I arrived In New York at the end of the void
of the muffled fifties
out of Southern California
middle class ease
watch out for the pachukos!
THEY GOT THE SPEED
-- if you don't count the time with
my itinerant cowboy dad --
boots and saddle were all he had
en la boca cerrada no entra de la mosca!
married briefly into landed wealth
via the real wayward teenager of my mom
MOST LIKELY A FIFTIES PILL POPPING VALLEY GIRL
even more briefly a starlet in some horror flicks
I always thought it was 'Curse of the Cat People,' but now I'm not so sure

this time that I remember
was just before Nam
and all that place brought home to us
Slam bam thank you ma'am
for we were attracted to the city
out of rural America
by the power and the glitter
for even if it did not hold
there was then a center
it was way louder and brighter
than provincial facsimiles
IT ROARED, IT CLATTERED, IT BATTERED AND IT ACTUALLY MATTERED
it sucked us in
but we did not get it -- chumps that we were
that we had been lured there
for the big apple would decide our fate
and throw us back out if we hadn't the weight
all I was, was a 20 year old with 20/20 vision
the same age and in the same year Lee Harvey sailed for Minsk

pray for our souls blessed Marina

see -- the city needs constant new life
as it fed on our silly ambitions
it didn't care if in its embrace
we were crushed
for coming here where
we would rendezvous
with the temptations to our youth
-- if we weren't already in the Nam --
just as Lawrence looked more imaginatively
for his destiny in the desert
forgoing the mapped life
for the ranks of the enlisted and unembellished
sporting scars as their decoration
-- Walt was here before and noted it all --
to remind us this is the gift of the democratic life
¿y no beseball por la Habana?
BETTER FUNGO ONE TO ME WITH A FAT THAI STICK

I had seen the great white way -- really a great carnivore
swimming idly below the ripples of fame and name --
briefly the year before as an easily inebriated
buck sergeant, a mark, a John, a sucker

just someone blowing smoke

and now I wanted in on the action
keeping my hash pipe in my pocket
but I would never have dared Moscow
Let's give Lee some credit
though I wanted to be there in the pits
where you get your oil changed
-- Show me your shit! --
where whores pissed in the street
for I wanted to go over to those in the know
to smother conscience
I too wanted to be on the take but with style and cool if not grace
and we had not yet created Saigon with its consequent
fragging of imagination
Hey GI, you wanna bump my mama?!
for as the fascination of the R.A. army
had not been for me the epaulets and braid of generals
but the chevrons and hash marks of sergeants
where at bottom the ideals of equal opportunity on occasion prevail
at least on the black market if you got the goods
so the con of a cabbie who knew it all
or the streetwise confidence of a 20 dollar hooker
doin' her strut while the Rocketts did theirs
even on the sidewalks down to Rockefeller Center
for their come-on was of a life
teetering on the edge
of these streets of dreams
-- Hey boy get your hands out of your pockets and come on over here! --

before I even made it to Times Square
-- passport control was done in zoot suits --
they got my daddy's patched sport coat
from a phone booth door of the old Penn Station
and when someone grunted out the way
-- Yo! Read the damn sign! --
to the Broadway line
I wasn't sure if it was uptown or downtown
because I hadn't a clue
I was compassless
and had no sense of direction
not even to resurrection
and I sure wasn't going to
ask those casually loitering raptors
-- Hey, man, you got the time? --
where Columbia College was
and I didn't seem to speak the language
of imperial and impervious token takers
so it's hard to describe the sinking feeling
on the first sight of Columbia's
bureau of standards architecture
-- Shit, I've been here before. This isn't why I came. --
No problema, man, its the friggin snow
and it was only romantic till I got there
Ginsburg and Kerouac notwithstanding
I never understood their commitment to feelings even to sensation
when you could have it for a nickel bag
and Harlem knew higher education as slumlord
hey man the rats ain't no smarter here than uptown!
but it drove me to make the city my university

and I soon learned to take the express downtown
where I first found the Cedar Tavern
and the laconic heroes of abstract expressionism
mix Christian Brothers with your yellow
and what you have is a smooth sticking pimento
for there were no minimalists there!
There were then ascetics in their off-avenue caves
but who came out on the Sabbath to party
and one guide to the underground
with hair combed to her ass
(she'd just got here from Philly)
-- she'd be about 65 now --
took me to the Newport jazz festival
and from there I learned of things
further downtown
-- Coltrane, Mingus, and Monk and much more
but I never touched smack!
of the Half Note, the Five Spot
dangerous stuff on stage, loft parties where ideas too were imbibed
the Vanguard
and the night life
that fissure between worldly wise and self-immolation
-- Man, I was more'n ready to leave Columbia,
denim and tweed and yamulka behind --
to hang with that community willing to pay the price for commitment
from there I found out about ban the bomb
and marches from the UN
often enough led by leggy red haired protestors
who were only sane about politics
shit I didn't care where they were going
for I didn't have any convictions to speak of
I would belong here and everywhere
there was a spark of life
¿Que viva la raza?
or the promise of secrets revealed
I learned of committees and actions for Africa and Cuba
en ciudad nuestra La Habana!
staffed by clear eyed women
vulnerable to idealism
but it took awhile to surrender innocence
though just a little later I couldn't understand why
persons of letters who I still thought should know better
took me as an inchoate American original
I did not yet understand their weaknesses
blinding them to pretense
while it did come in handy with the opposite sex
for as Sean Penn in his wisdom has said, we benefited big time
from their vulnerabilities and obsessions
for Dien Bien Phu was a topic of discourse
and they couldn't help but love
those who cared
Viva Fidel! Hands off Cuba!
And we weren't prepared to imagine the fate of French prisoners
gone Asiatic
and it had not yet become our Tet
Bogarting our sense of worth
and Algeria, visited regularly by Otto Scarface Skorzeny
still the Nazis' favorite commando
and visited too by Catherine to get knocked up in
politically conscious Arabic
which was too much of a good thing
especially if they spoke French
and Vietnam was safely on page two
while the end of the fifties was a paragraph
transitioning to a remarkable anticlimax
with tricky Dick doorman to sclerosis
of our imaginative life
though he did leave Squeaky and Charles behind
to mark the passage of time
I'll never forget just a little later walking quickly past
The Manchurian Candidate
and Dr. Strangelove
to a theater on Broadway about 49th featuring John Wayne
in a green beret on a poster while Sgt. Waugh of the old 82nd
was a cutout in fiberboard
there on the sidewalk pointing out
what we had failed to notice
as if the hypocrisies impeached
at the beginning of one more age
marking the end of restraint
could keep Managua earthquake-free!

