased

  as if

  as if I did something wonderful

  or the world really was

  is wonderful I mean

  of something beautiful and moving I am so central it seems

  because I’m here caring about it and wanting to share that

  not show it out or off but

  reinforce the fact that it still happens and we got to be

  at least me

  as honest about that as about all the shit and grief and non-

  belief that makes this year distinct from little else I never

  could use to get through either

  I mean the new wave post-post-modern punknik cold chic power

  of negation and denial or

  abusement and retaliation

  or finessing the passé as blasé style and fashion

  as though it really was politics

  only most of us aren’t better off

  for the fi
rst time in several generations

  except those who

  wait a minute, it gets away again, see how,

  because I let it interfere when what was pulling me into

  my life and the chances left to take and make was

  the contentedness of this evening’s gift

  the sky, the air, the atmosphere outside my window

  despite the lack of a toilet, a rank hole where it had been

  thanks to the landlord’s henchmen, black apologists for—

  but, I’m alive and well and the world outside that I can see

  and feel is beautiful in ways that made that word once meaningful

  I mean for use with precision, like the paintings those first

  gifted artists couldn’t stop when wandering into the western

  mountains and wildernesses, only this is New Jersey industrial

  landscape and Hudson river pollution and “Tribeca” development

  and rip off and abuse and despite the fucking penalties of

  wrong choices and fate to my various mates and ex-mates and

  kids and friends and family and self and the shit I’ve seen

  and been and created, it still feels so fucking nice to be

  here watching that incredible gray fall sky return to burn

  the dues and blues and attitudes from my not so different—

  what do we call it now where the feelings originate or wait

  to be discovered—I lived here too, I wore those clothes and

  took some attitudes that rocked some boats and paid some dues,

  I know it aint alright or nice or bright or new but I got to

  acknowledge the good things, the fucking good things that keep

  me, for one, here and wanting to stay and share it . . . if not with

  you than with the me I always speak to when I do . . . I mean the me

  in you.

  THE NIGHT JOHN LENNON DIED

  One warm night, when I was a kid,

  we were all playing ringalario in

  the high school field at the bottom

  of my street when Mrs. Murphy, known

  mostly for the time her hair turned

  purple when she tried to die it, stuck

  her head out the door and yelled across

  the street to us, “Go on home now and be

  quiet, Babe Ruth just died.” And we all

  did go home where everything was somber

  and serious and adult and strange,

  worse than when one of the family died,

  because then there were outbursts of

  emotion as well as jokes and stories

  and good drunken parties, but

  the night Babe Ruth died, everyone

  felt as sad as if it was a close close

  friend or a sister or a brother,

  but no one was really related so

  there was no call for an actual Irish

  wake or funeral party. I couldn’t help

  remembering that night again, the

  night John Lennon died. Nobody

  threw a wake or a party where we

  could all get drunk and high and

  have a good cry together. We all

  went home and wandered around our

  rooms and heads looking for answers,

  unable to sleep or forget or accept

  or understand what had happened.

  It had to be a mistake and it was,

  a fucking senseless, horrible,

  deadening mistake.

  It’s hard to

  recognize even the most familiar

  things. I don’t know where I am

  half the time, the other half I’m

  flashing on some song or line or look

  or attitude so close to my own

  personal history I thought it was

  mine. But it ain’t, cause it’s gone

  with John and I feel like I got to

  go do something now to spread a

  little joy and loving and honest

  fucking answers and questions about

  the world I live in and the only times

  we ever have, our own. I hope I’m

  not alone.

  FUCK ME IN THE HEART ACCEPTANCE!!!

  Fuck me in the heart

  in the acceptance

  in the part

  I fuck you in the heart with

  when I fuck you in the fantasy

  of childhood acceptance

  of the cosmic connection

  with our deaths

  that fuck us crazy in the end.

