11,953. NORMAL TURPITUDE

NORMAL TURPITUDE

The fact is  -  do you see  -

that normally it's posed

as 'moral turpitude,' like

being a lecher or a creep.

But I like it this way better.

It's all that we seek. The

cardboard singer and the

bobby-sox girls. So many

more interesting motivations.

-

There's more to the pitcher

than means the Kool-Aid

within. Ask Jim Jones

and all his kin.

11,952. WATCHING THAT WASTEFUL HEART WITHER

WATCHING THAT WASTEFUL 

HEART WITHER

In a basketful of Keith there was

nothing but a whistle : How the

grubman kept alive I do not know.

He had Salada tea, only of which

Saladin it reminded me. Those

fine Turkish blends tobacco too.

Once there was a time when only

the faintest whiff of the Middle

East was allowed in. Not now.

The erasers are all worn down.

-

One time, On Bedford or Barrow,

hell, I forget which now, I stood

outside the doorway where Delmore

Schwartz once lived. I could feel

that miserly presence passing me

by. I so much had to pee, and was

tempted to use that wall, but I 

stepped into Chumly's instead.

-

I found out later, yes, that the 

Miracle on 34th Street really

had happened right there. That

was John Ashbery, in the corner,

looking at me. He was surrounded

by huge white sacks of mail. I

smiled nearby, and he gave me

his open seat.

11,951. RUDIMENTS, pt 763

RUDIMENTS, pt. 763

(just start talking......)

Only days later, when you

don't even know any longer

what day it is, do you finally

get down to sleep  -  long

and frightful the midnights

that pass. You can't answer

what is not asked.

-

New York set me free and

tortured me at the same time.

I was as invisible as could be,

yet everywhere I went I was

plainly visible, and people

talked to me. There's a hanging

tree, two of them, in fact, that

I learned of. And the spot where

Nathan Hale was hanged also.

All that miserable 'one life to

give for my country' bullshit.

The guy was already a spectral

ghost the day he was born.

There used to be a little plaque

about all that on the lawn

aside City Hall Park, where

that curious collection of

trees was. And still is, but

back then they were just

trees along the passage,

and people frequented. As

it is now, the plaque is gone

and you can't get near the place

as a normal human being; it's

all off-limits and high security

and cop boxes and check points.

I don't know what they're trying

to prevent, because it's pretty

obvious to me, everywhere in

this country, and not just here,

terrorism has already won. I

don't even know what people

are talking about with all their

homeland security crap. It's

so obvious to me that it's

laughable. Everybody's a

geek. That terror scare thing

ought to be well long over 

as a tactic. I used to have an

Ivers and Johnson .22 pistol

in my jacket, that I walked

around with on me all the

time. It was one of the best

things I liked about Winter  -

thick coats and all those

pockets and places to put

things. Back then it wasn't

like now, with all those little

fake-man types all apologetic and

by-the-book about everything,

running their little towns and

places like file cabinets under

'R' for repetition, and 'N' for no,

making sure it all stays in order.

That's not, any of it, what was

in the original cards that real

soldiers and initial patriots

fought over. Try leaving home

and running off through the

woods, White Plains and

Brooklyn and Scotch Plains.

None of those town-hall

homeboys would have a clue,

fearful little garden-hosers that

they are. Go bang your head

on a hanging tree, and see what

something really real feels like.

-

To notice; I am afraid. Afraid

I will die in five minutes. After

that point, which passage is all

annulled by silence, no one

recalls you and all this is over

and no one will remember

who you even were. The old

guy in Columbia Crossroads?

Him, with all stories of tarring

roads and hating electrical things.

His wide hands slapping the

hood of a car, just to make a

point? Or old John Harkness,

in his 80's, hanging himself

in his barn because he hated

this miserable world and what

it was doing to him? 'One day

the sun won't rise. Won't you

be surprised.' That's from

1982; Rome's Roads. Back

then even, they still tarred

and feathered people; I saw

it done. It's not pretty, but I

never got the sense of it because

the references are all too old

now. Tar? Feathers? Upon a

human frame? What's the point?

-

'Well by God, if you want to

see something, ask for it after

you first say what it is you

wish to see. If you're going

to tar and then feather a guy,

determine what the image that

is supposed to call up for you

and for others is. Otherwise, all

the effort is lost, and down the

drain, and the poor guy's

body and skin is scarred for

life once that all comes off.