-- we foolishly thought it a kind of heroism
to venture timidly to the underworld --
not knowing of Lawrence's bold forays
and Hunter wasn't there to guide us
while the kids later who freaked
their fathers
didn't have to work so hard
to feel free
for they had the guts to act as they felt
even though alone in a VW in Arkansas
might end your life
they had learned Elridge Cleaver's lessons
the honky way
die hippie and find your white rabbit

and in some circles women still wore steel
in their bodices
and the movie star couples so admired
wore matching blue denim short suits
with the bruising obvious to everyone at pool side
BUT THE DODGERS WENT DOWN IN FOUR TO THE BOMBERS
while I, back in the Apple out of the madness of loneliness
sought out something to settle my mind
and when I overheard a group at the next table
between the oval of the great old center bar
and the pastrami counter
of the West End, the first oasis in fifty blocks
of the upper west side, in a wadde just this side of 125th street

the lull before Harlem

and it seemed they knew how to volley words
and could dig up the positions that I knew I should defend
and I hungered to be around that awhile
for I'd not yet exercised my mind
and smart talk has its own attraction
and perhaps addiction
and my stuttering, impassioned incapacity to articulate
fooled them into thinking I meant more than I could say
hooking them to doing what they could not do
mistaking me for someone who could act
though it would take Harry to teach
me not to talk my game away
at least in my bar life
something to know when someone was about to draw down on you
Freeze asshole don't say another word!
for they would flash me ideas
and David B. showed me how to
look at things from aslant
a view to use as needed
and on a page a second coming
while they couldn't know all I really wanted
was a front from which I could camouflage
my absolute lack of commitment to any known center
for now I could venture anywhere
not needing to believe in either this or that
for while they captured me unawares
then I too them
and anyway Camelot was on the big screen
and so what if the wise guys got out the vote
only to have their deal that couldn't be refused
renegotiated under royal prerogatives
as Sam Giancanna and the king extemporaneous
let their seed battle for position
crossing the void to a common private place
and a man who would understand
a deal is a deal
had to have the chromosomes for this job
'when you come to a fork in the road take it'
- Yogi Berra, catcher
so that an economy where it was foremost
that things worked according to plan
(improvisation a suit of the anti-Christ)
but something in Lyndon's hard scrabble
responded to the back of the bus
though not before Bobby's Bay of Pigs
(then later the Mariel invasion would pay us back)
but it put the gringo sugar brigades on notice
THAT CIVIL RIGHTS WOULD NOT BE TOLERATED
DURING FREEDOM SUMMER
pack your bags, gringo, and go home, no habla ingles!
for if the nightlife had not begun
to alter my reflexes
I just might have reupped
-- proving to me now personal corruption of value! --
because I myself sure as shit didn't know
which was the dirty end of the stick

so I remember Tom, a soldier of fortune
I found living in our communal apartment
sometime after our electricity had been turned off
on my return from sleeping around Hollywood
trying to raise a few bucks for my personal cause
whose end justified the means
so Tom hustled me into looking at dry rot p.t. boats
moored around a curve of the East River
so that we could slide on down to Miami
joining other midnight cowboys in the Bermuda Triangle
posturing to be in on the action
for he knew a guy who, over a cafe con leche
AND NO MESCALINE AT ALL
had given him the invasion plans
the Bay of Pigs had a place for the homeless
Hey Fidel, come chew on my chinga!
but there wasn't an engine in the lot
So I slipped back to the First Avenue singles bar
where I walked my beat
for I was there when they were invented
by the guy whose joint midtown later
was the site of the Great Sparks Pub Rubout
-- he'd giggoloed his first place uptown
from Gloria who couldn't follow his moves
some said she spent too much time with her head in a dryer
and his place in Gramercy Park was an arena
for many famous after-hour rat shoots
hosted by Harry in the basement
when he could find the stairs
and blessed by Stan, holding his cojones
so old Tom had been there too when in a high stakes
invitation to russian roulette
he took hesitation amiss
and Gary exited just ahead down straight stairs
expecting the muzzle blast to propel him
through the glass doors which had a one in six chance
of being unlocked his Reedley slippers with the holes the same ones he wore off the bus
-- flapping really fast, thwap, thwap

though this was just before Joey Gallo
formed the Italian American freedom front
and JFK was on the throne
though I don't think I noticed
but I remember well
that after that Dallas afternoon
Lee had got there first

Marina, Marina, say a prayer for us

I walked the boards alone in the only bar open
in the Apple
since New Yorkers had too much style
to take it in stride
they didn't do business as usual
at least not that night
and that's mighty unusual in the cradle of commerce
but New Yorkers have a flair
evident Christmas Eve and morning
when even a Times Square rerun house
-- this was way before Disney --
was as still as a church
the projectors flickered truth in sight and sound
and no one minded the smoke
contact high connecting us before Ken's tests!
when you could walk the city
like a high ridge to a distant peak
the pollution making an eternal sunset
with only the tracks of those who had gone before
and all the Christs at the Met
could be seen in the company
of spirit solely

even though I would never have so said
being dedicated to the notions
of a materially driven world
and the Battleship Potemkin playing midnight at the Thalia
or around the comer at the New Yorker
an oasis in the dry West Side
was apocalyptic enough
though Dreyer's Joan made me pause
and there were no chain espresso places en route
not even a good Blarney Stone
but then New York was still neighborhood
I left just before I found the way
of the hapless satchel bomber
the Weathermen leaving their village building a lot on 10th street
having no place in life and no hope on the street
not even on the corner
-- Hey motherfucker, who are you staring at? --
and a bit after I stopped being moved by art
where Woody reassured us there were only movies
so who needs to read this?!

for I had observed that the creative spark
could care less about the symmetry of the host life
reflecting perhaps winter no longer cleansed the city
with the deep snow of movie times
for by the mid-sixties confusion had turned to slush
and the Lower East Side was not much longer
to be a colony of European immigration
6th street and Second Avenue as the border
the all night bagel house a palace of solace
and from there you journeyed east
though it would be well into the next decade
before McSorley's admitted women
and neuveau immigrants
who didn't seem to understand
how to wait to be equal
Soda crackers, cheese, onions, beer and mustard
always convey to me a time and a place
-- draw one for you pal? --
and while radicals influenced my beliefs
David had taught me to look at the heft and feel of things
which was no excuse for not finding something sure
so my beliefs weren't enough for convictions
it would take a lifetime of tempering for that
I didn't go to Cuba because it was a hassle
though I was envious of those who did
the implied threat enough for cowards like me
I'll need your passport, please
later returning through Miami customs
from funky down home Sandinista Nicaragua
with a group of 'duped' movie stuntmen
we ah-shucked the custom cops
while Harry round tripped his stash in the back of the plane
they wanted to see a trick in place of a search
but we kept Dinner in Managua in a lunchbox
and I didn't witness in the south
though I knew those who did and I printed their stories
AND I CERTAINLY DID NOT PUT MY BODY ON THE LINE (I WAS NO V.C.!)
and consequence obvious to all
had not been invented for we were pretty safe so long as we
stayed where they thought we belonged
though I found the time to add my somewhat stuttery physicality
to invitation-only volleyball games on campus
with academic poets
punctuating their aspirations with deft spiking of ambiguity
while On The Road put ambition in perspective
at least of the ordinary kind
teaching me to savor the experience
of back alleys without pretense
tho I always scurried away by dawn
but most especially the lofts of the painterly
with the intimate smells of communal life mixed
with pigment and factory solvents
for you didn't buy space then
you earned it cleaning the debris
of the previous hundred tears of usually
exploitive manufacture
and the smoke of the weed helped with the smell
-- not unlike the bush --
and I found you didn't need Tangiers
to touch bottom
we skipped right by the community stage
the CIA didn't even bother to confuse us
Hey, bro, can I score a line?
APOCALYPSE NOW WAS HAPPENING ON THE HOME FRONT TOO
dreams of state-sanctioned genocide
could be transferred to the page freely
in a society obsessed by death
I spent years working on that
-- thanks Jessica for showing us why! --
while at Gettysburg where a supermarket
is slated as marker for the infirmary graves
Abe had meditated upon the transitions from life
to a more permanent place
and he knew the revolution had left many words as graffiti
now it is not only original people's graves we deface
shit they been dead 1000 years

