tonight the gars on the trees are swords in the hands of knights the stars are like twenty-seven dancing russians and the wind is I am waving goodbye to the casket of my first mammy well that black cadillac drove right up to your front door and the chauffeur was death he knocked on the screen he said come on woman let's take a ride he didn't even give you time to spit he didn't even let you take the iron out ofyour hair you said his fingernails was made out of water moccasin bones and his teeth was hollow he was a eggsucker you said he reached up under your dress and got the nation sack you said the conjure didn't work he didn't smell die salt in your shoes you said he came looking for you and you hid out in the our house you waited for him with a butcher knife you asked him why not let the good times roll you wasn't studying about kicking no bucket his tongue was a rattlesnake those sunglasses death wore I was talking to the pew of deacons they had white gloves on a midget collected ears on a piece of bob wire the black dog lifted his leg on the hubcap the wagon load of boots and banners was dumped in the bayou the chain gang drowned together in the fiood the disguised butterfiy the quivering masts when the hero returns one came on horseback with the enchanted sword in the hands of the father the magician comes into the grand court and his head is lopped off by the boy so the father comes back and knights his son with three strokes on the shoulder this was the accolade of noblemen the investiture by the magical father the bridge burnt up the tent and the ladder and the piano are on fire I saw them after the fiineral a drunk peckerhead pulled a pistol on daddy mother had a double bit axe just in case but daddy kicked his teeth in if his head was cut off it wouldn't grow back he wasn't a knight he was trash the pecker had cooties a blind fisherman used clorox jugs he use to be Mama Covoe's man he gets snuff on the harp I play it like when I kiss her on the lips and she is dipping snuff she is dead to put it out they rolled it down the bank the night crawlers the honkytonky is burning the piano under the water looks like a shark O.Z. stuck a ice pick in his knee the bull whip hanging up over the stove in the saloon the shadows in the rafters the stevedore dreaming his knots the empty sardine cans full of tadpoles and rainwater the stale Stage Planks the icy spars the rib of the wolf the lavender trappings drenched in blood the fine horses the deck of marked cards the prisoner's sock the toe jam blues the waterlogged guitar the haunted ship the tornado set down in the woods a hundred years ago the crew of vines and snakes and vinegarroons lightning striking the boom Baby Gauge and 1 taking a bath in a wash tub Mama Covoe washing our mouths out with lye soap for cussing my grandmother riding sidesaddle through the lowlands to meet Percy the steamboat going to the opera in New Orleans the autograph was a dream it was a black cape I took off on the levee I dream about dresses flying up for a moment 1 dream about mussels in the moonlight like castanets the antimacassars drifting off the couch the hair let down in the evenings I can dream about a stabde man shooting dice in a tent I can dream about the legions of angels in the forest I can dream the harquebusier showing out for Venus fencing with his shadow cast on the beach the grave the dreams sifted through cold dirt I can dream about a dead man's letter and the five dollar bill in his shoe I can dream about the ship of blind horsemen that puts out in your sleep that is rigged by spiders that has a plank everyone must walk and the dream sweat on the figurehead's lips like dew like mourning tears like a poisoned animal like moist silk like slivers of wood there are so many revolutions light years away like a catfish winding a trot line up like the emblem of a saint like a roulette like a song of the holy innocents like a bent hook like a blindfolded knife thrower knowing the bull's eye like a torn mouth like an invisible sword like the captain of death trying to spread his fingers apart like a frozen hand passed over a flame like vessels embarking at dawn like a revolver held at the temple like unblessed holy water dripping through a wound like a Virgin's piss like a rope burn like a plucked eye like a ship's wheel spun free steering a dream like a wolfiing chasing his tail on the Fourth they had a fish fry and the police hid in a clump of willows because they figured Johnny Lee would try to make a break they figured he was going to come home to see his mama a car went through the weeds with fishing poles stuck out the window two horses were on each fender a propeller was on the hood tonight the gars on the trees are swords in the hands of knights the stars are like twenty-seven dancing russians and the wind is I am waving goodbye to the casket of my first mammy well that black cadillac drove right up to your front door and the chauffeur was death he knocked on the screen he said come on woman let's take a ride he didn't even give you time to spit he didn't even let you take the iron out ofyour hair you said his fingernails was made out of water moccasin bones and his teeth was hollow he was a eggsucker you said he reached up under your dress and got the nation sack you said the conjure didn't work he didn't smell die salt in your shoes you said he came looking for you and you hid out in the our house you waited for him with a butcher knife you asked him why not let the good times roll you wasn't studying about kicking no bucket his tongue was a rattlesnake those sunglasses death wore I was talking to the pew of deacons they had white gloves on a midget collected ears on a piece of bob wire the black dog lifted his leg on the hubcap the wagon load of boots and banners was dumped in the bayou the chain gang drowned together in the fiood the disguised butterfiy the quivering masts when the hero returns one came on horseback with the enchanted sword in the hands of the father the magician comes into the grand court and his head is lopped off by the boy so the father comes back and knights his son with three strokes on the shoulder this was the accolade of noblemen the investiture by the magical father the bridge burnt up the tent and the ladder and the piano are on fire I saw them after the fiineral a drunk peckerhead pulled a pistol on daddy mother had a double bit axe just in case but daddy kicked his teeth in if his head was cut off it wouldn't grow back he wasn't a knight he was trash the pecker had cooties a blind fisherman used clorox jugs he use to be Mama Covoe's man he gets snuff on the harp I play it like when I kiss her on the lips and she is dipping snuff she is dead to put it out they rolled it down the bank the night crawlers the honkytonky is burning the piano under the water looks like a shark O.Z. stuck a ice pick in his knee the bull whip hanging up over the stove in the saloon the shadows in the rafters the stevedore dreaming his knots the empty sardine cans full of tadpoles and rainwater the stale Stage Planks the icy spars the rib of the wolf the lavender trappings drenched in blood the fine horses the deck of marked cards the prisoner's sock the toe jam blues the waterlogged guitar the haunted ship the tornado set down in the woods a hundred years ago the crew of vines and snakes and vinegarroons lightning striking the boom Baby Gauge and 1 taking a bath in a wash tub Mama Covoe washing our mouths out with lye soap for cussing my grandmother riding sidesaddle through the lowlands to meet Percy the steamboat going to the opera in New Orleans the autograph was a dream it was a black cape I took off on the levee I dream about dresses flying up for a moment 1 dream about mussels in the moonlight like castanets the antimacassars drifting off the couch the hair let down in the evenings I can dream about a stabde man shooting dice in a tent I can dream about the legions of angels in the forest I can dream the harquebusier showing out for Venus fencing with his shadow cast on the beach the grave the dreams sifted through cold dirt I can dream about a dead man's letter and the five dollar bill in his shoe I can dream about the ship of blind horsemen that puts out in your sleep that is rigged by spiders that has a plank everyone must walk and the dream sweat on the figurehead's lips like dew like mourning tears like a poisoned animal like moist silk like slivers of wood there are so many revolutions light years away like a catfish winding a trot line up like the emblem of a saint like a roulette like a song of the holy innocents like a bent hook like a blindfolded knife thrower knowing the bull's eye like a torn mouth like an invisible sword like the captain of death trying to spread his fingers apart like a frozen hand passed over a flame like vessels embarking at dawn like a revolver held at the temple like unblessed holy water dripping through a wound like a Virgin's piss like a rope burn like a plucked eye like a ship's wheel spun free steering a dream like a wolfiing chasing his tail on the Fourth they had a fish fry and the police hid in a clump of willows because they figured Johnny Lee would try to make a break they figured he was going to come home to see his mama a car went through the weeds with fishing poles stuck out the window two horses were on each fender a propeller was on the hood a man said how you I said fine I said I wouldn't go up that road any further ifI was you John Law is up there the doll fiy trailing in the wind from the pole hit the ground why don't you come over here white boy a man said like hell I said I ain't getting my throat slit you got me wrong he said no I don't I know you broke out the penitentiary shit man I know who you are Johnny Lee somebody get him the man driving said somebody kicked the trunk open he was inside all along he tipped his cap he spit in his hands it was him he said lay off Buchannan I knew the kid's daddy he's it he said Johnny Lee Dowd white boy you caught any he asked me not but two I said what do you mean I'm it say I said there's a posse up there you know it one of the Other ones was whistling and the buoys before the sun goes down I lost track of what he was saying I was scared I was dreaming the law ain't nothing but bluebottie flies well if you was to row me to the other side I just might show you where your luck will change he said I lost a track I said what about the Police I said to him I ain't studying no posse he said all of you I said no just me he said them boys is going to set things up for me they going to drive into that fish fry they straight see and one of them is going to turn around and look at the trunk and then them peckerwoods going to mess up a good car we stole it anyway boy that Buchannan said and the one driving picked his teeth with a ice pick you been pulling my leg I said I thought this was a laylow on account of that lay low up the road damn them Iaylows anyway I said you knew all along they was up there you knew I was here you mean that one called Buchannan ain't going to slit my throat I said that's right he said old Baby Gauge done told me where you was Buchannan smiled he said no hard feelings the man got in the boat I shoved us out 1 was rowing Johnny Lee Dowd to the Mississippi side I looked him in the eye I said you sure do look familiar he laughed like someone had they hands around his neck choking him how come you talk that way I said he said some towheads tried to hang me they didn't even break his neck those blowfiies in that posse they thought they hung this nigger ha ha no sit this here ain't no shuffling nigger what you see I was looking him in the eye a rowing that boat he was drinking wine I didn't take him to be no tapdancer nohow noway not me no sir he was what I call one mean you better believe it I wasn't messing with that man the sweat was working up on me because I figured somebody was fixing to cut down on us to change the subject I said what was that one's driving name that's Fireweed he told me and it weren't even dark yet he said now you mean to sit there he had him a pistol too and tell me you don't remember me he pulled down his bottom lip with his finger I saw the gold tooth with the star of David in it he spit the tobacco juice out between his teeth he reared back he said woowee boy and I remembered it was a long time ago I was a baby I was drifting away in a wash tub tied to the raft the cottonmouths was crawling up through the willow limbs there was a dark face above and black hands grabbed a hold of me the negro swam a long way with me in his arms he always smiled there was the star in his tooth we got to the bank he cut a X in my foot with his razor he said this hurts me more than it does you white baby he was biting the bottom of my foot he was spitting the moccasin juice and the blood on the ground all the while him swatting at things jumping out on him and the gold tooth with the star of David in it I was trying to catch a butterfly then he started cutting on himself he kept a saying woowee just like mosquitoes he picked me up I sat on his shoulders we ran through the bogue we ran through timber all the time I'm riding up high on his shoulders bouncing he wasn't no horse we came into camp another negro rode up on a horse he put his fingers in his mouth he whistled they laid us in the back seat of a black car we was going to beat hell before I knew it all got smokey mother was driving the cadillac then a man with sunglasses that had bats for cars everytime I looked out the window I saw a tall man on a horse that was my daddy the other horse had a negro on him we went to cross a bridge and I could see them trailing along side the boy's daddy and my daddy coming into town they rode into town I could tell by the wires and I could see them my daddy stuck his hand through the window he held the colored boy's hand my mother was in the front seat she was so pretty her hair like smoke daddy was saying appreciate we hit land I said I know who you are I said I ain't got time to talk to say what I want to cause them Police is after you he said I ain't studying about no Police he pointed to the other side I saw my daddy on a horse in a white hat with a rifie in his hand and a pistol in his belt he was waving to a man on a mule the negroes were passing it on down the levee Johnny Lee said they going to have to kill that man before they kill me daddy raised up in the saddle he waved both arms he said ho and it carried over the water that must have been the all clear signal for Johnny you could hear singing up the levee and a lot of shotgun fire and then a explosion that was the car rolling into the river I bet I said I hope those two got out shit man they eating fish he said reckon any of the peckerwoods going to shoot daddy I said not likely he said now the oars in my hands felt like two shovels what about you now Johnny I said Frankie boy I'm dead he busted out laughing he pointed way away down the river that's the place he said he got out the boat he pushed me away he laughed I saw the star of David he bent over he started talking like a crazy man he danced up the bank yelling I rowed back the sun went down the cars waved goodbye so long I said I saw the moon in the pool of blood in the boat so long all night long I dreamed about him I went to sleep in the saddle with daddy I put my finger through the bullet hole in his hat with the rattlesnake band everyone riding the levee road back to camp with their heads hung low I asked him reckon he's going to make it he said course he is two horses were on each fender a propeller was on the hood when we saw the posse coming towards us daddy give me to a negro I believe it was Grease Man then he rode out by himself he told the white men let my men pass the negroes and I passed by daddy brought up the rear there wasn't another shot fired that night at the show Baby Gauge and 0.2. and I saw a man say Frankie Frankie that damned Melvin got sick to his stomach I thought about the stranded sailors and the mates alone and queasy on the rafts and the years before the masts and the old naval battles in ancient times it's so lonely in the tent after they run the picture show boats knocking against one another at midnight the prows the hypnotist lives in Mound Bayou he got drunk and fell ofi his mule and we all walked home kicking at a empty lard bucket and Melvin I know I've seen a man on fire high tailing it down the road his son knocked on the screen he told mother his paw was burning up I know Odysseus drenched the tunics with blood I know my great grandfather was Francis Gildart I know the echo the horse and rider I know I just as soon stick a broom straw down a hole and sing to a doodle bug than go to school I know shit from shinola I know you will never know what is true or not it is through a glass darkly and the balalaika tells me to go to sleep and it also tells me I'm not Russian and the guitar lets me know I'm not Spanish and the black fiag is definitely raised and the bouzouki my ship bless the polished blades the fingers of the blind mirror makes the plum the drunk and the koto with the breathing of meditative animals the knives that are dreamt the moon is a death place that is dreamt by snake doctors the whiskey corks bobbing at eleven-thirty and my dreams like a samurai's sword my soul of aged wood under way of sleeping fish I sleep I wake I sing I am the last gift to the cities of loneliness my dreams of wood entering the gates at night my dreams like a horse built in the evening and Jimmy and the negroes I know their names each and everyone like the constellations like scars on the levee so drunk they couldn't stand up the dynamite man drunk the oiler drunk the root picker drunk the man on the bulldozer drunk as the one running the dragline daddy's drunk go back to camp big mama Emma whupped us with a hickory stick she switched us all the day is so hot like a strawberry patch full of sidewinders Chaucer's little pointed shoes the old fool riding around on a mule talking to himself all day I ride through the mountains and you know there's not a goddamn hill around here the corpse cussing in the slew ' the sambo sees the ghost horse I see feet dancing on the deck by themselves everything good is always nailed down and bleeding Jesus is a pickininny peeing off the front porch he was lying in a ditch drunk as a pole cat asking me did we get any cats the note in the bottle said pleez hep I my feetz n uh bar trap in snow lake arkansas sin mony the midsouth fair is a gyp the only thing good is the world's smallest man who happened to be a personal friend of mine don't go on thursday because every hillbilly in Arkansas will be there they believe in all that stuff you know they are a little touched in the head I had a long conversation with the world's smallest man one day and got to know him pretty well we was what you call buddies right ofi" the bar I take to people that are all fucked up I am like Jesus in that respect well no one else was in the tent he had this high whisper voice so nice he said he was from Brooklyn New York he told me to come over closer he was just twenty-two inches tall and that's no lie his face was all right his back was a little crooked and one of his feet looked lame the little fingers on his hands like sea creatures there was music from the old world playing in the alps he said if he fell he'd break like an egg he wasn't bowlegged the time came for his stunt to end he asked me will you come visit me we went he walked high up on a platform with silver crutches and there was space for regular people to walk it was like I was a way long ago time god talking to a captain on a ship he sat down and ate his lunch I turned some down because there wouldn't be any left this little room in the back of the tent just like a doll's house he threw his crutches away he didn't really need them he said he was the loneliest of carnival freaks so I went to see him everyday after school while he was in town he had been all over the world could talk in seven foreign languages and him not even two foot tall I'll be damned he was something one day we were in his tent in between his act he was looking at himself in the mirror with a piece of stocking over his head he had white make-up on he said now when the fair leaves I hope you'll write to me I said sure I knew he'd be back next year besides I could probably catch him in one of those Mississippi side shows he called me over he asked me if I was his little outlaw I said sure but he was littler than me his name was the mountebank he said I asked for a soda pop right after the first sip I thought he put some potion in it cause I was light headed I looked on his walls there was a toreador on a poisoned horse a scaffold a fioating crypt and a fiineral of violins and piccolos there was a tier of illustrations ripped out of books I had read there was a bunch from Les Miserables I started calling them out like I was a chant I was real still and wary like a buck with his bloody hoof raised in the fog like a onyx in a dead man's cufi" you know how a dog run over in the fall raises his head and barks but you don't hear nothing you just see the smoke coming out of his mouth that's how I was like a soldier on top of a mountain clover under my boots an old woman with the bloodstone beads in her toothless head the lips of the firneral a path of chicken bones in a black and tan's throat the laughing victims of the Sleepwalker I am at the dance tickling the virgins' palms he shook me a little said listen I called off the pictures he tore out of M. Hugo's book Hullo said she You Have A Mirror The Ravine Was There Unexpected Yawning Directly Under The Horse's Feet The Woman Had A Vague Look In Her Large Black Eyes Waterloo After The Battle He Was Sleeping Peacefully Cosette Sweeping then I perceived he was weeping I asked the world's smallest man did anyone ever try to steal his money he was changing into his admiral's suit the naked little man he put on the hat the magenta plume he said yes and sometimes they hide a cat under their coats they stare at me they don't look at me they laugh at me he said you want to know what I do I said what he went come here with his finger I went over I put my car up to his lips he stuck his tongue in it he busted out giggling what you trying to do I said he said sorry come back I went over again he said come closer and I'll show you what I do he drew a tiny sword like a woman's hat pin out of his scabbard and poked it at my eyes no I jumped back I'm pretty quick he said don't hurt me I wouldn't put your eyes out for anything I believed him I asked him have you ever poked any out he said hundreds of times what color people I asked white he said tell me about it he said this the last time the fair was in Arkansas some football players and some wrestlers came in the tent I was dressed no he said attired I was attired as a matador I broke in his story I said I have the opera Carmen he pulled the silk handkerchief out of my suit pocket and swirled it around his arm wonderful my boy he said he went over to his phonograph it was a old time one this is just for looks he said to give that shall we say the effect he made a movement like the court jester did in the French comedy he said here's where the music really comes from and he turned on some switch and I heard the most beautiful music coming from everywhere all over the room in my eyes were a hawk and a stallion he said my eyes were triskelions that they were heliographs he said the woman and the magician on the tapestry must swim the river and I should lead them clearing wind and water he said someone bowing was unknown he called me the averter of fiies that my wife one day would hear one child with a golden thigh the constellation of a woman he said that my mind was like a rose window a water wheel he showed me paintings and books he told me buildings were for termites he told me about the big time the graveyard of dice in the corridors it was like 3-D the way he talked there lie the ancient tombs the ancient dead he said there the untrodden sanctuaries he said that I was swathed in the night songs he put the needle on a german's aria he danced around and he clicked the heels on his little boots I let him sit on my shoulder like a parrot he said it was almost time to start the next show he said he was the saddest of side shows the little freak with the screwed up back now he jumped up on his feet like I was the big man in the harbor saying this piece of music is known as the fourth symphony of Brahms sure I told him I've seen it played it was fine alright we walked around the midsouth fair him like a bird he never shut up winking at all his gimped up buddies a drunk sapsucker who said he was from Jonesboro wanted to shake his hand but he couldn't do things like that on account of his eggshell bones and all he went on and told me how his best and only friend was Rhine Stone the three-legged tight rope walker he was married to a monkey and everybody saw his wife stab him in the house of mirrors he bled to death his leg was a fake it was tied on and the line he walked was actually a board I said well the horses drowned in Whirlpools he pinched me on the dieek and said and the blood and the ships were burned I said I ride a wolf he said the fire is perpetual like the great trees of night that genufiect in the lightning I said the fioor of the altar is a Whetstone where is the pyre in honor of the victory of the dauntless knife he said I said below the ice the shadow of the grave ship bearing the shattered blade can be seen ho and he said the horsemen are hanging from the gibbet masts the thieves the courageous who fell in smoke battle with the tune rock anchors around their necks and barebacked the young warrior naked as snow dealing out death and the aces of wind comes commanding the ship of the dead comes maneuvering the swatch or night sail in that journey through the black knees of sea I said a dream of a great horse a man dies all the people shooting at targets and riding rides and hoping to have their fortunes told seemed like lemmings to me they seemed like straw men like harlequins that belonged to a no nothing a know nothing a collector of string a man that did tricks with a rope something done for a buck with dime store mirrors not the magic in a Hindoo's basket not the great bronze discs of China only a herd driven by gimmicks performed by the outriders of talk and here I was carrying around the world's smallest man on my shoulders I said friend shit or get off the pot tell me what happened when they tried to make off with your treasure well my little outlaw he said two wrestlers a safety a center and an end came in to see my show it was the last performance in that town boys being boys one of them unzipped his pants and exposed himself he requested that I perform an unnatural act on his person I told the others to leave the safety wanted to stay but the wrestler persuaded him to go I told the wrestler to shove his lumber into my miniature camera the lens that is I would act the part of the photographer and that way with my head under the curtain and his member in the camera and all out of sight we could always say I was taking your picture if anyone walked in his picture not mine I told him I don't go in for that quite right he said anyway the wrestler who the whole football team admired shut his eyes I said that wrestler wasn't Sputnik Monroe was it I know him and I don't think he's that a way at all no he said I don't remember his name it wasn't Sputnik though this one had peroxided hair well what happened I said do you know what a guillotine is my little outlaw why sure I do I said that's what they used in the French Revolution to cut the rich people's heads olT and before the Citiuns took over the rich folks who was known as the blue bloods cut the bandits' poor heads off I've read about that contraption in a lot of books and I've seen it used in the picture show a tale of two cities and I saw it in a movie with no talking a old time one where everything is real fast I like those they're the best they come up with the writing in between you know then the strangest thing took a hold of me I heard the songs of people matching the blade of the guillotine was hovering in the heavens people were running down the road with torches held up every once in a while the leader would stop and turn around and say something a slogan or a cuss word I can't tell what and then the crowd would take up a running again I couldn't tell if they was going to some place or leaving some place the world's smallest man said his camera had no shutter just a razor blade I said you mean you cut that wrestler's pecker off precisely he said he said the blood when he cut went up in his nose I said you are kind of awnry you know that he asked me if I wanted to see it he had it preserved in a aquarium I dreamed about the old movie with talk where the nobleman got shot in the mouth and he put the handkerchief over it then there was one where the king had to show the next in line a book so he'd know what to do with a woman he was fixing to get married they would look down the wrong end of a megaphone and some body would dust them with powder on the wig in the end just about everybody gets it even the woman who I liked the world's smallest man said later that night the center came back he stooped over and asked the freak could he see what was in his pants the freak pretended to go in his britches but he pulled his sword and in the freak's own words he put the cutlass on the end of his finger for aim and plunged it into the center's eye he pulled it out some of the white was still on the blade he wiped it off under his arm and before the center could get away he climbed on his back and jammed it in his Other eye he said he did it just like he was a sick bull he said the crowd would have asked for it he said the first thing the blind center did was get down in a stance and try to hike a football all the time the blood streaming out of his eyes he told me how he put his hands up to his face and the red seeped through his fingers I asked him what the eyes looked like and he said like two piles of chickenshit well I told the freak I'd better be going that I'd see him the next time he was in town he got off my shoulder on to his little balcony he said wait a minute that he wanted to put another record on before I left he did that this song he said was called the magical fiute one I hadn't heard before we were standing at the front of his tent where you walk in to see his act and the song was coming from way back inside his tent I was leaving when I put my hand out to shake he kissed it then he put one of his tiny arms in front and one in back and did a bow I didn't know what to do so I genufiected and said goodbye he said farewell I left I told all my buddies about him some of them didn't believe me but that's alright they never do only the ones in camp believe me I told them when he comes through their neck of the woods they ought to go see him tell him the outlaw sent you but don't let him take no pictures of you it was about a year later I guess I was waiting for the fair to come back and when it came the world's smallest man wasn't in it I asked the barker where he was he was real perturbed at me asking those questions he said they dropped him fi'om the show he wasn't making enough money and besides they'd had a lot of complaints he said I would probably like rubber man better anyhow I told the man to go get fucked he hit me in the head with his cane I ran off he yelled at me a freak is a freak I stole five dollars in change all dimes from one of them gyp joints and doubled it at the baseball throwing booth then he says the man running it that he'd give me if I could knock those milk bottles over again fifty dollars I bet the ten bucks that shithook gave me a loaded ball I know it so I went up to this man I started crying I told him I needed some money to get home on he gave me fifty cents well I said to myself I can sure enough make some cash at that rifie shoot but on the way there I saw one of those striptease joints so I spent a quarter there and guess who sits down right next to me the guy who lent me the four hits and the god's truth of it is he was the Chief of Police I lit out of there just when she was getting under the jackass goddamnit I missed it I ran over to where they had the shoot they were a lot of those hillbillies from Arkansas there and they was doing pretty good but sweet Jesus they're stupid I won around eleven bucks all those hillbillies wanted was the stuffed animals the man running the show said kid this baldheaded fucker here he could have got a hundred clams off me but he wants those pigs he wants them all the same size all the same color while he was handing me the money I give him the go around sign with the finger on the side of the head for somebody's crazy I decided to run off again from home and school and catch me a bus and see if that freak was working any of those small time side shows over around Rosedale but first I had to go home and leave a note 1 was thinking about how I'd slip up and call the world's smallest man a freak in front of him he didn't like it I thought well I won't call him freak no more when I got to the house I went in the front door Charlie B. was asleep he asked me where in the hell did I think I was a going I said listen you tell on me I'll tell daddy you doing goof dust again I'll tell him you been taking that car out at night and I do know where that pistol went go head on he said I was walking out the front door he said hold on a package come for you certified inshawed it was well give it here 1 said there's a letter come with it he said you read it 1 said I didn't read shit he said I opened the letter first it was from the freak Charlie B. said now who do you know in Mound Bayou I know lots I said well you going to read it or not he said I tried to read aloud what I saw but I couldn't I thought my eyes would burn holes through the paper Charlie B. asked me if I let a fart there was that smell I didn't I closed my eyes I heard that music I was a dead lion I was a black stallion I disappeared under the water I was made sure of death the icebergs the wagging tongues a warrior cleaning his fingernails over a painting by the one called Goya the fragments of the moon drawn into the dead man's mouth the magnet my dreams shooting at one another from creeks and books and thickets my dreams like nuclear fission my dream tracks left by the clairvoyant paw my dreams like something I wrote with a branch on the bank like a bob cat honing its claws in the dark like astronomers sleeping in a ship of bark like my dog telling me someone will poison him and the stories I write at night I start the fire with in the morning a whop bop a lu bop da bop bam boom a doot doot doda ta do do doda tota op popalima dop a lop nop dota doot doot doot doot do da loba holding the spoons of death tongues licking woman underwear and the old broke gentlemen in their rooms drinking with the old porters and the blind negroes dancing by the light the muscadines are picked the whortleberties are picked the snake and the grapes and the berries are in the bucket of death the cock's comb is full of scabs and his spurs are sharp and blue and the spitchcock smoking in the skillet the crawdads in the gumbo the man swallowing okra he keeps saying to himself over and over I will find it here we are I will I know it some say there is nobody up there on the hill but they die at daybreak like a young fox in the highway he lies on the lines in the middle of the road a swamp rabbit dying on a stump I have seen it he says dead rotting asking one of the boys for a smoke outside his window my old cousin the ninety year old queer the moustachioed alcoholic in a white suit playing pitch at the Peabody can see many people pass by the light once in a great while he says to himself it is nineteen-twenty it is nineteen-twenty he don't know you can hear him talking that way crazy like he drinks whiskey all the time he knows the smell in the corners of old hotels that make old porters sick he knows the musk at the top of the ladder he shoots the shit with Sunday Call who is going blind he use to be the meanest man in Memphis he ran all the barrelhouses now he cleans up duck shit my old cousin listens to Puccini he shakes his cane at the wall the picture is gone he says the one with Robert E. Lee drinking buttermilk at the well with his cousin is gone he walks down the long hall and looks for the shoe shine man where is the peg-legged man who knocks a pigeon wing in the Lobby of the Peabody while the polish dries he's dead once in a great while. the yellow snake cuts his tongue in two on the hole in the hollow egg listening to the night play tunes for the unborn chick and the possom talking in the persimmon tree shakes his head at the hissing carbide drifting its stinking light into the nests of the hairless young the pink children and the possom warps his tail around the limb like a mad man like a boss with a whip Hailing a slave it's there but you can't see it it's like a squirrel's dick and the taps on due errand boy's shoes ignite the sample dust in the cotton room and the pianos and the pistols stop for the fun I never look straight