Damn! That's a ghastly way

of punishment.'

-

By the end of 1967, my time

exact right then, there were

some four hundred eighty six

troops in Vietnam  -  and

that's just troops; it's not

counting the thousands of

secret plants, undercover

mission-people, and top

brass, etc. A good portion

of them - not the white-boy,

gung-ho, 'on a mission for

my penny-loafers and chinos'

type of 'patriotic' pushers -

were poorer, often black,

and caught in the ringer types

who had no others means of

avoiding the debilitation.

For the others, it was all

Christian, God, Freedom

'tally-ho while we kill the

enemy' stuff. Ten thousand

boys died that year; 'on

'our' side. Yep. The streets

were full of the power and

the fury of the equally

distressed and perverted

opposition. Stalemate and

checkmate; no one went

anywhere, and no issue was

ever moved off the vile dead

center of 'conflict and anger.'

With the Tet offensive later,

there was finally some real

movement on push-back, and

that, along with the complete

degradation of the quality of

the American troops, drugs,

sabotage, fragging and the

otherwise complete breakdown

of whatever in the world was

supposed to have been going on,

at least spelled the beginning

of the end. We laugh about it

now ('Good Morning,Vietnam!

Good Riddance Robin Williams!).

-

Not all activity is bad activity;

not all is good. And sometimes

it's neither one nor the other, and

that where the stringy parts begin,

that when it gets tedious to make

distinguishing marks that mean

differences. And basically that's

what life is all about and that's

what those old French guys meant

when they started going on about

'tabula rasa' and all that. I've

heard that called any number

of things, and they all mean to

say the same : clean slate, clear

table, etc. The idea is that each

Human is born with open and

clear channels and that there

is no hindrance from any past

or previous and all doorways

are open to everyone. That was a

crock then, and even more now.

The real world, the one that

recruits people so as to deaden,

beat them down, and eventually

silence them  -  that's the one

that people now willingly join,

and get happy about it too. It's

a funny world  -  bootlace and

bootblack, subservience and

interdiction, following orders

and getting things done. I've 

always been the opposite of

any of that : I go where the

silence is, and I just

start talking........

11,950. RUDIMENTS, pt. 762

RUDIMENTS, pt. 762

(dredged channels, running freely)

There are so many things you

just never know. Like rubber

bands. How they dry out; who'd

ever think of the band itself

needing and having a moisture

content to stay pliable. Here at

the corner where I live, the

local mail delivery guy parks,

and always leaves a few rubber

bands behind, on the ground,

as he sorts and un-bands the

mail for his walk. Each day,

usually, I collect two or three.

Nice rubber bands, nice width

and strength, and fresh. Yet, if

there are any that I miss, in two

or three days of being in the

hot sunlight, they're already

dried out and brittle enough to

snap at the first stretch. It's

like an amazing, invisible

process, always underway; a

million and one things we never

see or think about. The entire

world, all of Reality is, in that

respect, one giant act of suspension,

a process of change and mix and

alteration constantly at work.

And that's only in our seen,

tangible world - something

like, for example automobile

paint. Look at it today, as a new

burgundy color, and look again

in 10 years to see the results

of fade and sunlight and

ultraviolet rays and the crackings

in the clear coat and all that.

'Build ye not up, treasures in

this world; for they fade before

the calling of dawn.'

-

The cool thing about life is

the way it was composed - by

how and by whatever ongoing -

how you DON'T have to know

this stuff, nor be aware of it.

Your participation is neither

needed nor invited. Like the

'active' God which we all

just consider active no more,

the presence of all this change

and alteration remains ongoing,

quiet, and stealthy. Like the 
act of breathing itself. And it all

operates without our sense

of time, and our 'Time'

of course means absolutely

nothing to it. St. Augustine,

in his 'Confessions' becomes

obsessed with the nature of

'time'  -  or what we refer to

'time' as  - and his own existence

within it. Feeling himself

'scattered through past and

future, with every 'now'

becoming a 'then' the minute

his attention touches it, yet

all the while intuiting an

existence that transcends

time altogether,' Augustine

comes close to despair. Oddly

enough, he gets over this

despair by finding in Scripture

something that leads him to

a realization that 'life in God

entails forgetting the past,

and moving not towards

those future things which are

transitory but to the 'things

which are' before him.' I'm

still not sure what that means,

but I know that I've disagreed

with it and find it opposed to my

own worldview  -  even though

I do not know why that would

be. Life seems to entail, for me,
NOT forgetting the past, and
building onward from that
whole and learned knowledge. 
Otherwise  -  it seems to me  -  
we just scratch blindly. Merely 
look around you, to see what 
I mean  :  Scriptural or not ,

(which only makes it more

suspect to me, frankly).