  Fuck the 1950s

  til theyre over and over at last

  and the best of the 1970s

  that refused to give in to the past

  and the worst of the 1960s

  that I refuse to believe was all bombast and gesture

  I still live that dream

  in my fucking for pleasure

  fucking guilt in the ass of a brain without hindsight

  or quality control

  or speed monitor

  or check-in-the-mirror devices.

  Fuck vices

  fuck vice-like grips

  on the imaginations that led us here

  in their failure to fuck themselves silly.

  Fuck silly

  and dirty

  and angry

  and nice.

  Fuck me in my past

  and my dreams

  and my lights

  the ones that keep blinking

  in back of my brain

  that ignore all the warnings

  to get back on the train

  that I fucked

  and I fucked

  to get off in the first place,

  and fuck all the ladies

  and men who deserve it

  I’m here

  at your service

  if you’ll only preserve it

  the fucking I saw

  in all your beginnings.

  Big

  innings

  for

  fucking

  that’s the sport

  I grew up with,

  I don’t want to die

  without fucking you all

  in the ass

  of your past

  inhibitions.

  CANT BE WRONG

  (Coffee House Press 1996)

  GOING HOME AGAIN

  Last week I flew into Albany where

  it was cold and there was snow on

  the ground—I was met by my

  daughter and son who drove me to

  Vermont where they go to college

  —she was 21 that day and I was

  there to give her 21 little presents

  to make up for the years when I was

  so busted I couldn’t give her much,

  or was so stoned I couldn’t get it

  together on time—the delight in

  her face when she realized after

  the first one, when I pretended I

  forgot something and pulled out

  another and then another and so on

  until she got that there were 21—

  even my son got hip to the fun of

  our little scene, despite all he’s

  going through at 19 I thought he

  might be able to avoid because he

  doesn’t have to live the way I

  thought I did when I was his age—

  but maybe I didn’t have to either,

  what do I know?—so I go down to

  New York for some fun, I guess,

  trying to avoid the social mess I

  made the last time I stayed with

  my kids when one of their friends

  made it clear she thought I was

  more than the dear old dad of a

  friend and I didn’t resist—in

  fact I insisted we could find a

  place to be alone, like my

  daughter’s r
oom when she wasn’t

  home—but that isn’t the point

  of this poem, this isn’t about

  my most recent dating trends,

  but something even harder to

  comprehend, unless you can remember

  a time when there were no hippies

  no homeless no dozens of mixed

  couples, black and white, walking

  the streets like lovers, or even

  just friends—and unless you were

  living on those streets too,

  looking for a way to get through

  the night without a fight with some

  thug and you, I mean me, just

  looking for someone to hug and

  not knowing it—this was before

  Naked Lunch or Last Exit to

  Brooklyn, long before Dylan and

  John Doe and all those other artists

  we admire for the truth started

  lying about their names—I’m talkin’

  about before Martin Luther King’s

  “I Had a Dream” speech, before the

  Cuban crisis and The Beatles,

  a time when Dixie Peach could

  still be found on the heads of

  most Black people, who were still

  called “colored” or “Negro” but

  on the streets the term was “spade”

  and I had one tattooed on my arm

  in defiance of the Jersey whites

  who kept me in constant fights

  over my preference for Black girls

  once I had discovered the lack of

  bullshit in romancing them, unlike

  their white counterparts there was

  no time or reason to play games,

  nobody was taking anybody home to

  anybody’s mother, or the prom or

  even the corner hangout—if we dug

  each other it meant secret lovers

  and that was it, hell even the

  Black dudes were ready to pick up

  sticks and hit you upside the head

  for messing with Sapphire—but

  somehow I survived and made it to

  the streets of Greenwich Village

  where a handful of perverts and

  junkies and thieves and dreamers

  created a community of lost souls

  with room for me in it—and for

  Pauline the 15-year-old lightskinned

  runaway from Long Island City with

  a body that everybody noticed even

  when it became clear she was pregnant

  —I remember thinking how brave

  she was to be out there alone like

  that—you got to remember there was

  only a handful of us on the streets

  then—runaways got arrested, and