Another Way to Play Read online

  you know, what I am, and I want to call it

  “poems”

  & I want the poems to fit

  in your pocket and as easily lost

  to turn up on washday with the half used

  books of matches and lint

  to be left in the bathroom to be read

  by visitors taking a shit or trying to

  I want these poems to be written now

  while you’re listening, later, when

  we’re both doing something else

  maybe we’ll remember, maybe we won’t

  and no one will ever test either of us on it

  and our children will be spared

  embarrassing questions about their parents

  I want these poems to fly south

  when they have to

  to cover the ground when it is time

  to be used to wrap sandwiches in

  for the kids to take to school

  I want a concert to be given with my poems

  as the audience

  I want them to die on their feet or

  going down on a lover

  I don’t want anyone

  to take my poems to bed with them

  I want everyone to take my poems to work

  to read instead of working

  I want my poems to meet themselves

  on their way from me to you & be surprised

  I never want my poems to be mistaken

  for something to be judged or eaten

  fucked or framed anthologized or

  criticized, I just want them to be

  taken for what they are, simply,

  almost embarrassingly: possible

  (broadside c. 1970)

  STUPID RABBITS

  (Morgan Press 1971)

  So, the novels I forgot to write were really

  frightened into the road like stupid rabbits

  & this is their blood & bits of fur

  HITCHHIKING TO ATLANTIC CITY

  to marry my first black bride I was

  taken for a ride in North Carolina

  by 2 teenybop divorcees & their angel

  a drunken truck driver

  I lied

  about my future while they fed me

  full of J. W. Dant and bad jokes

  about my future family, or theirs,

  and opened up their narrow unlit

  alley lives for me to smell & touch

  & share

  They laughed when I cried

  & blamed it on an old street wound &

  pretty soon we were all skunky drunk

  laughing crying parking somewhere

  dark to make our own bad jokes on

  come stained upholstery so colorless

  it was impossible to say whose bride

  black why was sharing what with someone

  LETTER TO JOHN COLTRANE

  I believe in you

  When you died Pharoah Sanders said: John Coltrane was a man of God

  I thought yes, this is all true

  like the first time I saw you there was nothing to say except:

  John Coltrane is a big man I mean, a big man

  I remember thinking: he’s too big god, he stands out

  You walked among us as though you already weren’t there

  J. C. is a serious man people said, your drinking days forgotten

  He’s clean was the rumor

  He’s thoroughbred was the word

  He’s Trane was the fact

  You said Giant Steps and they were taken

  You said Blue Train and it was on

  You said Ascension and there we were watching

  Talk about a big man

  November 1967

  HARD RAIN

  Met Bob Dylan

  in The Fat Black Pussycat

  same way my father met my mom:

  workin.

  We was always workin.

  If we woke up sick an complained

  fathered say: Eat some breakfast

  then get a little exercise

  workin.

  If one of us met a girl n started stutterin . . .

  sure.

  Comin out a the Pacific

  met Buddy Holly

  soakin wet.

  Ya look like me with yer glasses on he said.

  I don’t wear no glasses I said

  my father wouldn’t like it.

  Try to see me he said . . .

  sure.

  Workin comes close to prayin where I come from.

  My father usta say three things: Work, work,

  work.

  Some people are like that.

  I told my mom, god rest her soul

  There’s a Rangoon in Illinois you aint heard of

  place to go for tattoos so peoplell know who ya are.

  Met Alan Ladd there

  told me to go home.

  Go home boy he said

  getcherself a job.

  Getcherself a father I said.

  Where am I I said.

  Rest yer soul I said.

  Work I said, work, work . . .

  Sure.

  IN THE DISTANCE

  In the distance called My Father

  I rode my innocence down, rode it

  down on its hands and knees like

  the people whose dance created the world

  What do we know about the world

  or the distance we create for our personal atmosphere

  What we know is the way we fall

  when we fall off the little we ride

  when we ride away from the things we’re given

  to make us forget the things we gave up

  How far is it to where my son

  will break my bones and dance on them

  May 1970

  THE SOUTH

  ORANGE SONNETS

  (Some of Us Press 1972)

  from THE SOUTH ORANGE SONNETS

  1

  In books it was the Lackawana Valley.

  The Lackawana railroad ran through it

  separating those on the hill from us.

