Another Way to Play

by Michael Lally

  on and phone ringing and someone

  talking, at first I couldn’t see the way

  things are parts of a bigger picture,

  as a single blossom blends into

  a landscape, not anymore, as

  each item popped out, individualized

  and so distinct it was like a nightmare—

  no grasping of the whole picture

  just its individual parts shouting

  at me through my eyes to realize

  each tiny aspect of the scene as

  equally important and demanding

  of attention, oh it hurt my head

  just to open my eyes, and hearing

  was even more of a surprise because

  I couldn’t close my ears but had

  to hear each note distinctly in

  even the most complicated music

  so that this horn and that one were

  distinct and each voice in harmony

  to others was isolated in my ear

  overwhelmed with all the disso-

  nance no one else could hear . . .

  my children know what

  they mean to me, because

  I always tell them and

  hope my actions do too—

  forgive me friends

  for being so untrue—

  I always mean to tell you

  how much you mean to me,

  the prominence you have

  in my heart, but things

  happen, I never start

  that sentence until

  you’re gone or

  I am, so let me

  be clear and

  say it here—

  I love you all

  in my own way

  which is to say

  I think of you often

  and it always invites

  a smile to the ongoing

  project of time’s

  that is this face . . .

  as George Oppen wrote

  in that collection of authors’

  self-portraits Burt Britton

  once collected, under

  Opppen’s curved line of

  an old man’s back

  he wrote: “which is

  a very odd thing to happen

  to a child” and it is—

  jasmine—Tunisia

  —how evocative

  [ . . . ]

  Fall 2011

  THE JIMMY SCHUYLER SONNETS

  1.THE KISS

  At a party for Lawrence Ferlinghetti at

  Barbara Guest’s New York apartment in

  1975, Jimmy approached me and asked:

  Are you Michael Lally? I confessed I

  was. Then he asked: May I kiss you?

  Not something I particularly wanted,

  but because he was James Schuyler I

  said: Sure. So he did. I wasn’t into it,

  but he was. It was brief. He seemed

  pleased. I figured he asked for the kiss

  because he was attracted to me, so I

  wanted to know why he first asked if

  I was me. He said: To make sure you

  were the man who writes those poems.

  2. ELEGANT

  As he was leaving the party a man asked

  Jimmy if he would write down his address

  for him. He had a book he wanted to send

  him. Jimmy took the pen and paper the

  man provided and wrote in an elegant

  cursive style: James Schuyler. Then under-

  neath that in the same old-style cursive,

  but smaller, he wrote: James Schuyler.

  Underneath that he wrote in even smaller

  script: James Schuyler. I no longer recall

  how many times he did this, but the last

  had diminished to unreadable size. He gave

  the paper and pen back to the man and

  left him to read it and look up, mystified.

  3. IN THEIR COMPANY

  Over dinner at Darragh Park’s 22nd Street

  home with Darragh, Jimmy and Ana, the

  Costa Rican woman I lived with at the

  time, Jimmy was mostly silent. So she and

  Darragh did a lot of the talking. I loved all

  of them and was content to just be in their

  company. Jimmy felt the same way about

  us, as he revealed later to Darragh. He

  especially liked that Ana and I looked him

  in the eye and talked to him the way we

  would anyone. Not everyone did that with

  Jimmy when he was having a bad day,

  unable or unwilling to talk, the meds taking

  their toll on his capacity for communicating.

  4. BEAUTY AND LOVE

  In his room at The Chelsea Hotel, Jimmy

  was telling me of his love for Tom Carey

  as Helena reentered, back from an errand.

  Jimmy loved them both, as did many of us.

  Helena not just for the help she was to him

  daily but for her delightful beauty and dis-

  arming honesty and insight, and Tom for

  his beauty as well, and sardonic wit despite

  his serious troubles then. I was often arro-

  gantly self important around my peers in

  those years, and even some of my elders,

  but never around Jimmy because of his

  poems I loved so much and aspects of the

  strategies in them I felt we had in common.

  5. FORGIVEN

  Jimmy’s peers at times expressed frustration

  with the childlike aspect of his need to be

  cared for, not believing it was entirely

  from his mental health struggles. I might

  have some small insight into that now.

  Not because I suffer as Jimmy did, but

  because I worry some of my peers may

  be exasperated with my childish need to

  be forgiven or excused or tolerated or

  indulged when I forget to respond or seem

  to ignore or avoid so much and blame it

  on the brain operation some may think I

  use as a license to only do what I want, the

  way some thought Jimmy sometimes did.

