Thursday, April 11, 2013

4267. LIKE JAZZ IN THE MEMORY, BROKEN ON CHRIST'S OWN JUICY BACK

LIKE JAZZ IN THE MEMORY, BROKEN ON CHRIST'S
OWN JUICY BACK
'I am passing oil tanks. They ring the highway
like airfoils or dream-bubbles, squat and square.
I do not understand them, nor how they've
gotten there. I am obsequious to a fault, yet
these take all my time. To think, I try. This is
yet all very new to me. It was, way back, when
Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace on that
very hot day in a Maryland shopping mall
parking lot, that I think most of my energy
fell away  -  this modern day, I realized, was
nothing but shit and offal; old ideas again,
washed up like blood and scum on a really
bad beachhead of foul garbage and crud.
And yet now no one admits to remembering
a thing. I go on. When I first came down from
the mountain, it was on Hidden Valley Road,
a single turn off Emmanuel Way. I stretched
my limbs to feel what 'human' was like, but felt
nothing. This world blazed like a headache.
-
My first mother's name was Mary, as was my
second. Signifying nothing, just a name, I took
it all to heart anyway  -  as if I'd had the winning
hand in some luckless bastard's game of cards.
And then it suddenly turned into a million things;
other names and meanings: Tito, Titus, Orpheus,
Raimundo, Attila, Zavrotnick, Mandelstaum,
Cohen, Zapruder, Lauder, and the rest. I called
a cab and this Arab guy managed to drive me home.
He said little, all the way his radio blaring some
reverential Allah bullshit hum. He parked and I
pierced his heart with my glance. It gave him an
immediate other Life. And, yes, he apparently
was very grateful  -  emptying his pockets and
giving me all the money in his till. Fortunate me.
-
The jar the genie came out of is now on
double-lock and key. No nomads can have
it and police guard it night and day. I am in
speechless mode, just thinking of what will
happen anew when I am dead and gone. The
stories, my God, all those stories again.'

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