and Hank will never top the Babe

the great plains states empty as prophesied
while prior to Jimi's reveries
hey he was a grunt just like us
I actually heard music for the first time
Maria soaring to the very back of the kitchen
as I dealt with the stench of the hangover
of nighttime hilarity
with piss and stale beer
janitoring bars
to Strange Fruit and Gloomy Sunday
turned up loud rendered doubly dark
by noonday sun finally clearing the street
of midnight obsessions making it obvious
better to stay in an after hours joint
until the hollering and honks marking morning deliveries
Good Morning Vietnam!
cushioned the hammering in your head
-- better'n hunkering while being mortared in the chow line --
though in truth I had to teach myself to imbibe
while the small cigars I affected fooled a few
-- In the streets of Chicago in '68 they thought me a cop
still reeking of tear gas I could walk into a steakhouse and
see me on t.v. --
watching the longhaired volunteer medic swab my eyes
still I discovered my utter incapacity to handle
the mandated national fears
of our collective consciousness
which New York did not even
bother to masquerade
you noticed even when stoned to your eyelids
as the building trades for instance
could not but be obscene in ten languages
hey puta, hey bitch, hey whore come on over here!
and forget respect in the Nam
we divided the world into mama sans and Johns
and to any female of any color in the Apple
daring to sashay down the street
-- hey baby come ride my jackhammer! --
better the veil in Manhattan
while in Babylon by the bay
since Harry Bridges' time
there has been a romance being seen
working with your hands
even if an amputee
-- a certain poetic expression --
every passerby sees the grace of a high steel walker
even when constructing another casino
to deaden the fall
or the fire guys standing on the line
against the seasonal assault
blown out of the economy of the ambitious
the few who know in a work-a-day way
the influx of bear and timber rattler
to the warmth of the exhausted
crashed at the staging area
but the lady cop who pulls you over
and has compassion for your story
knows too what it feels like
to get a kick out of work
-- even my dentist says he's also in it to help --
or to stand with bulging tool belts
on a rafter removed
from mundane things
is no more than the garbage guy's carrying on
at 20 below zero
toking up as needed of course
or driving a ferry through fog to the bridge
in Alcatraz's slack tide
hoping the bud was small
or a Muni driver pulling right up to the curb
or Sierra ski bums, male and female foregoing apprenticeship
to fall a tree in a clean line
or pilot a 20 ton snow plow with surety
or the bike messenger's precarious journey
whose means is the end
or the fishing fleet's assembly for a comrade sunk in Shelter Cove
as good as Hoover Dam's mighty story
WALT TOLD US THEN THAT WORK WAS WORK IF IT FELT AS GOOD
AS WOODY SUNG ABOUT IT
but it would take the great beast slouching
to this grand Bethleham of commerce and races
to make us get our feet on the ground
knocking away the fear driven braces
tho' few New York tradesmen value the gallantry
of a bereted cable car driver
-- do I look like a chump? --

so we all zippoed a hooch
You know that, Marina

the house-builder at work in cities or anywhere, the preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,
the hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places,
laying them regular, setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises
according as they were prepared,
the blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men,
their curv'd limbs
bending, standing, astride the beams driving in pins
holding on by posts and braces

- Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass

it was a few years more
about the time of the Danang beach-head
before I sampled illegal drugs
the 50's legal variety scaring even me
fifties mamas sleeping late with eyes masked
though I was already partaking
of the illicit life
I think it was in the top apartment
of a building one room wide on the Hudson docks
where my first night there lulled by the sonority
not of surf but the whir of tires on the Westside Highway
I was welcomed to Weehawken Street
by the seriously sized rat gambolling across my bed
-- but no vipers hidden in the sand --
the result of my first toke was purely appetite

I did Woodstock in a day

later I would crawl home at dawn
from a midnight patrol
after unremembered degradations
corroding my bones
exposing my dreams
crapping in my empty tub
after a night of green chartruese
WHILE MY TWIN WAS ALSO NUMBING HIMSELF TO PATROLLING WITH HIS BOOTS SUCKED BY SWAMP JUICE
MIND FILLED WITH GRENADE WIRED TO GO
AT THE APEX OF HIS TRIANGLE
it was not before I was free to go
that I found the mindbending alternatives to the straight life
but when I went behind the bar
to walk the boards as the exiles drifted in
the shadows of Times Square emerging
I Can't Get No Satisfact-tion resonating off the bottles
while the lifers descended the stairs in a rage
where the pimps always carrying -- eased on
into a perimeter position
creating the silhouettes of the Apple's
unique understanding of guerilla warfare
and though Harlem didn't riot
and wasn't yet nuked
not until later in 1964
as cops of the precinct
left their suburban enclaves
to count cartridges on their Manhattan bars of choice
punching up Puff the Magic Dragon on the box

we were all in the know, you know that, Marina

who could know if grace would cleanse us
and make us whole
but then no longer would Uptown be Paris of the New World
as it became the Beirut to be
and we'd make damn sure Saigon was not any longer Paris
of the Orient
Chinga my sister, GI, I'm no V. C.
sorry about that C.C. Ryder.