  6. WHAT MATTERED

  I’ve been copying lines from books

  I read into a bound journal since 1962.

  A few here and there, not a lot, but

  several from James Schuyler poems.

  Here are two: “Californians need to

  do a thing to enjoy it./A smile in the

  street may be loads! you don’t have

  to undress everybody.” And the other:

  “Did Beowulf call the sea ‘the penis-

  shrinker’?” I can pick up any book of

  his and read any random lines and find

  gems. I just did: “From the next room

  the friendly clatter of an electric type-

  writer.” Jimmy knew what mattered.

  NOVEMBER SONNET

  On a perfectly clear Fall day, heading back to

  Fort Monmouth, I watched as other cars on

  The Garden State Parkway veered onto the

  shoulder and stopped, the drivers not getting

  out, just sitting there. At the toll booth the man

  said The president’s been shot. As I drove on,

  more cars pulled off the road. I could see their

  drivers weeping. Back in the barracks we stayed

  in the rec room watching the black and white

  TV, tension in the room like static. When they

  named Lee Harvey Oswald, I watched the

  black guys hold their breath, hoping that meant

  redneck, not spade, and every muscle in their

  faces relax when he turned out to be white.

  THE SAN FRANCISCO SONNETS (1962)

  1.

  In a San Franci
sco Chinatown hotel, Bucks

  slept off all his driving alone while I roamed

  North Beach in my slept-in skinny suit with

  action back jacket and pipe cleaner pants plus

  my junkie sky piece and pointy-toed boots.

  In Jimmy Valentine’s Hot Dog Palace where

  Columbus and Broadway met, with only a

  quarter left I eyed the jazz-filled box and a

  slice of chocolate cake in a glass case, chose

  the box, dropped my coin in the slot and put-

  ting my ear to the speaker felt a hand on my

  left shoulder. Turning to my right as I rose

  to avoid getting suckered I saw Andre, who

  said Got a car? There’s a party in Berkeley.

  2.

  I woke Bucks to drive us to BOP CITY a funky jazz

  joint where Andre scored, then to a small druggie

  party in Berkley in a little white bungalow where

  another Michael, a crazy Jewish jazz sax player,

  lived with a heartbreakingly crazy young blonde

  who loved books we deeply discussed after we all

  moved in. When he discovered Bucks was from

  Darien, Andre spoke of rich families he knew there.

  Bucks turned whiter than he already was. Andre

  had been the only spade at a private school, he said,

  his English becoming as polished as an old-style

  movie star’s, making mine sound like a spade Bowery

  Boy’s. Bucks sold his car for a motorcycle to split

  for Colorado and the first commune I ever heard of.

  3.

  Crazy Michael got jealous of me and the blonde

  so Andre took me back to North Beach to hang

  at Mister Otis, a jazz club that let me sit in for

  free drinks and Andre’s lady, a French illegal,

  hook wealthy johns. She said if I read Herman

  Hesse’s Steppenwolf it would change my life. But

  it didn’t. Later Andre snuck the three of us into a

  hotel across from Valentine’s thanks to the night

  clerk he knew, then left to get me a pint to stop

  my constant cough from my four or more packs

  of Pall Malls a day, but we knew it was to score.

  She tried to soothe me with sex but I said my

  preference was darker chicks. I missed Bambi.

  When Andre returned with the pint I emptied it.

  4.

  In the morning, the floor littered with sleepers,

  an old lady burst in yelling Out! Out! Everyone

  split except me and Andre. He spoke to the lady

  like a prince to a peon and she left us alone to get

  dressed. First he took a piss in the sink, did a few

  ballet turns, then bought me another pint and got

  me to call Dolores to propose. By then I didn’t know

  what I was doing. She said Yes. Andre disappeared.

  I slept after that in a half constructed high rise with

  other vagabonds like Gaylord, a large white cat I

  knew from The Village who wore a blanket with

  a hole for his head, looking like Jesus or an apostle.

  He was the first person I knew who gave the V

  sign palm out and said Peace when greeting you.

  5.

  I ran into Eileen Kaufman panhandling North

  Beach tourists with Parker. Like Irish peasant

  mothers of my Irish grandmother’s time wand’-

  ring the streets of Galway begging with their kids.