ahead I look at all sides I look at water because my father says water is the weakest substance on earth it is the most powerfiil I know there must have been so many received into that place called Valhalla so many at Agincourt so many at Maldon and death rolls on like a burning wheel like an envelope of staunch names avaunt the loincloth the spear avaunt the Elysian Fields aweary of the sun and the bloody child a hundred knights in scarlet cloaks riding black horses a hundred bowmen in green on white stallions a hundred more in blue riding chestnut steeds the tips of the Virgin's fingers on my lips the thick locks of black hair and the boxer of laughing eyes the questions of the maiden put forth to the bull the kidnapped dancer of ten years combing her hair with blood the butcher's son the stable boy the fury I Francis I swear it to the riverbanks to the blackesr of nights one day they had gone down to the river to bathe they saw a horseman come riding the horse pranced around the beach shaking its mane the dancing steed the horseman he wore a flowing white robe his hair was swept back and all the maidens loved him avaunt tangled limbs and crimson garments and the husbands have all drowned themselves on behalf of their mistresses and the wives have run themselves through and the mistresses have born children and become suicides too and the bastard sons will grow up and fall in love with other men's wives and they will be wounded in duels and all is like a one-armed negro blessed to blow harp what was his name what happened to the five blind gospel singers where are they where is Hatti who always carried a butcher knife where is Melvin where is Ben where is Seventy Five where is De Juan and the one I call the Cisco Kid where is the horse called Seven Trumpets where is Mama Covoe I lay down in the cook tents and she washed greens and squashed the snakes under the floor boards I looked up her dress where is that gospel ship coming from where is it going to I don't know all I know is tomorrow morning I must attend a sour room a building like a newspaper I have to sit in with a claque of milksops they are going to have a class picnic again the last one we all went swimming I showed out we had horse fights the one teacher is good looking she likes to give me whippings with the paddle full of holes she touched me between the legs and said excuse me she did it she got on my back around my shoulders at the picnic at the lake it was like slow motion when she got knocked off I had to swim under to go under her legs to pick her up I could see the hair the bathing suit was pulled up over her hips I tried to smell and almost drowned I went down again when I went between her legs she put her hands on the back of my head where it tickles she pulled me through her legs my eyes and checks rubbed the insides of her thighs my neck and my back touched her sex the whole time I never have been able to hold my breath that long I swam back through from behind I put my hands around her thighs I lifted her out of the water I stood up with her riding my shoulders she was a lot taller than me she knew I liked to tell stories about wars and ships and wolves she said I was a wolf and she was a she warrior I forget the name of what you call them we beat all the other horses and riders that is because she had long arms and blonde hair I have a strong back and short legs which makes it impossible to knock me down besides while no one was looking I'd kick a few of the bigger ones in the nuts after we won all the fights I thought about how warm she was at the back of my neck and she had her hands on the top of my head we went walking through the water she tried to get me in a neck scissors with her legs this cuts OR the blood in the carotid arteries while I tried to break this hold she bent over with her wet hair hanging down in my face giggling at me I used my chin and my thumb she rested her chin on my head she said things she put both her arms around my neck I didn't know she was just resting I thought it was a strangle I reached back I threw her off I felt her soft chest I was embarrassed she came up not with a smile just a look she dunked me she got on my shoulders again we walked away from the others towards the deep I carried her we talked about the story called the maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe we spoke about the mythology of Hero and the poet who swam the channel I asked her what her favorite sound was she said she liked the hum of the arrow the whine of the bowstring the unsheathing of swords the piccolo and dirt and a shovel and the fiamenco guitar the heels of an eighteen year old wild like an animal a black hat alone a gypsy humming while he ties a knot in the tails of his shirt a greek fisherman thumping the hull of his boat I said I liked the dance of death which is silence which is all things heard separately and together I stepped off into nothing into a blue hole there wasn't a bottom we were going down I figured she'd get scared and scissor me but she got off my shoulders she grabbed me by the hair she was swimming up with me she must have had a life saver course 1 knew not to suck in air I held my breath and let it out gently my face was between her legs it was like a pillow it was like she was a mermaid but with legs instead of fins when we got to the top of the water I didn't even cough we stood on the bottom now the water about waist high I walked backwards into the deep it was getting dark I didn't want her to see me I said here I am she looked at me she swam over she put her hands on my shoulders we were face to face she pulled herself up around me with her legs holding on I knew she wasn't going to scissor me she kind of leaned back and held on the mosquitoes began to bite and someone was ringing the bell the bus was loading up I would be in another grade next year in another school a whippoorwill called and something fiew down close to us it wasn't a bar it was something after bugs she said it's time to go she wouldn't be going back on the bus she kissed me on the lips it was a french one like falling underwater her lips and all the time the moon was behind her hair when she left that summer I sent her the drawings of the ships they called me teacher's pet we got a letter and a clipping that summer she drowned in Mississippi Charlie B. threw some cold water on me he fanned me with the letter from the freak and I thought when you have a swimming party always go alone do not attend show up by yourself don't show up unless no one is there swim alone never with a buddy always go in the water by yourself no matter what they tell you jump off banks even if you know it's shallow below crack your head open always swim at night jump in when it's COLD and you gasp and can't move my advice to all is death by water if you have an appointment at dawn a duel swim to the forest of honor with the moon over your shoulder dear Francis it said by the time you get this I'll be dead my unfortunate accident took place on the Arkansas side of the river and I was unable to find anyone here who could write so I had to wait until our little show reached Miwissippi before I could get some person to pen a letter both my arms are crushed my hands are like two gloves full of bath powder when I broke I sounded like a pecan cracking by the way my new friend and colleague M. Antonin the knife Bergarno a colored hypnotist is writing this for me he is only recently out of prison himself and that is where we met by coincidence while humming the same Creole tune he has a glass eye blue and all the toes on his left foot are missing there are numerous scars across his cheek and arm the big toe Bergamo cut ofi- himself to get out of work the other four were removed by the white man whose boot he spit on I might add that after we were released Bergamo put a spell on the guard and he cut his own throat well my little outlaw aside from my eminent expiration my predicament is this I was sentenced to eight months in jail for the murder of a third rate performer by the name of Crawling Vine you remember his tent don't you the one with the half and gibbous moon on either side of the canvas nevertheless I will explain the diminutive penalty rendered you might recall that Crawling Vine was a hermaphrodite well the judge kept this in mind in light of the severity of the crime he ruled manslaughter yea I seen that mofadyke Charlie B. said I seen him in Clarksdale I mean I seen it there my my 1 don't see how no judge can give a man near abouts a year for killing no mofadyke how in the world did that man rule manslaughter I don't know shut up Charlie B. let me read this letter which was a questionable decision on various grounds one of them being there was no corpus delicti I will explain but for now the motives for murder Vine that ignoble umbrella loved cats he was always taunting me with them he knew there was a hermaphrodite in every sideshow fiom Cairo to New Orleans whereas I was the world's smallest man why everytime I think about that tacky act he she or it has of fucking himself herself or itself I just shiver I seen me another mofadyke its name was Kudzu reckon it was Crawling Vine the freak went on I had just concluded my act I was still in my cape drinking a cognac about to remove my gloves when I noticed the withered arm of the hermaphrodite lowering a Siamese cat into my parlour I was aware of the ambush ahead of time I reached for a match when the hideous creature sprung at me I doused it with cognac presently striking the match and igniting the cat I took olIE my gloves with the feeling of a deed well done and watched the monstrosity burn a pity you weren't there mon ptoscrit to pour me another brandy I poured it myself and awaited the return of M. Vine I toasted his most hideous and immediate presence may you piss in your own cunt may you inherit the lice of Snorri Sturluson may dung bugs frequent your grave may you give yourself trench mouth may you put your cat out with your duet of piss no I'll do that I unzipped and peed on the cat it smouldered it finally went out like an old couch when all at once the infuriated hermaphrodite came out of the boards and grabbed me up and attempted to avenge the death of his sickly wife of a cat by pressing me like a rose between the pages of an early edition ofTess of the D'Urbervilles my rapier never fails is there need to say more I think so I had the Chinese acrobat dragging him to the tiger's cage when I had a most horrible idea suppose I were to practice my cuts on the still living corpulence I had the acrobat hide it in the kitchen I went to work on it sit it was a stroke of luck that the sawdust was fresh for the fioor was a sponge of blood I whacked it here there and every which a way my fervor was further heightened by the crowd shouting in the tent we had rented for the Revival next door I strung its ears and eyes on my blade like shish kabob I ground it all up the entrails everything it made just enough burgers to feed the starving religious maniacs and I can assure you that most of them were saved the holy spirit and others entered their bellies the devil be had Charlie B. said I bet them sapsuckers would a really rolled in the fioor if they had a knowed they all had eat a mofadyke goddamn he said I bet you that damn elf has got some head on his shoulders I'll swan wonder if that freak ever thought about going into show business I won't go into prison life here I just want to tell you about our new and short-lived show called The Floating Troupe of the Unnaturals named by myself and financed by a philanthropist dwarf a gentleman of the arts and a planter to boot it was Bergamo's idea to set the carnival up on barges and bring joy and murder and music and good food and cuckolded husbands and young lads and young maidens to the people dwelling on land the landlocked hearts they will come to us we will at last have a home a temple of shittim wood a watertight tabernacle no more one night stands out fairgrounds will be any good landing we will bring back gamblers the fortunes of the soul the fates in the fashion of the steamboat perhaps the lost and forlorn will choose to sail with up and down the river we will take on all comers we have already acquired the assistance of a sword swallowet who had lost his nerve we have a trapeze act that broke up due to the jealousy on the part of the older man over the younger one we have a fat lady that makes good ballast we have a wandering poet who draws fierce looks from the husbands and tears and farewells from their wives we have thirteen Chinese midgets all jugglets and acrobats we have a deaf snake charmer a woman that will go with any animal and of course the one-eyed negro my friend the knife thrower at night you should see our tow of barges all lit up like the northern lights die ridiculous music the last show before we put back into land and let the people off is my friend's like some god he hypnotizes all who are troubled and when he snaps his fingers they wake like butterfiies oh little outlaw if only you could join The Floating Troupe of the Unnaturals but alas the townsfolk stood guard on the banks they never let us put in our only home was the island our friends were the river rats and to think our only port before was night we docked like the dragonfly the wharfs of laughter like a virgin walking in a lonesome meadow the round tables of older brothers like bull fights most holy the grave and not alive all the time in the tomb dressed with the old sayings secretly went he and hid in the lady's castle and the mirrors riding horses and the robberies taking place and the rugged fingers of the carpenter building a piano that catches drowned seamen and the wise blood brothers of the earth the inhabitants of helmets being eaten by sharks and wolves and gars and falcons the bitter cold of the swallowed moon the launching of the ship made from the nails of the dead somewhere around the river town of West Helena home of fourteen singers and thousands of unknown songs a local group accused us of bootlegging a whole school of little boats rowed out with torches to meet us they boarded without permission sacking what they could the}' said we were running whiskey and whores of course it was found and of course upon seeing the chinarnen they cut open the sacks of opium that the jugglers smoked if only we could have made it around the bend we would be a troupe to this day the men with their greed they set fire to the ancient barges to the paddle wheel and tug to all the tents of dreams and painted canvas some of the animals and horses burned alive I saw a fiaming tiger with his supplications to the moon the bearer of vanished water as well as member of the Unnaturals most of them drowned to extinguish themselves the suicide of the blood brothers and the conquerors picking their teeth with chicken bones the editor of the newspaper was there but the story that appeared in the middle of the week was nothing like what took place it was only a fabrication it was only a lie it read a barge full of circus people and thieves collided with an unknown tug steered by a drunken pilot all were drowned none were charged those men pouring salt on the poor that crawl oh that collusion begets calamity in the turmoil of my unfortunate shipmates and fellows I was knocked over by a shotgun pellet the wind came up and a piece of rope and canvas nearly beat me to death and now as I lie on my death bed without pain thanks to Bergamo I think of you mon chanson if 1 had anything to bequeath you other than the enclosed you know I would want you to have it but all was lost and what money I did have on my person I am leaving with Betgamo my confessor and friend so my little outlaw sweet dreams my prince of the good night I bid you an affectionate farewell signed with an X Count Hugo Pantagruel the world's smallest man and friend of the Devil such were the last words of the freak I heard about that one-eyed nigger swinging a watch Charlie B. said let's open the package he said looks like the hypnotizer's handwriting just think I thought the freak was dead I asked Charlie B. if he'd ever received a letter from a dead man not that I recall he said there was a note written by the black man's hand reading it was the last wish of the Count that he be cremated and he named you as benefactor of his ashes just before the little man passed away he added that you might want to use his remains in making a bar of soap ifso he asked that you scent it with the enclosed eau de Cologne his favorite may Allah be with you signed Le Couteau sole proprietor of the lasting estate and keeper of the unexplored grounds of Count Hugo Pantagtuel this was like some honor some knock at the door late at night like throwing a stone as far as you can under the full moon and listening to it plump in water beyond the woods you didn't know was there like a blind man in the evening thinking about the old days a dark horse nuering his side got to be some kind of crazy man to inshaw a freak: ashes and send them through the mail Charlie B. said and I thought about the trick with the wand and dust from a magnet how you could put a loadstone in the fingertip of a glove and write with red dust on a black table the solo was heard coming from the remains of a ship Charlie B. said I need a beer let's take a tide we drove down to the section they was frying catfish I asked the chef for an eg I walked out of the joint with the smells and the blues alone I dropped the egg on the sidewalk it was like the man in the moon having a child a son a man with no legs came by on a board with roller skates underneath like a mechanic's scooter he had a harmonica rig around his neck he had a puppy he said I'm gonna let my dog lick that up alright he played the harmonica I heard the barge horn on Wolf River a long time ago I found a mouth harp all rusty in the Eleven Foxes barr pit he told me sweet dreams prince of night I feel like an old man who knows there ain't no point in changing his shirt he knows he's gonna die in a couple of days anyhow so why not save the clean one for the grave they rode by on seven horses it was so dark I couldn't tell a thing verily I dream about drawn swords the horse of the black wood the secret movements and the gypsy had eyes like new moons and all the oaths were broken and my head in a maiden's lap and me with my wounded brow where I dreamed the mouth of the passage and the boat wheel like a shattered mirror my dreams without dominion my dreams like hill moons like halberds humming underground like ricocheted bullets my dreams like a hunchback kissing the calligraphy of a dancer's foot that smell of the tarboosh of the dismissed wedding guest the clavier of sweat and the clarinet of tears the dauntless garments like tracks made in the dark of the moon like stones embedded in the muscles of beasts and the refiection like a ritual like vibrating blades like words spoken on a field of honor I found the young girl asleep I lay my head down on a damsel's tomb the hunchback's daughter dead when buried I looked at the notches on the handle I was bleeding the cork went under I was sleeping the tug boat put to death by morning black is the color victims of the oracle bones BoBo spoke to who was swishing the brandy in the glass I dream where no one is going like I am turning in space like the photograph of iron in the trunk of the wrecked cat I will rise and take my journey into oblivion like a convict's song I am like a column of smoke like a brain hovering over a blue indentation in the forest fioor like a swarthy hull mistaken for night I am as dark as the duel fought by the gypsy in behalf of the massacred children the fronds of the troops of the dead the burning net around the gutted vagabond the eunuchs fiying into the wagon of unplayed guitars with their deluge of pick axes like hairlips in love with a moustache to mount and ride away the gypsy says to himself scattered all over the field I will he says and the eunuchs are holding the strings up for one another like a bob wire fence like a nest of snakes underwater the girl forgot her wrap there are times when it seems I walk an endless pier a pier as cold as a spoon like a glacier of sleepwalker's sweat seamen sliding down an inclined fragment a shard of mirror looking at his new tattoo there is no backtracking there are imprints on the pillow it was black blood the fragrance of jasmine the color of wine all under the fingernails staining the maiden's cloak I say unto you beware the ghost of the gypsy said they rode together one fiowing back fiapping a trilling like a hidden bird trailing in the horror zone northwest and in class the students paint by numbers the last number says join I am the only one who strokes chance the sleeping panther I take off my gloves and hit it in the face I wake it up I grin at it with my teeth clenched I deliver my blows like a conductor like a grenadiet I hold up both hands clasped together Mahatma Gandhi I come to peace with it I let it bite me on the throat if it wants I know the source of all blood on the chair I watch it stalk me in a circular lope it struts along with a limp wrist like Socrates and all of a sudden it turns around and fights with a fist that never fails to knock me out and so chance the wise snowball that bleeds when I kiss it always sings a song so long you can never remember the beginning in this life it is a looking glass where one is seen as two my brush like the strokes of an oar at a river where none have been seen before I follow no numbers for me the last stroke is the knife I carry the tiger to the mountain like ikai-do I am fast to sever the enemies of my dreams my blade has a thousand layers it is soft as a feather and hard as a diamond a sword like a man praying under a waterfall a sword like a hymn never sung for years and years the victim of chance tempers his edge he prepares for that reckoning that lasts less than a second the drawing the slashing the cutting the replacing the scabbard of dreams with the motion of a disturbed tiger as natural as a moon shadow the blades ting they marry one another now for chiburui the blood cleaning chance rotates his swords he snaps his strong wrists and the blood comes ofi' like a cat shaking water off its back my dreams like a hawk fighting a snake my pennant the beak and the fang recess is over put the marbles in your head the book like a mashed hand the texts the desks are bloated fish the chalk is ground from bones the questions are pockets with holes in the bottom they are easy the answer is like being tied up in a trunk do you know anything about the pyramids they ask me the eunuchs whining like fiies what do you know about Tierra Del Fuego how far is it to Jupiter I answer however long the hall is to the bedroom of the mother of Dionysus about 484,000,000 miles from the Sun I still miss it to piss her off I throw in l,5000,000 light years to Andromeda Galaxy I go into my beam contacts with the messengers of black space what is the fifth largest river in the world how long is it compare it to the Hudson she doesn't know her ass from a hole in the ground I say the Hudson River looks like a stream of piss compared to the Ob' it is as long as a note on Louie Armstrong's trumpet l fiunk after a while it is my turn to stand up and recite fractions instead I play a character from The Tempest by William Shakespeare I get up on the desks and yell I take off my shoes and break the lights I say fuck arithmetic I start turning the people over in their desks the macher she is all messed up she signals for a fire drill and everyone gets up all in order they walk out the door in two rows she turns on the intercom she says Francis is having another fit she walks out too and locks the door boy I'm really yelling now I'm running into the wall head first like a bull I spit on everything I think of I look in the teacher's drawer and get my radio the one she took last week I tune in the World's Series I get me a piece of chalkI write every low down thing I can think of I'm still yelling every once in a while I bust a window to let them know who's boss some of my buddies like it when I throw a fit that way they get out of work Tanan I say I push the intercom button I say run me up a grilled cheese and a Co-cola how about it go to hell I tell those son-of-a-bitches now I'm going to write fuck all over the boards I yell out the windows at the little grades playing I say this ain't no school and it's not no stabling it's a dog food factory go to hell I climb up the ladder and turn on the civil defense siren and they are talking to me over the intercom I say you want to know something I'll tell you something when that damn Shelbey has that geography book on his lap and he's keeping time with his foot he ain't working problems he's jacking oifi if you don't believe me look in the book there's cum all over the maps I say give me the principal I want to speak with her I say you'd fuck a rock pile if you thought there was a snake in it go to hell over and out mayday get fiicked the people are yelling at me wait till they see fuck all over the blackboards my girlfriend is whispering through the keyhole Frankenstein some of the boys shooting marbles outside say do the Wolf Man I tell them throw away the cat eyes and start shooting dice I start doing a Russian dance I am saying I am telling you don't you be stepping on my blue suede shoes or I'll be coming up side your head y'all got that this is the Wolf Man over an out at that moment something went inside my head like a horse snorting like a spinnaker filling out somebody was a yelling my name outside it sounded like Charlie B. I looked for a black car I remembered we were suppose to be doing tenses I was writing a poem the teacher caught me she made me stand up and read it aloud in hem of the class everyone was laughing at me it was a love poem don't you see so the werewolf decides to improvise I do the banana peel backfiip I give a Ida and then I let down my pants I shoot the moon I was ducking and dodging I can see that old teacher sitting in her bathtub cutting farts she popping the bubbles open with a crochet needle let her get a good whiff she probably smells bicycle seats I don't like hospitals I didn't like being around the world's smallest man when he took his enema when he had Harold Warthog the weightlifter giving him a tub down the darkening of the sun old pappy Pugh passed the poem was about a girl with black hair who had to walk the plank with a rose in her mouth her hands were tied behind her and they blindfolded her with a pirate's sleeve you could tell the thorns were cutting her lips there was blood on her mouth her tongue was under the stem before she stepped off into the deep and french kissed the sharks she turned around and gave all the men a chance to see her face the black rose became a knife in her mouth she swam with her lover was hung up by the heels on the yardarm and his severed hands were nailed to the mast for some reason the last line I threw in was about how I saw a hawk eat a whole bait can of fish eyes but that isn't what I told them I told them some dirty shit with the good ears of a spike buck with my dreams like a pocket you are afraid to reach into like a cove that only a few people know about the best hole around I concocted the burning sulphur in the ventilators in the gills of the gypsy moths the immaculate conception took place I got the idea for my entry in the Science Fair from the astronomer I built an observatory in Tennessee I took it to camp with me I could see all the fronds and fishes and creatures of the sky my telescope is like a microscope it is like a towrope thrown over a wall I see through the tent screen the negro men and women like old bananas and oranges the constellations rub up against one another and lumber around like the big people like bears in old paintings the mirror has been ground with the precision of a sword like an archer shooting a fiaming arrow into watery space I vaunt the natural earth blood with my black spoon I dig up bait I find it everywhere I was asked to give the plot for the discovery of America I said the men entered the forest with the assistance of the jewish boy next door I made a computer it gave the names of the most valuable players of the national league and selected the presidents of the United States I entered the Science Fair with my planetarium made out of kotex boxes I made constellations with a pencil I poked holes in the boxes I put the stars on the ceiling of the school they named it Sherwood what a joke the fiag was raised like a village like a pair of soldiers' pants and as I see it close by I must say please bless the spirit of Francisco Villa bless the fingers of the blind pointed towards the sky they asked me what is your favorite hobby you know what I told them for second choice I put down riding around with Jimmy in his beat-up Ford sand soaks up blood real fast because my next entry was a bucket of hot ice and fox blood I use to have the hide tacked up somewhere well fuck me running they didn't kick me out of school the swarm of teachers like silent farts you get an award for diarrhea of the mouth the spelling B is like a kissed ass you don't have to sit down if you're nice to the teacher it is a joke so so long Charlie B. wrote me a note to get out I played a good hooky we rode around we shucked and jived we went downtown and got a fresh car we had it fried I swigged a little beer I threw to the line he let me wear his cool hat the cadillac was parked out from it was new and black he had me go turn the radio on full blast the music drifted in the cafe like smoke it was Bobby Blue Bland yea we rode around like cats that afternoon I wasn't studying about a ass beating I wore my pants up real high and shake my knees on the corner like him if we're waiting on the light I pull them up his last name is Lemmon in case you've already heard of him the chauffeur in the red beret they call him vitamin C for the women he always carries about seven dice in his pocket he has a Mr John root on his watch fob a Caterpillar bulldozer he's got a Italian knife too he knows all the singers some of the cats call him Midnight Blue I mean he's wearing those long toed shoes can he ever hold a note from one stoplight to the next we ride around in the black cadillac he plays it cool I am the truant trouvere so I am told and the truant officer is always looking for me after we leave our neighborhood I say you gone let me drive sho boy and I take the wheel he sits in the backseat next to the window and says drive on Francois I push the button on the automatic power drive seat soloanseeoverthehood I punch the buttons on the radio like it was a typewriter keeping the good music on all the time hit that cool air boy he says I turn the air conditioning on but we ride with the automatic windows down afier we get out a ways he lights up a weed and puts it in a cigarette holder that's kind of black and brown marvel he sits bunched up back in the corner on the driver's side so he can sort of turn his neck a little and poke his head out at the corners can I put it on now Charlie B. I say can I put the cap on boy he says see I have this Chlamys a pen pal sent me from Greece it's supposed to be real old it sort of fioats back in the wind and Charlie B. thinks it's ever so cool when we get down his section of town he pulls a pair of baby shoes out of his pocket and says hang these ovah the rear View mirruh I say why not the sponge rubber dice do what I say he says got you boss I say if he sees somebody walking down the sidewalk that he knows he might scoot over to the other side of the seat real fast and look cool we get to the market and he says run in and get me a Zagnut I go in and buy one and everybody in the store looks out the window if he really wants to show out he says go back and get me some pocket change he likes to stop off and get his shoes shined when we have a whole lot of time he goes to the hair parlor one day he stopped in and asked if his friend was dead or not he asked the barber how Mud doing Trueblood he's fine now Lemmon he must not a got the rabies huh a man laying back in the chair says who this nigger ya'll talking bout done got bit ah man you know Mud the barber said that cat with red hair he asked the one that live over on that's him Charlie B. said Trueblood asked me how you taday son fine how you Mr. Trueblood well I'm doing ok as long as I'm cutting hair and not throats how'd the man get hit the man in the chair say bunch them boys got drunk and was ovah to the Zoo and Mud say he gone bebop with a bear and he went back in a cave to get him and a albino bat bit him Tmeblood say and I say damn wonder if he's got the hat I reckon he does the barber said with a laugh really] say sho he do he say why he brought it in here in a mason jar the other afternoon asking me for some alcohol see the police had to get it so they could run a test on it to see if it was a rabid bat or not I give him some Rose tonic shoot Charlie B. said I bet Mud will have that thang up in the amen corner bound to Trueblood said I'd give anything for a albino bar I says and the man in the chair say I bet that nigger wish he hadn't tried to dance with no bear and they all laughed we left and as we was going out the door Mr. Trueblood said ya'll come back and Charlie B. say yea we be in next tuesday to get our ears lowered and I thought I must be the only white boy in Memphis to get my hair cut by a colored man because that is what M r. Trueblood bet the other barber that comes in on fridays when daddy comes to get his ears lowered and I kept saying to myself I'll never forget six years ago when we went and a man sat down in the chair and he had this look on his face when he leaned back and recognized the face of the barber who had been a barber in prison the one who had to do a extra year of bad time cause this here man the one who sat down fiew in a forged kite that tipped off the captain to something that really wasn't no I'll never forget the look in his eyes when that barber cut his throat from ear to ear but now Charlie B. says let's go on ovah to the White Spot and eat some pie boy sho I say and that is what we do hey honey Charlie B. says to the waitress I'll take a piece of blackberry pie A La Mort what you gone have kid well boss I say I'll have two donuts and a cup of milk to dunk them in a lemon-lime to drink how's that Charlie B. clicked his tongue and the dark skinned waitress clicked her gum then his expression changed and he turned around the other way on the stool and I says what's wrong and he says see that big black nigger ovah in the corner and I say which one and he says the baldheaded one and I say yea I see him what's wrong with him and he say ain't nuthing wrong wid him but see that high yellow sitting on the uthah side of him yea I see I say well he say that trifiing nigger collects for white mens what you mean I says what I mean he says I mean he's always slinking round heah wid a pair of brass knuckles and a hog's leg collecting on bills and I tell you I owe plenty what you owe him for I say wheels boy he say a sky blue dyna-fiow Buick me and Tickle Willey and Soap went in on this winter how much for I say mo than we got at the moment he says what you gone do I say hide he say if he see me and come this way I want you to tell him I'm yo chaulfeur and we is in a hurry going to the Dog Races in West Memphis you tell him that what if he gets rough I say then he says you go ovah to where that big nigger is sitting and say Cholly told me to tell you a friend in need is a friend in deed and then you run like hell will do boss I say but as it turned out the man didn't even recognize Charlie B. he just asked for directions but nobody would tell him none and he left damnation that was close he says we eat our pie and donuts and Charlie B. made eyes at the waitress and asked around where Soap was iffen he was still in Blaine or not and the waitress says she hear he got run out of town over there and besides that he shouldn't be asking her no questions bout no skunk like Soap that low down country shiftless thang she called him and Charlie B. winked and said that's Soap alright and we left and he said drive on Francois and I got in but he snapped his fingers and said ain't you fah getting something boy and I says oh yea so I got out again and opened the door for him and shut it and sat down and turned around and ask for directions and he says destination Beale Street and I says wonder if a police sees me driving and he says tell um I got drunk on the job and you had to take ovah last time they thought you kidnapped me I says oh I say there's one on a horse right now you got that beanfiip he says yea it's under the seat I say he reaches in his trousers and pulls out a dice and says heah you go pop that mare in the butt so I did and it reared up and threw the policeman and he says drive on and I say how come you ain't driving the Buick cause he said it didn't rain last wednesday what I say I bet Tickle Willey my thirud it was gone rain the next day and it didn't you crazy Charlie B. I said sho I am he say bout as crazy as the trespassing dog is and I say ain't nobody that crazy and he says that's a left and the baby shoes is swinging and we are cruising slow like through