Sometimes I have found

Augustine to be so full of

BS that his work is a poor

underpinning for 'religion.'

Faith as a form of forgetting?

No wonder churches pave

their parking lots and install

elevators and air-conditioning.
That's not humanity serving 
God; that's a 'God' concept 
being used to serve humanity;
which apparently only wishes to
worship when it's comfortable.

Ridiculous, from all angles.

-

No, I'd rather walk with the

past and hang with the dead than

imbibe with the living and waste

time with today.

-

I'll get back to that in a moment,

but, in the meantime, the jangling

nerves of steel which we are all

supposed to carry with us have

long ago failed. There's little

left of substance anywhere;

just look around you. Notre

Dame burns, and all they can

do is trivialize even that, by

making it a frilly, tourist

disaster with no bearings or

underpinnings to the world far

behind us (and burnt away?)

which we've long ago left. One

day it's the yellow vests; the

next day it's Notre Dame, and

then it all moves on anyway.

Nothing gets aired, unless

maybe they can hang an ad

or a commercial onto it. I've

always liked solid ground,

places with long story-lines,

with a past and a back-story 

that a person can draw from.

I write, I document and delve

Most people don't do that, so 

I guess that's how and why

the past gets dissolved away,

can be made to disappear, and

have no more meaning. Not

for me; all of that remains too

vital and too important.

-

I fault people who deny this,

in fact, again back to Augustine,

who just ploddingly twists it all

into doctrine, something that

makes little sense : "Faith is

a from of forgetting. A faithful

person doesn't merely forget

the past, that collection of dead 

nows. One forgets the future.

That is, to have faith is to live

forward, and very occasionally,

in, a future devoid of any of the

attributes of time. Forever and

eternity are not synonymous...

One needs a 'now,' in order to

be released from it." As the

Roman philosopher Boethius

said : "The now that passes

creates time; the now that

remains crates eternity."

(And people say I'm write

obscurely?). What any of 

this means, outside of me,

is probably nothing. I've

already dredged all my 

channels, and they're 

running pretty freely.

11,949. RUDIMENTS, pt. 761

RUDIMENTS, pt. 761

(who among you...)

Rattles abstract the quart with

no bottom : the painter is cleaning

his brushes. I sit nearby, in some

ancient wicker chair that's so

dry from age the wicker turns

to powder when you touch it.

Who among you should dare

for any more than that? There's

a flashlight on the shelf, an old

style kind, basic, batteries and

a little lamp  -  not those fancy

super-bright things they peddle

now. Painters don't buy junk

like that. Anyhow, this old loft

used to be a carpenter shop once

too, and then they stored paint

gallons, later. Who among you

knew any of that? The place on

the corner, called Phoebe's; as

I recall, from experience, it's

been here for years. In the 1980's

it stuck out like a sore thumb.

Now it rather fits right in. High

toned shoes, ambi-sexual men,

girls in light stockings and things

in their noses. But, still, I don't

go there; it's not for me. The

kind of ugly drinking I ever do

I do at Swift's, over there, just

across the way. That's the Bowery,

and I think that's east 4th Street.

Down there, see. Had I brought

you there, 40 years ago, you'd be

dead already  -  some nasty eel

would have had you down. The

bums here, they used to just sleep

on the sidewalk, like major guys

in a homeless domain.

-

There was no caroling on the

street corners, let me just put it

that way. One time I saw a guy,

passed out and gone, maybe even

dead, I don't know, over there,

Amato Opera Company, or

something, was right there. He

was getting stripped of everything

by two other bums  -  shoes, jacket,

pants shirt; they leave him there,

not quite bare but close, and it was

only early March. Who knows

what happened to him. They don't

drive hearses up and down this

street, or didn't then. When I

first got here, July, 1967, I was

astounded  -  right there, that

building, made of metal and it

was rusting - rust stains and leak

lines everywhere, and I think

it was the home too of some

now-famous dance or ballet

group, some guy and women

ran it  -  kind of incendiary,

street theater with anti-social

kind of 1960's messages. Not

Judson, but it'll come to me. The
Living Theater. Julian Beck; 
Judith Malina. Live goes on. It

was my first exposure to metal

buildings, and only then did I

learn about Soho which has

always had rows and rows of

cast-iron buildings. Most of them

still there, and treasured now. It's

a real sight to see. Lots of bright

colors and new, fresh paint.