  Paddy O’Sullivan tramped the streets of North

  Beach dressed like Puss’n’Boots, wide brimmed

  hat with feathery plume, cape and high fancy

  boots, declaiming his poems to strangers. We

  shared bottles while sitting against the wall of

  Vesuvio in the alley next to City Lights Books.

  After a few weeks I had my oldest sister, Joan,

  wire me fifty dollars to fly back to base to face

  a court martial where I was fined, busted to

  no rank and given thirty days in the stockade.

  SWING THEORY: 4

  Every time I moved as a young man and

  my now middle-aged older kids were

  little, when we took the art and posters

  from the walls there’d be fist-size holes

  behind them made by me. Now it’s the

  same in his room and beyond as he re-

  sponds to others’ mood swings by taking

  a swing at whatever’s in front of him.

  He wasn’t around when I was doing the

  same, so I wonder how that expression

  of frustration came to him, if it’s in the

  angry genes inherited from my side and

  —when coupled with the mood swings

  from the other side—might be irresistible.

  HOW THE DARK GETS OUT

  Thelonious Monk said It’s

  always night or we wouldn’t

  need light. Saint John of The

  Cross wrote The Dark Night

  Of The Soul which I always

  used to justify my research

  into darkness with the idea

  that the deeper I got into it

  the higher I would climb to

  the light when I came out

  of it. If I came out of it. Now

  I know how big that if was

  and how lucky I am to have

  found the light before it was

  too late—the light of love, the

  unconditional kind that we

  usually only find in kids and

  dogs and saints. What a quaint

  concept the latter is, and yet

  I bet you’ve known a few. I

  have too, and have aspired to

  be my own kind of one. Only

  what’s done is done and can’t

  be taken back. Though it can

  be taken with, as a reminder

  of all I have to make up for.

  But the easiest way is just to

  open that door and walk

  through it to the light, even

  when, like Monk says, it’s

  always night.

  TO THE LIGHT

  There was a time

  When I was a boy,

  Eight or nine, and

  Afraid of the dark.

  Even in a tiny house

  With tons of people

  So small it took only

  A few steps to walk

  From one side to the

  Other, and not too

  Many more to walk

  From front to back.

  In a kitchen with my

  Grandmother’s room

  Right next to it and

  On the other side our

  Little combination

  Dining/living room

  With people listen-

  Ing to the radio or

  Watching the black

  And white thirteen-

  Inch TV, siblings, or

  The boarder, upstairs

  Getting ready for

  Bed, light and sound

  Everywhere, even

  Then, if the light was

  Off in the kitchen

  I’d refuse to go in to

  Get something out

  Of the refrigerator

  Without a sister or

  Brother or someone

  Coming with me.

  When I got older

  So many women

  Would get upset

  That I left lights on

  When we went out

  At night. Every light

  In the house they

  Would say and

  Almost be right.

  But even though

  There were times

  In my life when I

 
Loved the dark,

  Relished the dark,

  Immersed myself

  In the dark, I was

  Always so happy

  To come home

  To the light.

  LOVE NEVER DIES

  Lots of shit dies

  Love doesn’t

  Parts of me are

  Already dead

  But love isn’t . . .

  My appendix

  Dead and buried

  My prostate and

  A disc from my back

  Dead and gone too

  And parts of my brain

  Cut out with the

  Dime size foreign body

  That got in there somehow

  To cause so much trouble . . .

  The twin towers died

  And all those lost with them

  Like a woman who was

  Kind to me when

  She didn’t have to be

  Gone on one of those

  Two planes, but

  My love for her isn’t . . .

  Five of my siblings and

  Our old man and ma

  Passed on now for awhile

  But not the love we shared

  When we were honest . . .

  The mother

  Of my oldest kids, my

  First wife, gone, but the love

  She and I shared never

  Died, though maybe the

  Like did . . . my first true

  Love, too, the love of my

  Life, gone now for almost

  A decade, but my love for

  Her, and hers for me,

  Never died even thru

  All of our husbands and

  Wives and lovers over

  The years when we

  Were out of touch with

  Each other, none

  Of that stopped the

  Love we both felt

  And affirmed whenever

  We spoke again like

  The week before she

  Passed still working

  To help troubled kids

  Find families, those

  Kids still grateful for

  The love she showed them

  That’s still alive even if

  She’s with the ancestors now . . .

  Or other women I’ve lived

  With who have passed on

  Or lovers long gone

  Like Joan B or Joe B

  Her face so sweet and tough

  Voice still admonishing me to

  Just be myself and not

  Worry what others think

  His voice so quiet and