the section and I says hey boss we got time to go by the orphanage and spring somebody today and he says let's wait till next week we been going past that place too much and you is liable to get caught and then it's gone be this nigger's ass all on account of you and I think the best thing in life is to help an orphan escape from Saint Blaise Home of Destitute Children slow down B says and I go with my head like I mean ok boss and so we is going bout five miles an hour and I am thinking one mo week just one mo week and we'll be out of this goddamn city and I'll be out of that goddamn school and the astronomer won't be able to lay his hands on me and make me act a certain way and I won't have to take no more of them tests to see if I was a mind reader and Jimmy will come back and I'll see Baby Gauge and life will be swell but I know what will really happen which is what I know which is the mule being led to the barge and the folks is lined up on the bank with hand kerchieves and just the other day I got a post card from the astronomer saying they must not look at you they must enter you which I don't get anyway turkey season is in before you get stung the wasps go into the shadows of the rafters that is the last you ever see of them until they get you riding along and I say hey boss what he says you mind if I say nigger depend on how you say it he say well I say like if I says it like you say it I don't give a damn he says would you mind ifI say it couple of times go head on if that's what you want he says so I got the steering wheel and I look down the sidewalks and on the steps and there is this colored man in a wheel chair taking pictures for a quarter and I say theres a nigger ain't it Charlie B. and he says yes with his head I see him through the rear view mirror we go on aways and there is this kid on roller skates and I say look there at that nigger boss I see him he says we turn the corner and in the next block a woman has a mouth full of clothes pins and I say that's a nigger woman for sure ain't it and he say sho is and I look around and say would you look at that nigger and he says ok that's enough and I say did you see him he was a and he says I told you boy that's nuff fah one day don't get out of hand ok boss I say and I thought many times I drove Charlie B. Lemmon around and I looked back over my shoulder and I said boss is it ok if or boss can I say nigger now and he'd look at his watch and say you got two minutes and I'd say it stop heah and pick me up a quart of wax he'd say and I'd say what if he won't sell it to me and he'd say you tell him it's Fah me Charlie B. Lemmon and the son-of-a bitch bertuh sell it to you ok ok I'll get it he was all the time saying Rendezvous man Rendezvous we were going down this street see and this cat sitting on the steps sees us and he says hey Lemmon what you doing in the back of that car and Charlie B. lets down his window and says to me without moving his lips real real slow boy and the guy comes over to the curb and says again wheah you going man and Charlie B. takes a swig of the beer and draws a little off his smoke and sniffs in through his nose and looks over his sunglasses and says going to get my shot man and the other man says style man Charlie B. you got style he claps his hands together and says got a goddamn white boy driving you to the County Health Office damn man and Charlie B. says how come you so down man I can see it in your eyes and the man say hadn't you heard man heard what Tickle Willey the boss said heard about Soap the other one said what about him Charlie B. said they got him on the other side of Lambrooke the one with the sleepy eyes said who got him Charlie B. says who you think Tickle \Villey said done lost our padnuh uh Charlie B. said sho did the man said and I thought about things and the boss says what you on Willey goof dust and he say I'm down bout Soap and all what all Charlie B. say that yallow nigger is coming to take my Buick away what you mean \Willey yo Buick I mean Soap dead and it didn't rain so it mine look heah nigger the boss says Soap told me if any thang was to happen to him when he went to Arkansas I's gone be left his thirud well they coming to repossess it taday so you bettah side which you want the radio or the battery or the tires of what he says you mean you gone set there and let that white man's nigger take the Buick back to the lot what else I gone do he say burn the son-of-a-bitch Charlie B. said hold on I say look who is behind us who the boss says the truant officer I say throw a brick through his windhsield he say I'll really be in for it then I said chicken he said so I got a brick and chunked it and the man peeled out and left he'll thank a nigger done it Tickle Willey say a woman with a fiy swatter in her hand and a dip of snuff in her lip stuck her head out this window and say hey yonah Tickle Willey the Inshawrunce Compknee called up and say they was sending a man right on ovah heah to get yo car shoot Willey said let's burn it Charlie B. said they ain't gettin none of my money back ovah my dead body let's jack it up and take the tires offi he says you keep the lookout boy the boss says right oh I says then went down to the corner and borrow some tools and bought a gallon of gasoline and come back and jacked the Buick up and Charlie B. give me a screwdriver and said get the damn radio out of there and while I was doing that Willey was stealing the tires and Charlie B. was taking the battery out and I thought if I was in school right now I'd be learning about ancient history or eating a Heath bar at recess and I said when l undid a wire I ain't gone never amount to nothing next year all my buddies which ain't real buddies will be on the football team but I won't cause the coach don't like my attitude and Charlie B. says hurry up boy and I says to myself I could go back and kiss all their asses and play like a fool like they want or win the spelling B or win the essay why I am a good American contest and they'd all forgive me but to hell with it I'll just go my own way even if I break that poor woman's heart but eventually that's got to happen anyway so to hell with it so we set the car afire jacked-up and all and sit there on the steps and looked when the yellow nigger drove up with two white men he said ain't ya'll gone help put this fire out and Tickle Willey said it might blow up any minute and the man said all the fire department sound the alarm and Charlie B. said that sho was a nice looking set of wheels and the nigger said I can have ya'll prosecuted for this I see you've already stole the tires and I don't know what else you'll pay I'll see to that and Charlie B. spit and got up and said Tickle Willey come on with me this hea boy will drive us and he looked at me and says since you itching to say nigger so bad why don't you call that cocksucker there one he's a reel nigger alright come down here taking our Buick away and I said let's beat it and the white men took my mamma's license tags down and I thought see I'm in it now I'm in shit clear up to my eyes these damn backsliding dreams of mine how they wake me up when I'm asleep in the backseat Jimmy frogs me in the arm he says Cockeye when a truck with one light out goes by the hunters with shaving cream in their ears and that Buick that afternoon burning like hay with the radio half out on the sidewalk and still hooked up and playing the blues and the men looking at me and taking down notes on a pad with ball point pens setting out the decoys drop drop drop for the tear ducts with the deer lick full of tongues and the blind cross-hairs I am breathing on my hands like the freezing skier trying on his mask I lay in a boat I dream the clouds are symphonies I compose my book fell in the water I bet someone is kneeling at a tomb who knows when death will kiss your eyes what kind of knot does he tie when he throws his rope at me I'll give him a mirror and let him kiss hisself he can lasso that he dresses as a man but he might be faking it he might be a woman it really doesn't matter who death is it could be a fiy you can't tell till you're down and bleeding I see myself swimming on my back only my foot is in the river I'm in a boat I would call out to my brother I would smell the oordwood I would watch a Chinaman pray I would ask the help of stones and branches I would draw a painting I would call it the mirror in the tomb the entombed speculum the secret dream of Lafayette the guillotine with the blue blade the figurehead in the basket the pyre swathed in pity the ship going nowhere the town called Goya the pose passed through looking for the Colonel the man who could not speak you have heard it said that you should chop the weeds around the outhouse down but I say unto you dream ain't gone knock no johnson grass today and it has been said dream and ride the nightmares of the cnrsade of Barbarossa the nightwalker of the eyes put out of the pyre of the docks the boar snouts the falcon beaks the wolf heads on the bows emerging From nowhere I hear them the crumbling harpoons the splices of rope the warriors the gown for shouting made out of the topgallant Delos my home of the sea horses when death has talked to the dark I leave I will not march with death and his comrades I will dream bout buried ships I will sleep I will say no to Unferth the coward no to the taxidermist doing unspeakable things in private dying his hair in his office no to the trifiing doubledealers to the lingering death no to the post hole digger no to the dragoons of legislators no to the fiends no to the lawyer swearing out affidavits no to the packrats no to the broken pacts just look at the wolves shipped up the river at the swimmers being picked 0H no to the lips no to the words no to the lies that is nowhere when the tongues are hair triggers no there they are looting the water there they are eating hate four times a day while no one is looking get thee hence a dog licks his own puke up have you seen the cross bones of the mysterious prisoner have you heard the soothsayer howling like an angel's sword the bones in the shackles the black sun driving the horses away the blood on the boats the sap the rampant stigmata the amigo said when I'm dying did you hear the water the long chains rattling did you hear the long chains dragging did you I go down to the sea in the ships 1 am that which is I do not exist I don't wish to offend anyone but I must say in the midst of everyone and everything once again I am having the scene you cannot look upon the scene you must enter the tunnel for my name is David my name is Wyclif a weak track a trail of blood in the blue snow the silence the light the night sweats my harp intercepts the delirious spirit of Beethoven's hands beating his fists on the hammers that come down like the legs of dead horses that break open like ripe fruit and the keyboard of blood Beethoven staring into some fire the fists are fighting hawks his dreams falling offi the tree warriors taking deep breaths black and white rattling the mail of Beowulf his dreams staring one another down his dreams like storms Beethoven's phantom like silent ticochers in my sleep Beethoven the definite anarchist Beowulf the gallant spirit playing chess outside my window in Snow Lake when I'm sick in bed piece de Resistance dirge of the undressed girl the accompaniment of scented fingers the first cummetbund I was too young I was the hawk I was learning to fiy with the seated eye I fight already my bloody feathers whistle over the river my tune on some shoulder my tune in a gloved hand it was only her hair she combed it was only what I saw in the mirror when I tied the four-in-hand the feeling like radium before it was discovered like eyelashes like delicate whips of odors I remember like pieces of eight something underground something desolate like perfume you remember two years ago like three looking glasses at once like no covers on the bed every night I tied the knot in the blue necktie I folded the pallet I saw her put on her panties by the light raking the leaves of the moon I crept in her room and kissed her knee I smelled her feet the elastic popped but she didn't wake up she was all night shutting my eyes with two fingers in a cup of wine my dreams before the mast before the mask and my ears warm as a fox listening to all that goes on in the forest I hear the needle of a compass get there and hold like something in my pants I hear an afternoon changing her dress I hear what they told I hear a scalawag picking his teeth in a skifi" I hear a cypress tree that burns in the middle of December I hear the night hawks fighting I hear lightning that strikes a man on horseback like a snake the hoes fiashing at noon or there abouts and the scarf of the somnambulist fioats behind me of course and me hiking over the gunwales to keep my dreams on course my body like a quintain and the minnows like spellbinders like the sleep in the vaqueto's eyes like a solitary garment and her black hair on fire like an envelope of forgotten names and I was falling out ofa tree all I am is a song I know it sung to the dead by myself all my days and the sacred ointment was hog slop and the bowstring was drawn over the mountain and death followed soon after where the bulls danced in a half circle I am like that no count dog that hangs around the store always chasing fiies I shut my jaws and my dream teeth crack me snapping at my dreams in the late of the day just like beans in a cold pan on the porch when it's hot a lap they keep coming up in the morning like smoke from a field hand's chimney they roll on at that time of day in somebody's shack like gospel music when it's still dark you can hear them fly off and hop down the road like a hubcap you can turn them over with your hoe in a cotton row and a long one will be hiding in them hang them on a box springs and shoot when you get drunk when you let your pants down in the outhouse they roll out of your pocket like brand new change they fall into places ain't no way you'll get them they say the lord he gives and the lord he takes away but I bet he won't reach his hand down no outhouse no sir not for nobody's half dollar he ain't getting no shit under his nails just like a pair of hand-me-down britches your cousin sends you in the mail my dreams don't fit they are tight in the seat and long in the legs but on sundays when you wear them you find money in the CMfi those dreams of mine buried in lard buckets and coffee cans and molasses tins come back cat I say you got to come on back or them chillren they gone die behind the outhouse and the old colored grandpaw he ain't telling where nobody but me and him all the way on his death bed getting up in the middle of the night going out there with the lamp and shovel I done the digging everyone else not paying no mind them thinking he's slopping the hogs slipping them a little extra when she gets dark him going to pull the wool over their eyes bring a little more at market Mr. Rufus saying say sooie evah time you put yo foot on the blade they really got him figured out them talking bout the old man and Mr. Rufus saying I got them beat now fah sho I do at the hog butcher's the fat nut cutter with the cleaver laughing in between chops saying that nigger must be pretty slim cause his pigs is awful poor the only thing solid in they slop must be gristle and bone he ain't feeding them shit and all along Mr. Rufirs sitting in the outhouse counting his money he bites each coin then he rubs the spit off with his finger and thumb and chunks it in the pail cachink and I am there and I keep account for him I carve a mark on the outhouse door with his jackknife and you can hear us at night counting money cachink in the bucket and him saying to the one and me with the knife in the old ash wood saying marked it be and maybe you know how tough lumber smell when you cut it how the dark part comes off like meat off a bone and the light stufi' is tender and many a time I've gone to sleep holding the knife and woke up in the shadow of Rufus Abraham standing there before dawn a toting a sorghum can full of pennies in his left hand his right arm with the walking cane spread out like a plucked and injured wing spread out like something supposed to come under the shadow and there he'll be walking the same narrow path like it was a rope between his toes a path so worn and without grass that it fills up with water when it rains good and him wading through his Canal in his high rubber boots drawing water like a listing ship he lumps over like a wounded rider taking the money to his grave in the moonlight with the post hole diggers I bring out cylinders of black earth and half portions of the night crawlers he says fetch one of them cans that looks like good hair to me don't cut yoself on the lip now nasuh you done had the Lock jaw already and I gather the worms nigh on long as snake babies and I lower the coffins of copper and silver into his graveyard and most that walk or limp or ride or drive by say Abraham that old fool nigger a burying every critter on his place why I bet they say some do he'd dig a grave for a dog if we's to hit one this morning and the other white ones spit out the window of whatever they're in when they see the sign he put up on his cane fence the sign partly in his own hand and partly in mine seeing how he never got no book learning all full of buckshot holes and the stains of bacca spit it that has the lord's prayer and next to it Rufus prayer Beware Bad Bull Absolutely No Trespassing On Rufus A Propti Or Be Blowed To Kingdom's Come Signed R Abraham his will be done and the spit fiies back into the bed of the pickup and hits their towheaded chillren right in the eye and so they has learnt it too to say goshdawg nigger who he thank he is and Mr. Rufus he always says a few words holding his hat in his hands each bucket gets a prayer Law bless this heah one too then I'll fix those sapsuckers they ain't getting shit when I die him putting his cracked black hand out and ducking his head along about the time the sun comes up he says well I reckon it's time for me to job go draw me some watah boy and I got to go out the pump now yessuh Mr. Rufus I prime it and go to pumping the handle and he yells check on the hose and I see if they is a kink I check it all the way from the spout to the outhouse and there he say ain't getting no watah ain't noun kink though they is liable to be a bullfrog in it I say wait a minute hole on don't have ta wury bout that I ain't doing nuthing till the watah come he say whoa I say here it is somebody done hoed this thing half through and he say I ain't getting no pressure yet so I tie it off with a tow sack and resume the pumping that sounds like a squealing pig and the old man tell me hole ofi' that's nuff and while he's taking his enema I pick figs and feed the chickens sometimes he reads me a tale outen the Bible but he don't really read it he just member it how it goes he been knowing it so long and all you know they is folks back in Memphis that would laugh and make fiin of me a hepping a old man take his gnmt but that ain't right I don't care bout myself but when folks get old they can't do things right anymore they can't zactly shit right you know I sit down on the worn ground where I keep it raked and clean in front of the outhouse and Mr. Rufirs leaves the door open and I stick a broom straw down a hole a saying doodle bug doodle bug anybody home and he's getting worked up in his preaching and that's when he can relieve hisself when he goes to breathing hard but even if he can't he's got plenty to do to keep him busy there is a matchbox full of rusty hooks and a file a catalog and like I say the Bible would you get me my medsin son he asks so I go in he shack and pour the mineral oil and slow gin in the jar and bring it on out and I says to him has you do-dood yet Mr. Rufus and he say no likely and il'fen it takes a long while there is an old stump with squares and plenty of bottle caps in case he wants to play and besides I give him a transistor radio I got out of the mail for his birfday three year ago the batteries was low or we'd a listened to the blues all they have is music that time of the morning don't have no advertisements excepting for the hog prices much obliged and he drunk it you need some more pressure I say and he says naw I just need the Lawd to send me a idea how I'm gone get even wid them white men when they come afta my place when I pass ain't none my chillun live and left so you gone have to stand guard and see to it don't none of um get the money and there it was Rufus Abraham's cemetery of change and them thinking we was burying critters and slopping hogs ha ha that was the berries he sho had them there boy we got another pail you reckon we ought to count it out to pass the time and I say might as well so cachink cachink when the coins hit the bottom of the bucket go get the fiy swatter he said so I did boy by the time you is gtowed the Knife will be worth plenty tell you that sho it will I says boy you can open you up a baitshop or a fishing camp shit you could do all kinds of things I know I could Mr. Rufus too bad you ain't got nobody to have it well he say I got kin dopted chillun but they just well be dead they done gone OE what you want me to do iffen they come back and ast fah the bend and the money well you make sho they got some credentials and get them to sign and say the truf then you get a witness and you cut off a chunk how much I say ah bout a quartah OK I says I's down to Bohannah's the other day early and I seen something queer out behind his place what's that he say I seen a space man I thought had on a helmet and everthang shit boy yea I did too it was a bad fog so I couldn't make it out right but I seen who it was it was a man welding and when I come up to him oh about forty paces I reckon he say half I says what you welding and he say never you mind beat it I wonder what it is he's welding Mr. Rufus oowee I heard that Mr. Rufiis that was a fine piece of broken wind weren't it sho was thats music to my ears I reckon you might job some this morning huh I might if the thunder keeps up say now you talking bout that welder he been welding on that contraption ten years now he covah it up at night and won't let nobody look at it what is it I say he say it a rocket that gone blow up Wushenton DC. but he probably gone blow hisself to smithereens if he don't watch out how's he aim to get it clear up there he say it'll fiy up there and he gone fiy wid it I don't believe it do you well he got the idea from them KumaKazee pilots in the Wah yea them Japs done that I say I seen a good pitchu show the other day yea what bout it was about this Chinaman Charles Boyer was him and the name they give it was Shanghai that right Rufiis say I knowed a grifnigguh call Shanghai is that so I say sho is he say well you see you really didn't know what was going on tul Charles Boyer says we chinese naw he says a clever tea we make we chinese that gives it away see you come to find out he was half white and half yellow his mamma was a chinese princess that wouldn't marry his pappy but nobody knowed it not even his girl friend who he was pretty sweet on gone Rufus say well this buddy of his Lun Sing said everbody'd drop him like hot cakes if they knowed he was a bastud but what he done was to give a big costume party and all the international big money folks was there and he come down the stairs dressed like he use to be a coolie rickshaw boy everybody got a big kick tul he tole them he was part chinese then they all left what happened then he say I can't really say I said why he said cause I said it come to this part where he found out his mother had done gone and kilt herself so he'd have a easy hoeing in his growing up life after that I went into a deep spell of thinking you didn't get yo money's worth then he say I snuk in anyhow I says having any luck yet not yet he say you know that astronomer back in Memphis I's telling you bout yea whud bout him he's ruining my life I says how's that he says cause I says he wants me to be well I don't know what he wants me to be whatever it is I has to stay inside and read books and talk right and wear a tie to supper ain't that a pile of shit you tell me if it ain't it is he says what's bad is sometimes I like it I even want to do it sometimes you young they ain't nuthing wrong wid that besides you got a God given powah to read minds and if you use it right and runs into good luck you got it made I don't know about that I says jimmy says it's gone be hard when I go to dating girls I'll know just what they thinking bout me well he say you know what that tree and this dime and 1's thanking bout you don't you sho I do I says but that's different I'm use to that what them three scbundrels from town drinking bout my land he asks they was thanking about soon as you kicked the bucket they was gone come and claim this place for they selves one of them was thinking he had a fi'iend in a high State Govment place that could swing it well them he say you know what to do if I could just think of a idea to get them fellahs riled where they couldn't do it then I could wuhp um but they already got it figured out so I got to think fast a great big stinking fart come out man alive I says Mr. Rufus you sounded like you broke the bat yea he says I gone get a man on base heah in a second but I's watching out for the double play and him thinking those doublecrossing goddamn white shithooks he was thinking they was the reason he couldn't shit and I says how's about me and you taking offi tomorrow from work and go to the doctor he said no look I says when they come you got to be ready and if you die afore you get the idea then they is gone get it and he moaned and held his heart and says what about the othah money you mean the stolen cash I says yea he says I done what you role me to do wid it I buried it where they'd be sure and get hold of it goddamnit I lost it he said that's what he says when a turd decides to crawl back in his hole that ain't gone stop fah long though won't stop them up far no time if the law won't get um damn I just got to have that idea soon Lawd you need something like the sign I says that really gets them riled evertime they drive by maybe you right I been thinking bout something mean but maybe something long that line like you say and so for the time that I was with him he had trouble taking his shit even though we buried more and more tin cans as time went on some night he would count so fast the cachink was like afta Brother Pull decided to get that silver collection plate instead of the straw basket so folks could hear all over the church just how much everbody dropped in it rung like a bell at first and afta they'd get it firll it'd rattle like a chain and he finally got it one day it come to him out of the blue he role me about the rope and the bucket of shit and the bricks and the cofiin and the candle in his room and the ice cream stick he tole me just what to do and it all happened right but I can't tell you cause I promised him I wouldn't he called me over that day that it come to him he passed wind like a horse snorts with that look in his eye and he say shut the door and he role me he tole me like he was a priest who says hey you there come ovah here and let me confess to you for a change and that's what the outhouse reminded me of and I buried him like he wanted to I done it just like he said I knew his heart was gone give the day he passed I just knew it he quit wanting early that night and just sit there and gtunted like he was tugging a barge rope and he said Lawd it's me or this crap take me now or let me job how about it but I done it right just like he said he wanted the fiag fiowed at half mast down by the river so I done that too he would a really liked that when the fishermens all took ofi: they hats when they come in of a evening he'd a really got a kick out of that I can tell you I bet you never even heard of Abraham's knife there was only one guy worth a shit who worked in the orphanage he had a oboe and when this boy put hisselfouten his misery the guy had the decency at least to play Kindertotenlieder on the gramophone somebody had ought to told the newspaper why he done it but shoot the night the night no song can do it justice when it rains I run through the forest it is evening the sun like a little but left in the bottom of the bottle strike the tent lads look at your watches make ready for the camisado I look into wounds I see cross-eyed babies I step on dead fish and listen to them pop I hear talk like a rope of lightheaded threats over due horses' necks I feel old men sweating in their sleep I watch the flashes of hate the bit in the moonlight the stirrups that cost sixteen dollars a pair the rocks that cut your head open from eyebrow to eyebrow I forget beatings like room numbers I beheld death with my own eyes there passed the night my dream like a trapdoor like baskets of warm bread like a port salutes a barrage of forgotten tunes a tent fiap like a sail my last dream like a stranger riding by a pistol shot along about seven-thirty like a sack so heavy it takes two to carry like a circular object hidden from the Greeks like a ghost story by the Indian told on the other side of the fire like a burning chicken coop the dance of burning feathers at one o'clock in the morning like an incomplete message carved inside the outhouse with a piece of glass by a wounded Negro like a broken Co-cola bottle like a black hand bleeding before it thunders like a stolen car coasting down the road with its lights offi and the commands like songs the shouts like whispers the old mamma with the child in her arms saying shush with her finger on her lips the blood crawling down the loin of the mule like a chickensnake the damp reins of barge rope that taste like salt and smell of the ditch the wounded rider who ain't about to bite the dust and the covers laid back and the people sitting up in bed as the rider rides by sandy land dust like the wake of a doomed ship like the color black distinguished from the new moon men who never come back from Panther Brake an open mouth like a fish staring at the lantern like a white face among white eyes tucked under an ancient quilt I can smell it like fixings for supper and the news that goes back forty years on the walls and the mice that come out in the dark to get the droppings in between the cracks of the kitchen floorboards like men with something hard in their breast pockets kneeling on running boards with lucky teeth like rhinestones twinkling on the mudflaps my dreams like red dice you can't throw down like somebody's older sister in Memphis who leaves a crack in her bedroom door and lets you watch her undress and you know it like the back of your hand a dream like a plaid skirt that takes forever to fall to the fioor and I can't swallow the breasts like two fishing boats riding a wave and she turns sideways to her mirror and sees me in the hall and says what you doing she takes my hands and holds them up to her and I feel them with my palms two prows gently rocking in the fall I sing to each leaf like it was the last to leave I fall into water on purpose so I can take off my clothes and build a fire so I can lay me down in the dirt I see how far I can spit and the wind weighs anchor it takes me into cypress trees into oaks my dreams like war drums made of the enemy's hide fioating on great rafts like wolves with their mouths full of blue feathers l have my dreams alone like a young squaw has her child I have them like fever 1 slobber at the mouth sometimes I beat my heels on the ground my bed of dreams set out in the forest like a ship set down by the winds like the silence of the stars and their movement a bullfrog catching a sparrow someone whistling up at Shrimp Eye's Landing a nighthawk a dancer with a quiver without a bow shafts that pierce any target and keep on going on this side of the boat I am borne away buzrard magic cirque of night snake doctors fitcking the daylights out of each other on my big toe like a dream the horses bathe in the river I glide past it all I forget to ask questions the gars are my companions I greet them with a pain in between my eyes the songs I see in the bullets of river water like someone throwing guitars at me like bats that come out of a black hole wandering moon like a mirror where one tear is seen as two like a background for my eyes that light up each parabola of water as it did yesterday it will do today why won't they leave me alone why won't they let me be like everyone else no they won't let me sleep they bark all night they want me to salute them the congress of sharp shooters hell no I won't they give me Toe Main poison I say get on out of here come back another day but do you think they listen no they are like a dog somebody gives you to take care of for a while they run folks' cows they bite the people down the road when they go out to draw water in the morning and what's worse they get in between them and the outhouse why you can't even take a shit my dreams are like spirulas that crawl under my bed from the ocean they hole up under there and die and stink for a week they are like lain up ships the enemy I am always looking for those dream dogs of mine with their howling like splices of rope with muddy feet tracking things up they kill everybody's chickens they run up side of the big house and get neck blood on the wall the feathers are like seven of us having a pillow fight they pee on my bicycle and get the aces in the spokes soggy l have to reach down there and put another one in the Clothespin I put a one eyed jack in the other one everywhere the night is dark and the dreaming dog wouldn't you know does his dookey right where I crawl under the house isn't that the luck a moon struck dog and when the man comes back to get him I'm sorry he's gone just don't ever come back you hound you ship fill] of bones on the bottom knocking in the locked compartments you song I can foretell before I sing the negro went around talking to himself all the time if he was drunk he was liable to slap the shit out of you just for nothing I remember one time everyone was sitting around the stove in the store white and colored alike was spitting in the same empty lard bucket and you know the reason it was empty you guessed it 1 had to throw it out I threw it on some sapsucker's tire I don't give a damn well I mean to say it was cold outside and in walks BoBo mumbling to himself he was saying I'm going to get that dog I'm going to get that dog listen here I'm telling ya'll I'm going to get it evertime I walk up that road that damn dog jump out of a bush and bite me on the leg me minding my own ain't d1at right you tell me you hear that and here is where nobody but me can tell what he's saying I know I mean I don't know I be drunk walking up that road at night with a good idea in my head one that will fool that cat and here come that dog I'm getting tired of that look here where he's been chewing on my pants I don't know whose dog that is but I'm going to get it the other morning I said to myself 3030 if you was to piss on the fire and tell the bossman you ain't studying bout no cotton today thinking fuck his cotton tell him it's mighty wet better lay by with the chopping tell him boss let me off today and I'll guarantee I'm going to catch that fish here's the hole and the devil can have it I took your car last week and you didn't even know it you fool I took a half gallon of wine and a new pole and some side meat I know what I'm doing I poured some molasses on a hoe cake I wrapped it up in some newspaper last thursday's Commercial I believe I had all that stuff up in my hands and that damn dog jump out of the bush I kicked him in the head whose dog is that I want to know there wasn't nobody in my spot if they had been I'd a run them out if had been white folks I'd say oh no suh fish left out here last tuesday they is all up around Abraham's Knife after them mayfiies you won't do no good here no suh you got to get up to the bend where them fish they sound like a somebody shooting firecrackers on the Fourth of July and if the old son-of-a-bitch would a told Well I done caught six already well then I'd say I bet they ain't fit to eat I say boss I know you want that fish and he's right down there where that barge sunk then he's looking at me thinking what's that drunk nigger doing around here this time a day why ain't he in the field that crazy bastard I don't know what he's saying maybe he knows where that catfish is and I say go down yonder capum for a fact I seen him the other day and he knows I know well he does there ain't been no barge on this water in twenty years I was here when they called it the cutoff see that little finger but the fool is going to wrap his line up he's going to waste the good part of the morning taking the time roll it up on the pole you goddamned cocksucker take all day you ain't going to catch another thing and you know what he's asking me 3030 what should I put on my hook I know all about those folks I tell him capum uh well now uh if hit was me I'd uh go down to the bridge I reach under the west side and find them dirt dobber shacks and break some off and run them blue babies onto the hook I have some real good luck dirt dobber chillun