Wednesday, June 13, 2012

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').

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