-

Those bums I talked about, back

then they were always white guys,

usually in suits and stuff. The oddest

thing  -  dress clothes for bums; like

it was 1940 still and their lucks had

not yet run out. Poor stiffs; I always

felt sorry for them, but I go around

a lot feeling sorry for all sorts of

things. If I see a guy getting a

damn ticket, I feel sorry for him,

or her, whoever it is, and then I

feel sorry for the stupid traffic

police person who has to do that

to others, enforcement and all.

Once I get rolling, I never stop. I

get sorry for the whole goddamned

world. Nobody ever gets sorry for

me though, isn't that weird  -  I've

gotten tickets, even been towed

twice, and they treat you like crap.

Nobody gives your grief a second

thought  -  you have to go find your

car in the impound yard, pay to get

there, or walk, across town. Then

when you get there, it's cash only,

last I knew anyway. Like a hundred

and forty bucks, and they expect you

to just have that on you  -  as if

you were headed to a gentlemen's

club or a nudie bar (NY is famed

for all that crap) and rolling in the

cash you need to just peel off on

some cute little bare-babe dancing

lithe body. See what I mean? What 

the hell's the matter with people?

Once you do get there, they're

all surly and nasty to you, and if

you complain about something, 

it's some beastly bear of a slob

muttering some half-English,

'Shoulda thought about dat when

you wuz parking, buster.'

-

Who among you would even think

of that stuff? See that spot right there?

The building's gone now, they tore 

it down in the early 'oughts (Boy,

I hate that, using that dumb word;

it means like the early 2000's.

Sometimes Britishisms are cool;

sometimes they're bloody rotters).

The building that used to be there

was called McGuirk's Suicide Hall.

From the Civil War era up, right

into the 1920's and past, probably,

it was a thriving whorehouse, filled

with girls on shifts. Like prisoners.

Men came in droves, arriving in

some cases like royalty, and in

other cases like dogs. Over and

over, they'd arrive, weekly or

whatever, pay their dough, call

out or pick their favorite or the

newest, and go upstairs. It was

so bad  -  and how it got that

name  -  that girls used to despair,

and just go upstairs and jump off

the roof, to their deaths. That's

the truth, ain't making nothing

up. By the 1980's it was vacant,

derelict, sad and probably filled

with bad, miserable spirits. I used

to go through the fence they'd put

up, to the side alleys, just to figure

the jumps, and where the poor girls 

would have landed and all that.

Tough stuff, and I wasn't no rogue.

-

You don't need antennae to pic

up on things. Any jerk with half 

a brain, if he pays attention, can

intuit stuff everywhere; the way of

the world, male and female and all

the rest. It's said women are even

better at all that than men. If that's

the case, with all that sensitivity 

and feeling and intuition, then 

I'm probably half or more female

myself. Just goes to show. Who

among you would ever know that?

When the camera lights come on,

you're supposed to know they're

filming  -  that's like Hollywood

crap, and they do it all with signal

lights and the director's clappers

and all. It's so simple for the rest

of life too, but no one ever knows

when the 'important' lights come 

on. They just go about, continuing 

their same stupid ways and 

blunders  and compounding it 

all by convincing themselves, 

over and over, that their wrong 

is most certainly right.

11,948. KENSINGTON

KENSINGTON

Too late for all these flowers

and the scent just makes me

sneeze, and who are these 

guys anyway? Where'd they

come from, some safari?

Wildebeast and anteaters

on the Serengeti Plains?

I'd go forward if I wasn't 

in chains. Yes, yes, there's

moonlight in the cell, so 

what? I can't do anything

with it. You seem to have

brought me here for nothing.

Now, to take a dig at you,

I'd like to be home again,

and with your wife!

-

Remember when 'Edward 

Robinson Squibb was burned

in the fire in is lab? That was

1858, damn you, and this is

now. He managed to survive,

and they sent him to Brooklyn

and he made a mint. Bad

fortune sometimes makes for

great endings.

-

There's too much I just don't

know : In the Winter I can't

get warm, and in the Summer

I can't keep cool. Two distant

endings; but what's in the

middle for someone like me;

inquisitive, wasteful, fool.