on my line and he say thank you 3030 I'm much obliged what you going to do here boss I'm lucky last nite won fi dollus shooting craps so I sided come down to the revuh and get some crawdads fuh brekfust and the old man he's already half way to the bend by the time I finish saying to himself why don't they do something about these crazy nigers why won't they go get their shors I know all about them I go over to the sycamore and get my pole I ain't studying chickens or Ivory Soap or cheese or no dead pigs no sir I'm going back to the old time favorites to a quality bait I'm going to run me some sidemeat on there down in the woods the owl he says time to get up nigger rise and shine I take my jackknife out my trousers and cut me a big chunk of that sidemeat off that salty pork feels just like a cat's tongue don't ha ha where's my wine I put it on the hook now I'm ready cepting one thing and I been saving it up in the back of my throat all morning I cough up one of them big green loogies and bring the hook up to my mouf I wind that spit around the hook like it was a worm I still got a lot in my mouf so I'm going to test the water wid it I rear back and spit way on out there on the other side of that willow boom that catfish hit it when it hit the water he suck it down like it was a bat now it's time I chunk my line out I let it swing seven times before I throw it in the river I got my lead just right seven inches have the hook and the leader it's seven foot to the fioat I know that damn cat is ready to come out today if he don't take it today tonight I going up to that old man's horse barn and set it afire and while evabody fighting the commotion I'm going to slip in to his room I'm going to get that sword off the mantel and run it down his mouth and out his ass and while the white man is twisting like a minnow I'm going to cut his liver out and the last words that old son-of-a-bitch will hear is see dis capum i'm gon catch that flathead wid hit I'm gon put yo livuh on a hook and then when Easter slides around I'm going to put lilies on the old gentleman's grave ha ha I look at my cork I don't let it out my sight there it goes in a circle like a wolf see him something in the clearing I don't put no kind of tension on it cause that cat's mouf tore up enough I say to him real low I'm just whispering now cat I'm going get you this time suck it on down in your guts suck it on down that cat smelling that meat that pig he sho know how to stink up the bottom that ice pick on his back sure enough he's big you going to get it this morning cat yes sir talking to him good now I'm going to cut you law this morning cat right now it's a chill of a morning but the sweat is coming off me he's got the meat take it on down working in a big circle take it on down come on now you got to put a little tension on it now just like you was trying to get up some gal's dress not too much just touch it you can grab a halt in a minute eat when I jerk this line that cold steel is going to bite you I know how it is in the dark of a morning when you is half asleep and a reaching over into some woman and she know what you been doing she know why you been getting on the other truck every morning she know why you want to drop with that other woman on the low turn row right where that tall stuff is right about then she starts carving you up with a butcher knife I know don't be telling me when I'm in bed with my eyes shut and some woman comes up side me with a shiv she near about cut my leg off and here I was on cloud nine with some kind of dream well cat I want you to bleed when I set this hook I'm going to pull a whole wad of your guts right up in your throat pole now pole please oh don't you break on me this time you hear now the sun is trying to cough up some light he knows there's going to be blood in the water then a snake doctor lights on my cork and then another snake doctor lights on that snake doctor now the hawk is fixing to dive now that awnry moccasin is just waiting for that redneck to reach under the dock now I hear somebody pumping water there ain't nobody yelled yet on the river not even in the slew so I'm going to be the voice this morning I'm going to be the first one and then I hear that white man screaming on the bridge mercy jesus mercy he mus a reached down like I told him the old fool thinking goddamn that crazy nigger mercy lord I can't see lord them yellow jackets is all over me help help that damned BoBo don't know the difference between a dirt dobber and a wasp please help me lord somebody come by my heart my heart oh lord that stupid nigger and I'm just laughing my ass off but shut up nigger 1 say it's coming testify going take it down in the channel ain't you yea yea yea come on goddamnit get out of there wait a minute scoundrel taking me to that snag again please don't let me have him this time lord must be a thousand hooks in that cypress knee now this damn fish acting like a lamprey eel maybe he ain't no cat atoll the devil have him if he's a eel no sir I'm scared to death of them I won't touch it don't tell me a eel is on the end why I'll throw the pole away wait a minute now no sir you ain't fooling me cat I know you well I sung too many songs over you I raised my fist in the moonlight too much I try to gig you now where'd I drop that wine I need one more hit foe he runs with it I reach under a many a log after you and all I grab is a moccasin all messed up on account of you snake bit amost dead and all that ok cat take it and run get ready 3030 you going to yell first listen here dagoes a nigger's going to talk this morning you hear that my voice swallow it cat take it down go on dive run with it now I let it go slack if he's going atoll he's going now the tip of the pole is in the river cat I'm bringin you out of this slew I taken my fish knife and put it in my mouth the blade towards me when he goes I'm going to bite it going to cut my mouth clean open in the corners I ain't going to bite through my lips again eat this is hurting me more than it hurts you he's still talking all this and he's right the scars will grow like turnips the seeds was coming out just like when I sit on his knee and squeeze his nose me telling him grow some turnips BoBo come on grow some turnips and about the time the sun hits the knife the catfish takes the bait the cork goes under and 13080 has his eyes shut on account of the fiash but he doesn't need to see a fioat he Feels the fish he lets out a yell he raises the pole like he was pulling an axe out of a log the water drops slide down the line and the blood comes to 3030's mouth now what he's saying whatever it is I can't tell cause he's got his teeth shut over the knife and it looks like the cat hooked him instead of him hooking the cat I can tell what he's saying when he's got a lip Full of snuff or when he's drunk or when he's got cornbread and grits in his mouth but I don't know what he's saying now no sit it beats me I know he's cussing the fish and now the pole is bent over like a bow and 3030's giving ground to the fish like the cat means to shoot him with an arrow he's panting he can't get enough air through his nose even if it looks like you're looking down the end of a double barrel shotgun now he's throwing his head back and sucking in air and the knife almost Falls out of his mouth but he catches it he goes at it like a dog eating a stolen bone in a pack you can hear some of the outboard motors starting up all the old fishermen is coming to see if 3030 lands the fish but they is a long way OH and it'll all be over when they get there cause the dog has showed up and it run up on 3030 and bit him in the cheek and now he's got a hold of his britches leg and 3030 kicking at it and the catfish is a coming up cause I can see the line coming up like a ray BoBo is thinking maybe that cat will run onto a stump and knock hisself out but he can't think about that long cause the dog is fixing to knock him off his feet the dog is crazier than 8050 he keeps jumping up like the negro's forehead was a bleeding fish head nailed to a tree and 8080 is shaking his head like he was a wild boar hog wanting to cut the strike dog's guts out with his tusk and 8080 lands a lick he gores the hound and the dog almost bit his ear ofi but 3030 ain't got no ear the rat took that along time ago and he's thinking I want to know whose dog is that why don't they keep that hound tied up I'm going to kill it that thing ougut to be dead right now it must have nine lives like this catfish cause now watch it pole cause I tied me a tow sack to the wheel of the truck and went on down the road by that bush where he stay and that dog come running after me barking at the tires and he catch hold of the gunny sack with his teeth and I figured I had tore the dog's head offi I didn't know cause there weren't no side mirror on the right side but hell at least I done broke that sooundrel's neck but no sir I didn't now the fish is rolling and Bobo is in the water a walking down the bank now the catfish is like a mirror and BoBo ducks his head from the light the dog all the time down in the water too chewing on the negro's leg the knife not cutting too much any more cause now he's biting the handle and fighting the dog with it and the fish is running up into the shallows and Bobo's still got a chance and for one second he is dreaming about the time he was in Hawaii when the Japs flew over he was on the beach with the Wahinies lifting driftwood showing off his muscles but now all his children are dead and his wife she is gone at this moment anyone looking up at the sky in the morning will see it and they will never see it again but they would know all that went before and all that come after is like a crawdad with one claw the fog is rolling in and I'm getting dizzy and I don't know if what I see is what really is or what I don't see is so I rest my neck which hurts awful bad and I can hear the fish tail slapping the mud and I can hear the dog barking and all I hear from 3030 is not talking just some groaning sounds and every once in a while when the negro rears back on the pole the line hums like an intercepted message like walking papers from a woman in black and then I hear it I hear the pole break it didn't go up near the top now it snapped at the stock just right about where 3080 had a grip I know how it feels I had a lot go on me but it feels worse later your hands turn blue like they do when you break a bar but the pain is worse than that it feels like it would if you was to pick up a crow bar and slam it across the railroad tracks yes I heard it break like a tree struck by lightning in the woods I'd like to yell out to God almighty right now if I could Pain sweet Jesus Pain but I can't and I'll tell you why in a second and besides one human being has lifted his voice and how he can talk with the blade of a knife down his throat I don't know but he's yelling Pain Pain Pain not like fools at a football game but like a man that went through a war and a prison would Pain Pain Pain he's a saying under his breath in great sighs like they were the last words of a song he was singing for a dead friend maybe a mother I see a boat maybe a washwoman way out in the river with no one in it and it look like a coffin to me but I can't do a thing noway cause wait a minute maybe this is how death come and take us like it did to the nigger mechanic you know a bulldozer engine was hoisted up on a block and tackle and he was under it he was a fine fixer and all of a sudden a grasshopper landed on the motor and woom it fell it fell right on the nigger's head and when the men hoisted it back up his head look like a squashed frog a grand daddy bull some soda water truck done run over on a bridge and the driver didn't even stop to pick it up a good meal like that a fine voice been living on the bayou all his life and ain't that a disgrace for a fine voice to go like that and the first thing he said was boys I'm going out of my head in pain he cut a joke he did it himself like somebody letting a fart in a firneral he said things like have lost a breeze ain't nobody's business father of lightning get some Maxwell House wEee a Fifth Avenue and baking soda what happened to that mule then he come back he wasn't out of it no more he said 1 got a one-legged cousin in the penitentiary he's got a hard to fit foot like me would one of y'all sec to it that he gets this left foot shoe we wear about the same size that small foot runs in the family hold on a second I want to be laid out in them tell the undertaker bless his heart I ain't studying about one of these two hundred dollar coffins no sir I want a cheap service just slip him five understand and rent that good one for the church and then have them put me in a pine box painted black I'll go under in that another thing I want the top lid of the casket shut let me show from the waist down I want them pants I picked up in Memphis last year got that and tell my wife I know C that's what we call Lamont ain't mine tell her I don't care I love him I hope he turns out better than his daddy did ha ha is the boss around I can't see nothing tell him I enjoyed working for him he pay two dollars more a hour than anyone else on the river tell him he better retire pretty soon or that river is liable to get him the Old Man takes everybody child and foogie alike it takes good mules and no comtt dogs tell him I was the one that stole that set of wrenches and yea see if Mr. Ltu'n is around I want to know see if he'll take my picture I'd like a drink but I can't swallow Lum wasn't around he was playing Samba on the other side of the levee he was a Bohemian photographer who spoke bad english so he cussed all the time he was a communist like mother was he was pretty good with a knife a lucky one if he is he said tell him I sho did appreciate those pictures especially that one with the woman and the donkey ha ha tell the boss lady bye she saved my life a many a time and maybe the lord will take me now it sho does hurt man alive hold on here the mechanic moved his arm up to his head he said my eyes is gone they was too they was squashed right out of his head like I told you where are they give them here and somebody said something about that grasshopper and he said give urn here damnit he was going out of his head again he shook them like a pair of bones he said look here brother death you grasshopping bug you ain't about to spit no tobacco in my eyes then he shot his eyeballs on the oil covered dirt he rolled snake eyes and died they buried him under a shade tree that is because mexicans colored and white all brought their cars to him when the Job was shut down he was known as the best shade tree mechanic around and study that I wished I could do something but I can't there ain't no way I can wave that boat if that's what it is cause two white men hit me in the head with a wrench last night and tied me up to the oarlocks in a boat full of snakes cause I caught them stealing horses they run after me and caught me at the bridge they tried to cut my tongue out I wouldn't open up my mouth so I just spit in his face and shut my eyes I guess the other one he wasn't nobody atoll I told him so he must be the one daat come up side me somebody will come along before long I reckon I thought all night I hurt and I'm still thinking it right now ain't nobody but a deaf white man showed up and 8080 run him off now my friend when he ain't drunk and crazy I ain't scarred of him but still I'm the only one that will pay him mind when he's loony can't nobody else understand a word he's saying he's after that fish and he ain't studying about me I thought those Italians that was out before it was light would see me I was kicking the transom out with my foot but I had to quit because I said to myself uh huh keep on boy and you going to sink this boat if you pry that loose and then you is really going to be sunk the men they just passed right by my boat they didn't even see me it was so dark and foggy if this was a castle I was in and I was a actor I would say the caliginous morn but I ain't I am just tied up and dying somebody come along I reckon those thieves was crazy there ain't nobody around here going to help them cause they ain't outlaws they ain't out for nobody else but themselves I know these snakes is crazy cause they ain't bit me yet and for sure 8080 is plum out of his mind he's dragging the cat up on the bank the pole is broken so he grabbed a halt of the line now I can't even talk right with this rope gagging my mouth I bet you ain't never had rope burn on the lips and my hands is bound to the oarlocks and my feet is stretched out to the stern and I can hardly breath I'm telling you I ache but I know there's people on this earth bound to be hurting worse than me so I'm going to quit feeling sorry for myself and look at 3080 now he's pulling the catfish up the bank he's down on his knees with the knife in his mouth the dog is trying to get a hold at his throat so 3030 jerks his head around and gores the dog again I mean a good one too the dog is lying in the mud whimpering 3030 has got a hold of the fish it's nigh as big as he is about two hundred pounds about the size of that alligator gar we was riding the other day and I see the catfish whiskers that look like indigo snakes I've felt them brush up against my knees at night when I was in the water I know 3080 is trying to stick his knife in the soft spot on the fish's head all he needs is a piece of wire like those sapsuckers twisted me up with that's right bob wire 8030 is going to try to paralyze it but the catfish rolls and sweet Jesus the spike that big fin on top of his back it went clean through 3080 he's hung up on the fish it is like the fish had it in him to spear the nigger who run him through I can see it sticking out of 8080's back and just when 3080 was grinding the knife in him turning the blade around and around but the negro he still ain't found the cat's brain you got to hit it just right that dog is just gnawing and now I can't tell the difference between catfish blood dog blood and 5030's blood come to think of it I'm bleeding again myself I'm going to have to yell in a minute but I'm mostly scared too I don't know if I got no tongue left or not I ain't got no feeling of one but sometimes I think I can see it I see the negro pulling himself off the spike and the dog he done chewed down to the bone pulling his guts along like a king's robe 3030 is on his back 1 think he's crying I hope not cause the salt will be running down in the cuts he is looking at the catfish and it's growling like a bobcat I know that cat is smart but I think the fisherman is smarter and I think that dog can smell what to do now I have to tell you something I don't really have to when 3030 lay his head back in the mud that pillow we all want to comfort us most he saw me he saw me twisting my head he saw that I had on the aviator cap that use to belong to his son he gave me it you know that cap saved my life the fur of some Japanese animal inside it and the soft leather outside the calligraphy that says something but I don't know what so it says whatever I want to white band sewed inside now dark with the child's sweat from his play and his work in the field the child dead now and to think when 3080 got it long ago there was only one stain on it a small sphere of blood where the pilot was shot a stain directly across from that other red moon that rose for his nation and its gods the moon that is black now like the rest of the head band and in it I can still smell the odors of 8080's boy I can smell the kiss of death in the sky at dawn I can smell the aromas that came years later the Vaseline and lye the eggs and potatoes all of the congolene that the do-rag didn't soak up I can smell conk job after conk job and it seems just the other day that I waited on the porch for the fat lady to finish with him I can smell where we cut our wrists with a broken wine bottle blood brothers forever and the blood kept dripping into the hat and we ripped the do-rag into we used it for bandages and now I am a poor way'faring stranger twelve years old just like you would a been and all I have to look forward to is the next launching of a rocket a Vanguard or a Jupiter C maybe the Russians will contact them my ancestors first I don't know like a knight kneeling with his weight on his sword like all those who have gone before me I bow my head I say a grace to memory a bitter dinner I cannot speak like a man with his throat cut for now the two spheres are indistinguishable they are like a hot iron for a boy's hair and a cauter knife for a colt just like a circle no larger than a peacock's eye on the black robe of a slit-eyed man kneeling under a waterfall with a knife in his hand the sphere is lost to the moment and the other sphere the sun rising behind the mountain is like something bloody falling on the stable fioor like a horse neighing on Jupiter like a feather with many colors that is how they are two demiurgeous moons moored to the fiute in the music we heard in the german pilot's house just like two ships of death tied to a drifting dock with the lines in complicated knots coiled around the cleats like snakes I hoisted you up you hoisted me up and we looked in the window of the gutted mansion we saw the german pilot drunk and singing with his eyes shut we saw the collection of phonograph records and the shelves of books we saw the dog asleep and the pilot come around to each window and open them up we saw the tornado in the lightning and the pilot with his scarf trailing in the wind the fire licked up and he toasted the music and the night and he broke his glass on the end irons in the huge room the two eagles I remember the melody it is the same as Miss Barker played in fourth grade I was drawing ships and men fighting on the wall one had a knife the drowned one played Haydn Concerto #3 the same music the cuckoo clock strikes twelve under the waning moon the tall one and the short one come out with their sledge hammers first the tall one then the short one hits the anvil I remember the music for two years I remember it now and I remember a long time ago when I did not know what is was when I first heard it and I remember her playing it two years ago and that german pilot it was the same the crop duster with the shack out back fiill of poison the crazy one who starts his two winged airplane up at night and takes off god knows where he pretends the war is still going on and he strafes the negroes chopping cotton in the fields he'll die one of these days if he ain't dead already now I'm in the boat the bob wire cutting my throat cause I'm giving BoBo the high sign and he sees me I don't have to tell you this but I will he is fearing for me so he just let go of the catfish he just turned it loose on account of me don't you see he saw that cap the cat got away and 3080 swam out to the boat he took the wire pliers out his trousers and cut me loose and the dog followed the fish down the bank as far as he could barking all the time but I'm not going to tell it that way no I'm going to tell it this way like a dream supposing a clown was to walk into your picture show one evening and say my friends put up your popcorn and soda pop and about that time the sides of the tent would start bulfeting like sails and a hole would break in the top fiap and water would come down in a stream on the stage and hit the clown in the face all the white make-up would wash away and his baggy suit would cling to his body and all of a sudden the phony country music would stop and the silent newsreel of the tag team midget wrestlers would end and all you would see now is the long beam of blue like moonlight hitting the sheet they use for a screen and instead of Baby Gauge and Melvin who are sitting on Co-cola cases in the back lifting up their middle fingers to the empty projector light like they usually do shooting two big birds to the audience instead they would point down to the stage at the wet clown who wasn't a clown at all but was the most wanted man in the county the quickest knife fighter on the river the one who is known as Abednego and called the Gypsy now the audience all in the dark could see the ring in his ear the band of gold he took off the finger of the preacher's young wife the girl who stabbed herself on account of the Gypsy they could see now his eyes like caves those passages that jilted so many women they could see the dark hairless chest showing through the wet cloth the crucifix and the madonna beating against his powerfiil breast with his heavy breathing and too they could see faintly the two red dots on his cheeks those strange circles that hadn't washed away supposing this Abednego the Gypsy showed up at your picture show one night with his black-brown curls like the wet feathers of a hawk wouldn't you remember him the rest of your life or would you ask me how could this happen how could this be I can only say that he did appear and your question to me is like asking the mist on the mirror it is like asking a meowing deck and you know when they asked the painter about The Dream he said the woman dreams she is in the jungle listening to the fiute it is like a man drawing the bow across his belly it is like the dream tramp with the worn-out britches the saint carrying the devil in a croker sack on his back I tell you Ray Baby was holding the reins of the black horses outside supposing now his side-kick and third cousin a negro comes out on stilts which are really two weather beaten but sturdy oars and drapes the Gypsy's wide shoulders with a velvet cape of indigo blue now have it that he looks out the corner of his left eye with a smile that stretches the scar on his thick bottom lip when he sees the baldheaded reverend standing outside with a bible and a pistol and supposing now you hear only the cachick cachick cachick of the loose end of the picture film on the spool because the projectionist is still asleep in his booth knocked toged'ier with dynamite boxes and the fan he took home from church with him ten years ago with the scriptures and the big EYE and little time notes to himself about when to change reels has fallen to the dirt floor so supposing this silence is broken by a black child with a pair of short pants and no shirt on slapping his thigh with the palm of his hand him saying well I'll be a towheaded dog and everyone now looking around and the man running the projector waking up because the Gypsy has thrown a knife at the empty light and the blade in the powder crate is quivering like a wing on the sheet while this is going on the colored man walking on stilts picks his way through the folks and children who came to the tent and paid a dime to see Think Fast Mr. Moro and Orphans of the Storm but they aren't even going to see that because the man who runs the picture show he is saying hold on folks we got a little problem here there's been a mix-up in the mail tonight y'all will have the privilege of seeing The Tower of London Bedlam and just a second folks here we go how about Mad Love but by now the audience is booing and throwing soda bottles and clods of dirt at the sheet because already Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is showing and that is what they saw four nights in a row last month and to go one better amidst all this confusion in your picture show suppose the tottering negro he puts another roll on the projector a movie no one has ever seen before a picture made by a camera not invented as yet at least a camera no man has ever looked through and say silence comes once again to the tent in Snow Lake and say the beat-up speakers the circus doesn't even use anymore the ones the politicians got rid of last election day just say they work for once this time not that it really matters because most of the pictures are silent anyway say the warped music is just beginning to come through and suppose it isn't as strange as most of the audience thinks because what makes it so odd is that they have heard it before but they can't remember they don't know where or when they don't recall it late at night and at dawn drifting out from the german pilot's mansion now the audience is not at attention they are in suspension they are like a fleet of rafts rocking in shallow water a motion that even puts the man who runs the Ferry asleep with his eyes open at this instant Abednego snaps his fingers and says the comedy is beginning he takes off his hat with his right hand he puts his left hand behind his back he bows revolving the hat lower and lower he goes the hat sweeping the dust from the stage the left foot going to the rear resting on its toes the bow executed perfectly with a swoop and his head bent gently to one side his lips moving in the shadow he has made forming an inaudible adieux while everyone is in a hush he takes advantage of this position to pull the ballet slipper back over his heel and with one insouciant twirl of his arm he is up and the cape is fiowing behind him as he dances up the moonbeam after his knife and now for the holy fare-thee-well drawing the blue cape around him like a cassock the Gypsy like a stranger standing vigil beside a windy grave lifts up his knife in front of them and holds it there like a monstrance then slowly he backs away our of the picture show with his knife swathed in its cape giving them its benediction my friends if I may borrow from the Gypsy we have heard the flute and the cello and now it is time for the violin the sheet is dark and waiting for the image so why don't we follow him outside where he and his side-kick are mounting their horses besides the music is better from a distance Abednego is about to throw fifty-cents to Ray Baby for holding the horses enough to get in and eat with a buddy for four nights but the third cousin whose name I never caught says don't give that boy that money Gypsy that's all we got to live on till we get to New Orleans the Gypsy says got change for a half-dollar boy and Ray Baby says all I got is a steel penny the Gypsy fiips his side-kick the coin and gets down off his horse he takes his knife out and goes over to the side of the tent and makes two slashes in the canvas he says that ought a hold you we hear the hooves of their horses bringing up the dust of the delta road as they ride toward the river to the bridge and if the white man hadn't already stirred up the yellow jackets we would hear the cussing of wasp bit men but tonight we will hear the crack of a pistol shot and the groans of a thrown rider we will hear a baldheaded man of God running through the fields shouting l kilt him I kilt him I shot that damned Gypsy we will hear this just about the same time we heard the hooves on the planks of the bridge and now listen 1 got him I got that little wetback I did Reverand Hacks did it y'all hear I kilt him at the bridge I shot the Gypsy I got him the one that raped my wife I done it he got my Jenny the court let him go but I got him I hated him Lord I hated that little bastard my wife was all time after his as Lord I shot him listen y'all hear that Reverand Willy Hacks shot that Gypsy but fear not friends the Gypsy is only wounded he's not dead he will return even though the baldheaded fool is running through the fields yelling it Abednego is resting his head in his side-kick's lap he is saying to him Gypsy I told you that sharecropper was going to shoot you if you didn't lay low and from afar y'all seen that curly headed cocksucker slinking away like a fox off my backporch and the third cousin tending to the wound saying he almost clipped you for life I wonder if he was shooting at it we see the blood seeping through the clown pants from the fiesh bruise on the groin and Abednego with his arm around his side-kick singing one of his old homesick songs let's take the long walk back to the picture show on the lonesome road where the prow of the moon the Viking ship is putting out in the black waters of Snow Lake and if we have a nickel let's look in through the tear in the tent with Ray Baby because he will surely say wait a minute partner it's going to cost your ass five cents to look in this hole so we cough it up and stick our heads through the canvas like fools in a side show dodging baseballs and we hear the sad music again and we see the audience weeping at the sheet even the children aren't ashamed to let one another know they are crying over in the corner a woman is dipping snuff and rubbing her aching feet together a black and tan puppy is licking her toes the crazy man with his innocent eyes is playing the Jew's-harp but no one is paying him any mind tonight no one they don't even care when the woman pulls a wadded up two dollar bill out of a pop corn box and says well shut my mouth I done won the prize all souls are sighted dead ahead and on the sheet in black and white they see BoBo as we left him not bleeding in the mud looking at me about to let go of his catch and swim out to the boat and save me but BoBo exhausted and panting in the mud holding on for dear life looking into the strange eyes of the huge fish like a drowned Chinaman he knows he can take him he can land the cat . but if you have never looked into fish eyes that large or rode his big fiathead or seen any of Lum's pictures then the only thing left is the movie that is playing inside the tent in Snow Lake and this is how it is and this is how it was made suppose the camera was in my boat that is slowly drifting away from 8080 suppose its refiexes are like those of any of the swift animals in the woods say a deer for it sees you a long time before you see it then the machine that made this picture is like a doe in my boat and I suppose you know how they lift up their heads and the eyes that are seeing everything the eyes that look through the camera are those of a spotted fawn so what we see is not what we have ever seen before it is like the spike buck the son of the stag that the people in the town see for the first time the feeling you get is like if you opened your mouth once too many times and a man takes off his gloves and slaps you in the face and you know he is better than you and he'll kill you tomorrow morning it is the feeling a towheaded man pulling on his boots gets when he is sitting on the steps lying to a bunch of folks and suddenly a stranger a long lost man he thought he did in returns so the towhead shuts up for a second and leaves go of his boots and everybody turns around and looks the stranger's way but the sock footed man can't stop talking he wants the sapsuckers to listen to him so he says out loud so the stranger can hear him who is that nigger and now they can see the stranger's eyes looking right down their throats they are all taking a swallow like he was a fiash fiood or a wolf they are all thinking I hope he ain't come back from prison to call me out shoot I never done him no wrong I helped him out when I could but they all know they are as guilty as Cain now they are not looking at him any more they are looking down at the ground because he is getting closer and the one sitting down he's not saying much now he has forgotten all about his boots because he is scared to death but to try once more to get the sapsuckers to listen to him he says under his breath what he does not know to be his last words now where'd that bastard come from that is how it is that is the feeling you get when you see 8080 through the eyes of the deer in the boat when you hear the crackling music that is the Quartet in D maybe in G I'm not for sure I can't remember things like that now maybe in a few years I will but for sure it is the composition of Franz Schubert you have heard the violist and the violin so now it is time for the fiutist and the fiute again and it goes like this the catfish is trying to get back to the water the dust caking up on him like dough and he come out of the slew so pretty and blue and white the slime that he needs to live by is all dried up the dog is chewing BoBo gets his knife and stabs the fish but he don't hit the right spot when the fish gets to the water Bobo grabs him he's trying to get his hands in the gill like he was grabbing him out of a log he gets it open he sticks his foot through it comes out the fish's mouth now the dog has to go around on the odter side and chew on the negro's foot and on the way some of his guts get hung up on a snag but the dog aims to eat off BoBo's toe and we can hear a way off in the water where did that nigger go but now BoBo can talk but he ain't answering the calls from the river you probably wouldn't know what he's saying but I know which is dog I could a kilt you a long time ago when I had the chance I could of kicked your head in when nobody was looking I should have blowed your head off I was scared you going to be some white man's dog I ain't studying about killing one of those and here you is some nigger dog now I had the fish and you spoilt it he's going to go 03' somewhere and die and fioat up down the river a piece that's what 8080 is saying but he don't know that his foot is still poking through the cat's gill out his mouth and so he misses his chance cause the catfish is beating his tail against the bank like he knows BoBo done give up and if he ain't give up then he done lost track of himself so the cat digs a hole in the mud and it fills up with slew water