  Lackawana Place was the toughest block

  in the neighborhood until 1952 when

  the temptations and reputation moved

  to Church Street where *THE PINK DEVILS*

  had roses tattooed between their thumbs

  and forefingers, wore delicate gold

  crucifixes on chains around their

  brown Italian necks, and carried porno

  playing cards from Newark, the city

  where parades got lost and statues

  died. Newark, where we all had lived.

  2

  My brother brought the moon back from

  Okinawa. I mean, there they learned of

  the surrender three days late and then

  they danced all night. My brother played

  the saxophone. Junkman Willy did a one

  step that most girls didn’t want to do.

  They called him that for all the old cars

  he worked on til he was old enough to

  drive. He was a paddy cat like me and we

  lived on Cabbage Hill til we were old

  enough to live anywhere. We believed

  Italians and Jews ran *THE SYNDICATE*

  maybe the world. In West Orange a man

  hung himself higher than he could reach.

  3.

  The girls liked to dance with Eddie

  we believed. He came back from jail

  with big muscles and, it was rumored

  bleached blonde hair. He had a tattoo

  with the name crossed out and dimples.

  One girl’s father sent Eddie to school

  in Las Vegas to learn to be a shill.

  The girl’s father was a big man in Las

  Vegas it was rumored. Eddie was a big

  man in South Orange. While he was gone

  I met an Italian girl with hair on her

  chest
and poured beer out my side of

  Junkman’s truck when nobody was looking.

  After only two weeks Eddie came home.

  4.

  In East Orange Carol Robinson decided I

  was her boyfriend. Her father found out

  before I did. Told his friends and neigh-

  bors how he didn’t want no white boy hang-

  ing around his little girl. One asked me

  not to pass the time at his house anymore

  listening to his son’s Clifford Browns or

  talking to his twin daughters. Walking

  home that night three teenagers sitting

  on a stoop on Halstead Street yelled: Hey

  white boy, whatchu doin aroun here? You

  know where you are? Where you from? When

  I answered South Orange this fat girl said

  Shoot, that muss be Carol Robs turkey.

  5

  Little Robert called himself a sporting man

  at fourteen. Came by Charlie’s house talking

  about being a gambling fool and losing a

  hundred dollars a minute and who has got

  the playing cards. A friend of Charlie’s wife

  laughed and said Ain’t you too old for card

  games now? Charlie’s wife made most men turn

  around. When I was fourteen I watched her

  walk by the store where I swept the floor.

  Seven years later Charlie’s cousin told me I

  danced too close to Charlie’s wife. My father

  figured Charlie, Kenny, Bobby and the other

  friends I loved were lazy cause they didn’t

  have good jobs. Kenny didn’t even have a job.

  6

  In 1959 I thought of myself as *NEVER

  FEAR* and liked to talk about a door

  that when you walked through it you were

  dancing. My father thought we had to be

  up to no good out til two o’clock in the

  morning. We rode around in Charlie’s car

  and talked. We decided one difference

  between white girls and black girls was

  the way you danced with them. White girls

  you held around the waist with your right

  arm. You put the same arm over a black

  girl’s shoulder. That was in 1959. Did you

  ever have a woman’s cunt wrapped around

  your head asked Eddie. That was in 1956.

  7

  One year our people refused to buy Christmas

  cards that said *SEASONS GREETINGS* A year

  later we christened the new homes on the hill

  JEWSTEAD. Three years later we sang Guns for

  the Arabs, bicycles and sneakers for the Jews.

  Then a year came when the Jewish girls turned

  soft and ripe and full of round things we

  longed to hold. That was the year we all wanted

  to be Jewish. We wanted to kiss the thing

  they hung on their doors. We wanted to dip

  our fingers into whatever holy water was theirs.

  But most of all we didn’t want to wait to be

  the forbidden goyim they would sneak down

  from their hill three years later to sample.

  9

  When my mother died two Irish great aunts

  came over from New York. The brassy one

  wore her hat tilted and always sat with

  her legs wide apart. At the wake she told

  me loud You look like your grandfather

  the cop if you ever get like him shoot

  yourself. The other one waited til after

  the funeral to pull my ear down to her

  level and whisper You’re a good looking

  young man but if you don’t shave off them

  side boards people will mistake you for

  a Puerto Rican. We had so many cousins

  in our neighborhood everybody called my

  mother Aunt Irene. Even the Italians.

  10

  My uncle shot himself before I was born.

  My grandfather who carried an old petri-

  fied potato in his pocket for his arthi-

  ritis got up and walked out of the funeral.

