Sunday, August 3, 2014

5643. NOTHING LIKE IT APPEARS, SO WHAT

NOTHING LIKE IT 
APPEARS, SO WHAT
(for Sam Wagstaff)
All that ancient stuff annoys me now  -  Detroit has
fallen like shit on its heels and some people still
talk of you. A dumpster in magic mode, a Wreck
of the Hesperus in human garb. What is the sum total
of anything  -  in retrospect everything adds up to zero.
I don't even know, is that still considered 'up'? Art
in a bottle, art in a frame, art on field thirty, thirty
feet high. My fantasies run to excess. In my mind,
like Heizer, I jump at the chance to play in dirt.
-
There was a loft on the Bowery. New York City.
You were every second week, for a while, bothering
 everyone. It was the early seventies  -  all these crazy
people found you grand. Beautiful. Those Detroit women,
the horniest bunch of swanks I ever saw, they feel all
over you in spite of your being so gay. In awe, they
promised 'no matter, whatever, let's go!' Far and 
away the most simple and best.
-
An offer of a monogram in Paris. The sipping red wine
on the D'Orsi tables  -  it all went to Hell after a while.
I ran off, to be far away  -  in fact my end site was the
grave of Stephen Crane. Evergreen Cemetery, I think
it's called, Hillside Fucking New Jersey, I wrote.
-
Postcards are too short for book-writing. Long
paragraphs alone can kill. Like some precious
Chinese poetry, a Li Po crap or whatever, ten
words alone, if properly done, can do the best.
Oh mama, those long ago were the days.

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