like it does when a horse finds water in the sand and fioats up to another level like he was a barge in one of them lock and dams on the Erie Canal and now I mean to say that fish is going he is swimming off the line is going through BoBo's hands it's that clear line they say the fish can't see and it'll lay you open like a branding iron 8030 is dizzy and he can't keep a hold of it he's thinking now why did I let that peckerwood sell me it I had some good line on my pole shoot he's trying to find a grip on it like it was falling water but the line is going right through his hands you can smell is skin cooking and here he thought that fish was going to be frying in cauldron full of pig lard by sundown no you can see the big flathead and the tail fin and the handle of the knife swimming away now all you can see is the knife the fish is coming towards me he's twiced as big as I am he is like a dream he is so big but 8080 ain't give up yet no sir not by a long shot he lets some slack out all he's got the tail end of the line is all in a mess it's what you call a blackbird's nest he doubles up the line all around his finger like he was making a salad like he was doing hoodoo a putting a conjure on somebody well he better throw a conjuration on that fish and if one of 3030's buddies was to walk by with a sack of perch and seen 8080 with that mess a line between his fingers he'd say uh uh nigger that's what you get for messing around with that no count line that's the slippenist shit I ever did see and don't you sit there and tell me you wadn't fishing wid it cause if you was a commencing one them cat's no they call it tomcat's cradles well then nigger you done naturally fucked up but there ain't nobody walking by and besides about the only friend 8080 is got is me and he don't see me and it don't make no matter no way cause I'll be dead in another hour if somebody don't come along I'm just full of mosquitoes like I had a black shirt on and they done sucked enough blood out of me so that if they was any ticks in this boat I bet they'd latch on to them a mosquito as sure as the world here comes that fish he's right under me now look a here look a here I see the line not tight yet but it's fixing to be now it is like a ray again like what would come out of a one-eyed composer's eye when the song comes to his fingers there it is that fish line with the sunlight on it like a tight rope nobody's going to walk cross and BoBo yells cause it's cutting into his skin in between his fingers he yells goddamnit lord have mercy and then crack like a rifie the line breaks it looks like lightning and the mist on the line hits you in the face and now it is fioating down over my boat like a spider's bridge landing on the bow and 30130 is crying he reaches down at the dog but he don't have to cause the dog grabs him and he pets him he pulls him up to him and it looks like they going to be friends for a minute but he takes the dog by the jaws and you hear one god awful howl when he tips the dog's mouth when he rears it in two I hear both the jawbones break it is as loud as the line was when it broke a person might of thought three shots were fired I see the dog kicking his legs I see the paws digging into BoBo's chest the negro still don't see me now my boat is turning around I'm a heading up river and I see why that damn line done caught in a crack in the bow and the fish is towing me as long as you don't never go straight ahead the line will hold I ain't looking at land no more I know the catfish still has that knife in his back cause I see the sunlight coming off something not water in the morning I ain't looking at land just above and I see trees going by and I feel fine ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo went the barge horn the dream was a house on a mountain on an island I was asleep in a highback chair I could see the snow falling even with my eyes shut I knew the ashes on my cigarette were eleven inches long with the holder before I could say tray a hunchback wearing a fez appeared with a platter he came out of nowhere my back was to him I faced the water my eyes were closed floating in quicksilver on the platter was the severed head of a child wearing a black patch a gyroscope two chelae applauding me with a synchronized hand and a locket but no ashes because I dropped them on the fioor and when the servant bent over to clean the immaculate wooden fioor I put the cigarette out on his neck he said please master I atn so ugly I see myself in the fioor by concentrating I could make the chair revolve I could even make it levitate when I got near the ceiling where the chandelier hung I could see hovering outside in the snowlight a buzz saw and I know it was a buzz saw because if it hadn't been I would have called it a chainsaw I saw the trails of the bleeding cabrioles inside my robe was a looking glass I let the servant look at it I knew the chair was red the mirror cracked like the huge fire he had prepared over and over please master I decided it was a matter of integrity to stay still in the chair as long as I could but a woman with eyes liked crushed blueberries was sliding off her back onto a larger cylindrical mirror my eyes were shut and I could see myself not in the chair but fixed to the pine wood my torso light blue like a statue rooted into the body of a horse if I had known the melody on the fife I would have known that I would be in the seventh grade next year and so could have recognized myself as a satyr but I won't learn that until next year but the curly hair is there or was there because I saw it with my closed eyes she is sliding down the circular banister that keeps going down I know that out there I can hear the black ice as tall as masts groaning like beats with no legs the lady is saying she has been ravished by her steed she is breathing so hard the mirror is fogging up even with her breath alight year away she is standing in fi'ont of me she is saying the vessel of my horse gives way in his belly when he sheds water in my face my eyes are closed but I know she is in pantomime stroking my locks and my stifie I am sitting in a red chair but I can feel her fingernails dredging the rivers in my side I can feel my member like a roll of salami so I know not in the too distant past it was used I reach down into my black robe and I expose it I hold it like a chalice with both hands I push on it and it won't budge it is as if I was being hauled back up the bow at the last moment and there I was dripping wet holding onto the boom now the figurehead turns her head and I see her neck giving its adagio and she parts her salty lips and her tongue crawls out and touches my bowsprit and she says in the storm with my eyes shut let me call it my bowspirit spoken by the dancer I have to open one eye and I see the corner of the map a familiar geography and when I open them both wide I see it's just the Mississippi map marked with X's at all the places you can buy boorlegged whiskey and a snake doctor splatters all over the windshield I can smell the summer evening coming through die side-vent and the chuck-holes in the road are like the old cowboys yodeling and I can remember staying up all night till we crossed the Memphis Bridge so I could see the naked back of that woman stretched out on a mattress on the sign the other dream was Buster said the hawk's gone y'all done set here and let him leave me telling you keep you eye on that hawk he just going to do some gliding y'all can follow him there ain't no fish going to take your pole this time a day anyway now I ain't going to get the eye in time we was looking at June's bite Duck said y'all knew I was wanting that eye June had a good one Duck said I reckon it was a hog Haemon said they all lying June said we been asleep all these fish is asleep they ain't studying about biting when you left I told them Buster was the one that wanted to fish I sho didn't and Duck says there ain't nothing but gars in this bart pit anyways so I said shit let's knock some 2's and Haemon says flick that hawk so we all goes to sleep looking at that bird and when we wakes up he is gone and you is coming through the woods and Duck says he wasn't afier no bait leastways no fish bait he didn't aim to catch no fish he ain't aimed to catch no fish for the last month bringing us to this gar hole it's just that bird is all he wants and Haemon says he wants the eye and I said why does he want the eye the mosquitoes knock the dew ofi their wings the doves shake down too and Buster drives a stake into the crossroads at dawn he is in his second mind wait it's coming I know it is like a blue curtain when my ships comes in when this woman dies one hand will break open like the skin of a good fruit the other will go back behind my eat like a wing to hold in the humming of my skull and stay there until the bees that are my eyes sting me and leave me alone the head bone behind like a fiower what will I think then when I see him kicking his feet under her lids when I see the insignia of the foe the white bulls of ice the armies of double tongues tied like fiag ropes so you can't get it down so you can't run up a pair of long-handles or a dead cat it grieves me that Cybele who did beat me like a skin of wine to my dream is laid out in a catafalque of burning arrows alone I look up at her fiaming pyre like a bulwark dead feathers here she comes down on two shrouds her arms folded over her chest her legs spread like a divining rod she sits down on my lap in the red chair at last she runs her hands through my hair that leave furrows of musk with my eyes closed I know the white island was a dream the eye was a dream and I know too the bridge was a dream but her crooked teeth and her lisp are as real as the chanfrin over my face and the tables are turning I can be Arthur I can be Launcelot I can take the oath of knighthood again if they'll give it to me if I may believe my eyes Merlin comes on a gallant charger I may not believe my eyes sit down Francis I am tired of your impulsive outbursts in class I walk out of the room I say Miss Fulgum this chevalier needs to piss goodnight leave it alone I worship fire I saw where I wrote fuck in the halls I saw where I left I opened the door I saw that I said kiss my ass I saw that I walked over to Soudtwestern I saw the old stone I stole a book a hundred years old about magic I saw the old stone I stole a book about sailors I walked over I saw where the astronomer had moved I walked in his butler he lived alone said cookies and milk master Francis that's where I got that from and the woman was his adopted daughter that wasn't there she didn't like Memphis State she was a foreigner like him I saw the painting hanging there the sun like a broken eg with blood in it you've seen eggs like that in the country I saw the fulvous moon I saw the Sleeping Gypsy I see the gallows for Hotspur the dancer's friend all night long in my dreams I look at what my brother Francisco Goya has done the astronomer doesn't think I'm crazy when I talk like that and that is the reason I like him I say what I want I can cuss if I want the butler says you didn't have to steal those books I would have been glad to check them out for you I say I'm going to take them back but I like to keep a book for a year or so I'm already tired of this magic one it is fill of bullshit I'll let you have it now I'll keep the sailor book everynight for supper the astronomer wears a beautiful robe we eat by candlelight he says your parents will be worrying and I say no they won't I told them I was going to look at Saturn he says well Francis what shall we talk about tonight the astronomer told me about de Montcorbier he told me about snowballs he told me about Alcofribas Nasier he told me about liars he told me about the one-handed Saavedra who I already knew about I thought who is my hero he told me about how not to drink water at a creek when you are hunting unless you can see who is behind you I picked up a new cuss word from him instead of saying dogshit all the time like Jimmy I said Goddamnarune ha ha it took me a while to catch on since the astronomer has no son he likes to give me compliments he says you should be a saga Francis you are like a paladin I figured he got that from Have Gun Will Travel because I always wear black but now I know about the real paladins I know lines fiom Shakespeare like Paladin I know a Chinaman too but he doesn't have a pig tail he has a bladtbelt he said you are the wandering soul the lover of Beatrice it took a year for us to finish Dante Alighieri one of my favorites is the one who sold his soul to the devil you know about Christine incognito with a borrowed pistol he shot himself in the head Portinari he played music like the world's smallest man over the roses in the urn on the table he on one end and me on the other he says Francis tell me what you see I said I saw a man singing through a fine-tooth comb and there was a long-legged man dancing in a cane tow he said what else I said that's all he said see it again I said that cousin of mine they say died in a fire in the civil war the one they say was a lieutenant that helped those people off that burning steamboat that is a lie he was drunk at a Sunday picnic in Virginia they was having a gander-pull and he fell oifi his horse and broke his neck trying to grab a goose by the throat what else they let a Job early one year it was good weather so daddy had them start working early in the Spring when it was a might bit cold yet they knew they had to patch Turner's Levee before the river crested so they had the dragline: and the boom machines going I went out with my father at dawn I saw negroes pouring coal oil on I don't know what I asked my daddy I said what them men doing setting fire to that dirt like that and he said son they is burning snakes I said what he said in the fall the snakes of all kinds go in the ground they make nests and hibernate like bears they tangle up together he said the poisonous ones and the ones that just bite they all tied themselves together in great balls about seven feet across and when the bucket of the dragline first broke the stakes and dug into the cold earth of what would be the new barr pit that every year it lifted out great clods of snakes and the negroes would stop work and get down off the bulldozers and mules and wagons and dirt dumpers and they would go fetch kerosene and throw it on the sleeping snakes and sit there and watch them burn the first time I saw this was when I was four years old I can remember how the cold blood of snakes smells just like hot metal the astronomer said go on and then one of the drivers would be selected to make the first run and dump the first load of dirt on the old levee and when and if it ever came a great fiood again that is where the black people would stand with their lanterns and possessions that is where they'd tell the steamboat captain to let them off because there hasn't been a levee yet to break where they first dumped snake bones and moccasin ashes once the engineers long ago decided they'd have to dynamite a few of the beams to relieve the pressure and the run-off during the fiood well the smart-aleck right out of college from Saint Louie got the job he wouldn't listen to the old men to the negroes he come down and he thought he knew it all he kept pouring powder into the levee but she wouldn't let go all the time in the rain the negroes with the black raincoats on holding the lanterns saying uh uh boss you got it wrong this here's a cottonmouth slope that powder ain't going to raise him out of his grave the Old Man going to get you if you don't watch out but that tonic selling engineer he wasn't going to listen to folks that knew better he kept a blasting until it didn't make a matter if the levee broke or not cause the people down river they was already washed away and the engineer he done buried six good men doing it his way and you know what it read in his home town paper Local Boy Saves Lives lies lies lies he got it one day he tried to take a boat out by himself in some place he'd never been the river got him and it'll get you too that's a fact if it'll take a fisherman been on it all his life it'll sho take a Whippet-snapper who don't know what he's talking about for damn sure I know the rivet like the back of my hand you say well that hand can get you in a heap of trouble sometimes don't stop Francis and I saw the man called Sylvester who was called the town nigger by the peOple of the town and I saw the people of the village who were called shiftless trash and peddling cowards by Sylvester and I saw a bull piss in the shade and I saw the whitewashed Judas tree and I saw the jonquils and I ate the spoonbread and the old woman chewed the orris-root and her letter she sent I wrote it cause the son was hanged by the sapsuckers who I call all a Judas like a cut horse sealed with a kiss some by signs and others by whispers brother for nothing why was he killed to me he was a friend we use to see how far we could spit those people they come around a good red melon like fiies after the seeds they lay their eggs on the Tom Watsons from Quiver River they light on the Moonstars from Black Bayou and the Rattlesnakes from the Bogue Phalia why couldn't he have been a tree or a weed to them why not a pecan a sweetgum a walnut a ash a wateroak a sycamore a cottonwood a yellow top a wahoo bush he was only a peanut farmer chunking clods of mud across a creek he only skipped them seven times he was only some cattails or some pokeweed he was only mud on someone's boots he was only the heelgnawed porch steps of the store he was only a sole with rat bite fever he only had the dueling pistols because he found them he dug them up they were buried near the ruins of the old house he only drank whiskey and he never took it out the paper sack he was only a little sawgrass a crop duster's propeller a feather an anchor a broken guitar a orange crush neck a rusty tub he was just a lame nigger running his trotline on Caintuck Bend and before he hung I took him his shiny black Johnny Walkers he got them his mother's request like a song of white people who can't dance he was only a katydid and his mother broke a window to steal something she didn't need to get them off the trail like a killadeer bird she was and the sound of the new shoes with the holes cut in them when they dumped him in the coffin like a midget's ship it was hard like a plunk in deep water it was soft like a Shoshone kneeling on a hill with a knife between his teeth many times he played the cane fife in the deep woods and I would come our to him alone there sitting on a rotten log in the strange clearing where the crippled animals died where the good wood was and see the negro playing his fiute by himself and the mushrooms and the snakes tumbling in mossy logs he wasn't afraid I called him the black angel cause he had a black choir robe cause he was always alone and he weeped like an angel but to them he was only something born in the rainwater that stood in an empty sardine can his home was something you was liable to cut your foot on he was a hubcap not worth going after on account of the chiggers in the weeds if he was around he was like an old tin sign nobody reads and they probably can't even read anyway I know how the white men come into the store and mark down their X just like the test he was a boll weevil in Whiskey Jim cut he was one of them red tick spiders to them he was a dead square a chunk fioater rain at the wrong time a no count worm who wore a white suit in the spring and a long black coat in the fall they looked on him like he would never lap the middles them with their red bowties the razor cut red lat hanging over their collars on election day and the mud up to the lug nuts them shaking hands in the rain why it would make you pull out a pistol and shoot at the first thing you see moving down the road even if it was your own mule I tell you they listened for him like he was a tornado just another jogo just another jigaboo just another stowaway on the yellow dog some preacher hanging around for a month or so turned him in they had to get somebody and for me he was the BLACK ANGEL now he is deader than hell his mule is dead they stole the new wheels he made for his wagon he had a speaker in his outhouse so if you had to do your business while you was listening to a good song or a close game you wouldn't miss a thing they tore that out some peckerhead got it why don't I go to toting a pistol I know he was on the hog all the time no dough and all that he didn't get drunk like some of my other friends do but they called him Mr. Petty Gouger he said he was a dicty cat from way on back I don't know he was just the BLACK ANGEL his mother made a living selling spells she had a sack of conjurations some gopher dust some signs a little bit of everything ain't nobody's business but St. Francis bad lucking trouble all my days to them he was only a weed I know then the ones that done it some by signs others by whispers if you have ever picked up an old Nehi bottle buried in a ditch for two cents and poured the muddy water out and seen a tadpole beating his tail on the new hot mix asphalt that the prisoners was made to lay down just the other day that stufi' still crawling over the weeds and all and you see that tadpole like the black rag of a fiag fiapping on a dead mast then you know what I mean you know what people will do to one another do you think just because some county sheriff is got a buddy up in state government stealing off folks and he's going to see to it the law is elected judge do you think then we got to do and abide by what that redneck says hell no why he ain't even from around this neck of the woods he never set his big policemen foot in this county till a few years ago he never sharecropped for nobody he ain't never broke no hoe hell no he moved down here from Iowa or Ohio or someplace like that and him going to drive that patrol car down a back road once a week and tell some nigger on a tractor boy I think you busted a row why shit the way they do things around here is like one of those bounty hunters they send after a outlaw who's been a pestering these banks in the state they get some lay low fixed up between them and then ambush him while he's playing the mouth harp in the outhouse then they bring him into town over a mule and say how they shot it out with him bullet for bullet them that never fired but one slug into his head while he was wiping his ass I tell you the man that runs the newspaper he's in with all of them on it so he lies in a big story so everybody will start getting his paper and just to make sure he throws in a few pictures that they fixed up in the dark room seeing how it is that most of the people can't read noway well the rats that ambushed him they end up being elected next year I know all about it some by signs others by whispers it ain't no different from the way it was a long time ago except back then I believe if my book learning is right the cowards didn't talk as much one of the exceptions being Unferth who always liked to wag his tongue while he pidted at the bumps on his face you might remember how he stood up in the king's saloon and told that lie about how Beowulf couldn't swim a lick well that's what I mean if I'd a been that seagoer I wouldn't been knife fighting and arm wrestling with that gar or gorilla or whatever that damned abominable snowman was I'd a hauled olf and kicked that son-of-a-bitch in the knee and then when he bent over crying I'd drug my gauntlet crosst his lying lips that chain mail a clear up them bumps real quick old Beowulf should have just said shit on it and kicked his teeth in the fourteen plates of snow are set before me the moon has bright eyes I meant to say the twelve cups of wine are raised in my honor atop my friend the black fiag that sings in the blizzard hundreds of years gone by in the streets of Paris and Moscow aloft I of the horses and the slippers riding bareback like a blood poisoned man that enters houses uninvited like someone who has never and will never turn twenty like I am given invitations by wives and I eat their good making and their husbands ask me about football and try to get me drunk and if they are from new york and on the block it is ok for young ones to drink wine and so it comes out that the woman is from new york and a jew and that I knew already and it comes out the husband isn't fi'om there he is from Texas and his wife says your teacher told me a secret you have a collection of private papers and the man says what do you do besides play catcher play fullback play tennis go fishing collect stamps with little billy phillips build rockets and I say I consider myself poet and he eats real fast and looks up at his wife and says well I better go polish my shotgun and oh yes I'm suppose to play cards with the guys tonight see you later honey glad to meet you Francis goodbye she wipes her mouth as he leaves she says tell me about yourself before I can do anything I tell her I have to go to the bathroom because I am about to throw up on account of the drinks they gave me those grasshoppers it is real big a pair of her panties are lying over the sunken tub there are all sorts of good smelling powders and bath oils like baking pics on the counter I look through all the drawers I like to look under mattresses in shelves in bedside tables in strange houses there is no telling what you will find and if you find it out the sooner the better whatever it is because that way you will know what to expect of the people who hide them there I opened the closet and looked under a stack of nice towels they looked like they had never been used I found one of those electric toothbrushes they just came out but I had to go puke then so I vomit pretty good in the toilet I don't get a bit of that oatmeal on the toilet seat pretty good aim when I throw up all the time I am thinking now have they invented those electric toothbrushes yet or did I just read where in the next few years they would have them well I gargled with some yellow stuff looked like Listerine in a fancy bottle you know how some folks put soap and medicine and everything in these fancy bottles well it was perfume anyway I said to myself I didn't see no cord to that electric toothbrush I wonder if they got them to work on batteries I went back to the closet or what you might call a pantry and looked at that thing-a-ma-jig I hit some button and that dude cut on I thought it was shocking me so I was switching it from one hand to the other like a hot potato it was humming like a egg beater it was vibrating like one of those things a barber uses on those old men's heads to make them calm down well it was tickling my palms I turned it off and thought my my I don't see no sockets for a toothbrush and the way that thing goes it's liable to knock your teeth out no sir that wasn't for me I'd just use my hand and some baking soda the lady knocked on the door she said are you feeling better Francis could I help you I put the thing back under the towels and fiushed the commode I walked out the bathroom door she said your face is red she got a cold wash cloth and she sat down in a chair she said sit in my lap but when I sat down my back to her there wasn't a lap just the chair and her spread legs I tested my head under her chin and leaned back she applied the cold cloth to my forehead she said now there she told me I guess you know our little boy was run over by a garbage truck last year he would have been about your age about twelve but I wasn't listening to her any more I was dreaming about sun discs immersed in oceans you could look out over and all you would see were icebergs and on top of these would be werewolves but there would only be one iceberg and one wolfman because your ship would be a mirror I thought of a frenchman walking down alleys so cold and finally getting an open door and some old gentleman feeding him supper one of the vagabonds one of the old soldiers and as they talked over the firelight the man looked like a wild boar with big teeth but you only thought that because of the way his tusks went and because he was eating so fast really he looked like a wolf and when the man told him he was just a no count gypsy and the man was a bastard I want to point that out he slowly picked the knife up off the table the gentleman gasped but the gypsy only cut the cheese and put it on the good bread he drank a whole lot of wine that warmed him up and they said goodbye when he stood outside and saw the monk with the rope around his throat hanging from the bell tower he just coughed up some blood and spit it in the snow and said to himself who was about the only one he talked to except for low life he said as he pulled out the silver watch with no hands and held it in his own fingerless gloves his breath like smoke from a thin cigarette going up his nose le bateau noire en face de l'eau il vien pour moi l have inhaled the fumes of the chicken feathers of death myself I have dowsed the burning birds I have set the wet feathers afire like the lullaby from the Russian ballet in many tongues but none of them double none of them spliced none of them forked none of them separated by words I carry on with myself in even the most I don't know what moments my dreams some of them come and go like fiash fioods some of them rains that never let up and some of them the river that remains forever on the verge of passing out with so many batons and lost music like toothpicks like pieces of pork and fur stuck in between like it could grow to the gums the dreams they are strangers striking matches in the dark they are boots that keel over to the side a definite limp for forty days like hot metal hissing in some liquid the liquid is unnamable I open the pages of the book without the benefit of light I walk into the bathrooms of the catholic families and the stockings of the older sisters catch in my eyes like webs they fiutter in my hair like little wings and when I'm asleep in a slim woman's lap I am not sitting on the chair anymore I am sitting on her little belly and she is giving me a horse ride like it was eight years ago and now I know why the older gentlemen give the little girls horsey rides on their legs they like those rings on their fingers and those bells on their toes they like the moist cotton panties on their shin but now the woman is giving me a ride below her stomach she is moving around on the couch she must have lifted me up while I was sleeping in the same position now I have a sailor suit on which is too big that I saw in her dead son's closet and my pants are off and so are my socks and shoes and the inside the soft part of her arm is in between my legs and her hand is waving at her belly and she has the hair and I don't and now I remember telling her about the electric toothbrush I found I must be drunk and she brings her arm up like a wand and tickles my lips with her wet fingers that smell like water fiowers she takes hold of me with the same fingers like she was fixing to puff a cigar but she doesn't do that no she gets my arm with her other hand and goes to tickling the soft part of my arm with my hard part so now she is making me tickle myself and I get goose bumps now I see what is so soft on the back of my head her breast she only has one I remember that she said do you care have you seen these have you seen this have you ever done it to yourself tell me she says I am to do this with my teeth and tongue she goes like you do when you are making a call in the woods at dawn the way she has her lips spread and her teeth clenched it is like she had a big hook in her mouth and she was about to pass the line through the hole and make a good knot a figure of eight maybe a falconer's knOt but like she was tying something up she said I was like someone asleep on a c118 and I said ship ahoy and jumped" off she wanted me to be her son I said no deal she gave me a bath I had to let her she would have come in the door anyway I've never seen a bathroom with so many doors while I was bending over the tub before I got in washing my hair I always do that first she came up behind me and put her tongue in my asshole I jumped and hit my head on the water spigot and cut it open and I actually was knocked out and drowning but do you think she cared I guess not when I woke up I was naked and shivering on a large bed and blood was all over my pillow she was groaning and squirming around on me with that electric toothbrush crammed up inside her if that don't beat all I tell you I'm going after a girl my own age I'm tired of these women getting me in my dreams that woman didn't even get the soap suds out of my hair and they got down in my eyes and I started crying but I really wasn't but she thought I was so then she wanted me to suck on her titty some more just like I was a damned pup or something no sir I believe I'll ask Veronica Novareese out next Saturday night she's thirteen and catholic I really like the way she dances and her accent at home I keep a record of the various accents I run into while I'm living but of course you all know by now that I am Death and my twin brother snoozing over there is Sleep so all I have to do is talk to myself I dream with one eye open and the other eye shut I open windows and pull up blinds they want me to knock it 03' they say it is wrong to think up bedrooms and tigers to see murder committed on the streets they want to wrap me up like a mummy and my dreams they won't get them I'll tell them to run off don't go down with me the people if you know anything they want to cut your tongue off so you can't tell what you really saw they want to moor me to some shelf like a book leave me alone and goodnight let me go to bed with me let me pee on the quilt let me bark on the clothesline let me unravel let me be a yo-yo going around the world while they are trying a suit on me in julius Lewis let the string snap and I'll break the mirror watch the ends of the two bones going to shreds see the skull split in half and the threads will pass through the needles of wind my dreams that need to be changed like bandages because if you don't watch out they'll set up and get infected there you go that's what you get but the Indian calls me the sleepy-eyed one the fish boy some of them want to get me in their gill nets but huh huh brother I know I have no markings I know I take no bridle I know no bit my helmet is ringing aye the bird falls the author of the wound Lucy eating your corn on the cob the pools of vermilion butter whitecapping in your sockets saint with a slit throat saint of the finger fucked mandolin the maenad eating of the god himself master of illusion bullcalf with his blood so full of fiiry the transubstantiation the women sucking mysteries out of his palms the dead goat around his neck his hair matted with wine his lips dancing like an opened coffin Dionysus with my fingers full of splinters like a lad overboard I told the woman about my hawk with bells on his talons the falcon manning the wrist of the lady the bird tethered to the bleeding wrist the hood like a new moon the eyes that swoop down on the backs of rabbits I told her about myself my bird that sat on my shoulder the one I found with the broken wing see the stairs on my back where the hawk toes sunk in see him dive see him fall bloodthirsty bird like two friends of mine who visit me often while I'm looking at clouds Sir Richard Burton and William Blake you should see them carrying on together what with them letting down their pants in front of the churches and the bone houses of government shooting their moons old baldheaded Ike adjusting his truss says who are those beatniks I've read about those two men and there's much more them with their dreams I would like to quit school and go back and live in a tent I would like to dream again sometime I am afraid one day life will give me its Sunday punch I am afraid after reading all these so-called initiation books that some cortege of boot lickers will enter my room while I am sleeping and suck my eyes out with soda straws they will be older men and women much like the arnanuenses with bad breath in the principal's oflice who call up and tell on you the Unferths of the world better beware 1 know Jesus would have kicked your necth in you couldn't pull that shit on him he was telling his buddies one night boys I'm glad y'all decided to come on up and eat supper with me I hadn't got much there's a few things I'd like to say at this time Matthew says to Simon I sure as hell don't know what he's got us here this time for I'm beginning to wonder you talked to him lately yea I was shooting the shit with him on the mountain but I want to tell you this Matthew don't never come up on him when he's alone he jumped on me I thought he was going to kill me he was just walking around just talking to himself waving his arms like he does he's worse than John Jude put his hand up to his mouth and said down the table I think Jesus is going off his rocker get Simon to tell you what he asked me Simon says he didn't want to talk about politics or dreams or nothing he just said Jude next time y'all are over in Mesopotamia why don't you pick me up a few bottles of that wine they make over there sure thing Jesus I says well now the boss is talking he is saying