3709. THE CRACKUP

THE CRACKUP

The crackup, the Hayden viewing stone where

they store the molasses and water. I will rein

you in, I will suffocate you. I will razor-wire

your face into a hundred little pieces, raw

fellow recondite mouse biscuit, leveler of

houses. Now let me talk : give me that old

black desktop phone, let me sing the ages

in a broken mouthpiece where even old

Methuselah manages his own mimicry.

I am the biscuit man! See me here again!

It may be high Winter, but it is warm, and

I am sitting at the Brooklyn Waterfront Cafe

where the coffee is made from blood and that

waitress is running size 6 in decay on white pink

buttocks with a maudlin candle-top double-breasted

spindle-top bed. Work your magic on me! Put now

your legs behind your head and let me see the

Union Jack  : in the dozens, when time gets slow,

I see she gets busy reading 'The History of Rain'.

-

Over at the library some translator is giving his

event; a 'translated' talk about translation, they

say, but I can't tell. 'La Rondure Returnez Vous.'

Very well then, and Alsace-Lorraine to you.

-

I turn around three times : the old ruins of a beat

tobacco warehouse from the Civil War days  -  when

everything else on the harbor-front became a hot

ammo-drop ready to blow : big frothy ships with

billowing and tandem sails filled with briny soldiers

and dirty men  -  survivors!  -  and then the ironclad

that was tested in the waters, made right here at

the Navy Yard. Gone and gone and goner and then

the vicious war was over. I sit regarding nothing. I

think regarding everything. Take my hand and

I will waltz you away, right now.

('Let us go then, you and I').