3418. WALT WHITMAN AND THE CRAZY WORLD AND I BET YU CAN'T SAY THIS ALOUD

WALT WHITMAN AND THE 
CRAZY WORLD AND I

BET YOU CAN'T SAY 
THIS ALOUD

(the poet starts to sing)

Thanks for taking the crazy man away. He's been looking in, sitting 
at the window crazy as a loon. At first I thought I knew him, then I
wasn't sure. The next thing I knew, he was gone. It's all OK with me;
there's no nature at these bridges, and the sky has overflown its

limits and left town long ago. Now, there are others who speak the

same of me : 'He's getting stranger and more odd with each passing

month, little things I notice, they all add up. He had a birthday,

and didn't come. He held a seance, and no one saw a thing. Even

the ghosts, so meager underneath the tablecloth, were tired and

too withered to show. He said nothing, just stared ahead.'

-

'And it was then, back at Joralamyn Street, when he held that

battered loaf of bread in his grimy hands  -  sniffing like a

puppy, he was cursing artisan loaves. He pointed at fishes,

and said 'I will make these rise.' For even God's sake, the

use of a such a mixed metaphor was foul and useless."

-

"I am so tired of all this uselessness. Walt Whitman, was it,

who bequeathed to America the launching of piers and the

piracy of masculine ships; lauding men and boys for

dying with courage on the sad and savage field? Was that

him  -  I forget  -  squeezing fruit in the supermarket aisle,

swaggering like a lynched Nigger just before dying, pausing

for a moment at Lincoln's stupid bier, donning funeral-rags

for two long years, and then crying in vain to boot? Was it?"

-

"How awesome was that? Edgar Allen Poe sitting down

in Val Allen Park watching the fireworks overhead; July,

at night, 1889, something like that, near Baltimore's

inner harbour, way before a theme park or a seaport

raised its brazen head to mar the place. Wherever he

died, New York or Baltimore or here, no one ever

settled the really rambling question : what is mind

and what is body? The gay man's pliant plea, again

takes me right back to Walt  -  do I like the ass or

lick the prick, and why won't I ever know?"

-

"What is mind and what is body. Good Jesus,

what a crazy question! We are all the each

and every of each and every thing. Listen

to that crazy man; the poet 

starts to sing."