I asked y'all up here because frankly I've been feeling a little sick lately and I want to make sure y'all know what to do in case anything happens I know one of you is going to do me in I know that but goddamnit y'all know those people in town are after my as the other night I walked down the streets in a disguise and I seen a couple of you messing around and drinking with the soldiers what's going to happen if one of you gets drunk and lets it slip where I'm hiding out then I'll be in a fix you know if they was to find me they going to cut me y'all ever think about that and Peter ain't you ever going to get it straight what you're supposed to do give me one of those biscuits Judas and go outside and take a look-see I got you Jesus Judas says John leans over he says been catching any fish Peter oh well I been getting a few of a morning they ain't biting too good now you know on account of this blamed weather nobody is even listening to Jesus he's just talking to himself like he was crazy Matthew says I believe he's been hitting that wine a little too hard don't you reckon Jesus says another thing I told all of you it'd be better if you didn't get involved with women now just listen to that little two-faced bastard James the Lesser says we all know what he's up to shacking up with all those town girls the other night he was dressed fit to kill and drunk as six hundred dollars a rolling around in the mud like a hog kissing that whore's foot why shit I wish he'd let us in on what he really does Thomas spoke up for once he says I know what you mean the other day Andrew and I asked him about some scripture he said leave me alone I don't know nothing about that shit and then we seen him cussing out a priest over at the temple he knew more about it than the elder did another thing Matthew says I wish he'd start writing what he wants done down and do it so I can read it you know as well as I do that damned Peter can't keep it straight he won't get anything right Bartholomew says don't make no difference atoll cause Paul is going to tell it like he wants to that's for damned sure all the time Jesus just mumbling to himself wine spilt all over his robe the rest of them chattering and cussing trying to figure him out John the Baptist about the only one Jesus can count on except for crazy John is banging his goblet on the table he is saying now ain't this a sight spitting in the lord's face at his own birthday party I'll swan Brother John why don't you tell Jesus what the real problem is . the crazy one says everyone of y'all is chickenshits you are afraid to look those elders in the eye and tell them what you think y'all get up on a rock to talk and you see a soldier coming and you say anybody seen a stray mule Jesus is saying to himself I'm going to pull those temples down if I have to get me a rope and tie it to a pillar and a jackass and do it myself wake up Jesus Philip says Paul who hadn't touched a drop gets up and gets his paper out and says the nature of the problem Jesus is this the people don't believe you those fellows in the temples have got it all organized all they have to do is send out stooges and hire a couple of rednecks who make out like they're crippled they have a big gathering they say the same things you say they pull off a fake healing the redneck's wife stands up she says LIE he ain't lame he's just drunk and so all the people go home saying those christians what a bunch of wind see Jesus they are using your material but they ain't coming through so that is making you an enemy of the people we just got to get organized as is proved here today by your followers carrying on as they did so I'm getting sold down the river by the elders and their hirelings uh that's right Jesus ask anybody here why I didn't think they'd do that he says I told you a long time ago not to keep talking with them temple people John says you should a know'd what they was up too ain't nobody going to understand you why you ought to know that when we first run on to you we had second thoughts we thought you was crazy there's probably still some sitting down here right this second that still thinks you are a crazy one but Jesus you should a known we been through a lot together we go a long way back you should a listened all they wanted was you they liable to get you yet then they won't have no competition they want to keep feeding the hogs the same slop they the ones that want to get fat man you listening to me Jesus he says ok if that's the way they want to do things at the temple I'm going to change my tactics I going out after these chillun more than I have been they'll know I'm telling the truth I still got a few things up my sleeve left what's that Paul says I'm going to do a few things can't nobody follow we could always go back to biting the heads off fish and chickens Peter says why don't you let us in on it for a change Paul says we follow you around like we were bunch of sheep picking up your tab bailing you out of jail coming up here all the time fior supper and what do we get to eat nothing why can't you have a little faith in us Jesus ok this is what we going to do he says hold on who is that walking up the steps it's just Judas how does it go boy Jesus says and the other one answers just fine Jesus just fine and John the Baptist turns around he says to the one who has just slipped in boy didn't I see you talking to some white folks the other day here endeth with a chord on the guitar that's how the men did Jesus like he was old like he was young just like Elvis did to Big Dad Arthur 1 know just like another blind singer the men come down to see with their equipment they get his song they pay him twenty dollars and he don't hear from them ever again except sometimes in the mail on Christmas when one of them might send a five dollar check there won't nobody cash oh tell me brother how do the old men feel who were young as purple flowers fiom Hawaii once when they listen to their songs coming in over a borrowed radio tell me don't they take up a notch in they belt don't they tie another knot in they headband don't they wring that sweat out have mercy Jesus deliver me from the lawyers and the teachers and the preachers and the politicking fiies can't you hear them buzz can't you hear them bite another chunk out of me oh brother I am death and you are sleep I am white and you are black brother tell me I am that which I am 1 am sleep and you are death we are one person getting up and going outside naked as a blue jay rolling out bellies at the moon oh brother tell me you love me and I'll tell you too I want to know how do they like it when the ones who sung shake they leg on the Television I want to know Jesus don't a blind man oount no more some by signs others by whispers some with a kiss and some with a gun and some with a six bit fountain pen whoa lord help me and my brother help us get through this tookover land we are poor wayfating strangers bumping into each other in the dark going to the outhouse like the picture show in the tent in Snow Lake that old marquee tacked up side the whiskey sign it ain't ever right everybody specting once upon a time one thing and ain't getting such a thing when they get there they might as well turn around cause it won't be on less you want to get a pint and buy a ticket and take a chance you can't never go wrong on that sign it always got the good show playing I tell you I'd rather put my faith in a fishing pole instead of a word many a time in school I've had my mind like a circular table like a mirror ready to be set with hope but when the teacher opens her mouth she besets it with TV. dinners when I had a feast in mind a feast to feed the world of my dreams and I had them and I had one oh lord help me my ship is spinning round and the women and children is still on board those fiickers in Washington DC. done grabbed all the life boats and they ain't letting no more board I tell you one day in the unknown county where my drums jump and shout a train will arrive and it will arrive like a General oh the days I spend in the classrooms are like caltrops thrown in the path of my ponies with my dreams their riders I heard tell of a man get a call from his house come on home lay the plow down and unhitch that mule I got yo dinner ready you can finish the row this evening well the man goes home he sets down with his family he eats a fine meal of field peas with relish and turnip greens and sweet potatoes and sidemeat that is cooked just about right ice tea and a jelly glass full of buttermilk I know he goes back out and cuts his firewood that evening when he hitches up that mule to finish his row he hears another voice it don't sound right come on home and eat your supper early supper tonight he thinks but he do what's right he goes on home and when he gets there his wife and chillun is stabbed and tied up like hogs and for meanness they set fire to his wood he just got through stacking and take him on to fight with them oh fight that battle one more time get this strawboss ofi'en my back what a body can think up like a new grave to put somebody else in they want you to join this be a part of that they won't make cinders out of me I say no to the crowd of whimpering dogs I say low and behold I won't sign my X to another pack of lies they can't run me out of my own land my home no they can't they can't run me for office they can't run me through somebody take up the call shout it so the dwarf rowing his boat can hear it on the other side of the river oh dreams nesting in the helix oh dreams under the dirt the last testudo I breathe into my image on the jambeau under the waters of the archipelagoes I watch the anchor chain wind up like intestines the mooring line to the companies in arms my dreams like a horse bucking at my crotch leave my brother alone who is sleeping the black vine together we tie our shoes in the bow we see the asteroids brother do we see them fall leaving their trails of burned rope brother the sails dropped like a good card under the table like something red on the side of the bill a footpath where day is lifting her hem here I go brother looking for shadows good morning brother night my companion I am dead like my mother I hold my hands over the fire like the lightning that struck her I walk through the breeze I am the falcon my dreams the falconer the jaegers will have to take it from me I intend to put up a good fight I remember those guitars under your arms still this jack tar makes a little headway into the past with all its spiders toting hour glasses where I cut my feet on the crystals that have sprung loose where some negro burns a leech off my shin with a Lucky Strike cigarette where we go hunting the bulls in britches spun out of mud like gods with tridents and the split tongued creatures knock their brains out going for the gorge: those fables in the photograph like heirlooms put away in brandy where 1 see the lieutenants entering the room in maroon and lifting the slips offof the women with rapiers so be it the dream for all its splendor was run over in the middle of the road while it was licking itself and we will all go south from the Susquehanna with my Chaplet of ashes and ice I swagger through valleys with a black sash alone and I see maidens with the backs of their hands over their eyes listen to them trill on the S that means sad ' and see the teachers in the halls asking for excuses in plain daylight and go to the school at night and see them taking the pups away the unweened ones with their eyes still shut see them load them in their sacks watch the water level carefully where the teachers have all joined hands do you see that concertina below their feet do you see how afraid they are that the water wheel might come loose do you see them passing their whispers along in the night like a dead man's wind do you see them joined to their lies like cancer do you see them joined to the word like an insurance salesman look at the cankers that signify the name of the club on their belts and lapels when you enter the city limits the road signs announce the time and place where the diseases are having their noon day dinners look at them talking like they don't want to go home watch them go home watch them accuse the triggers of backsliding see them grading the papers with a scalpel like a piece of butcher's ice am I wrong to say there is no place for the parabola or the shipmate in their shingles of nerves and skin infections if you ever pass down this street you will see them all looking out the windows at the lights of the automobiles they want I would like to point out that they all have excellent credit listen to them reciting the long numbers on the reverse sides of the cards hurry on now don't tarry or a wife will open the shutters and lift up her breasts to you for sucking for the nipples have turned hard as cleats on a shoe leave this neighborless hood of shoddy carpentry and tables that won't stain or the bugger men will get you watch out for the street lamps like a regiment of minervas those white lights burn like men throwing acid at your doorstep in the backyard the kids are bending silverware beneath the clothesline they are pouring detergent boxes full of cockroaches over their red hair they are holding the kitten by the tail in one garage is an imported car with the price on the window and a football tag on the front bumper and fifteen dollars worth of unread magazines in the backseat I have to side step the dog shit and I see unopened cartons of hair oil sitting upright like a gas meter 1 see mail boxes like cleft palates behind a bush a man is picking at his bumps like he was trying to start a fight I see fireplaces that are never used and everywhere you look there are new dimes I can see all this out the lunchmom window at school and I throw up my dinner someone slips me a note saying I was betrayed by a rat I see the teachers assembled like an erector set and one of them is looking over at me what the hell this place is a port of lies and a sewer of words it is a harbour I must never allow myself to enter again for the rows of desks are like a regatta of coffins my teadrer has a tongue like a cow it will reach all the way up in her nose she is saying attention the president will speak they turn on the TV. up on the pall the stage it shows a picture of the flag being raised and when it is tied in place a bumrd sits on the pole speak president cave in my ears while I atn dreaming of submarines and a master on a ladder floating down a canal I drink the rest of my milk that cost me a nickel I fold the carton up into a box I place it on the floor I stomp on it and when everybody is looking towards me I shoot duet fingers like a pair of love birds I say so long flies I run out the door and slide down the waxed floor on my horseshoe taps the faster I run the smaller the building gets I run and I run and I hitch rides but I get my young ass out of there where all butts are licked or kicked I leave I come to the edge of some woods and a negro puts his finger to his lips I am breathing hard he bends over and lights a firecracker stuck in a redneck's sole he makes a motion with his head like he had a tight shirt on in church we get the hell out of there in the background a crack like a big fish at midnight blast those fucking children the white man says but we is long gone by now I told the boy without even catching my breath I already had it I says I know where there is lots of jiggling change to be picked up off the sidewalks but this boy here ain't going to try for none of it they is all crazy the negro blew on his fingernails and rubbed them on his T-shirt how about you treating me to a Eskimo Pie man he says we buy two from a Chinaman and eat them both before they melt all the festering sores on my legs had disappeared and they wasn't even little white spots where they had been no they had all tanned over nicely mighty nicely the boy looked to be one of those nigger indians from over around Caddo he was humming the beat to In The Evening When Things Go Wrong I say where you from he say Louisiana my name Emmett uh uh call me Don Moon too bye and bye we got to be friends strickly speaking I mean we was and on a day like today we come up on a blind child named Mack Son he was helping his Mama clean fish a couple hundred buffalo you should of seen them chickens eating those guts I asked Don of the Moon hey where did they take those out at back up in them rupelos he says I smelled something somebody's sister cooking her hair he say uh Miss Adeline could me and this boy have some yo ice tea go head on and get sis baby to po it fur ya des fish is giving me a time we went inside there was a sweetback man playing some of them old Jax records he was high as a coolie's kite him with that juice rolling out the side of his mouf like a buick man the sister had a pot of snap beans in her lap Don Moon say watch that Mack thow that hade to the cheekins he listens to um peck them eyes out he's teched but he's got a power I heard someone call I heard them a hollering on the levee at this point the dream that had cut the nightmare's throat left me 1 was fathoms away with a cracked glass in my hand where these three or four people came from and went to I don't know never was I to come across them again in all my travels it might not even be worth mentioning to you but I ain't going to forget ever it was like it wasn't even me maybe I was living a part of somebody's else life the men at the college told me about how a person even if he's dead can be somewhere else that he wants to be I believe this has happened to me before because before my granddaddy passed on he sit up in the bed and tell mother honey I'm going to see that child one way or the other and I wasn't even in this world yet I was dreaming in a belly but I remember when I was one it was awful hot and this colored woman sit me down in a wash basin of cool pump water and I was looking at these wasps making a nest and then I go to hearing these hiccups a coming from somewhere that was the ghost of my granddaddy cause he died with the hiccups another time in the middle of the winter we went to camp nm to hunt but to check on some equipment just the day before I was daydreaming during the consecration at church about checking on that place where the gas come out of the swamp and what happens but Baby Gauge comes up to me and says damn yo hide you must a run off and yo daddy down here to get you we seen you in a red robe and a white gown lighting a fire in the water with a golden torch man you pull some of the darnest shit off I ever saw he says and right then I get goose pimples and shut my eyes and another time we went into the quarters of an old house where a colored seamstress lived for many a year in the night the old sewing machine hummed the gospel and wouldn't nobody touch it cause they knew it was deemed for a long time I thought the name to this was on account of poultry lice caused I overheard some of these scientists talking but I was wrong but I ain't about to go into that cause it is another long story and a hard song to sing right now I dream and the faces of dead people look into my windows at night I have to sleep with the quilt over my head sometimes though these dreams simmer down like broth and then they fiare up again like a border war the kind you are always reading about in the paper except the way the news has it is wrong they don't know the inside you'll have to ask some of them spics about it I'm for the spies in the border wars to the south I think it's kind of dirty us telling them how to shit what I am feeling here and now is got to be nothing but a pipe dream but I dream all the lawyers and teachers and preachers and government is gagged and bound on some beach and we is free to do what we want that is how crazy I am ha ha for some reason I thought of a hatchet it reminds me of once when I was sitting on a cypress bench a year or most about ago talking to Sylvester the Black Angel he says wit so many killings and all in this world how come somebody don't get a market for all them bodies you know wit the starving going on be a lot of meat feed a lot of people get some dem navy cooks and make a stew I told him that was the craziest thing I ever heard of me and you both know that human beings wouldn't eat one another yes yes yes Sylvester use to say cause that meant no he didn't believe it them days he was holding down a job with the bootlegger in other words we was outside the liquor store in the heat of the day seven miles off the highway right there near Miss Viola's place over around the foul ball weeds well I don't know how to tell you to get there you can hear them shooting craps at Spoon's Landing though some of the time he had the strange habit of singing stories in his sleep and the words was hard to make out sort of like when a colored man gives a little back talk sass to a boss and him smiling all the time and the old boss he don't even know what the man is saying might as well be morning capum out of the corner of his mouth he would say Jesus died to save our sins he was dream talking about when he had his free man's feet propped up on a cot and a sheriff's deputy kicked them down he said come on you burr headed nigger you coming with me that gnat telling me talking bout he taking me to Arkansas no no no I ain't goingl seen them feed dead triggers to the hogs in that penitentiary I just pick up that bottle of scotch uh Cutting Saw was the label with the ship on the bottle I'm telling you I hit him I don't lie I busted his head all kind of blue fiies come around ha ha I seen a pretty monkey woman fallout dead in the field in picking time and a purple butterfiy lit on her head goddamn now I'll tell you what happened the man from town rode into the country they is the ones that done it I know they got them one tree they do it in I know where it is I mean was cause Sylvester's mama and me went out there yes we did after they hung him we know the man that led the lynching party too his name was Guy Sipp we got to that tree his mama and me and I Cut it down took a long time to fall can't you hear the haunts yelling timber 1 don't have to tell this but it fell in the river and floated on down it knocked the poles out from under one of the river rat's shacks when it collided I was laughing woowee you can guess what happened to that shack ha ha he was another one that was in on it he just goes by Fat Man I think that's all I ever hear anyone call him I fixed his wagon I put a cotton moccasin in the cab of his pickup snake bit him seven times didn't do nothing to him cause he was so fat anyway while he was running down the road with his swelled up ankles I put a match in his gas tank for good measure I blew that fucker's truck sky high but that now is just out of the way and I wouldn't want you telling nobody got that I hope so I loved it when that tree hit the water all the branches and bark and bugs and dust fiying off it settling over the backwater all them fishes getting their supper off it I looked up at the piece of the moon like a chunking rock and I say wonder if that was a dead minnow fioating on top and I was a big black bass lurking in the blue hole something I want to swallow but to get back to the song I was moaning see Sylvester didn't hold with anybody that disagreed with him it was like this he came home one night and said the county had passed a radioactive law so he was going to have to go to jail I tried to tell him what retroactive meant I looked it up at the court house cause somebody tore that page out my book I told him but he wouldn't listen to me what I don't understand is how they can make your serve time on a retroactive law it just made it worse that they was doing it cause Sylvester wouldn't listen to me but they damned sure well sent Sylvester up on one I talked to every shyster and clerk in that court house and not a dad burned person could set me right on it and I know I am right about the only thing I did see worth agreeing on was some old man in the spit and Whittle club tell a preacher in a long coat damn you man you making me nervous throwing that bible up in the air like that see he was catching it and pointing out verse and reading scripture loud as he could I agreed with that why not shut his mouth and let a fellow bull shit whenever I'd go visit the Angel and I'd bring him some liniment and tonic and a little candy and the newspaper which he read like Shakespeare and I'd tell my side of the story again and he'd say boy you as wrong as that calendar there hanging on the wall you can't make a 54 calendar work in a 55 year boy don't you know anything atoll ain't I got one lick a sense through your mule head that reminds me you better not come so close to those bars now that I'm natural bondy fite radioactive I'm liable to blow you up see what I mean once he got something stricldy in his mind a stick couldn't knock it out I never brought that particular subject up again excepting that year he got a job working awhile for the county what he did was quit soon as they told him he was entitled to some retroactive pay For some work he'd done for them a long time back he got drunk and went to Louisiana trapping alligators and never did come back for his check finally he returned it wasn't on account of them gators no one day they was catching some saw tooth sliders to sell for eating they had a whole boat Full of them but his partner wanted to stay out in the dark and see if they could get any soft shells well Sylvester got a hold of the fisherman's nightmare a seven Foot grennal eel not no congo 1 mean a big one he come back to Mississippi and when they told him bout that money later on he really fucked up he told me uh uh they tried to pull a Fast one on me but I fixed them I said to that lady I don't want none of that radioactive money they should a just said Back Pay I don't know why they do like they do but those damn rednecks working in the court house they learn one fiicking word longer than Deuteronomy and they keep on using it every chance they get they ought to go back and read about some of them curses Buzzin Insects Will Infest All Your Trees And The Crops Of Your Soil I know I had to go back and read Chapter 21 Verse 22 now that I'm thinking about it but I ain't thinking about it because it is just like a warrior delivering his blows to the night alone and unnoticed like a blind swordsman going through his forms on the top ofa mountain the blade severing the side and the thighs of his dreams oh I don't know it ain't so bad it's a pity wasn't everbody crazy as the Black Angel he'd walk down the road and on purpose run into a tree like a loco horse so he could say to all who were on the same road see there ain't no tree around his neck he wore a little noose he had braided out of twine some person passing by would say how you Sylvester and he'd say fine but don't you come up trepsing in front of me like that I'm radioactive he never did take his shots so a lot of people said about him his mind was ate up with the syphilis but that was a so-called lie with that atomic talk of his he still had his reservations about bombs him a lying up on a brass bed with a blue tic mattress reading a funny book and some soul walking up in his yard he don't like so Sylvester just raises his arm up and smiles uh uh brother that's nufi' like he was Moses hitting the water with a two-by-four he didn't quit giving his warnings until he got that geiger counter I sent offi For in the back of a comic book actually I sent ofi" for him and you know that is what he found the pistols with them old ball-and-hammer dueling arms that wouldn't even click like a beetle just some rusty side guns that was all the evidence the trial was about as fair as a white man's Face they made the Black Angel wear the red scarf around his neck I went to the newspaper office about it i walked in the door without knocking I caught the man beating his meat he had the roll chair shoved way under the desk the liar tried to tell me he was sharpening his pencil he said he had it put under his desk why do Folks think they can talk their way out of things like that but I had to be Socrates I had to be a nigger so i say suh would you please tell the people the truth about what happened to Sylvester he didn't mean nothing with that radioactive talk he never hurt nobody he took down notes ofwhat l was saying and when it come out in the paper it said boy of six confesses to witnessing Sylvester Martingale said Negro the accused and deceased rapist commit rape now a damn fool is the only one to make any sense out of that but when I seen what he said I seen that was the last straw and say jesus how come you letting all them camels with them strawbosses in the gates so what I do is one of two things it is possible that I did them both or I might not have done either one nevertheless two simultaneous acts were acted out in my dreams like ancient inscriptions being read offi in my sleep in writing I can't read but in language I understand like scrolls unraveling like a piece of rope I dreamed in my bed covered with mauve I walked in to the newspaper office I saw the man zipping up his pants and I could see a piece of string hanging out his fly the unthinkable but brutal truth of him hoisting his meat with the same twine the Black Angel wore around his neck was incredible it was like this lying grasshopper giving an invitation to Death yours truly brother of black sleep I am that which I am that I am all me Death I'm tired of Ishmael for no one knows he had a secret brother on the ship with him who escaped also he was black as the ace of spades and blue as a channel cat but not a soul knows this and if he had a let Ishmael tell the truth the book would have been uncomprehensible except for a few swarthy seaman and the men who will dream in the future he the one called black sleep whose name I will not reveal was a real wild man when ships passed at sea even the captains shivered when they saw the secret brother in repose sometimes with one eye or both eyes open in his sleep but this is another song one of many I will not sing on account of the rebus turnabout did he know that carpetbagging coward that he had invited death to his desk or table or whatever the first words of the blushing host yes I've taken care of everything now the people know how and why your friend died he tells me he told it just like I told him I say well my book learning ain't too hot why don't you read it to me and he lies a little more and says he's got to go to a meeting at City Hall and here is where I wish I knew the word of the double a what let's see I can't never remember it but I had a dual dream like I told you about and here is where it begins to unfold before I was able to remember what I did or what I was about to do or didn't do I recalled the wind like the breath of a black tiger stroking my hair as I stood on the mountain I saw all the geometrical figures in the astronomer's textbook Hy past me like a swarm of hornets I saw in detail all the great naval battles that had ever taken place and I saw the overruled nautical plans I saw oysters on the half shell served to me by a negro in Justine's and what is odd is the fact that I ate this dinner in the first Justine's which was impossible for the building was torn down long before I was ever born I saw Sir Richard going through his cuts and there was an empty bottle of brandy in a corner that caught the light of the sun I saw an alcove of bones and the master bedroom of musicians I saw three fires and three floods at once the same ones that turned my granddaddy into a drunk I saw Governor Vardaman show him where to sign his name when he named him warden of Parchman Penitentiary I saw the convicts with their axes raised and ringing like the battle swords of Beowulf's warriors I saw hulls of ice I saw boys waiting on boats at the levee with dim lanterns in their hands I saw the statue of the knight wink at me at Will Percy's grave I saw the men coming back from the First World War and falling in love with bourbon and french I saw King Cotton dead and buried I saw the abscission of the guitars I saw Rousseau St. Augustine and Beethoven taking their evening bath I saw my ancestors committing adultery in the lowland fog I saw the spot where job stood I saw David composing his songs I dreamed I was chosen to slay Unferth who was in the guise of the newspaperman I dreamed I had to take a long swim at night and at exactly eleven-o'clock I appeared dripping wet in his office where I avenged the Black Angel's death as was called for in one dream and at the same time at the corner the second act of the second dream was carried out I borrowed a needle from the canvas sewer I sewed the man's lips up with the twine I knocked his child out with a beanflip when he passed by on a tricycle I became a shoe shine boy and when it came time to polish the newspaperman's boots I spit on my fingers and went to work and when it was over and he said how about a kiss I bent over and at the same time reached into his boot and drew out his own knife and severed all the connections behind his knee these two black acts were carried out to make amends for his lie I walked out of the town and kneeled down and prayed to the voices of sleep and that is where I dreamed I saw in a pool of water a horse in the distance and mounted upon the horse was a midget who was stabbing the horse in the crest and this is when the method came to me the method I should use to murder the flybait of all evil the one called Unferth the open sore the baby eater it was so simple it was funny I had spent a year studying ninjitsu the art of stealth I had become a ninja but Unferth was too low to use such a high form of death on I decided depending upon how long I could wait to save my money to purchase one or both of two objects one a very large mirror the other one of those new fangled cameras where I could take a picture of myself and this was my plan to order the mirror and the camera and to take them way oifi into the forest I was going to have in my pocket a thousand pennies that would fall out as I walked back to town I would go over to the store and suck on a lemon and drink a Nehi full of peanuts I would wait for the figure of evil to pick up the copper scent I would watch the philistine Unferth pick up the money and bite down on it ha ha just like metal like blood like a knife and as he started following the scents out of town into the woods I'd take the short cut through Dee Earl's pea patch so I'd get the last coin so I could climb the bald cypress with my dirk and jump on his back as soon as he got there 1 had it all planned the camera didn't come but the wall mirror did everything happened like it said it would in the dream I would lie awake at night thinking how is that son-of-a-bitch going to like it when I tie him up and let him watch hisself get all cut up I'll put a couple gashes here and some holes there I bet he'll be the first person ever to actually see his own throat slit I couldn't wait I wished that camera with the gadget would of come so I could have an official record of me killing the rat but it didn't and just when I was ready to jump out of the tree the knife fell out of my hand and shattered the mirror I let him off hell it wouldn't be any fun if he didn't get to watch his own death I know the evil will come back someday in some form he always does and I'll be ready with a new plan like a dream but when my mind is clear I think of Sylvester with his talk like a steamboat of jive of magic we would sit on the bench and spit and Whittle we was some kind of friends just like that cross your fingers not like you was telling a fib like a doctor's sign we had it all figured out what the evening sun did at night we could finish one another's song if he got drunk if I got tired and went to sleep he told me how the congressmen had beeshit between their teeth the moon was our sentry he kept a good watch he looked out for us he could wear some of the awfullest getup you ever saw he had those black dice made in Spain he knew some gypsy talk when he got back from the doctor he always had bad news like he lost a payroll at the horse races he had the blues you know how you get of a morning when you feeling so good you feeling low down when two or three of you goes out to check the lines you get in the bow and lean your head over the prow you can see your shadow some people like to look straight out the window of a car I look down at the water in a boat sometimes the dog will get in the front first he stands up like a wolf the diving birds leave their feathers on the rivers like hard-ans I might say to him what you reading he say I'm reading bout these here border wars we'd be in the shade outside the liquor store hey Sylvester whose war is it this time mexicans shooting it out again he said which mexicans I said 1570 them ones way on down there got another border war he said any our business I said maybe it is and maybe it ain't he said got any more wars this week any on them ended yet I said got a whole slew of them got them all over he said who is a winning I said reckon the gorillas is he said must not be dropping any bombs 1 said yea they dropping lots of bumbs he said must not be on target I said them Hy boys is hitting the bull's