while in Harlem hostages too would be taken
and Fidel would have had no balcony to wave from
Lee would have to go to Havana to return the greeting
soon after our first in-country offensives
and no more would 125th St. be the boulevard of choice
for real lovers to stroll

and I'm real sorry about that Marina

and I made it to the Apollo
and the annual Harlem gangsters ball
though I dropped my bottle of Tangueray at the door
before LBJ decided to bomb today
for he had the Gulf of Tonkin in his pocket
and he could send the marines to search and destroy
to his heart's desire
while the instability of weather in the Apple
told us of things to come
and the dark stretches of the avenues
had not yet been lit by post-Vietnam boutiques
and finding dues paying members of Manhattan's waitress corps
gathered there from
America's depleting center
-- it was obvious many were also interested
in matters of lit and unlit
as were many who hid behind an uptown front
so we found in New York that temptation
could still afford the rents
while I counted the Moran family tugs
from my window onto the western frontier
rearranging what the planners and the Mob
had left of the waterfront
broken docks without the silhouette of clipper ships,
and later mighty steamers stacks
still Jersey across the infinite Hudson
was the edge of the continent
husbanding our dreams
seen from our island that we knew to leave
was to get caught in the undertow from out there
and 'wanted for murder -- Gilligan the Cop'
was announced to me by the cleanout uptown dude
who walked across my shoes
as I sat in the subway stalled
at 110th and Broadway
while his beautiful lady announced her ambivalences
toward the future by her hesitancies
in the present

sorry about that

though I had watched the nuclear standoff
with faint t.v. images, like memory
through discount furniture store windows
I remember my first television color experience
was Billy Mills winning the '64 Olympics 5000
for the Buffalo People
and began a decade of late late shows
where even Charlton seemed meaningful
as Moses greeting another dawn
and his in-law watched over our bridges and approaches
making sure the Apple's ghettos would be vertical
and TV's Tokyo and the World's Fair are still vivid memories
but the really important things slid below the surface
like my life
even the Cuban Missile Crisis in black and white
behind dirty windows
I remember I like a Tijuana street
it was real only in hindsight when Jack Ruby stole the show on primetime
though the replay is more faded than my thoughts
and my mind I think was oblivious to reality
occupied only by fears and ambition
and desires and never enough temptations
for I still remember Steve visiting me
in my communal apartment
over the neighborhood funeral parlor
where bets were placed without distraction
and I realized his mind was filled with equations
while I equated obsessions with thought
for in the city I could do what it took to be self preoccupied
to not imagine the futility of personal indignation
in the hate-infested South
or a grimy precinct squad room
or grunts from everywhere in the world witness at a Bell Telephone hour
where the righteous were forced
to deny themselves
here and in the bush
so how did so many resist that?!
it needed an exercise of character
for which I was unprepared
to freely step on a bus bound for the Mississippi border

there'd be no Transit Authority there!

and when Martin made politics religion
and Malcolm pointed out how scared we were
of more than one armed Black man
AND HAMMERIN' HANK, TRACKING THE BABE
TO THE WHITE MAN'S SECRET LAIR
where later Barry would bond with him
but I was too busy negotiating
with high-priced abortionists
who I'd heard about after hours
at the end of the bar
and who I saw post-op
descending the ramp of the Guggenheim
and I gave more thought to Barney's Beanery
or Genet, or the Brig, or Burroughs, or Godard
-- and for sure I was too dumb
and way too straight to recognize Allen was keeping track
of our national soul --
and I gave no time at all to the thoughts
of Norman Morrison
-- though I spent time learning Jim's beat! --
I didn't try to empathize with his indignation
at our finding it so easy to see
a distant Asian people as figments
of our imagined national will
when he sat, then lifted the can
of gasoline with which he doused himself
and then struck the match -- or was it a lighter? --
that should have inflamed our conscience
as no number of charcoaled Buddhist priests
had been able
and I hadn't either found the righteous path of the resident
Hanoi Hilton bubbas
who like Buddha know the value of each day
so that the rest of us today think nothing of our neighbors
driving anxiously on the Jersey Turnpike
knowing they will be periodically pulled over
for driving while being Black
or hair too long
or an Indian prince in Texas called Mex
or in a car too full to be safely
in middle class absorption
but I scanned the Voice
for events off-beat and creative

and I hoped sitting in the far left field bleachers
with other recent immigrants counted

without once looking in my own heart
thus I might not have required
later open heart surgery
until someone walked on my feet
as I cruised Tap-a-Keg uptown
en route to the village circuit of bars
that were about as far out as I dared go
though it has to be said that then
you could still know a neighborhood
by its popular drinking establishments
but the village Joints were safely White
Dylan Thomas notwithstanding
until I allowed dancing
at the back of the bar on Christopher Street
violating written and unwritten ordinances
where Jimmy T. who my dad had taught to cowboy
found me there while taking a break from a shoot as Marlboro Man
this was way before the Stonewall Rebellion
but then that was about the time
obscenity became politic
-- Hey, hey LBJ, who you goin' to bomb today? --
and I was one more small instrument
of the fall

perhaps while the OAS was letting the blood of Parisians
and Che was Bolivia-bound
with Fidel's blessings
Hasta a la Victoria siempre
-- No damn paseran, Companero --
I reveled only in what I could imagine
for somewhere off-Broadway what could be thought
could be done
and soon Mohammed All would stand alone stage left
right on Broadway
his show closing after the dress rehearsal
but not until he found the jingle
of our jingoistic voyeurism
telling us he was no chump he could see
that those who liked to liberate
scared Vietnamese kids
with the barrel of a gun
sure weren't no friends of his
here or in the bush
for no Vietcong cadre had wormed their way into
our judicial system to keep him
from doing what that one man did best
'No Viet Cong ever called me nigger!'
and I began to feel that
our race just might be dead wrong

for Mohammed's actions were way bigger than his words

which were way bigger than his uncanny way
of making a square a space to be reckoned with
float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!
Bundini said
for others had told me so
but Mohammed made me feel it
'Ali boma ye, Ali boma ye
still I didn't march until the movement swelled
until it even went down Madison Avenue
or was it up Fifth?
and snatched me off the sidewalk
for even I could see
no matter what they say now
that peace without victory
had become safely sure
there the rest of us were
rivalling even Macy's Thanksgiving parade
but the revisionists gloss right over that

for while I had hid behind an interest
in ideas and romantic causes
making sure I was hard to see
nonetheless I could feel neural pathways
growing; fed by new capillary beds
as even without a center
though some would say a cancer
that a casual observer might notice
I was stretched in all directions
until finally in remission
I began to at last surmise
what was supposed to be there
and I began to have an idea
of who I might be
even if the what was still paper mache
for it would take me decades
to finally become a human man
long after I espoused a free press
as fear rusted my deeds
just as they planned
and demon fantasy hosted on my inner life
and like the Dead's Hell's Angel outriders
Acid made sense of what I'd let be done to me
so that when I finally did
hitch on out of the Apple
there was scarcely a thing
I knew or could do
I had to learn three decades of common sense
in the few years proving it too late
to gradually find the way of a thing
AND HANK HAD HIS 500th DINGER BY THEN
though I could nip a board and pound a nail
I never could understand how things fit together
at least I thought I would as I knew I should
at long last have convictions
to help me withstand hesitancy
-- not a Bedouin vice --

