Saturday, December 27, 2008
17. IT WAS ONLY ONCE:
There was a time and a time after that and probably another too - a time with monstrous proclivities towards wrong things : I remember the man with the tri-cornered hat (just like in the music piece) leering at some girl who'd just walked by showing the backs of lovely thighs to the inmates along Carruthers Alley - or at least that faction of them who frequented Washington Street by the old bar that later became Hogs & Heifers Saloon (a nightmare joint of false values and veneer where I'd spend many a dead afternoon with two motorcycles parked out front forgetting how I'd gotten them both there and how I'd get them BOTH away : it always seemed like two trips to me when in my right mind but whatever : no Trappist Monastery could be more austere nor more the same all the time) and then the men from the lamb-packing plant all bloodied and skirmished came out for a smoke and I watched them chase the tri-corner fellow away screaming 'go away you fucking fag lout! - we don't like your type and don't want you about!' - and I said to myself (in fact I wrote it down) 'those guys are so lovely singing language like that - butchers madmen and killers though they may be the blood on their hands is - perhaps - sacrificial to poetry!' and just then the mob truck pulled up and two frozen bodies I noticed were thrown to the curb and the mafia guy in the back said 'here's Carlos and Loti - they got what they deserve!' and I again was flabbergasted to hear the criminal mind in mischief or fear still spouting rhyme - stuff like this went on all the time...now it's all fabrics and scent and Stella McArtney and even (I saw one time) Daniel Johnstone down on the curb getting off a bus by the Highline Bridge and he looked rumpled and stupid and not well-preserved wandering along these streets thinking it was Omaha or something else : no one helped him and I walked over and said something like that meat guy had said - lout fag get out and all that - but it came out wrong and somehow he'd thought I asked for money and he gave me a negative ten - he said - whatever it was and though I couldn't spend it anywhere (he said) except at 'Myron Brocket's House of Jumbled Matter' I kept it no matter and still keep it today (under the yellow sofa still) : it was a time and a place like that when cobblestones still ruled and the ancient Fourteenth Street trolley tracks were still apparent enough for one's feet to trip over but everyone knows that to grow one has to move on this town's not big enough for the both of us to live outside the law you must be on eggs...or whatever all that once was : the Indian doily lady who told Gypsy fortunes if only she could bowed down at that point and took the magenta filter off the sunlight jar and then sent me her daughter down from upstairs - and the sky had turned pink and I said 'I knew you'd do that' and she said humbly 'no no not at all sir - the knowing ahead you must see is MY job and my job alone' - - and all this is true but it only happened once and I mutter it back in fear.
There was a time and a time after that and probably another too - a time with monstrous proclivities towards wrong things : I remember the man with the tri-cornered hat (just like in the music piece) leering at some girl who'd just walked by showing the backs of lovely thighs to the inmates along Carruthers Alley - or at least that faction of them who frequented Washington Street by the old bar that later became Hogs & Heifers Saloon (a nightmare joint of false values and veneer where I'd spend many a dead afternoon with two motorcycles parked out front forgetting how I'd gotten them both there and how I'd get them BOTH away : it always seemed like two trips to me when in my right mind but whatever : no Trappist Monastery could be more austere nor more the same all the time) and then the men from the lamb-packing plant all bloodied and skirmished came out for a smoke and I watched them chase the tri-corner fellow away screaming 'go away you fucking fag lout! - we don't like your type and don't want you about!' - and I said to myself (in fact I wrote it down) 'those guys are so lovely singing language like that - butchers madmen and killers though they may be the blood on their hands is - perhaps - sacrificial to poetry!' and just then the mob truck pulled up and two frozen bodies I noticed were thrown to the curb and the mafia guy in the back said 'here's Carlos and Loti - they got what they deserve!' and I again was flabbergasted to hear the criminal mind in mischief or fear still spouting rhyme - stuff like this went on all the time...now it's all fabrics and scent and Stella McArtney and even (I saw one time) Daniel Johnstone down on the curb getting off a bus by the Highline Bridge and he looked rumpled and stupid and not well-preserved wandering along these streets thinking it was Omaha or something else : no one helped him and I walked over and said something like that meat guy had said - lout fag get out and all that - but it came out wrong and somehow he'd thought I asked for money and he gave me a negative ten - he said - whatever it was and though I couldn't spend it anywhere (he said) except at 'Myron Brocket's House of Jumbled Matter' I kept it no matter and still keep it today (under the yellow sofa still) : it was a time and a place like that when cobblestones still ruled and the ancient Fourteenth Street trolley tracks were still apparent enough for one's feet to trip over but everyone knows that to grow one has to move on this town's not big enough for the both of us to live outside the law you must be on eggs...or whatever all that once was : the Indian doily lady who told Gypsy fortunes if only she could bowed down at that point and took the magenta filter off the sunlight jar and then sent me her daughter down from upstairs - and the sky had turned pink and I said 'I knew you'd do that' and she said humbly 'no no not at all sir - the knowing ahead you must see is MY job and my job alone' - - and all this is true but it only happened once and I mutter it back in fear.
