Monday, January 23, 2012

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."

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