and the majors wouldn't raindate the game
the day Bobby was shot

but I didn't stay
in either hopeful Sandinista Nicaragua
or ecstatically Mujahadeen Afghanistan
long enough to share the pain

and I made damn sure I risked nothing
I didn't buy into one person makes a difference

protesting our murderous policies in CentroAmerica
-- the players here and there still unrepentant --
Ollie North and Elliott Abrams cha, chaing on the land fill
of macheted kids irridescent clothes
being sure that it benefited no one
to stand individually in protest of death taxes paid
and I wasn't anywhere near
-- though I lent a camera --
when Brian Wilson lost his legs
-- doing it for all Vietnam vets --
'When you're willing to pay the price for what you believe you're free'
on the tracks of the Concord army (or is it navy?) depot
Thoreau and Emerson would have approved
and Walt must be the patron saint
of construction guys
finally they would again be as free as he said they were

I finally began to raise my sights
soon after.... but that's another story
but there -- back then -- near the very center
of Greenwich Village time
standing over the confluence of the Sixth Ave and Broadway lines
by the Sixth Avenue handball court
now a choice location for ads
of athletic shoes sewn by colonized
TB kids
from where you could hear the catcalls
from the Women's House of Detention up the Avenue
Hey honey shake it but don't break it
I realized for the first time
man I stood for zero
that's why I was no hero
when a large Native American
from a plains state
aiyah, aiyah!
hit me in the third eye
for banging on his phone booth
really for just being an asshole
for not knowing about Wounded Knee
though I sure as shit knew Ken wasn't Lewis or Clark
really for just letting it be
and I couldn't remember how I was to act
-- and forget react
I had to go back to a beginning
and build myself from scratch
and maybe with a little less scotch
which couldn't mask the confusion
though Sitting Bill said
if you lose something go back and find it
for ideas sure seemed to have failed me
as I faltered standing for what I thought
and I couldn't help but look with suspicion
at those who could stay upright
later I would remember my corruptibility
leading only to frivolity
as I rejected unexpected favors
even from the universe
for I found in my own weakness
the grandeur of the few untempted
and this is in recognition of what they did
forgotten without street names
or a national will to remember
here or in the bush

It's been a long time gone Marina

for those who have tracked the passing
of the intrepid few in remote Mississippi counties
like Gary or Milton have done
a long way from Tomkins Square where the rioters stood a chance

some say Hue even seemed safe compared to Gulf coast hate

and put them right there on a page
creating a national monument
that must join Crazy Horse's mountain
in the center of the universe
replacing Teddy's gift of wilderness lost
no longer able to tether our soul
even if witnessed by such a remarkable few
who too deserve praise
if only in the circle of an individual family
for I came to see unheroically late
that we must remember something
as towns lose their centers
Manhattan even its real Times Square
and you know they can't leave Yankee Stadium in the ghetto
and the libraries close in the rush

as rememberance seems to be for the few, Marina

who remind us how to remain human
whereas but a few years ago
it was not uncommon
for a journeyman in the trades to preach eloquent civics
with unnecessary craftsmanship
like Utah does now
and Studs always has
-- Hugh Thompson taught us that --
when he armed his machine guns
sighting down on brothers gone astray
like Frank Serpico did in the City
rather than be a Calley Boy
'Did you fight or did you run? And what did you tell him, Rusty?
We responded to their rifle fire with everything we had.'
doing five hundred slopes like they used to
back in the mall
-- and it earned the NVA Saigon after the fall --
but Calley was out in two years
I heard he's now into shoes
and Medina even less
just as those two real White Detroit cops
who did Malise Greene
with flashlights
or any number of the boys in blue at Fort Apache
got out after a few
they could be trusted not to skip
after all "you know they were good boys
who got a little carried away"
but smart aleck Black street dealers
or lowlife barroom brawlers
or gringos with a thing for weed
can do time till they hit the head
in a wheelchair
where there's no special access for cons
and we've got to remember these days
indigent Whites will do and very well too
we might have color-coded the chair
but lethal injection has democratized
the process of being poor
HEY KARLA FAYE LAY ON HER CROSS LIKE THE REST
a friend on a town council said to me
remember we have the will and the means
to incarcerate until all small towns
feeling the squeeze of dulled expectations
can have their own institution of maximum security
to stabilize their debt to society
Johnny Machine went from Sing Sing brother to small town sheriff
-- back then though --
and he said over a natural Coke we are facing facts of life
for the Hispanic birth rate warrants building beds
for no one would have realized in 1888
that the penitentiary movement was the vanguard
of an American economic miracle
I had read where an upstate boy named Willy
caught the Apple's eye
so that an Edison and Westinghouse
fighting block by block for electrified turf
felt if they could get the other to
fry the butcher of Buffalo
then that would obviously not be the safe way to light the Great White Way
even when it led to a Bell Telephone hour
-- which led all the way to fateful 1963
including George Lincoln Rockwell's pilgrimage
to celebrate the beginning of the end
visiting Joseph McCarthy's grave with the request
that the sacred memory of saints
be not disturbed: 'there oughta be a law'
celebrating there Adolph's name day
THE DAY AFTER HANK HIT HIS 300th OFF THE METS
AND THE BIRCHERS FREAKED
and in that same year foretold in Revelations
George then continued on to sing praises
direct to Louis Farrakhan's devotees

and Malcolm began to stand alone in Harlem, Marina

but in New York that same year my dad died
for I remember November 22 at Chinese food 103 & Broadway
where I must have felt faint from the MSG
and I don't think Lee was feeling so good either, Marina says
you know that was the year the summer cooked
as New Yorkers finally began to melt down
which I thought was a pretty liberated place
after the buttoned-up youth of a ranch life
it sure meant more to me than less prosaic things
and there weren't many better places
than bars to hang out
as there are worse things to do
than downing a cold one watching a Met's game
It's not the catching's the problem it's the chasing, Casey said
this was before too much coke took out the fun
and Yankee Stadium needs the heat
to create revolutionary fervor
and these small pleasures did in many a hard core radical
Leading all the way to Studio 54 extravagance
remembering Fidel always said he came to pitch
and some people said Rap Brown
had a curve ball that popped
-- was El Ducque he? --

