Book of Blues Read online

  To the tune of the English

  Fifers in some whiter mine,

  ‘Brick a brack,

  Pliers on your back;

  Mick mack

  Kidneys in your back;

  Bald Boo!

  Oranges and you!

  Lick lock

  The redfaced cock’

  8TH CHORUS

  Oi yal!

  She yawns to lall

  La la—

  Me Loom—

  The weary gray hat

  Peacoat ex sailor

  Manning meekly

  Hands a poop a pocket

  Face

  Lips

  Oh Mo Sea!

  The long fat yellow

  Eternity cream

  Of the Third St Bus

  Roof swimming like

  A monosyllable

  Armored Mososaur

  Swimming in my Primordial

  Windowpane

  Of pain

  9TH CHORUS

  Alas! Youth is worried,

  Pa’s astray.

  What so say

  To well dressed ambassadors

  From death’s truth

  Pimplike, rich,

  In the morning slick;

  Or sad white caps

  Of snowy sea men

  In San Francisco

  Gray streets

  Arm waving to walk

  The Harrison cross

  And earn later sunset

  purple

  10TH CHORUS

  Dig the sad old bum

  No money

  Presuming to hit the store

  And buy his cube of oleo

  For 8 cents

  So in cheap rooms

  At A M 3 30

  He can cough & groan

  In a white tile sink

  By his bed

  Which is used

  To run water in

  And stagger to

  In the reel of wake up

  Middle of the night

  Flophouse Nightmares—

  His death no blackern

  Mine, his Toast’s

  Just as well buttered

  And on the one side.

  11TH CHORUS

  There’s no telling

  What’s on the mind

  Of the bony

  Character in plaid

  Workcoat & glasses

  Carrying lunch

  Stalking & bouncing

  Slowly to his job

  Or the beauteous Indian

  Girl hurrying stately

  Into Marathon Grocery

  Run by Greeks

  To buy bananas

  For her love night,

  What’s she thinking?

  Her lips are like cherries,

  Her cheeks just purse them out

  All the more to kiss them

  And suck their juices out.

  12TH CHORUS

  A young woman flees an old man,

  Mohammedan Prophecy:

  And she got avocados

  Anyhow.

  The furtive whore

  Looks over her shoulder

  While unlocking the door

  Of the tenement

  Of her pimp

  Who with big Negro Arkansas

  Or East Texas Oilfields

  Harry Truman hat’s

  Been standin on the street

  All day

  Waiting for the cold girl

  Bending in thincoat in the wind

  And Sunday afternoon drizzle

  To step on it & get some bread

  For Papa’s gotta sleep tonite

  And the Chinaman’s coming back

  13TH CHORUS

  “No hunger & no wittles

  neither deary”

  Said the crone

  To Edwin Drood

  Okay.

  There’ll be an answer.

  Forthcoming

  When the morning wind

  Ceases shaking

  The man’s collar

  When there’s no starch in’t

  And Acme Beer

  Runs flowing

  Into dry gray hats.

