Day: October 2, 2001

  • I once recited the following poem for a best friend of mine at his *bachelor party* (lol) at Mt. Saviour Monastery in NY (no, the nuns were not dancing girls :) .  Corso was one of the lesser well-known Beat writers, perhaps most easily recognized by his graphical poem Bomb.  Read this and realize why I like cemeteries and feel sometimes like a lost pharaoh adrift in time.

    'Marriage' by Gregory Corso


    Should I get married? Should I be good?
    Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
    Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
    tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
    then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
    and she going just so far and I understanding why
    not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
    Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
    and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-


    When she introduces me to her parents
    back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
    should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
    and not ask Where's the bathroom?
    How else to feel other than I am,
    often thinking Flash Gordon soap-
    O how terrible it must be for a young man
    seated before a family and the family thinking
    We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
    After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?


    Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
    Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
    but we're gaining a son-
    And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?


    O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
    and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
    just wait to get at the drinks and food-
    And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
    asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
    And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
    I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
    She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
    And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-
    Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
    Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
    All streaming into cozy hotels
    All going to do the same thing tonight
    The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
    The lobby zombies they knowing what
    The whistling elevator man he knowing
    Everybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!
    Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
    Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
    running rampant into those almost climactic suites
    yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
    O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
    I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
    devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
    a saint of divorce-


    But I should get married I should be good
    How nice it'd be to come home to her
    and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
    aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
    and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
    and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
    saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
    God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
    So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
    and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
    Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
    like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
    like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
    grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
    And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
    When are you going to stop people killing whales!
    And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
    Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-


    Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
    and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
    up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
    finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
    knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-
    O what would that be like!
    Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
    For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
    Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
    Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
    And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon


    No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
    Not rural not snow no quiet window
    but hot smelly tight New York City
    seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
    a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
    And five nose running brats in love with Batman
    And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
    like those hag masses of the 18th century
    all wanting to come in and watch TV
    The landlord wants his rent
    Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
    impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-
    No! I should not get married! I should never get married!
    But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman
    tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
    holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other
    and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window
    from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
    No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-


    O but what about love? I forget love
    not that I am incapable of love
    It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-
    I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
    And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
    And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
    And I don't like men and-
    But there's got to be somebody!
    Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
    all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
    and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!


    Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
    then marriage would be possible-
    Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
    so i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

  • Oh the aggravation! 


    I'm trying like hell to get a spare PC together for my friend lcsaph so she can get back on line...and now another friend, toreibjo, is faced with an ultimatum to pay a hidden bill for his ISP service or get disconnected for an interminable amount of time.


    Well I say no!   I will get lcsaph some kind of setup soon and I'm going to write toreibjo a 3-digit check to help him out with the surprise $500 debt as soon as he sends me his mailing address! 


    Yes, I love both of these folks something fierce and will do all I can to bring them back and keep them here--if that is what they wish.  lcsaph is a musingly quixotic yet passionately sensitive, inventively poetic young woman.  And toreibjo is perhaps the most genuinely gentlemanly and ardently intelligent warrior spirit I've ever gotten a chance to know.


    And when toreibjo does send his address, I will share it with all of you who may have a like mind to help him out.  And if he doesn't want to consider taking any *assistance*--fine, let's just make it a long-term interest free loan, the terms of repayment to be discussed later.


    There's just no way either of these fine, beautiful people are going to be silenced by the withdrawl of high-tech, if I can help it.  Simplicity confounds the most sophisticated idiots: I can act, I will act--that's all I know.


  •  my lost angel

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