and Hank was going to bring the south to its feet

for this is why taverns became our living rooms
at least for those of us without kitchen tables
and at first I didn't realize
addiction recognized
is a whole lot more attracting
than ambition and avarice denied
for in fact the worldly wise
don't do so good
in the intensity of illicit night life
they lost their wives or a few teeth
and sometimes got buggered to boot
and for sure they were never invited
into the storage room behind
the single table
under the dangling bulb
for a few tokes or a blow
you had to be able to handle
a Walter B. Cooke for that
and go in one at a time
then when it got rough
in some small village bar
just below sidewalk level
it was the old time street cats you knew
who drank quietly at the business end of the stick
waiting coolly to dance
The ancient first baseman's glove dangling from a rear pocket
I Heard It Through The Grapevine their time to make a move
and they stayed during middle class White flight
and they were there when there was blood to mop
some bloods had bled in the Nam but hadn't been damned
so what could I do but put down my prejudices

realizing finally I was just one of the boys, Marina

me and my Samoan gunnery sergeant now watching the door
for you know that wasn't a bad place to stop
though it was they who had accepted me
with an invitation to an old-time New Year's rent party
doing the funky chicken learned then and there
-- the parlere shuffle finally evolved --
as I can remember lying on the pavement
trying with corrupted teeth
to bite off the fat fingers
dislocating my jaw
until Jose saw I had no counter to the mount
and round kicked my man in the ear
looking upside down in the window
at the Lion's Head somewhat hip
where they sat and talked and talked
-- Do you really think Norman understands the implication of his words? --
and idly watched my story unfold on the street
while next door at number 55
-- just this side of the Stone Wall where
for sure they in turn
thought us uniformly straight --
the clientelle moved to the 55 from The No Name
where they took time out from life's hustle
for sex, connections and equality
with Marvin Gaye turned way up on the box
What's Going On with the high notes freaking out the honkies

I did that Marina!

and the pseudohip fled to safer places
and the day bartender's book
would include nothing past the color line of 8
while those determined not to be kept
by place or race
AND WHO COULD CARRY THEIR OWN FREIGHT
drifted into this island of democracy
where victims were still free
to attract their predators

that song came to me one night
as I pried Crazy Horse, drifted onto the scene
in hope of movie work,
off the front door bars
across the street from General Sheridan's ghost
unremembered by most for his qualities in making us Indian free
-- we didn't have Wyatt Earp who lived on into cinematic times
there to referee --
so you can understand how hard it was to walk the boards
without a shooter, handed me my first night,
-- cognac with a Galliano float --
and a hit or two
to face those open psyches without fortification
why it took years and the Second Coming to pull off
but when the bar closed my first night
and I found my clientele
passed out around the Square
I had my first lesson in the responsibilities
of being a dealer
and I became an artist
at the short pour and the floated drink
but I wasn't free to leave
till I could do it dry
though I was as eager as any other hustler
to see what action the night brought
and I usually got tipped enough
I didn't need to salt the cup though Bradley, my boss, who casually caught punches
even when ripped
with his large hands aided by a little
walleyed vision
regularly being the cover mug shot of mystery stories
- the WWII teenaged translator to Jap GI's about to be blowdried -

with his wild eyes and pockmarked face
who was an openhearted jazz fan
though I'm sure he never knew of the Dead
and could pick out a tune
providing a place where anyone who'd ever had
a professional, even if short-lived, gig was valued
I remember Mingus cuffing himself
-- he'd had them under his dashiki --
onto an aspiring pimp who whimpered
as Charles swallowed the key
don't fret friend I'll shit it out before last call!
Bradley would phone in half mast
from the Vanguard or wherever it was hot
and I never did go down the street to hear
Bobby Timmons play
but me and him and finally an Arapaho activist all knew Marcela
he'd call, Brad would, to see if the riot had begun yet
everything ok down there -- yep
shit how do I know you're not saying yep
from the short end of a. .44
or rodeoing on our dirty damn floor

meanwhile I committed endless small crimes
of mutual consent
without notoriety, quietly muffling
my soul's heartfelt cries
which I mistook for heartburn
from a shift's six cups of
the square's radioactive brew
till my day finally came
and I ran in the great race
of light and dark
I counted on the spirit of Billy to speed me on
Gary proudly represented dark
in vermillion shoes
from Hudson's on 42nd Street
and I gold from Paragon
so the various bar folk
especially the Roadhouse crew across the square
put their wagers in Peter's cowboy hat
even though he clearly had some Indian blood
and race day was with an auspicious sprinkle
for those who kept watch
while the proud purveyors of dark
brought their drinks into the bleachers
from way past last call
while Harry coached in boots
coasting easily with me panting in spikes
but before this I had spent 1964 nights
looking I think longingly west
over the Hudson to where they still dreamed
of secret places of the heart
until the Norwegian-American line
finally had a ship with a bridge
-- and no payload for Haiphong --
that rose over the elevated Westside Highway
to block my view of eternity not to mention the Jersey shore
from the shortest street in the city
in an apartment a full block of that street wide
sublet from a well published intellectual
whose limp the end of the line bus driver
ignored as he gunned it back to the barn
-- sorry, about that --
along I think 9th St.
and in a typical Times Square reaction
I did a better sprint than I did for God
to catch that driver by the mirror
pulling myself up to strike him in his seat of power
while he in turn tried to leave me on a double parked gypsy cab

but most days I spent in the reading room
of the New York city library
in reverie at another age foretold in microfilm
and on the way home waylaid by castaways
from the Cuban
revolution
who were washed ashore here first, New Delhi later
so that Cuban-Chinese cuisine
or just saffron rice, beans and avacate
and don't forget deliciously silty
cafe con leche
were all I was nostalgic for anywhere in the world
so when I finally escaped my whims
and got to the Himalayas
New York rice and beans
were all that pulled me back

but James Earl Ray had not yet
escaped from his Missouri prison
for the time line forecast in Revelations, and our own National Enquirer,
had yet to be printed
to broadcast this passing moment of hope
in an inevitable trail of grimy boarding houses
of a life amongst those sentenced
to the monotony of despair
until he arrived in the rooming house bathroom
just across the color divide
with such a perfect view of the Lorraine

now we all still wonder how he did that, Marina

so much better than everything
he had done before
and thirty years later to the day
about the time it took Ho to cross the border
back to his place in history
I spent an Easter afternoon
in a spring blizzard
hearing this in the cosmic commentary of the St. Matthew Passion
no wonder we identify so well with the holy city --
even though it will never have more than a triple A club
though the life might later be
revisioned or reviled
while Malcolm was just then
giving us a piece of his mind
and Sheriff Jim Clark
-- let's make sure we somewhere here
list Bull Connor's name too --
and let's list the Parchmon Farm guards who brought
South Africa to the Delta with acts we've scrubbed
from collective memory until Gary reminded us
while he Bull was marching with his deputys' revolvers drawn
into the sanctuary of Selma's Tabernacle Baptist
-- to guard against insurrection --
and like Schwerner, Goodman and Cheney
and the nine nameless lynched bodies
they found instead
let us remember Price, the shooter and Rainey
and note their present place in history here too
you know that's how Lee got there, Marina
and Hank has always said
'King and Robinson they're the real home run hitters'

