A golden mean
For a heavenly life
He went to the city
Tried all tricks
Sadness & pity
many highs, many kicks
Saved by music
Books & dance bands,
Generous, correct
Taught class, steady hands
Married, had a boy
Whom he sang into life
He’ll long enjoy
His Child & Wife
Air Shuttle Boston—N.Y.
March 4, 1997, 5 P.M. in milky sky
Half Asleep
Moved six months ago left it behind for Peter
He’d been in Almora when we bought it,
an old blanket, brown Himalayan wool
two-foot-wide long strips of light cloth
bound together with wool strings
That after 3 decades began to loosen
Soft familiar with use in Benares & Manhattan
I took it in my hands, searched to match the seams,
fold them, sew together as I thought
But myself, being ill, too heavy for my arms,
Leave it to housekeeper’s repair
it disappeared suddenly in my hands—
back to the old apartment
where I’d let go half year before
March 7, 1997
Objective Subject
It’s true I write about myself
Who else do I know so well?
Where else gather blood red roses & kitchen garbage
What else has my thick heart, hepatitis or hemorrhoids—
Who else lived my seventy years, my old Naomi?
and if by chance I scribe U.S. politics, Wisdom
meditation, theories of art
it’s because I read a newspaper loved
teachers skimmed books or visited a museum
March 8, 1997, 12:30 A.M.
Kerouac
I can’t answer,
reason I can’t answer
I haven’t been dead yet
Don’t remember dead
I’m on 14th St & 1st Avenue
Vat’s the qvestion?
March 12, 1997
Hepatitis Body Itch …
Hepatitis
Body itch
nausea
hemorrhage
tender Hemorrhoids
High Blood
Sugar, low
leaden limbs
lassitude
bed rest
shit factory
this corpse
cancer
March 13, 1997
Whitmanic Poem
We children, we
school boys,
girls in America
laborers, students
dominated by lust
March 18, 1997
American Sentences 1995–1997
I felt a breeze below my waist and realized that my fly was open.
April 20, 1995
* * *
Sitting forward elbows on knees, oh what luck! to be able to crap!
April 17, 1995
“That was good! that was great! That was important!” Standing to flush the toilet.
June 22, 1995
Relief! relief! O Boy O Boy! That was necessary, wash behind!
January 18, 1997
“A good shit is worth a thousand dollars if your purse can afford it.”
February 10, 1997, 5 A.M.
Heard at every workplace—obnoxious slogan: “Shit or get off the pot!”
January 24, 1997
How did I know? How did my ass know? Suddenly, go to the bathroom!
March 10, 1997
* * *
Château d’Amboise
Sun setting on their faces the diners chatter over plates of duck.
June 22, 1995
Baul Song
“Oh my mad mind, my mad mind, where’ve you been all my life, my old mad mind?”
October 7, 1996
The three-day-old kitchen fly’s flown into my bedroom for company.
December 9, 1996
“Hi-diddly-Dee, a poet’s life for me,” Gregory Corso sang in Paris sniffing H.
January 16, 1997
Chopping apples for the fruit compote—suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer!
January 24, 1997
Courageous little lemon with so many pits! sliced into the pot.
January 25, 1997
The young dog—he jumped out the TV tube stood still then barked for supper.
January 26, 1997
Stupid of me, stupid of me, just dumb plain stupid ass! Where’s my pen?
February 19, 1997, 2:45 A.M.
My father dying of Cancer, head drooping, “Oy kindelach.”
February 24, 1997
Whatcha do about little girls who want to play Horsey on my knee?
March 10, 1997
“Hey Buster! Whatcha looking at me like that for?” in the Bronx subway.
March 10, 1997, 2:45 A.M.
To see Void vast infinite look out the window into the blue sky.
March 23, 1997
Variations on Ma Rainey’s See See Rider
“I’ve been down at the bus stop
Buy my jellyroll there
If I can’t sell it in Memphis
you can
buy it in Eau St. Claire.
See See Rider
you got me
in your chair
But if I have
my fanny
can sell it anywhere
See what I want today
yes yes yes
Need a man who
really can do
anything I say
Do that for me
Then I