EXTREME VELOCITY
(nyc, 1968)
(to be read really fast)
I never had a home I never wasn't hungry the
car doors around me slammed and people
people endlessly talking like saltines on the
wet ground sloppy and saggy and dripping wet
no crispness left (but they're good long after the
soup is gone - so take what you can as many at a time)
the man with the tubular hat bent down to retrieve
a nickel I'd missed damn damn Goddamn on that !
slanted buildings seemed ready to fall in my delirium
this hunger was all and what if what if the glass from on
high came crashing down on my head all those people
falling from the sky with briefcases still in hand regimented
as they are and bland so bland not an adventurous soul
among them and me porous me dripping iniquity crying
in pain praying in vain down on my knees supplicating
again - two doorways down some rich kid comes traipsing
with an electric guitar in one hand held rakishly like it mattered
like some aggressive weapon of glee I was supposed to see I
guess this gutter-snipe's superiority to me but I'd never see
his fraternity never be in his redundancy paternity familiarity
and then his friend this wicked girl parading loins comes over
to me and - bending down ever so slightly in her St. Luke's Place
way - takes my hand, presses it ever slightly to her breast and
hands over a five-dollar bill and says: 'I'm so sorry really,
nothing that matters, it's just the way it is, just the way it is.'
(nyc, 1968)
(to be read really fast)
I never had a home I never wasn't hungry the
car doors around me slammed and people
people endlessly talking like saltines on the
wet ground sloppy and saggy and dripping wet
no crispness left (but they're good long after the
soup is gone - so take what you can as many at a time)
the man with the tubular hat bent down to retrieve
a nickel I'd missed damn damn Goddamn on that !
slanted buildings seemed ready to fall in my delirium
this hunger was all and what if what if the glass from on
high came crashing down on my head all those people
falling from the sky with briefcases still in hand regimented
as they are and bland so bland not an adventurous soul
among them and me porous me dripping iniquity crying
in pain praying in vain down on my knees supplicating
again - two doorways down some rich kid comes traipsing
with an electric guitar in one hand held rakishly like it mattered
like some aggressive weapon of glee I was supposed to see I
guess this gutter-snipe's superiority to me but I'd never see
his fraternity never be in his redundancy paternity familiarity
and then his friend this wicked girl parading loins comes over
to me and - bending down ever so slightly in her St. Luke's Place
way - takes my hand, presses it ever slightly to her breast and
hands over a five-dollar bill and says: 'I'm so sorry really,
nothing that matters, it's just the way it is, just the way it is.'
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