3683. APOSTASY WORKS BEST FOR ME

APOSTASY WORKS 

BEST FOR ME

Never you mind the wherefores and

the whys  -  that was how my parents

died. The madhouse frenzy of an

apocalyptic doom can mean nothing

to me now. Or, as my friend Aleck used

to say - 'your house, crazy, all that energy

and nothing going on.' Piss on all that.

-

I am upstairs in a Frenchtown gallery,

viewing old industrial ruins, now pictures

as art. Nobody works at nothing no more.

Nobody makes a thing. It all gives me the

creeps, and the blond girl behind the desk,

I bet barely thirty, tries catching my eye  -  

but her breasts, I do swear, already are

giving me vertigo. I have so many

funny stories in my life.

-

 At fourteen, reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti's

Coney Island of the Mind, (the old 'I am waiting'

routine)  -  turns out, this San Francisco guy was

really Lawrence Ferlin - living amidst the Italians

in SF's Italian district. He wished to be a poet

with a cooler name. Sounded like 'spaghetti'

and thus became 'Ferlinghetti'. That old,

Jewish milk, just curdling again.

-

Back in the gallery, the old wood floor creaks;

with my steps, or ours, or the steps of other

people. I imagine nothing less and we are

talking, she and I, the girl who left the desk,

as she gently asks 'who am I?' or 'who are

you'? The question, either way, sounds berserk.

I tell her, 'you know, so many have changed

their names, like men who have changed

their sex.' With that, she leaves me alone.

-

And - not to be outdone - the pterodactyls

outside are strutting their stuff  - walking

towards the river, walking the bridge.

I step into the decoy store, the man is

very nice, and very gay  -  two huge

rooms of antiques and varied and painted

decoys and ducks of another time, the

paintings, the frames, and the art:

-

When all these fops held farmlands and

foxhounds with their household dogs and

their land-locked cunts, their trumpet calls

and their big fox-hunts. And, oh, it was so

a different world. Now, this bastard's

playing The Rolling Stones overhead,

from 1971. I can't believe my ears and

eyes  -  a fucking, messed-up world.

-

I ask him nothing. I look about,

knowing my eyes would be too hostile,

and my mouth too foul to shout.