LIVING THE LONG LIFE
How things turn out; it's all got
to be done one at a time. First
you wobbly hit the ground, crying
and with no more stability than a
rubber ball looking for its legs -
Mama holds you, while Papa looks
away, and then your masked allegiances
all begin : the crawl and the stumble -
both proving you're attached to Earth.
You want to say 'attached again', but
maybe not. Soon it's over, you're free
and flying : rebel, scumpot, hipster,
scholar, asshole, fool, mogul,
master, rich man, dead man too.
-
I've got the memories here wrapped in
this fragile gauze. With them - can't you
see - I am walking Washington Street
and talking to you. I started this wise-ass
life asleep in Tompkins Square Park in
August, '67. I was 18 years old- ten
Puerto Ricans and their bongos and
percussion all night long - in that
band shell, damn, no longer there,
gone now, and me, transfixed.
-
Well, are you listening or am I done?
Smoking something and ingesting tea,
climbing around like a midnight monkey
on the children's swings in the night until
dawn's morning took it.s swipe at me.
That monument to the Titanic - at the
other end of the park - well, yeah, it
was there then and it stands there yet.
Not Titanic, damn it all, get it straight,
the General Slocum, on which many
local Germans had died in the harbor.
-
Now, what, fuck, I'm in a big, green room
with paintings all around me - each one the
same size and each one a large portrait
or someone or another : the large, blue girl
in a blue shirt with blue sunglasses - her blue
period - God I hope not though I sense some
red underneath the blue pigment; the girl on
the bed (I've mentioned?) asleep in only a
blue bikini bottom, or, as the scientists said
at the atomic test : 'no bikini atoll'; that smug,
gay dandy, in his sandals and shorts, with one
leg up on the bench - his tan leather briefcase
and pressed,white shirt - bare underneath -
held in place only by one, central button.
He's smiling back like a dentist on a Bimini
vacation; a girl, lost in green, amidst a very
tall crop of corn - stalks towering above
her; the naked girl in the netting; the girl,
again by herself, holding a cat. A real
rogue's gallery, and all of that,
-
I've concluded - to be sure - that reality
is a pretzel as it's presented to us : things
twist and turn, wrap over and around,
get baked and salty, and then....
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