1223. WHILE IN VENICE

WHILE IN VENICE

What is it after all that I had to do?

'You can do this or you can do nothing.'

Oh crazy wizard take me far from here

and move me like a Venice watercraft in

hiding - two paltry sums of music and song

gliding beneath canal bridges and women up

above. I look up to see recognition and all I find

is you : magnificent bile living by wits and guile

the strength of all equations being bent and

broken. 'People stopped talking to me in 1963

and I haven't had a conversation since' :

it was true enough then and it's true enough

now. I figured since people say nothing much

anyway and what mattered little had therefore

no consequence . Here's the catalogue I'd

make if I had to make a catalogue :

two guys standing right near the gate

when the gate blew up, blown to smithereens,

their bodies went flying; three people selling

newspapers by the kiosk in the middle of the

square when two Italian kids come running down

- swiftly - push a man over, and run off just as swiftly

with the cashbox of one - they don't get too far, are

tackled by the crowd, and then are mercilessly pummeled,

nay, beaten to a pulp, by two big gents who had come

rushing over in the melee. Obviously some sort of enforcers.

The money perhaps was their cut? They wrenched the kids

brutally, and smacked them with deadly force. I guess that's

how you remember not to do these things again; four women

walking the cobblestones - most obviously whores down on

their luck - they are each dressed in comic clothing too formal,

too self-important, yet revealing in an old woman sort of way.

They stop for a moment while one adjusts her stockings.

Another lights a cigarette and drags on it from a holder she

has in her fingers. The woman with the stockings is done,

straightens up and, laughing, they all walk away.

Smoke lingers on the square, from where or

which event, I'm not sure I really know.