A READING.

SOME REAL GOOD WOMEN-FOLK & A SONG / PART #2.

                     

                       

MISS KANE. 

(MISS MCGREW, NAN.)

                       

MISS ETTING.

                       

& MISS CONNEE, MISS VET & MISS MARTHA.

(THE BOSWELL SISTERS)

HERE YE HERE YE.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

COMPLIMENTS OF D.W. GRIFFITH

---

TWO POEMS

COMPLIMENTS OF NICOLE WALLACE

MR. LINCOLN, COME GET YOUR SUPPER.

my man wears his top hats tall 

smart as pepper & pretty too 

would run away on his weddin’ day

then hold his bride tight & sigh

oh my!

feels like a boy who stubbed his toe

hurt too bad to make ‘im laugh 

but he’s jest too big to cry 

he says, it's not mr. president to you

i've hung my hat up 'til they can knock it down

from now on 

from now on 

from now on. 

IM WORRIED, MARY.

but we used to be able to sleep in springfield

come to bed now I said to come now so come now

mary, i’ve got it if we ever sleep again & again

as earth as it is in heaven he beckoned

to my wife, meet mister general grant 

& want more servants & what’s all this smoke 

open a window and win this war already

(bugle call)

LOVE LETTER #1.

TOO MANY MEN FOR ONE SHOE SET.

there is too much time in extended adolescence. not enough glass in the whiskey & money on credit. i can do things you do better in five minutes or under. & while sitting in a broke chair in a disheveled corner it's easy. sitting on my feet under the kitchen counter eating garbage is easy too. there are only one or two things worth listening to when you are talking especially. when i met him the first time he kept looking at me like drinking from plastic cups in the flicker of track lighting. it just felt right i suppose. i wonder if you are drunk somewhere in williamsburg living on shiny linoleum flooring and refinished marble counter tops. your parents paid for those windows you know and all those things that make it seem like you did it all yourself. you wouldn't fool me would ya? annette hanshaw once asked that in a song & i thought about the time that you played ragtime like buster keaton or saturday mornings. you always were wearing that peach foundation & smearing it on your white button up shirts. it was funny when i mistook it for you finding luck with a lady. you didn't think so. once i walked past your apartment looking for you but i gave up for a cigarette & some opium. you were just too easy to get when times were hard like that. now let's sing another song boys so a real man can show you how to pretend: 

- or - 

- or - 

typically & etc.

SOME REAL GOOD WOMEN-FOLK & A SONG / PART #1.

MISS BESSIE.

MISS MONTANA.

MISS HANSHAW. 

& SOME BANJO-PICKERS.

SAVE THE DATE.

GOAT.

LIKE A GIRL IN A BOOK.

SHE DON'T HAVE TO WEAR RATS IN HER HAIR.

UNSEASONABLY SO.

a hot kind of wind blows leaves
plastic bags stuck in branches
against the window he thought were just
some kind of bad dream, in the first place.

i talked to him on the telephone
on my day off, i listened to the receiver
listen to your breathing it said
notice it gets higher when
you move your tongue, the pitch
on the harp the blues hummed
the lowest note, a reed numbered one.

i thought of how easy it would be
it’s just so easy i tell them
we don’t spend much time together
but i still wake up late, lose my books
spend all my time twiddling my strums
it’s pretty much the same as always, they ask.

along sixth street his notebook, a song book open
the pages turning and my telephone ringing
a conscience ignored, like one of his lines
in the pauses i was counting the encounters
before they had time to hatch he lost
but then again, nobody’s won.

the same kind of hot wind blows in
through the window, the plastic bags
are leaves, the tree branches fall
we got here, i thought then
in the first place, this is why we are.

SOME KIND OF DISAPPEARING ACT.

TOO BAD, MEPHISTOPHELES.

DOWN THE RABIT-HOLE.

NOT QUITE THE ENGLISH THRONE.

STEP RIGHT UP...

'CAUSE THE DUMB ONES KNOW HOW TO MAKE LOVE.