  His sons slipped out of their pews as

  piously as they knew how and went to find

  him. He was buttoning up his fly as they

  came through the big oak doors of the

  church and caught the reflection of the

  sunlight on his piss. He used to open the

  door of a fast moving vehicle which the

  driver would hysterically beg to a stop

  squeezing everything. He’d say It’s time

  to shake a little water off the potatoes.

  12

  The Lackawana Railroad was an electric commuter

  special that cut off the head of a ten year old

  Boy Scout one summer. He was listening to the

  tracks to hear if the train was coming. His

  cousin saw it happen and was sick for a week.

  He was seven. In bed when I was a kid listening

  to the sound of the Lackawana rolling by I’d

  dream of the places it would take me someday.

  And it did. It took me to all the places it goes

  to like Orange East Orange Maplewood Movies

  Brick Church Newark and Hoboken. Sometimes

  we jumped off halfway home to avoid paying.

  One year somebody got a plate in his head from

  jumping off onto something hard like my cousins.

  14

  The tree between the sidewalk and the curb

  attracted me. The leaves turning up in the

  breeze before a summer storm revealed a side

  that glowed, flashed like the palms of a

  dark woman shaping castles in the air. My

  father didn’t like it. He’d ask why a boy sat

  on the stoop staring at trees when he could

  be watching TV learning the things a boy

  should know to be well liked by the men who

  could help him. Golfing terms, starting line

  ups, some news. Too much thinking can ruin

  you, he’d say. When we were alone my mother

  would ask Don’t you think there might be

  something wrong with having no white friends.

  15

  My cousin was an artist but no one knew.

  They thought he was only a work of art

  like a pinball machine made of marble.

  When someone deliberately broke the first

  two letters of the ESSEX HOUSE sign, my

  cousin did the same with a new kids head.

  He grew bigger than any cousin and more

  gentle. Eddie no, I said, I never did

  have a lady’s cunt wrapped around my head.

  I knew Eddie was an artist when he ate

  the aspirin. Girls from *THE KRAZY KITTENS*

  played EDDIE MY LOVE eighteen times in a

  row that night. Eddie looked at me and

  said Whadja do, come out of a horses ass?

  16

  They say prospectors saved their scalps

  by acting crazy. I acted as crazy as I

  could when white guys asked me what it

  was like with a, didn’t want to say it

  but afraid to look like they didn’t want

  to say it, said it: nigger. I hit them.

  Or I told them Fine as 400 wine. Like

  laying under that tree before a storm

  watching the leaves turn over and shine.

  Like getting it steady and nice. Like

  the first time twice. Like standing in

  the rain laughing. Like sitting at Broad

  and Market, spitting at the moon and

  hitting it. The word I wanted to marry.

  17

>   There is some music you have to listen to.

  In South Orange there were rich Catholics

  rich Protestants and rich Jews. My cousin

  became a cop. His brother was stabbed by

  an Italian called Lemon Drop. Across the

  street lived two brothers called Loaf and

  Half a Loaf. My brother became a cop. On

  St. Patrick’s Day 1958 I came home drunk. My

  mother said He’s only fifteen. My father:

  It had to happen once. My grandfather was

  a cop. One cousin won a beauty contest at

  thirteen. My sister married a cop. By 1959

  I knew I was going to be a jazz musician.

  My father joined AA before I was even born.

  18

  At first the world’s great heroes were FDR

  Churchill and Uncle Joe Stalin. The block

  hero was FLYING ACE who shot down Krauts

  on a seven inch screen. One brother served

  with the Navy Band, one with the US Army

  Air Corps. Before TV we sat through Sunday

  matinees with newsreel footage of Nazi war

  crimes. The boarder in our house had been

  a dough boy in World War I. We called him

  uncle. My third brother worked on tanks in

  Germany during the Korean thing. I joined

  the Air Force on February eighth 1962. I

  went AWOL July fourth 1962. For a long time

  no one we knew ever went away a civilian.

  19

  There were people who didn’t need nick-

  names. Love I’d say to myself walking

  those streets under the old gas lights.

  The woman on Valley Street who waited

  after her friend went home. The eyes of

  pretty Italian girls as their boyfriends

  pulled up to the curb. The voice on the

  phone from West Orange saying love the

  first time saying What saying Wait saying

  Say it again. Or like getting on the bus

  to Newark six thirty in the morning

  with a beautiful black girl in a party

  dress and all the people going to work.

  In 1960 you could star in South Orange.