while at the scene below the streets of 46th Street
Black genius like LaMont Washington and others
flowered briefly and died
in the short life expectancy
predicted statistically by a UN report
while their gringo friends lived to be celebrities
and regular guests on the Tonight Show
but in my only relief that decade
from the Manhattan of the mind
-- I had vowed success or failure
in the canyons of the worldly wise --
I returned to the Golden State for my dad's funeral
there aged vaqueros without chaps and
kid cowboys-to-be gathered
in the same Santa Ynez Valley of his youthful belief
in the material world as eternal
how could he know he would have
no cowboy son
but one who was
merely an urban expatriot from the way things were
though I would have to wait for Dr. Thompson to give me the
prescription to believe in what I thought
but notating my admissions gave me a needed lift
even when swinging in my shrouds
from an eighty foot swamp pine
tho I'd never witnessed a hangman's 10 foot drop
as Breton told us of from his adjoining cell
so that I made an earnest error
vowing to feel that every day
even the day we checked out plain maple caskets my uncle and me (Barry likes maple when he swings, for it won't split)
not realizing what a mere shadow of the eternal
embellished memory can be
but I didn't know then lots of things
for instance I didn't know that I was from bad seed
or that a great-great-grandfather
had been instrumental in the death
of Tecumseh's dream
that of a Democratic confederation of original peoples

I wonder if Ho read of him too

when he too spent time in New York's great reading room
and that a more recent uncle
in the pay of the company to whose funeral I never understood why I didn't go
I wished to but didn't
apprentice in the surveillance craft as I think he thought I couldn't
keep a secret
he had dickered with some made men
some say out of Chicago
mentioned in passing in books of the conspiracy
to end America's newfound innocence
triggered perhaps by the desire
to abet Fidel's untimely death
hey amigo that companero there with the cigar
drop something in his rum
-- with very little success it must be noted --
tho he got Gary Powers who squirmed traded at Checkpoint Charley
for Colonel Able who didn't
and that my little moment of infamy
was to win the right to spread degradation
-- weakening the bones of the republic --
me and the New York Review of Sex and Politics
portrait of where we are now
my miniature Swiss Army knife with the fingernail file
was removed from me in a rough frisk
by the obscenity squad
so that I wouldn't escape justice
by piecemeal suicide
but when I was booked at the 13th Precinct
was it just off Seventh Avenue?
the detectives there quick drew to a double take
on seeing a village bartender also on the make
there in the booking room door
for this was in the lull between exculpations
and when they had laid their pieces on the stick
might I have been wired for sound
and I thought this might be the time they took exception
to Bradley's refusal to give them their fair share
for looking the other way
when an obstreperous customer found himself
sidewalk bound with newly impaired hearing
remember one hand washes the other they said
or as a Mafia distributor of consensual smut told me
'Remember kid, 100 percent of nothin' is nothin.''
but then we always had Roscoe on the A.M. to fall back on
where 'everything is everything and nothing is nothing'
and Symphony Sid bringing it on home
but in the south when it got too tough
for even heroic adults
as honky crowds stepped out of church
to hold the burning bus doors shut
to you know 'let the niggers fry'
'Hey let 'em fry, hey, hey'
so that the next wave of resistance
was from the kids who said
'if not us, who?'
'if not now, when?'
a message we never wanted to hear
Not in Sarajevo not in Kilgali
but meanwhile back in the Apple Harry advised me
to have my ribs x-rayed by a doctor he knew
who kept his finger on the pulse
of the independently wealthy drinking crowd
and he was right about that too
for there in the lower 5th Avenue waiting room
safely down the avenue from 14th St. Lowlife
-- we've learned it's best to see things from afar --
like a high altitude bombing run
there were all my drunks who could afford the habit
waiting to score their vitamin B-12 shots
from Goebbel's favorite doctor
for the bar world was important here and the Reich
-- you know we got the good stuff directly
offloaded from Air America --
in developing some of our most intrepid thinkers
just as James Earl Ray learned in Nuremburg beer halls
how all the mugs still bore the swastika at bottom
and later in Alton, Illinois taverns
he would follow raptly
Joseph McCarthy's inevitable logic
that surely led to Tommy's pinball wizardry
while another Morrison inticed the avant garde of the White middle class
through the door to small free acts of self-destruction
- and was a solace to the grunt in the field tapped into a pirate broadcast
reprise before a one in ten option of buying the farm

but I raptly saluted some mythic
proletariat hero
knowing nothing in fact about Flint, Michigan
so I couldn't handle Bertolt Brecht's son
was just another customer
my mind was comfortable with Mao cartoons
brightly painted red tractors of work brigades
triumphant expressions with flags flying
just as in the arrested development
of the industrial leisure class
-- As I had never experienced being struggled with --
I didn't do reform through labor, Marina
I was in time travel still the twelve I must have imagined
we did it
and I'd never had to denounce myself
and I kept that fantasy up to Vietnam
still believing in Jack Armstrong
and other all-American boys
meeting airborne sergeants with laughing eyes
far removed from skulls and crossbones
besmirching our beloved red white and blue
All American Division patch
mess with the best die like the rest!
decorations of snipers who lost the way
so that even a pathfinder couldn't light
the zone for them
-- 'Kill them all, let God sort them out' --
everything's everything and nothing's nothing
tatooed on many a heart
when they went out of baggy GI Joe clothes
to Panzer Green
but they paved the way in the fifties
teaching us teenaged grunts it took guts
not to be humane


But then the guys involved in Second Coming
got me a job body-englishing the truth
at the National Enquirer
so that it would only be sued
when fiscally expedient
you know a 100% of nothin' is nothin'
and I took the midnight bus to a sweatshop
nowhere near the Jersey shore
where it's said one of the Pope brothers made book
and the other sold rotten rock salt to the city
hey one still hand washes the other, brother
but my job was to keep the description anyway
of what you saw
out of litigation
which I did with success
until the photo cut out I laid down
so as not to be visually impaired
slipped -- and I saw Tractor Tragedies anyway
with the funereal rider impailed
lifted sight unseen from the first John Deere I ever rode
a big old poppin Johnny with the fly wheel start
snatched by a misbolted stanchion on a subcontracted bridge
and I decided then without counsel
as I didn't speak the language
of those who handled hot type
it was revealed to me the issues
were too deep for someone like me
and that it was better to master the fumes
of stale beer and urine
of Upper East Side bar hoppers
-- Coors knows the truth hurts by God!
and that remains the smell of place
when I read Greta Garbo died
between 1st and 3rd Avenues
though the words who is that yo yo?
from a somewhat tough bar regular
I don't think a stand-up guy
to Whitey about me before I even knew how
to tip one and match the banter
dangerous to the layman
Hey Whitey who's that punk in a hole behind the bar?
I may be stuck in a hole but watch me grow when I blast off from here!
later when I made my name
sucker punching a bartender
-- it was ok I was a waiter then --
sometime after dawn
at an after-hours joint on Broadway
somewhere near Needle Park
my man walked the boards down the avenue
at an Irish establishment which still has the rep
for being where saloon folk like to be seen
and I think the proprieter now has a book
of course it was my good luck that he knew
I was such a punk
why he could walk on my shoes
and they surely didn't have Hard Rain on the box
we deserved the legacy of Nixon to Reagan to Clinton
***