  When

  Dearie

  The pennies in the

  palm multiply

  as you watch

  14TH CHORUS

  When whistlers stop scowling

  Smokers stop sighing

  Watchers stop looking

  And women stop walking

  When gray beards

  Grow no more

  And pain dont

  Take you by surprise

  And bedposts creak

  In rhythm not at morn

  And dry men’s bones

  Are not pushed

  By angry meaning pelvic

  Propelled legs of reason

  To a place you hate,

  Then I’ll go lay my crown

  Body on the heads of 3 men

  Hurrying & laughing

  In the wrong direction,

  my Idol

  15TH CHORUS

  Sex is an automaton

  Sounding like a machine

  Thru the stopped up keyhole

  —Young men go fastern

  Old men

  Old men are passionately breathless

  Young men breathe inwardly

  Young women & old women

  Wait

  There was a sound of slapping

  When the angel stole come

  And the angel that had lost

  Lay back satisfied

  Hungry addled red face

  With tight clutch

  Traditional Time

  Brief case in his paw

  Prowls placking the pavement

  To his office girl’s

  Rumped skirt at 5’s

  Five O Clock Shadows

  16TH CHORUS

  Angrily I must insist—

  The phoney Negro

  Sea captain

  With the battered coat

  Who looks like

  Charley Chaplin in a

  movie about now filmed

  in the air by crews

  of raving rabid

  angels drooling happily

  among the funny fat

  Cherubim

  Leading that serious

  Hardjawed sincere

  Negro stud

  In at morn

  For a round of crimes

  Is Lucifer the Fraud

  17TH CHORUS

  Little girls worry too much

  For no one will hurt them

  Except the beast

  Whom they’d knife

  In another life

  In the as well East

  As West of Bethlehem

  And do of it much

  Rhetorical Third Street

  Grasping at racket

  Groans & stinky

  I’ve no time

  To dally hassel

  In your heart’s house,

  It’s too gray

  I’m too cold—

  I wanta go to Golden,

  That’s my home.

  18TH CHORUS

  I came a wearyin

  From eastern hills;

  Yonder Nabathacaque recessit

  The eastward to Aurora rolls,
<
br />   Somewhere West of Idalia

  Or east of Klamath Falls,

  One—Lost a blackhaired

  Woman with thin feet

  And red bag hangin

  Who usta walk

  Down Arapahoe Street

  In Denver

  And made all the

  cabbies cry

  And drugstore ponies

  Eating pool in Remsac’s

  Sob, to See so Lovely

  All the Time

  And all so Tight

  And young.

  19TH CHORUS

  Pshaw! Paw’s Ford

  Got Lost in the Depression

  He driv over the Divide

  And forgot to cleave the road

  Instead put atomic energy

  In the ass of his machine

  And flew to find

  The gory clouds

  Of rocky torment

  Far away

  And they fished him

  Outa Miner’s Creek

  More dead n Henry

  And a whole lot fonder,

  Podner—

  Clack of the wheel’s

  My freight train blues

  Third Street I seed

  20TH CHORUS

  And knowed

  And under ramps I writ

  The poems of the punk

  Who met the Fagin

  Who told him ‘Punk

  When walkin with me

  To roll a Sleepin drunk

  Dont wish ya was back

  Home in yr mother’s parlor

  And when the cops

  Come ablastin

  With loaded 45’s

  Dont ask for gold

  Or silver from my purse,

  Its milken hassel

  Will be strewn

  And scattered

  In the sand

  By an old bean can

  And dried up kegs

  We’d a sat & jawed on—

  21ST CHORUS

  Roll my bones

  In the Mortiary

  My terms

  And deeds of mortgagry

  And death & taxes

  All wrapt up.’

  Little anger Japan

  Strides holding bombs

  To blow the West

  To Fuyukama’s

  Shrouded Mountain Top

  So the Lotus Bubble

  Blossoms in Buddha’s

  Temple Dharma Eye

  May unfold from

  Pacific Center

  Inward Out & Over

  The Essence Center World

  22ND CHORUS

  For the world’s an Eye

  And the universe is Seeing

  Liquid

  Rare

  Radiant.

  Eccentrics from out of town

  Better not fill in

  This blank

  For a job on my gray boat

  And Monkeysuits I furnish.

  Batteries of ad men

  Marching arm in arm

  Thru the pages

  Of Time & Life

  23RD CHORUS

  The halls of MCA

  Singing Deans

  In the college morning

  Preferable to dry cereal

  When no corn mush

  Cops & triggers

  Magazine pricks

  Dastardly Shadows

  And Phantom Hero ines.

  Swing yr umbrella

  At the sidewalk

  As you pass

  Or tap a boy

  On the shoulder

  Saying “I say

  Where is Threadneedle

  Street?”