eye he said then them bombs ought to be killing them guerrillas I said what you talking bout boy he said you ain't making no sense I said I told Sylvester to lay off that bottle I thought he must be getting you know what I told him he was crazy he looked the other way he went shoo with his hand I said look here I ain't cur no fart man I'm talking to you I said he give me one them shit eating grins like I know more than you do you don't know nothing he said I know you is full of shit I said a dream like a snake crawling off was ]e congnois vision et somme you might think I'm showing off with the french talk don't get me wrong it's like the riddle in the rebus it might turn up like snake eyes so don't come down on me for it OK who you talking to like that he said I'm talking to you I said goddamn here you go off to Memphis and go to school you still don't know I know plenty I said I know a bomb will blow the hell out of anything wrong he said wrong wrong wrong I got you now Sylvester I'm sick and tired of your crazy shit I said ain't no goddamn bumb gone kill no gorilla he said no point in even talking to you I said might learn something he said all I'll learn from you is how to tie knots and it's better to take them shots mens can drop them bumbs all day ain't gone do no good he said look Sylvester a fucking bomb will kill a fiicking soldier hear me won't do it he said will I said not no gorilla he said a customer drove up in a truck and Sylvester had to get up he opened the Wonder Bread screen door and said how you boss dry the white man said dry as that dirt on the road you need a drink then don't you boss I could see the man drawing water from the cooler inside Sylvester came back to the bench and got in the hammock and said that cocksucker one these days a white man going to hear you cuss him come head on muthafuckah he said you got that from Jimmy I said hell if I did I got that from a wetback and jimmy got it from me what else it say in that newspaper I said it say the gorillas has retreated to they stronghold afta enfiicting heavy losses yea they'll blow the shit out of them with them bombs though I said boy I'm gone tell you one last time now you listen to me ain't no aeroplane made that can drop no bumb gone kill no gorilla pigshit I said they might can duck out the way of some of them but them Atom bombs will kill everybody I know I seen it on a newsreel now you never did hear me say no bumb wouldn't kill everybody I said wouldn't no bumb kill no gorilla no it ain't I said yea it is he said ain't but one thing kill a gorilla and that's a white woman I don't know what the fuck you're talking bout I said I'm deep as a well he said you're deep alright about as deep as a pile of shit I said you ain't got no call to talk to me like that you don't even know what you are saying I said I'm saying won't no bumb kill a gorilla he said then you don't know nothing bout the Korean War or the Second World War what you talking bout he said I know they was fighting soldiers then they was fighting wave troops and fox holes wasn't fighting big gorillas and that's what they use in them border wars they don't waste no men another dream came to me ]e congnois tout fors que moy mesmes I know the chinamens was hard to kill but they bleed red like everybody everybody but a gorilla he said got to have a woman bring him down a white one you must have a brain like a dill pickle Sylvester I said here you is one of my best and favorite blood brothers and you is crazy nah its yo book learning done gone bad he said just tell me one thing I said where in hell tarnation do you get your notions motherwit the bible and the Memphis newspaper I know it all he said then you can't read right I said cause bombs is falling and bombs is killing they killing people but they ain't killing gorillas he said they stout ain't nothing that stout I said I got up off the bench and stomped on the ground along about that time I heard a dago cussing behind the fence I turned around and a wagon wheel came rolling down the road dust was going through the spokes Sylvester said yep there goes his wheel I see it he ought to put him another rubber tire on that side I said that way they'd be in time he said yea and they wouldn't be coming off all over this county scaring everybody I said ain't got much sense for a one legged man he said he's pretty stout though I said yea I Indian wrestled him before he said you get beat I said hell yea I got beat can't nobody beat that one legged dago he said excepting one of your imaginary guerrillas I said you right for once boy a gorilla could take him have you ever seen him churn buttermilk in his wooden leg I said nah but I seen him drink out of it he said I heard he puts sorghum in his good shoe so the dog will lick his toes why don't you go over there and see if he's got a ice cold cantaloupe he said you buying 1 said I'm buying he said but don't you bring back no chop sticks with my money damn chillun send them after fire crackers and lemons and they bring back them eating utensils I'll see if he's got a honey dew melon I said I heard him cussing the broke down wagon the pots and pans he peddles was jingling like chimes he must have been asleep while he was driving I said he don't see the wheel uh he said he don't see it I said them fish he's selling going to rot if he don't get them out the sun he said maybe he's got urn iced down I said if he do get me a chunk he said I'm going to ask him why his leg is so strong I said I heard he skates in the dance halls he said I heard that he was hell on wheels in them roller rinks he said builds him up I said I wonder if he can ride a bike I said go get me my mush melon he said I'll tell him where his wheel went maybe he'll give me a discount I said I'll clean my knife he said I'll be back in a minute I said go on then he said I'm going I said don't forget my ice he said the wooden wheel was asleep in the cotton in Tar's patch by the turn row ask him why he's got those license plates hung all over his wagon that's so he can sell in forty-eight states I said you mean he can peddle that junk in every state of the union that's right I said you know how them semi-trucks do see if he's gone cook any spaghetti up this week-end he said I walked over to the dago's wagon you got any mush melon for sale I said he was slapping the mule ofa course I gotta melons he said he had a old Co-cola cooler with ICE COLD painted on it I got up in the wagon to get it while he cussed his mule it was dark on account of the canvas was brown I reached down in the cooler I felt the ice and the slick backs of the catfish and the smooth soft shell turtles a fin stung me they were still alive I felt a melon and I heard something like a low moan I thought it was a cat but on the floor on a patch quilt was a girl dirty as sin she was waking up and she didn't have a blouse on I said excuse me mam she said whata you want I said a honey dew melon mam she wasn't too much older than me she got up she had those big earrings she didn't even try to cover herself up kind of like when you is riding in the car with colored people and some lady is nursing her baby but this woman she didn't have no baby she said one quarter barnbino I reached in my pocket I could feel myself I was glad it was dark then I remembered damn that Sylvester didn't give me no money she was standing with one arm akimbo I seen a roller skate hanging up I said mam a nigger sent me after a cantaloupe and I forgot to ask him for change and was going to do some more explaining but she giggled and shook all over I could smell her she tossed me the melon and said I know you but you don't know me uh I reached down in my other pocket I wasn't that way anymore cause I wasn't looking at her so much she was still laughing I didn't know what to swap I found that black patch and I give it to her she said whata I need this for thata man gotta one leg not one eye you never can tell I said your husband might can use it for shade she tried to tie the black patch on herself she said thata my poppa boy the man was still cussing his mule with a whip now I could hear him outside in the light I was sweating like her she was holding the black patch in place still trying to tie the knot it wouldn't stay on her head she had too much black hair hey bambino tie this on for me hey she said I went over behind her and made a bow I was breathing like I had been swimming I remembered Sylvester wanted some ice there was a picture of a clown spinning the moon on the end of his finger I told the girl where the wheel was I kissed her on the cheek I reached in the cooler and grabbed a chunk of ice I jumped out the wagon and ran all the way to the liquor store my hand was burning cause I had got dry ice when I had leaned over my belly touched her on the back she reached around with her hand and rubbed my side like I was a pony I didn't have no shirt on either it wasn't dirty I don't have to ask forgiveness no I don't maybe the spelling was bad on what it said in the picture I don't know she rubbed me like I rubbed the trees at night like a flank I set the melon on the bench cut it you son-of-a-bitch I said I looked out in the field I was breathing the dago was rolling his wheel I don't have to ask to be forgiven it was like the moon said I love you boy how come you left out of here without getting the change never mind I said just cut it he opened the knife up the sun was at his back free at last I thought ain't gonna be studying bout sin no more no more no more I sang I went down to the corner get a pack of cigarettes police drove up said boy you under arrest hey I like that Sylvester said he sang look at them handcuffs look at that bat whoa back boys I'm coming back slice it I said he got out of the hammock and cut the melon in half he scooped out the seeds from one half with his big black hand he chunked the handful in the dust I reached in the other half and got the insides I threw them up in the shade tree now he sliced it into quarters he cut the rinds off and threw them to the chickens the dog got his tongue hung up on the dry ice twofuhyouandtwofuhmehesaid man that cantaloupe was good we was eating and talking at the same time the melon was orange like a harvest moon the moon passed into its phases a cool breeze came up I knelt down beneath the shade tree I said thank you Lord I thought the black angel was standing beside me they teach you in school every boy has a guardian angel I went to a Catholic school a couple of terms and learned that by the water when I might drown at night he is there sometimes he solemn and holy sometimes he cuts up like Sylvester anyhow they bath is dead and I still know his second mind two rednecks walked out the liquor store and seen me and shook their heads they told Sylvester he should have put the seeds in the newspaper so the fiies wouldn't come down you know what I told those white men why don't you shut up I can get away with that cause daddy is a big shot he ain't one these fat lazy bastards he's skin and bones work to him is like blueberry pie he can't get enough I got to say I've been jumped a lot when I's by myself shit I can take it I got me a knife now that'll cut hairs so I ain't worrying come ahead on muthafuckus why don't you quit talking to yoself wit that melon in you mouf Sylvester said as the men backed out I give them the bird you little bastard one of them said I'll get you I threw a rock at the window they drove off damn you awnree boy what ailing you he said I want to kill somebody I said hush that talk boy I do member when I found out where them city slicking boy scouts had set up at oh didn't I fix them you almost fixed yoself blue jaying like that he said I had them thinking I was the son ofTamn that master thought you was a son-of-a-bitch bet those farts won't come around here no more I said this is what happened I seen them down there in those Sears Roebuck tents it was a joke I took all my clothes off I bit down on the knife I put some mud on for war paint I grabbed aholt of me a vine and boy did I let me out a yell when l swung I run through their camp like a drunk Chickasaw I danced through their campfires Tmahahmahahahahahahahahdmhmahahahmwdiahahahdmhahahahahahahahm uh uh I beat on my chest like a ape I howled like a wolf I bucked like a pony I slashed through the tents I cut a few of them in their sleep I stole a side of bacon and give it to the poor they had this troop fiag tied on a branch sitting up there like a what-not I ripped that shit down and spit on it I took on a couple of them kicked them in the balls I beat my chest like a monkey again watch it boy you slobbering all over my paper he said now I'll miss my story fuck your guerrilla story ain't nothing but a lie now that Sylvester the Black Angel is dead I wished I hadn't said those low down things to his face like that lot of things I done I'd like to take back when I put that snake in that man's slop jar for instance and when that old man fucked my side-burns up 1 left out of there and went down to the Hardware Store and stole a hammer and come back and busted his gum machine how was I to know they hired a handicap to cut hair he's liable to cut my fiicking throat bless the cripples take it back when I shattered all them mirrors in the picture show in Tennessee telling me I'm not old enough I got the sin of murder eating my soul I ain't old enough listen at that he should have got a job working with the highway department take it back when I kicked this feller in the stomach and he had a sack of blood and piss strapped to his waist lord I take it back don't worry son the devil going to take it back and I don't mean that devil or a devil but the devil I'm ready I said if you don't watch out when the voice says all aboard he gone take yo ticket let him take it I said my my ain't you contrary this afternoon you better shut up you been fucking me up all day just trying to knock a little sense in yo hade give me that newspaper ain't nuthing in it but border wars look I said I've had it up to here well lots of people don't believe Sylvester he said I'm used to it ain't we buddies I said sho we are he said well then if you could prove to me once just once you are right I'd know from now on that someway you was right about everything I got to prove it uh yea just prove one thing you said today that's gone be a might hard with you since you is a pen pusher and a boolt reader forget that I said just prove something forget the words say it anyway prove it let's see he said I can't even prove the sun's gone go down this evening but I know it will just pretend I never asked you to prove nothing just talk like you was doing no he said if you ain't going to say nothing how you going to prove something I said he just shut his eyes and relaxed in the shade that's a fine howdy do I said back down when the going gets rough don't you I'm smooth and easy man he said you the one in commotion I ain't got to prove nothing I already know you don't know nothing though I said well now I might not have a etchication in the sense of the word but by the water of jerdon I know a hell of a lot mo than you no you don't yes I do prove it then I said done he said Chile and I don't won't no sass you hear you coming with me this Saturday night to the pitcha show why I said so I can prove something prove it to you I mean something I been talking bout who going to be there never you mind you just wait and see what picture show I said the one over in the next county outside inside or in a tent I said tent he said what you think you can prove I said don't think I can prove nuthing I know I can what I said I'm gone prove bout them gorillas and bumbs oh you are huh yea I is and I'm gone make sho you see it again see what again the pitchu the pitchu boy you done seen it once already I know 1's sitting next to you see how short yo memory is what I'm gone see in the picture this time I didn't see the first time you gone see the truth and that I'm right when are you going to prove it when the lights go out what are we going to see anyway I said Kang Kong he said goddamm Sylvester got you now he said you wrong you're crazy I said can't take it when you wrong can you he said Sylvester I don't even want to talk to you anymore today because we talking bout two different things how's that didn't you see the pitcha yea I saw it but you're talking about an animal and I'm talking about a man see a gorilla is spelled different than a guerrilla hold on now you ain't slipping passed me like that it's the truth though yea but it's some of that slinking up on me book learning he said Sylvester guerrilla is a french word meaning a man who fights hold it he said boy you been messing round with too many of those Creoles I know cause I'm Creole myself and I know I never taught you such a thing I take that back I said it's a mexican word meaning a man who hell then he said I'm right didn't I say down there in them mexican border war Sylvester it's spelled different and it means difierent shit I don't care if you spell it in chinese it still means the same he says words can sound the same but they don't mean the same especially when you go into other countries admit it he said admit you wrong giving me all this bullshit hell you just said it was french now you say it's mexican it still means the same I said then I'm right he said can't no bumb kill a gorilla nowhere no I said a gorilla is an animal that comes from one certain place and a guerrilla is a man that can be anywhere don't tell me where they are and where they come from I know boy just look in this paper they got them hired out all over the world fighting Sylvester have you ever seen a gorilla sho I has twice he said where I said seen one in the Chicago 200 and seen one in the Jackson 200 then you know they are animals I know they is about the meanest things in God's world one of them bout tore this white man's arm off when he stuck it in there with the peanuts I know me a monkey man too and he's mean as sin his brother was a monkey too and you know who I'm talking bout who I said the man it took that posse all week to catch you mean Deck Monroe I said that's him he said why he was colored sho he's colored but he was an ugly monkey man and mean too what's that got to do with it you know how many shots it took to bring him down hell he was full of bullets when he escaped it was the warden's daughter that tried to talk him into surrendering then they ambushed him it wasn't her fault see what I say he said monkey man is an expression of speech Sylvester it don't mean nothing it mean something cause I know this here Creole couldn't take that much buckshot besides they wouldn't never have got him if it wasn't for her and him been hoeing her garden all spring I know look I said Deek Monroe was a human being King Kong was an ape and was made up in a picture anyway you the one he said to talk about making up things finally I said a guerrilla is a man who fights in the jungle and a gorilla is an ape plus just in case you'd like to know a monkey and a ape are different well then you little smart m tell me what Tanan is why he's the Ape Man but see boy all that talk ain't getting you nowhere why don't you mid it I'm right and you is wrong anybody knows Tarzan lives wit monkeys what you mean they all the same thing here you his cussing me and not more than a half hour ago telling me how you acted like the Ape man in that scout camp and don't you go telling me Tartan was white so that make him different no suh it's all the same I didn't say nothing bout what color they were they can be chinese but a bomb will kill them won't do it he said will to I said you better learn something when you go back to school this fall he said Sylvester I give up you better cause it'll be a cold day in July fore Sylvester get drawed offsides I ain't going to say nothing else cause it don't mean nothing anyway be a bad sport he said not less than an hour ago I was forgiven and now I'm miserable that fast talk give you the blues he said I feel like I got a no count haircut know what you mean he said I guess you is right Sylvester the world is a piano and we ain't got a finger on those chickenwire words ain't gone hold this hound in he said I feel like a spotlighted deer and the world is a pickup full of teethless hunters got a nice ring to it he said let's see he said this here world is a relief ditch of shit where you don't know whether to sink or swim that's a old one I said yea but it still works just like that old time religion huh kind of like he said Moses swum the creek didn't he I said Moses hit the water with a two-by-lbur alright but he was standing on the bank when he done it he was smart he didn't get his feets wet I feel like a riderless horse Sylvester that's OK wait till you feel like a mule I feel like David sitting in the middle of the desert with his harp and a wind storm blows a phaeton with a dead gypsy by me some dream he says who is that Sylvester why that's my cousin McGillicutty what's he doing with them boards he's mending the fence son why's he doing that cause 1 got him the job what's he doing with the bootlegger's lumber he'll never miss it what's he making that's his trade he has to make them McGillicutty you say why he's the undertaker like I say somebody got to I don't care what he is you tell him to quit harnmeting on that coffin Jesus was a carpenter he wasn't no undertaker and he didn't build no caskets though I say McGillicutty he said you spooking this boy how bout fixing me that swinging board so I can get my whiskey will do brother McGillicutty limped over to where we were he said I through anyway who passed Sylvester said boy child drowned in the barr pit what your first name I said Mulciber he said what happened to your leg mule fell on it don't you know no better than to be nailing coffins when it's dark I like to work at night take your work someplace else then yassuh you ain't got to leave you can stay with us but the casket give me heebie jeebies I see Sylvester said cousin you got the dimensions right well now I don't know I knew the two negroes was jiving me look here at this boy reckon he's bout the right size. Sadday night if he ain't they got ahold of my arms and legs like I was dead man leave me lone I said but they dropped me in the coffin it was shored up on two saw horses like a boat the shavings of wood inside were like a nest of dead wasps it felt so good real tight like new clothes that fit like a muscle man T-shirt I heard thousands of ridetless horses I could almost see them the coffin was like a boat in the pocket of the watery harbor of sleep I saw what was left of the light and their fingers crawl from under the lid of the boat the lame negro had bored out two holes for the plaque and I looked out into the night from my portals and I heard the harbor master death call lad overboard dead wings crisp as the biscuits in the pockets of a man on the run I dreamed l was wading in deep water I kept reaching down in the mud until I found something heavy it was the black tennis shoe of the drowned child the moonlight was coming through both portals I had to shut my eyes Mulciber was walking around the casket singing she was a gypsy woman and Sylvester was beating the lid like it was a congo drum I breathed in like I do when I want to show off my muscles water came out of the eyes of the tennis shoe I was waking up I was going down the dock was aground in the waterless harbor I couldn't breathe but little did the infant dream that all the treasures of the world were by I thought an angel passed his hand through the wood and gave me a book I was lowered into a cottonfield with ropes that were burning my hands an empty book is like an infant's soul my bed was harboring me I will open my mouth in parables I will utter things that have been kept secret from the foundation of the world I was stabbed in the back in a London ravern death I won't take this lying down I said to myself I dreamed I danced in a way that left me out of breath and I went back to sleep again I woke again sliding down a sort of inclination it was only a deck and death was close at my heels I went down into the chambers of the deep and all I found was a gathering of people a bowl of cherries was sitting on the coffee table I went over to get one and my hand was slapped I was called insolent sullty mad by all but a daughter of one of them she called me dream horse I was only a pony I trotted around like I was wounded to keep the others from jumping on my backs with their stolen knives I called out to her don't look for me in a building I am in the bed in the forest where the cello is heard I weaved back and forth like a hawk with severed wings I made my own trail a cloak of mauve I staggered like a stabbed man with an empty bottle in his hand at his breast there were enough bloody feathers for a thousand poets to sign their names to make their ingenious inscriptions to carve their epitaphs in my soil enough knives enough wet clay black dirt under the assassin's boots hauled into the cemeteries for good looks the unweaned are still kicking their feet still being born across the fiinerals of water in chains those that have committed no crimes are interred by men who when they open their mouth women speak I warn you messengers bring me no messages teachers do not raise your voices like a fiag I will raise my hand like a fox looking up on a hill in the afternoon I will smell you out in the dead water where my tongue is held captive if it is to be silent it will be silent in my mouth where darkness and the scent of roses come out like smoke I smoke alone in the woods to be smoking so I can say I have smoked even after the maggots have entered the quick I all out madam shall I undress you for a fight the wars are naked that you wage tonight in a bed as broad as a battlefield as a sword I mock the fallen with and the angel says what is dead is dead I dream what I dream until the nigger lets me out of the coffin I yawn at the wharf I see words on borrowed crutches and vacant wheelchairs and I know it will be four years at least before I shave the lame one puts a broom straw through the hole and says doodle bug doodle bug anybody home like a man sitting for his portrait and the artist never shows up I wait in the new wood until I am awake Sylvester you let me out of here you black assed nigger he mad as a rarnrodding buck ain't he cousin reckon we ought to let him out cantankerous bastud ain't he I tried to pry the lid off with my feet you bettuh hesh up talking nigger he said let me out I said you gone hep me cut the weeds down maw moaning yea I do anything just let me out open up McGillicutty goddamnit don't it get dark quick seems like the day won't ever tarry black night is falling Mulciber said then I seen something I won't never forget not ever this here lame handy man got down on his hands and knees looking all over the ground he was saying come here cootie he had a pair of pinching eyeglasses on called pince-nez what's that fool looking for I whispered to Sylvester you'll see he said whatever he had he filled a Prince Albert can up with them he turned the tin up to his mouth like he was eating cracker jacks give me some of them I said I figured they was peanuts cause they sell nabs and stuff in the store he'd rattle them in the can and shake them in his hand like dice he'd turn them up like pills of medicine penny-pincher I said give me some them M and M's 104 4170 I'llfi M" he poured a few out in my palm you know what they was they was rollie pollie bugs he said melt in yo mouf not in yo hand I threw them in the coffin and they bounced out why he's crazy Sylvester a black cat jumped up on the fence Mulciber got this look in his eye uh uh he said as he opened up his jackknife there was the noon he lit out after that eat there he goes you won't see him again tonight Sylvester said good riddens I said he'll be back to get his casket at dawn I ain't going to be here yea you is you gone hep wit the weeds I will if you take it back about those border wars what you thank the truth is boy a playing card I ain't no Indian Giver that's right you ain't nothing but a nigger boy there's a time and a place for everything and I can see right now I'm gone have to teach you a lesson I don't have to do wat you say you ain't my boss cording yo daddy I is and I can lift my hand when I damned well plea: you better not hit me I said you bettuh shut yo mouf then I can say whatever I please pot calling the kettle black he said well this here pot is white then I thought you was a slop jar he said got you didn't I ha ha fuck you I said well the way they got dis Mississippi law I could tell you a few things but you'll find them out later find out what I said bout this who's a nigger and who ain't bizness m white as the moon I said yea well the moon ain't all the time white why don't you talk about something you know about like gorillas I said would you believe Sputnik Monroe got whupped by a gorilla sure I would and a guerrilla could probably kill him since they know them kicks so I'm right he said in a sense you is but in a sense you ain't you sound like that chinaman he said I figure it this way I won the battle but lost the war I said I sees it you got beat both times he said I've seen a trick mirror where two look like one I said I seen a man by hisself praying in a boat one time he said I seen a jew cut a hog's throat without hitting him in the head I said I seed a white horse break away from a funeral hearse he said I know a cowboy said he seen a ghost ship in the desert I seed a blind child dancing behind Mamma's house speaking of blind you member when I stole that white man's eye I said yea you carried it around in velvet ring box he said I pulled that out of my pocket at the state marble championships and them boys from Chattanooga packed up and left say it whupped a Chatoyant hey he said sho did what happened to it at the Nationals this slick talking cat from Cleveland pulled out a Steelie and broke the eye into a million pieces Cleveland Mississippi he asked no Ohio I says he whupped everbody shu he said listen it was only somebody yelling about a fish they'd caught we got in a fight over which bait the man used we done some cussing and he said he had to teach me a lesson on how he was twice as smart as me so I said have at no shit Sherlock he said what would you say ifI say I can steal a fifth of whiskey then take a couple of swigs out of it then give it to you then slap you up side the head until you is yelling bloody murder then when that man comes out throw the bottle up side his liquor store then get him to make you do my work in the mawning I'd say you was day dreaming this is what he did he went around back and stole a bottle of Wild Turkey he drunk part of it like he said then he give it to me then he commenced to giving me the worst licking I ever had call me nigger in front of my kin folks will you he said I yelled help the bootlegger run out and says hands 0H: that boy niger Sylvester grabbed the bottle and busted it upside the shack the man was red in the eyes he said you crazy bastard what you doing busting good sipping whiskey in the dust wasting it like that I was fixing to talk but Sylvester put his hand over my mouth he said boss I's got full permission and responsibility for this here child and I caught him stealing a bottle of yo foughteen dollah whiskey he had it halfway turned up too I give him a good licking and snatched it out his hands boss I hope I done what was right when I broke that bottle well tarnation the bootlegger said I owe you an apology Sylvester you done right I'm gone give you a bottle for catching him boss if it was me I'd make him work off that foughteen bucks I will I will I want you to see to it he cuts down all these weeds first thing tomorrow morning ya here yesuh boss I'll see he does a good job you might ought to give him another licking too I'll do that boss goodnight Sylvester you done a good job I been wondering who's a been stealing my whiskey I thought it was you wait till I tell that boy's daddy evening boss I bit down on Sylvester's hand like a mad dog I dreamed that there wasn't no such word as that that way everyone would say the instead I dreamed the delta was a whore ship without any name I dreamed fifteen big negroes got off the boat Vidalia Sandbar was the place I dreamed the catwalk was called the gangway I dreamed the oil drum sounded like a jackass I will always dream the black patch I tied in a bow I dreamed the gypsy daughter washing her feet when Sylvester went to sleep in the hammock I went to sleep in the coffin I pretended to be the drowned child I can't remember if it was the last time I saw Sylvester alive or not at dawn Mulciber was standing over the wooden box he gave me a bloody black cat's paw he said I got to have it now the boy is sleepy-eyed and waiting to go under like a page from Mamma Covoe's bible a boy was pointing in the temple I said Mammy it ain't polite to point in public she said child Jesus didn't study no manners the sun was too bright by then I won't ever know how he got the coffin out of the bootlegger's place maybe he hauled it off in a truck there wasn't a wagon maybe he finished the fence maybe he didn't I think he built the black angel's coffin but angels can't die who says they can't I do they got holy water in a Nehi bottle burns the devil's eyes out I went over to where Sylvester was sleeping I hauled off and socked him in the mouth there you go I said thar'll teach you to whup on me he felt his teeth to see if they was loose ready to cut weeds he said I went to get the sickle but the hands had took it to the field that undertaker left his ballpeen hammer I said I got the scythe instead the clouds were going over real fast like horses chasing one another on the ground like a cavalry with no cavalrymen the wind the wind picked up in Mississippi the moon was a garden where I picked roses at night where my fingers bled over the guitar it was a temple and the priest was a drunken wolf my clothes are holey and black as dusk I slumbered in a sepulchre where my hair flowed back the stone was my horse I rested on my arm I was the rider I dreamed like a drowsy bird sleep is death and it comes by water the blade is dull on that Sylvester said why don't you use something sharp this will do I said too many folks used it already he said I got just what you need what I said a machete he said call me orphan of silence call me dead drunk call me sleep rider can I call you a no count bastud the black angel said call me what you please if you get hired on to sod the levee that is how the story is told my lips are a bell my tongue is missing so I had to commit a crime I stole a hundred and fifty dollars I stole a mule I just borrowed it I rode over to the aeroplane poisoning service I asked if they had any Italian pilots they wanted to know why I said I wanted to write a message in the sky to a gypsy girl they told me to get lost I flashed the money and they jumped but they wasn't a dago to be seen maybe they could write some sympathy for the drowned one I thought wonder where they is holding the service I didn't feel like making no line up or quoting no song though I guess all I want you to do is say McGillicutty you Forgot your hammer I said so the man wrote that I guess he saw it I told them if they had any smoke left to write one-Ie'ed gypsy I love your girl where at they said I said over near the river somewhere I give them the bootle'er's money I didn't even look up to see if they did it I just left fuck it that's how life is you do somebody bad to do somebody good but you don't know what to do what to do oh gypsy girl I miss you I dream and in my dreams his drowned fingers play the submerged guitar like sea anemones in the glove of sorrow I with my sackful of dreams my heart never puts down I like the ghost of the dead horse casting a shadow l with my soul like a harbor I with my body like water I speaking in the fields me and my dreams like ships going nowhere like long lost cousins I am fast asleep in the depth of the sea and when a keel passes over me it is like a cool drink I the dock of empty stalls I am me some dummy and my dreams are a ventriloquist I sit on a mysterious knee that is always sleeping I thought this was my lot but low and behold one day I saw the shadow of an arm in the ventriloquist's back and so I knew that God fondles our guts he likes to make his finger stink with our suffering he likes to show out in front of the angels he likes to have his boots licked he likes for them to smell his finger like an oaf who talks all the time he leaves the maidens who aren't maidens anymore in the woods 1 can see his point some of the time but why does he have to have his ass kissed when all I have is my lavender robe and my dreams like a wino howling in the forest alone shooting a pistol and so my dreams outride the winds unwrapping the cold bosoms the young ones small but quivering listing in ceremonial lines my dream bullets richochet and if I wait forever one might hit me by chance so I got up From the ground where I had stared at the water I got the nerve from singing so long like 1 did when I told my teacher she didn't know her ass from a hole in the ground and I reached around and I broke the ventriloquist's arm I used