and though I came to New York
enticed by art
as Pete reminds us from his barstool
literature and assholes are not mutually exclusive
hell no I won't go
but even they like me were blown out
by the freedom riders
and damn, black and white could hold hands when clubbed
on the front page of even the Daily News
Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh
(I better hope this isn't read by immigrant Saigon shopkeepers)
when Martin told of his dream
I like others hung on every word rapt
though perhaps not enough to seize the moment
and even after acres of bad press
Fidel still taught kids to read
even the expatriots of Little Havana knew that!
and he vaccinated moms too
and his GI's stopped our Afrikaaner proxy dead in their tracks in
the Angolan outback
and later they would keep Albert Belle
from hitting one out of the infield
so that Che's disappearance
needed Marlon's movie of the betrayed moment
mapping for us just how we lose our souls
though I don't know
but for all practical purposes
they might as well have burned the print
and I learned about history through Western hypocrisy
at plausibly deniable murder
to disappear, to eliminate, to cleanse,
to pop, to waste, to whack
revealed to my dumb eyes first
in the Battle of Algiers
where mutilation was the heir apparent
of Old World calculation
-- You know both Tutsi and Hutu speak French --
and it was hard not to feel
that Dien Bien Phu had been true
though some part of me
suspected the hue
of Maoist proletariat actions
which were a tad too staged
for good theater
and we learned of prison labor for sale later
in free trade barter of condemned body parts
but it was impossible not to believe
that Chou En Lai was extremely cool
though to see Mao hug Nixon
-- representative of the capitalist inclination --
in B.O. soaked seersucker suit
was to shake your head in wonder
for it needed no self-denunciation to see that
was to know that they deserved each other
doin the foreign policy bump and grind
and it put things in perspective
one hand does wash the other
I know when Ho washed dishes
in the Apple he learned thatafter all it was pretty obvious
at least in the bifocaled vision
of the underground press
that we knew how to take care of business
when we offed Patrice Lumbuba
who even the Chinese thought
was a pain in the ass
1,2,3 who we fighting for
later native Russians no longer looking so good
as when Soviet proletariat
would spit at the African students
gathered for Borscht
at poor Patrice's namesake Moscow University
nonetheless a few years later at the New Delhi airport
where I stood next to the shoulder-holstered
North Korean delegation
inclined to the doctrinaire left
by the remembered weight of a Walther
under every arm
it was beginning to become clear to me
that there never had been
merely black and white
everything's everything and nothing's nothing
no matter how many times
I shuffled the deck
for I remembered well enough
the fifties segregated South
where I learned what I thought was a fact
that the age of heroes was over
for in the Phillipine insurrection
of our colonial frontier
their liberation fighters told our black soldiers
of the lynching, skinning and burning
of Sam Hose
and the subsequent civil display
of his pickled body parts
there in sophisticated Atlanta
And Hank made them stand for a time when he rounded third
for the 715th time there too in Atlanta
4,5,6 don't give a damn
next stop Vietnam
but even the bar world survivors
of more courageous times for some palefaces
were there in the occasional comrade
of the Lincoln Brigade
who'd witnessed our marines' behaviour
in the Phillipines, or Cuba, or Nicaragua
where we proved we could get
down and dirty
and as Stanley a hero of the Battle for Madrid
and had a shop I think on Bleeker
and a known premature anti-Fascist
would say to bar machos
A you like to box but do you like to fight?
Remember it's always a bad war
If you're on the wrong side
There was no velvet revolution for the Romany

and four dead in Ohio

the thing unique about New York
is that with your eyes you knew
every walk of life sometime each day
crossed paths
something only the thin blue line
does now.
Jim Brown on the crosstown bus
no big deal,
Kareem Abdul Jabhar at a midnight showing of
Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman
Allan Ginsburg at a Second Coming party
hedonistic but calming
even to riot police in Chicago
Stokely Carmichael bought shoes too
Senator Bobby's appreciative eye-contact to men
with beautiful women at boring political receptions
and if not the celebrities of different worlds
then certainly their mistresses
or Eva who had a classic M.G.
and lived wonderfully far down
on the Lower East Side
and returned weekly to the family home
in Jersey where old Germany settled
which had defied Hitler
never deifying
continuing as Communist mayors
till there were no more
citizens to represent
or fishermen on the Zeider zee
till there were no more fish,
now gathered at smokey hand-tooled tables
bunched up on benches
in a communal centrifuge of engaged citizenry
that rendered Pompton Lakes ancient
as any Italian Alps village
for New York where exiles could meet
at an expatriot's art opening
liverwurst replacing hors d'oeuvres
defied improbably the isolation of today
where we know better
than to meet our neighbor's eyes
there we might have had Miles as a nodding acquaintance
at the dell or the gym
or listen in on Studs
at the solitary back table
of a village saloon
swapping stories with Signor Rosalini
and with Dave, the last American raconteur
and a serious presence behind the stick
or some useless fool like me
picking up a story free to the world
in I.B. Singer's kitchen
his delicate complexion in the foreground of memory
before his brilliant canary
while cunning running backs for the Giants
didn't seem so awesome
ordering a Dewars
next to an anonymous barroom behemoth
while Norman would show for a benefit
for an alternative weekly if
the soliciting letter had
one good turn of phrase
way before he knew he would chronicle
Lee Harvey Oswald's pilgrimage thru these times
where I like Lee found no trail
to assure me advantage
for I remember as yesterday Janet
with the gleaming black hair
at the bar of the No-Name
up the street from Dylan's White Horse
now her hair too fully white
while I hold the line with a morning touch
of Grecian formula
to dampen the titters
of my youngest daughter's friends.
For now maybe I'm finally ready to put my body on the line
so that maybe they'll say
this body bag has the weight of a man

And Marina please sing a lullaby
for me and Lee.

Postscript

For sure it was time to hit the road
from the Apple
when I was tailed in the ancient Triumph
I had bought back from Jim who had
successfully crossed the border
ahead of the draft
by a plainclothed member of the litter squad
in an unmarked car there at the tunnel
where he finally put his light on
as I turned toward Jersey
and I had bought my coffee, sweet and light of course
at about 59th on a downtown avenue though
I discarded the cups about 50th on a sun-caked mound of street debris
Adding my little bit to drop the whole damn thing
into the river, Marina.

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