  24TH CHORUS

  San Francisco is too sad

  Time, I cant understand

  Fog, shrouds the hills in

  Makes unshod feet so cold

  Fills black rooms with day

  Dayblack in the white windows

  And gloom in the pain of pianos:

  Shadows in the jazz age

  Filing by; ladders of flappers

  Painters’ white bucket

  Funny 3 Stooge Comedies

  And fuzzy headed Hero

  Moofle Lip suckt it all up

  And wondered why

  The milk & cream of heaven

  Was writ in gold leaf

  On a book—big eyes

  For the world

  The better to see—

  25TH CHORUS

  And big lips for the word

  And Buddhahood

  And death.

  Touch the cup to these sad lips

  Let the purple grape foam

  In my gullet deep

  Spread saccharine

  And crimson carnadine

  In my vine of veins

  And shoot power

  To my hand

  Belly heart & head—

  This Magic Carpet

  Arabian World

  Will take us

  Easeful Zinging

  Cross the Sky

  Singing Madrigals

  26TH CHORUS

  To horizons of golden

  Moment emptiness

  Whither whence uncaring

  Dizzy ride in space

  To red fires

  Beyond the pale,

  Rosy gory outlooks

  Everywhere.

  San Francisco is too old

  Her chimnies lean

  And look sooty

  After all this time

  Of waiting for something

  To happen

  Betwixt hill & house—

  Heart & heaven.

  27TH CHORUS

  San Francisco

  San Francisco

  You’re a muttering bum

  In a brown beat suit

  Cant make a woman

  On a rainy corner

  Your corners open out

  San Francisco

  To arc racks

  Of the Seals

  Lost in vapors

  Cold and bleak.

  28TH CHORUS

  You’re as useless

  As a soda truck

  Parked in the rain

  With cases of pretty red

  Orange green & Coca Cola

  Brown receiving rain

  Drops like the sea

  Receiveth driving spikes

  Welling in the navel void.

  I also have loud poems:

  Broken plastic coverlets

  Flapping in the rain

  To cover newspapers

  All printed up

  And plain.

  29TH CHORUS

  Guys with big pockets

  In heavy topcoats

  And slit scar

  Head bands down

  The middle of their hair

  All Bruce Barton combed

  Stand surveying Harrison

  Folsom St the Ramp

  And the redbrick clock

  Wishin they had a woman

  Or some money, honey

  Westinghouse Elevators

  Are full of pretty girls

  With classy cans

  And cute pans

  And long slim legs

  And eyes for the boss

  At quarter of four.

  30TH CHORUS

  Old Age is an Indian

>   With gray hair

  And a cane

  In an old coat

  Tapping along

  The rainy street

  To see the pretty oranges

  And the stores

  On his big day

  When the dog’s let out.

  Somewhere in this snow

  I see little children raped

  By maniacal sex fiends

  Eager to make a break

  But the F B I

  In the form of Ted

  Stands waiting

  Hand on gun

  In the Paranoiac

  Summer time

  To come.

  31ST CHORUS

  I knew an angel

  In Mexico City

  Call’d La Negra

  Who the Same eyes

  Had as Sebastian

  And was reincarnated

  To suffer in the poker

  House rain

  Who had the same eyes

  As Sebastian

  When his Nirvana came

  Sambati was his name.

  Must have had one leg once

  And expensive armpit canes

  And traveled in this rain

  With youthful hidden pain

  32ND CHORUS

  Beautiful girls

  Just primp

  But beautiful boys

  Do suffer.

  White wash rain stain

  Gravel roof glass black

  Red wood blue neon

  Green elevators

  Birds that change color

  And white ants

  Climbing to your knee

  Earnest for deliverance.

  33RD CHORUS

  It was a mournful day

  The B O Bay was gray

  Old man angry-necks

  Stomped to escape sex

  And find his Television

  In the uptown vision

  Of the milk & secret

  Blossom curtain

  Creak it.

  Cheese it the cops!

  Ram down the lamb!

  700 Camels

  In Pakistan!

  Milk will curdle, honey,

  If you sit on stony penises

  Three times moving up & down

  And 7 times around

  34TH CHORUS

  While young boys peek

  In the Hindu temple window