Nobody mentions
that you co-wrote the great
“Needles and Pins"
or were right-hand man
to the ur-weird
Phil Spector
not to mention
your not-bad solo album
with the Dylanesque
“Laugh At Me” all
about how maitre d’s
snooted you away
because you insisted on
dressing like a caveman
in the 60’s
I saw your re-election
as a good omen both to the nation
and your 44th Congressional District.
A someone who looked like most
of us – dear-in-the halogens expressions
against the tsunami of almost unreal
factoids
the kind of guy who’d
snap a photo of his family
eating junk food
with Mt. Rushmore
in the background.
COMPENSATION PORTRAIT
The factories have
burned down. The people
function in their isolate
huts. The mayor
has gone home. The college
is issuing traffic tickets.
The water is wounded.
The Great Falls seek another
path. Chump change hits
the pavement & no
one picks it up.
Mormons are here
selling the Pearl
of Great Price. Pay phone
ringing in a parking lot.
Your friends have fled
Paterson. No squirrels. Someone
begins an essay on concrete.
Did you get the money we
sent?
Empty apartments. A jalopy
that needs a new radiator hose.
The old circus hotel burns
down. No money for gas, the cars
run on static. The clock sounds
fade. Ghostly tongues of water
throughout the evening.
The potato chips war
with one other.
There are the Watchungs.
A car drops into a pothole. Dirty
statues. Did
you get the money
we
sent? For dinner:
soda crackers, birch beer.
The book inside you
is asleep. Moody
telepathy. Streets
the color of cheap beer. The school
is burning down. Did
you get
the
money we sent? A nameless
uncarved block stands in
for your future. Paterson
is a relay of false
and true alarms. The moon
is not a thin silent key.
In your head: sea storm, a nor’easter.
A chili dog squirts out of its
buns
and lands on the curb
of Ellison Street.
This is not
an experiment
in the American
idiom. What
did one do
in Paterson,
1956? Get
the MONEY!
A library
is burning
down. Your friends
have moved away
from you. Black out
& “friends”-turned-thieves
have redecorated
your loft through
attrition. Did
you get
the money we
sent you?
Look up,
are those tangrams
of tint moonlight
or just street lamp
glare? Drunk wandering
through a midnight
housing project. It has
gone beyond
peculiar personal
habits
Just enough
for a chili dog, maybe
a birch beer. On the shirtside
of this street, nothing
looks like homes. Snatch
of Jethro Tull snaps me back
to an easier way
of telling this. New rain
kool whips the street’s
ripe debris. What is a mojo? Can
you pick up the house? The mailbox
is on fire. No one believes you
any more. A pizza shop radio
blares
uninteresting “oldies”, Streets
obliterated by black gum spots.
A hot dog cart explodes. Did
you get
the
money we
sent?
Coffee
is not drunk
by mendicants.
What does
one do
in paterson
circa 1998--
DUCK!
The children’s toys
are burning. Empty bus
deadheads to
the Market Street garage.
You’ve become
the man
your father was. Did
you get
the
money we sent?
Your life -- the open window.
LOU COSTELLO (In Paterson - 4)
"Hello out there to all
the people there
in Paterson" is how Lou
ended his radio show.
And in the jumbo shrimp neighborhoods
Of Paterson, where archeologists
huddled together in squatter dorms,
women lifted their heads.
from the Old Gold haze of canasta
& liverwurst parties to shout
“That's our Lou!" -- then
back
to the business at hand.
In their minds, Lou is sleeping
on the leather lobby couch
of the Alexander Hamilton Hotel.
Family troubles. Moonlight
is coating
The floor & the tuba-faced
night clerk
Gets his blubbery fingertips dirty
scanning the want ads
of a “nite owl”
Paterson Morning Call.
Report to The Central Committee
Magellan didn't; he blew his
stacks
in the Phillipines & four near-naked
sailors
returned to Lisbon as ghosts, no
ruby pendants
or docile natives as royal gifts.
And don’t ask me the length of exile.
Let in the north moon & let
it seek its level
And what remains solid in the coffee
cup
is each moment’s spare change and
dust.
Withhold tools. Bring yourself through
the salt marsh that glows airport
blue.
Bring your portfolios that have
myths ascribed
to them. We shall, as one entity,
solve
the Jersey calculus that claims
us both
as sons and gatekeepers of the shunpike.
Telegrams will not be sent. We
will not parade
on slick macadam. Magellan’s
brain became
a smoking wreck. His persistent
silhouette
unnerves the ranter.
AT THE D.E.W. LINE
for Ed Smith
The poultry man and the honest jogger
wait at the bus stop. They’re not
thinking
evil, but they’d like to. These
minds
akimbo are streets themselves.
The busses
are derived from the archives of
an era
when we were reduced to repopulating
North Jersey with the tuna melts
of bad poetry. Now that scabby
verse
is out to sea
& beyond our motors
& just part of the burnt toast
of the galaxy.
Some better times in Paterson, Passaic.
Leonia, Hoboken or luminous Wayne.
The squashed literary rebbes who
judged us
no longer eat the Cheez-its
of a ruby consciousness; they just
wander
as nomads in the land where they
make the shirts.
Forget it all, forget the tab,
forget the bakelum on your
hut, let’s go out and stomp the
shit
out of a language only spoken
in sleep. Let’s trade our trudges
for sno-cones,
type up head ragas dedicated
to our better selves.
Believe me bwana,
kimosabe’, chaver, comrade,
companero, moneygrip, friend
this spatial crooning
has nothing to do with poetry,
it’s just that I’m tired
of arranging the cattle drives.