THE GREATEST DEPRESSION.

OH BOY!

BRING YOUR TANGLED UP OLD SCRAP METAL, HEAVY GREEN GLASS BOTTLES, CRUMBLIN' WINE CORKS FOR CORKING, ONE WHEELBARROW, HORSE TROUGH, MOONSHININ' BARREL, ONE MUSIC RIPPLIN' SAW FOR SAWING, YOUR WIFE & YOUR WIDOW AND A TWENTY-TWO FOR GOOD MEASURE. WE'RE GONNA COOK THIS ONE UP ALRIGHT. 

ALCOHOLIQUE.  

WOULDN'T IT BE BETTER TO ----- ?

VERMOUTH, VIN, KIRSCH, SCHNAPPS, BIERE

&

ABSINTHE AT THE GUILLOTINE. 

BOOTLEG/PEGLEG.

SOMETIMES IN THE MIDDLE OF A NIGHT.

TOO MANY ASHBOOKS AND MATCHTRAYS.

There is a very charming section, featured on the last few pages of Ed Sanders’s 1962 issues of his mimeographed magazine Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts, written by poet Nelson Barr called “A Bouquet of Fuck You’s.” Barr takes the responsibility of granting his various “Fuck You’s” to certain people within the Lower East Side/East Village poetry community, along with some other public figures and government officials.

ISSUE #1: “The following is a list of Fuck-You’s to all and sundry—
…Fuck you Jean Morton- Large nosed/bullshitter searching for order in chaos
[…] Fuck you to Ed Sanders- May Crotch- / Lake stomp him out of his faggot mind.”

Others included, but unquoted, were: Charlie Butterflusch, Kathy Gesner & Mark Samara.

& then followed by an “Editor’s Note” By Ed Sanders:“I agree. All pacifists should be exposed!”

ISSUE #2: “Offering #2” –“Fuck You’s” to: N.Y Police Department, Nelson Rockefeller, N.Y Daily News & Moise Ishombe.

ISSUE #3: -“Fuck You’s” to: “Art Harvey, com-symps & sheis-kopfen, Georgie Lincoln Rockwell & all his dirty wee nazis, nignogs one and all.”

& then followed by an “Editor’s Note” by Ed Sanders: “**NIG-NOG IS A TERM COINED ON THE NASHVILLE-WASHINGTON WALK FOR PEACE. HAS WIDE MEANING TO COVER ALL COM-SYMPS, FOOLS, ORGANIZED COWARDS, SELL OUTS, ASSKISSERS, IDIOITS, POLITICIANS, POWER-HUNGRY PACIFICCTS, ETC. ETC.”

ISSUE # 4: “Offering #4” –this time- “Fuck You’s” to: Hollywood, YAF, the City Fathers of Albany G.A., the American Nationalists.


--yeah, I’ve been doing some kind of research in some archives. so what?

LOVE IS HARD TO DO.

HENRY JAMES WAS A PERVERT.

She sits at a wooden sewing table, a small typing desk, a good size for a room so small. It’s late and stretching into the smaller hours. The clock's hung on the wall behind her, but she doesn’t look back.  On the quilt-mess of a bed, the cat sleeps. His ear turned slightly towards her,  waiting for the aggravating tune-hum of “School Days” to stop. Up against the wall, opposite of the door, a thin rust colored scarf  covers a board laid across the desk's top where a sewing machine used to fold in. Atop of it, a single-bulb lamp glows next to a dim screen, half blank and half filled with paragraphed words. To her right, a white wooden bookshelf rests heavy on dusty floorboards. She lights a small candle with a single match. Next to it, an old jam jar filled with pens, some pencils and one felt-tipped marker refracts the small flame in flickers and flashes. She thinks aloud, as so only she thinks she can hear herself, “Isn't this just terribly romantic.” On the cold keys of a black 1947 Remington-Rand, her hands hit the  raised white letters. One at a time, return the carriage, roll out the sheets, in a windowless, soap-box sized bedroom, some where in Brooklyn at the beginning of May.