kansetsu-wau I started talking back and it was like real orange juice like a breeze like diving into cool pools with no snakes I took a knife I out myself open the blood and the sawdust fell on the fioor it was like a circus arena like a butcher's shop I cut the ventriloquist's throat the same stuffing came out like mather's Thanksgiving dressing I heard God spoiled like meat like the child of a king I heard him rattling in a mudhole like breath in a sour building like some old man that shits in his pants and he was the crowd and I was the bullfighter and so instead of severing my car as the painter did I slit God's wrist nothing but black blood fiew up in my face our lips pumped like dogs riding each other like beating hearts the clowns the elephants the wrestlers of Greece the wives who were always slipping me letters on the side behind their husbands' backs and the chinaman chopping bologne all had blood on their shoes God has lost so much blood now he can't speak he had to go to giving hand signals like a deaf and dumb man all was silent as a winter pond silent and untrue like a featherless arrow like a shaft of sleeping wine beneath a tree the rotting teeth and the dreaming knife and my dreams still ricocheting so close and so far apart like journeys into space like the fast madness of butcherbirds like field mice and toads and grass snakes all of them with holes in their head have you seen that bird beating the minnow against the branch he's got him by the tail the eyes of the minnow like rubies tin lids with their duets under the creek in the moonlight like planetoids who never make it weep for the children with their bellies buzzing like a hornets' nest hill of snakeskins made by the sparrow the pieces of stars passing my ship so slowaI can reach out and touch them if I could I lay in slumber charged with death stuck like a sword in a battleground giving its aria like a dancer coming to life in the solar ditch I ask the sailor of space touch one finger with the other like a symphony the blessed legend in the void all over again 0 how we died centuries ago we slept friends I tell you I heard the oboes that belong to the wolf the opera two steps from the blues the light years boogie all the time I heard the blind tiger guitar so that is how it goes how my dreams those sad captains treat me the unkept rendezvous with the void which is black the pocketknives I lose in infinity those blades of grass that cut you in the dark when the insects are doing their hoeing when the granddaddies are singing in the blue mud the friends you meet in your dream journeys that are bound to come dreams like holy rood birds that tell on me in the morning that slip suicide notes under the door that tap on the window at night with the beak of the unknown this earth like a fiea on the back of some beast and who is it that leaves cross ties on the front porch who leaves his guts there on my doorstep when it is so cold I have to warm my feet in them and how they steam up and the red swear is seen by the horses on my brow they just come out like farts those dreams like the acolyte looking up dresses he has the good vantage point dreams like peeping toms that make the rise in your pants those dreams like devils that jump out from mysterious trees that jump out of the pan like a pair of bullfrog legs God you don't never have to empty the slop jar you always making your children and saints do it oh I tried knives and books and praying and friendship and picture shows and thinking and thinking and thinking that's like lines in the highway you never get to see anything else not even nobody peeing off a front porch not a soul getting knocked out just other cars and fiats and wrecks the highway of distorted visions I say I am leaving forever I don't travel that road friends there are people that never leave that road that come back to where they are going to where they have been and they tell us like T.V. highway that deceives those who go by it those travelers of headlines who never get to where they are going highway of deception the only thing worthwhile I ever saw while going down a highway was a school bus fiill of ghosts with photographs fiying out from the cracks in the windows and we both know I didn't see that on a highway I saw that in front of Bayhalia's Place a place you have never been to not because you have never heard of Miss Bayhalia not that she is known to you no how but because the place she comes from is unknown my home part of the years in the weeds in the mud in the shacks in the tents in the roads that don't see but a half dozen automobiles all year long and them is so bad they is always broke down and what ain't is stuck like knives cause the roads they is no count in the fields in the turn rows in the ghost mansions with the furnitures of apparitions in the Peabody Horel in the Cotton Exchange 1 walk the same dog in Memphis of my dreams twenty years ago eight years before I was born I dream about what must have happened and I keep going back fiirther and further until I am no longer in Tennessee I am in Egypt now oh the city is a leash and sometimes a whip I must have been on the chain gang working the pyramids cotton's got to be easier than that woowee huh huh brother so I know I'd rather be hypnotized by the waves not the sands not the lines of the highway I'd rather be a sinking boat than a 61 Chevy I'd rather be a lost board instead of a house I'd rather be a gypsy with no tongue but with a ring in my ear than a man in a building with a ring in his nose I'd rather pick cotton than deliver papers fuck that fiick urn both for that matter I'd rather catch fish than shine shoes huh huh you heard me there is enough to go around to do all that God if I could put you out of your misery maybe my dreams like a mother who has lost her cubs would shut up maybe my friend would wake up maybe she would find me and keep me warm in her fur all night oh what the hell nothing like that is ever going to happen me and my buddy are like lost pilgrims of sorrow and my dreams are blazing a trail in black water and if you try to follow our wake you'll find yourself lost in the unknown country of the water the country of the infants tired of carrying out the plans of the strategians of war we will write the play the country of the infants of the forest in the beautiful river where the hawk gave me one of his eyes where the panther gave me his neck where the bloodhound who has nothing to do and the fox gave me their noses where the negro gave me his lips and his butt where the white man gave me his skin and the pony gave me his dick and the baby sitter gave me a hard on and the teacher gave me F's and a hard way to go where the mother wolf gave good milk from her red teat when I was born the black daddy wolf gave me his hair and his teeth and the buck gave me his ears and the owl and the chinaman who only use their tongue twice a day they gave it as one I wouldn't take it as split like a man's the bear thank you for his hands and Jesus gave me his blood that was still warm and tasted like strawberries so wild when I drank it out of a tin cup dipper fashioned after the stars and I want to know did I ever at dawn shoot a buck l have to know and the old villages are so lonely the old white women on welfare and the old negro women on welfare living together and see how they go to market together and they cash their checks together and the white woman hiding the return address so no one will see it's from the government up in Washington and the black woman she don't care about the envelope the one still thinking the other a weed and herself the fiower I want spring to come I want to smell it like blueberries I want people of twenty seven languages walking back and forth saying to one another hello brother how's the fishing and when they reach their destination I don't want them to forget if it was bad spring wasn't here yet it hadn't come if it ever was it was still cold if I had been Gulliver I would have took the barren fields to be giants' graves and the tombstones were the mist that went on and on forever through the trees if a man were to drive that road even the bad highways nor once would crop duster poison hit his windshield if he had one smelling of cheap perfume the kind you can buy for a quarter in any dry goods store some of it not even costing two bits not even that but seven cents he wouldn't hear the high voices like rainwater hitting the tin roofs advertising light bread in the spring if it was spring no he would only see the raised axes out of time the wood cutting of cold men with their breath like swamp smoke on an early twilight like this in a late delta winter there wouldn't be a thing blooming not a dog or a rose not an idiot not even a hound I say standing on an Indian mound lonesome and howling at the cold tin selling everything you can imagine that was put up so long ago you can't even read some of the signs the ones on the sides of the houses and on the fence posts however long ago it was the ones that got the two dollars for putting it up on their place now they ain't even living there and ever how long ago it was don't ask me I wasn't around back then by now the sign is like a part of the wood that built the house but if you was to take it away there'd be a big bright circle or a square or a rectangle or maybe even a hole and it just wouldn't look right but the money is long gone anyway that dog seeing all this who can still feel the frost of this morning's dew in his toes and in between his ribs poking out like plowed rows thinking when oh when thinking like a farmer with his foot resting up on the third step is that spring going to come nor could you see the stray cotton of autumn strewn along the sides of the roads like love letters to a whore not no man not even a yankee could feel the warmth of a wood fire nor would he shake the hand of a negro who caught the winter fish and the fish so cold you couldn't even hold on to it for more than a few seconds just like a block of hundred pound ice for the water barrel but colder than that since it ain't summer yet by golly you can get lonesome when it's cold when you look way off and the only light you see is in a house of folks for some reason you not allowed to mix with it is something strange where you are cause you don't know how you got there and now all the time you are wishing you was in camp you wish you was holding a carbide lamp so a friend could get the bull but it is not so now no now you are alone and dropped off with folks you don't know people you ain't never seen before in your whole life for some reason your own folks they gone maybe they went to New Orleans the Job and the camp they is shut down so why ain't l in Memphis then beat every thing I ever saw for some reason I'm staying with people I never seen I don't even think the folks have seen I wonder if I been kidnapped this is the way it happens I don't know who these people is but I am with them a old woman and a old man both of them ain't said over ten words since I got here maybe while I was taking a nap my real folks got killed and so now time has passed and this here is who I'm with now kind of like a drifter but I know the relatives they'd take me in they wouldn't let strangers get me maybe these here folks is who I been with all along say I just went out of a evening to slop the hogs and lay my head down to rest and I dreamed ever thing else just think about that it gets to a point where a fellow he don't know his left hand from his right he don't know if he's dreaming this or if he's this a dreaming that I'll be damned that was the way it was the way it is with these or them folks call them what you like it don't make no matter just look at them looking at that T.V. ain't said nothing since supper except you'll not be seeing no niggers while you be under this roof now have you ever heard anybody talk like that sounds like one of them hillbilly preachers and just look over there at that chocolate cake here I am a guest and do you think the woman has said a damned thing about that cake hell no ain't even offered me a piece and I'm company I think something is a little off here them old fogies can't see nothing on the screen they ain't even getting good reception the aerial is bent over from the storm I wonder what the law would do if I killed them borh seeing how it is that I never seen them before and how they could of got hold of me by some means not called fair and square I swear to you fi-iends I never set eyes on this place before in my life and yet I am here in their custody in this house with people I don't know from Adam at least she could ask me if I'd like a slice of that cake I'm tired of these white folks I don't see nothing on that TV. I want to know where my real folks is I want to leave what they looking at some kind of show you can't even see I ain't got a damned thing to do with them but I want that cake the man says maw fetch me a slice she says sure paw he says I'm going to put that boy to work by sun up how much did you get him for maw says I give twenty-two dollars and a saddle for him maw he says have you cut him yet paw we don't want him running round with the fillies he looks to be about ripe for a solid cock why don't you go see maw that's what they was saying them talking about cutting me when I was thinking about cutting that cake maw comes over to me she picks up a knife I say ma'am I sure would like a slice of your cake but she ain't studying no cake cutting I say you going to cut the cake with that kitchen knife she puts her hand down on my pants leg she says come on out to the barn boy she gets me by the ear and drags me on out there where she has all her vegetables put up I say my them is fine looking preserves you got there she says off with them pants and it is at this point that in my dream I stab a chocolate cake I dreamed I shit in my pants but that is only because I really had a slice of devil's food in my back pocket in the dream there was blood on the icing I heard the old preacher telling his wife how they could boil them in bacon grease and have another snack I'm gone I looked way off into the night I saw this light I saw it come and go in the same place I figured it was a firefiy but it was the wrong time of year if it ain't a lightning bug what is it I walk on down the road a piece I pull down the fiaps of my cap over my ears along come a stray mule for some reason I recollect some tune a tune like the chain gang sings in the winter a slow blues 1 mean real slow and cold like two rivers running in to each other so I hop on the mule this place is not in no neck of the woods I ever been in none of the plantations around look like I know I don't see a bridge or a cut I walked over berne I'm just letting the mule take me anywhere it takes a notion to I don't care now I'm just a poor way'faring stranger you know what I mean if I was older I might get drunk but I can't hold it yet the wine gets to me my long lost brother might like it if I was to drink some well I'm riding the mule to nowhere then after awhile it is a pony and then it is a horse don't ask me how it happened though I see the light is getting closer but it is so dark now I don't know what it is it is like shooting stars coming from the same place and going to the same place it beats me the horse he balks get up here boy he won't go no further and even though I know I am alive I bite myself to believe it my hand hurts like a mad dog bit it I like it like that I get off the horse cause I see two white men I go up to them I says I wonder if you all could tell me what that light is and where it's coming from they don't see nothing but I see two childrens I take to be the mens' sons I ask them and what do you know one of them is a girl my age I walk over and I see she is dressed in a white nightgown she has a ribbon in her hair which is braided and black and from the start I am fond of her the other kid is fat and has red hair he sounds like some sapsucker from Texas he is a lot taller than the girl it is like the difference between a little piece of smooth wood and a roll of wax paper I ask them what y'all doing the boy says we're fighting a duel did you catch that i everybody from Texas says i lie pie listen to them talk they say rice dice lice oink oink the girl says in the shy voice of one of my Mississippi cousins I will lose I know I will I want to cross the line but they won't let me anyone who wishes to cross the line will be shot all girls fourteen and under must die in a duel her voice I remember like scarlet like a grove of honeysuckle like a cantaloupe someone brings you in bed on a Sunday morning she said some of the other children have made it they are known as the infants of the wood she says this in french but I don't know how to spell it when I see her mouth I want to walk away and cut long gashes in my chest this is the way I am when I hear the music I said this ain't fair give me that gun I'll shoot that cracker right between the eyes and you can just sit yourself down and wait for me then we'll cross it together she is standing there in the wind and the cantatas of moonlight holding the ancient pistol once more I request the dueling arm hold on the girl's daddy says I arranged this due] and no one is going to stop it I intended to be my daughter's second but if you wish you may however I give fair warning you will not interfere with this duel young man you got that three birds fiew by they seemed to be saying Musset Musset then Strindberg the first of August then a raven like a fat monk said Hoffman creatures that I've always heard in the dark all my life suddenly were like rustlings of the devil the father reminded me to take up my place the other old man said through his nose now that's right I got a bet down on my old boy how many times like crimes committed in Holiday Inns have I heard that phrase the so-called good old boys that come in the middle of the night with blood on their hands the fraternities burning up churches at ten pm. I said look here but before I could do anything the girl with black hair and the fat boy who talked through his nose like his daddy both were stepping off back to back against one another and the fathers were counting I made a move towards the girl with black hair at least I could take the shot in my heart instead of hers but the men threw a blanket over me I was yelling this isn't fair stop this at once that didn't do any good so I said y'all better quit it or I'm going for my knife at this very instant I heard a negro's voice a call sweet as a chilled muskmelon like whoever the black man was he knew the sound and the eyes of the girl with black hair once in the life of every youth he must yell these words Help Me more often than not no one answers but fate often delivers an undoomed earl and fate has seen to it since in my dreams at least my spirit be gallant that I should receive the sorrowfirl countenance of Beowulf with his visionary sword of Roland with his sad horses of solitude of Cid with the scorpion tattooed on the back of his hand aye mates I've been lucky the guitar and the rose a whole host of others with their sidearms and the ships doing battle on the bottom they come up they all come to my call they owe me one I have consoled these warriors when they weren't warriors atall when they wanted to tuck tail and run I've seen their chain mail rattling just like their teeth I've seen them send the young ones in to do it for them I've helped them off with their cages in my dreams they do combat so loud what with them all drunk and calling each other liar the beer and wine rusting the hauberks awful bad I just have to tear offi. the corners of somebody's flag and stuff them in my cars so I can sleep in peace now I hear the armor creak like the lid of a cofi'in I hear those damned mail coats dinking like coins dropped into a chest oh the knees that can't genuflect anymore oh these forecastles hill of booty look there at the rings some still on the warm fingers is this why I love you heroes no I love you all dead and buried ri'ed out in your battle gear my friend William has done your portraits he has told all of you to stay where you are don't rock the cradle why can't the lovers ride off I must take OK this coat of dreams and lay it over the altar will you click your heels if I do will you cut my throat will you I'd like to know I want to kiss the bullet in the dark if anyone reads this they will say what a fool what a sissy but I admit the night I missed the dancers' performance I felt the draft of the javelin as it passed through my side I felt like the wolfling the mother wolf won't touch because a human has already touched it they have just picked me up by the fur of my neck to be doing it and they have left their smell all over me like a blind sextant taking his readings I am diging the graves for my dreams it says in the black book I am who I am I want to know if death is the master of this household who did he take over for where did he get the whip for a fact when death has once entered into a house he invariably almost returns immediately as if he knew the way death knows the way to my closet he knows the way to my bedroom he knows how to get in my shoes death knows how to tie knots in my fishing line he unbuttons my shirts he whets my knife death like a rudder to the slaveship moon with its sombre sarabandes like little footprints like tombs put to music songs that cannot be sung listen how it tangles my tongue and see here the spectators of death his messengers are sliding down the spiral staircases backwards they are stalking me in my abode my bed in the field by the river and now I see the barrel of the dueling pistol resting on my beloved's shoulder the left handed girl with black hair and her finger to the trigger cocked over her heart I see the I who will look down the same chamber one day the voice in the wind that parts your hair for the dance it was the Black Angel he said Francis you must leave you live in an occupied land you must be the banished youth throwing his discuses into the sea the girl child will be murdered there is nothing you can do carry her body across the line don't look back come with me I said Sylvester shut up talking like that and help me goddamnit who told you to talk like that where'd you pick that up help me there was one shot that cracked like a small bone I took the blanket off my head she was still falling down she hadn't even turned around her lips were counting seven that red headed coward had shot her in the neck the girl's father was shaking hands with the sapsucker the other father was proud he was slapping his son on the back like he'd run a punt back for a touchdown I said I didn't second this act I wanted to break her fall but the girl with black hair was lying in a ditch blood came out of her mouth like a lullaby I went over to her I unbound her hair I looked at her a girl about my own age at last when she fell back she hit her head on something and her robe came open and she had nothing on underneath it wasn't the first time I'd seen a girl my own age undressed there was no hair at all between her thighs and her little breasts were like the heads of two dead squirrels you touch in the forest and they are still warm I heard the wolf hounds coming down the road I bent over and kissed her the blood was on my lips I wasn't ashamed at the feeling inside my pants since she was very beautiful her wound opened up and the blood seeped over her gown and into the black hair I felt like I make myself feel but this was a lot better the pool of blood and the ribbon and I kissed her soft eyes that tickled my lips with her eyelashes and drops of creek water came to my eyes and I looked up and I saw the moon spread over her naked body that was dead but not cold like a sail and I said I am the captain and I lifted her up in my arms her hair trailing the ground I looked at that line it don't look to be much more than a ditch I thought anybody can cross it was that fish frying on the other side it sure did smell like it I lifted my leg up and set it down on the other folks' land and when my foot touched the ground I tell you it was like an electric shock when you pull on the light cord and you got wet feet it hurt it hurt awful bad the worst I ever been hurt and the blood was fiowing from her wound like her black hair like the moon and all the young doe fawns died in my heart and I looked back and I saw the two fathers and the fat boy with red hair and I spit crosst the road on their side and me who ain't even got all the way crosst myself and I saw my spit was taken in by the cold dust the undertaker and I knew I would have a night with the dead child and I would bury her the same night who is that cooking fish this time a year I tried to lift my foot from their side to free it they laughed it was like a dream where I was straddling a huge razor blade that little crack in the ground that looked to be no more than a rut but when I set my foot down I could see the crevice you know how it gets late in the summer if they are having a drought that cracks up the ground like a jig-saw puzzle you've heard about the little canyons no bigger than that but big enough to swallow up pigs and cows and a neighbor's child that's how it was me with my legs spread out far as they could go like I was involved in a powerful mean game of Mexican stretch except I wasn't worrying about nobody sticking the knife in the ground I was worrying about me splitting up the middle I was holding the dead girl close to me like we was the only two things left in this here world like we was the only things that meant anything to each other in this land of backbiters and it didn't make me a tinking damn if she was dead at least we was friends I wasn't worrying about nothing but them three folks and those hounds I heard it never come across my mind to look to the other side and when I did I noticed the sister woman with the fan saying step on crosst child that's right you can make it lift that foot come on crosst all the time her wiping the juice from the corner of her lip and looking back over her shoulder cause I guess there was others in the dark her saying raise your leg and I crossed the line like a buck jumping a fence with the dead child with black hair in my arms and I dreamed about a wolf on a mountain lifting his hind leg peeing on a burning boat and the sis woman said follow me and I followed her the girl's hair flowing over the dust making a wake and the drops of blood and the footprints forming letters in the road it said this is the Black Angel speaking boy you better go on back cross that line and get one them dueling pistols I'll guarantee you going to need it later on I wanted to say what in tar nation is going on Sylvester but I was dreaming so I gave the girl to the negro woman and I went back over to the other side and I saw the horse with his head down near her pistol and I thought why that old stray is showing me where it is I wonder if she'll make a jump I got the pistol and just when I had the mare by the mane a fixing to throw my leg over her seeing how it was she didn't have no saddle I felt something travel down my back like a piece of hot ice I doubled over holding on to her crest I whispered get on up here let's see if you can take that fence she give away a little I looked back over my shoulder but I couldn't see nothing on account of the moon under hill sail kind of at an angle I seen a man chopping firewood I thought but he was using that chopping axe on a piano it was still playing ever once in a while it would wolf that red headed one that shot her he had both ends of a bow in his hands and the fool was trying to snap the wood his old man had a harelip I hadn't noticed that until now no wonder he couldn't talk right well he was in a truck and he kept backing it up over a fiddle I didn't see those old folks I stayed with I don't know where that place was but I know I ain't going back ifI can help it the redneck told his boy shoot him again son shoot that horse out from under him I reached around my back with my arm I started feeling around I looked down at the horse what did I see my blood on the withers why those bushwhacking peckerwoods sure enough my finger would go into a hole in my back I put my thumb in the hole too like it was a cherry pie to see how big a wound it was I wasn't studying about losing a lot of blood that night I was falling off the horse I keeled over the mare brung her neck around and licked the bullet hole she nudged me back on with her head here we go to jump that line the dogs snapping at her shanks we glided over I passed out from the time she jumped till we hit the other ground a second or so but it was long enough for me to dream I was in my bedroom in Memphis I was asleep and Jimmy and Elvis Presley walked in a little drunk Elvis shook me on the shoulder he said can I borrow a comb I ain't famous yet jimmy said we got in a fight over at Clarksdale he went over to my desk where I keep my secret papers he picked up an hourglass and turned it over they climbed out the window I heard a cat with loud pipes crank over yep that was Jimmy I got out of bed I run to the window the astronomer was charting the heavens and his daughter was naked she was looking through the telescope with them I had to talk right I said one of you mind telling Elvis he can keep that comb they didn't hear me I was going to climb back in a window but it was the wrong one it was my great grandmother's window she was staying with us she was born in 1860 the year of the civil war now she was taking her pot on the slop jar but she couldn't get up why I didn't go help her I'll never know instead I found my lost baseball in the cotton hull fertilizer in the holly bushes so I took a walk I caught a bus when I give the driver my token it fell clean through his hand we rode around I don't have time to tell all that I saw but I tell you it was plenty and it'd make your hair stand up especially when we doubled back around I seen what the astronomer and his daughter was doing on my front lawn brother I was walking down in colored town my footsteps was like I was pulling a wagon behind me I turned around a negro with lightning bugs in his hair the one with no legs and arms who scoots along on the mechanic's board he asked me to pick him up another french harp the next time I was in but he didn't say where and that is when i woke up on the good side I fell off the horse a way off I saw that light I stood up by myself I took the girl from the woman I mounted the horse with the girl with black hair I forgot to tell you what I did with that baseball I broke that big mirror in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel the ducks are the shattered glass we rode off into the forest and when we got to a good spot I lay her down in the feathergrass and as I drew my breath like a knife the musk of spring fiew into my head and the girl touched me she said Francis I am dead from now on but I will live as long as the cloud stays in front of the moon and I looked up and saw the black ship like a great wolf after the neck of the moon and she took off my pants and my cap and my wool sweater and my boots and she stopped the bleeding with her hair and she said why do you always dress in black and I said on account of all the hand-me-downs in my closet are midnight blue for the winter and sweet milk white for the summer but I thought about the black cloud so I didn't want to speak and so the grass was a quilt patched by one night and though I couldn't see her I knew she was there and I loved her I was with the girl with black hair and when she lifted her legs it was as if she wanted to balance the moon on her toes to keep it from falling but I knew all along it was the black cloud that needed to stay in place and so in that country where I was once and now and will be before I was where I spoke the words holy holy holy Lord God Almighty all the earth is full of Thy glory where the whistling swans ride the backs of the white horses of the river where the boxcars and skiffs are full of drunken troubadours where once I did lay awhile longer the pavane of whippoonvills while the pallbearers are strutting in the ceremonies of my sleep the passing bell nodding like a snake charmer all fat past away deep behind the woods down the road where I saw that lightning bug in the country where my dreams are like bark peeled off by lightning I was with her the girl with black hair while the wolf had the moon by the throat I said I love you in the field of honor and she was like a colt and she was water I held in my hands and she was the canoe I worked through the river and she was the flash at two-thirty in the morning of the suicidal knife and she was a fire of pine cones who ran like a deer and she was a butterfiy that lit on the fioat of my pole and she was the night herself she was the cape I drew over my body . she was dead she was the girl around about my own age the girl with black the horse encircled the clearing and dug a grave with her hooves while she looked for a drink I buried her beneath that very same tree a sycamore I believe it was nigh on three hundred foot tall and every time I threw a handful of dirt in her face the horse reared up and pranced around the grave in a circle and as the water seeped back down into the earth she went with it I raised my hand and a Gerfaloon fiew to my fist he bore a worthy hatchment I let him go and he climbed and climbed as high as the tree then he dove towards the river grave bearing his gift that would be last I saw of my sweet falcon for some time to come good night follow her into the realms of dead children I only said goodbye I only let the horse circle the burial water once more with me his rider I looked up at the moon I raised my list to the heavens I vowed to slit the throat of every sapsucking straw boss from Vicksburg to Memphis now you talking a voice seemed to say I saw a shooting star that fell towards the western hori zone and I saw that light come and go it was hard for me to resist the temptation to dismount and dance a dirge alone a dance like a lost ship wheel like ten years from now where are you kind spirits where are you dreams when I need you I galloped towards the mysterious glow that wasn't a glow worm that first came and then would go I slowed down to a trot and then it was like the horse was a shadow it was only a negro it was just the Black Angel striking matches on the side of his britches all along it was Sylvester I said Angel you going to burn a hole in your pants there he was with his ladder-backed chair cocked up side the wall of the store with his bare feet the toes like acorns gathered into the lower cross piece of the beat-up chair that soon would be a stool on account of the back was fixing to fall off there he was with the rag around his head sucking on a diamond match stick now wasn't that sweet what I seen he said shut up goddamnit why didn't you help me I'm kind a down in my side lately see he said well when you going to start cutting up them white folks who said I was up to that I said you did he said you swore on the Bible I seen you why don't you do something to them men that hung me I already done took care of them you can ask your mother I said watch your english he said yea boy that was one hell of chick you had back there a natural blonde you going to start that shit again I said I'm the same dead as I was alive he said how come you ain't got a shirt on ain't you cold the Black Angel said what the hell I don't never wear no shirt on my back in the middle of July by the way I want to ask you something shoot I said which one of these here names sounds the best for a girl Sardinia or Gardinia I think they both sound like shit I said well I got to name that sow something she's fixing to have some pigs and I'm going to have bacon every morning you hear that yea I hear you I said look at all those silver dollars a lying out there in that mud hole he said them are mussels shining in the moonlight I said boy when you going to learn about that moon why it ain't no such a thing like a cargo that shifts from one side to the other in a ghost ship that is how my dreams change their course I have nothing to do with it I see the babes of the wood but do you think people will believe me no I see wings in the sand like whorls I see bows brought across throats and one-armed drummers I see Jewish stamp collectors that have run out of spit so I lick them in I see the magnifying glasses the crackers and the beanies I see old men totter out from the outhouses in back of the church on Sundays with shit on their cuffs and they don't even know it and I see the cuff links the gold buttons someone found a hundred years ago that fell off some grey jacket soldier I see the remains of dugouts uncovered I see the skulls of horses and dogs and wives vanish all day I drift along in the rivers on my dream horse I ride ride ride out of the water and up the levees over the fields in the dead of night I dream shots coming through the window I dream cars leaving with no lights and no muffiers I dream the strawbosses with the red bandannas tied around their necks with no guts it was on a Saturday morning it was raining so Jimmy and I didn't have to work we got to sleep late how come you took all the damn cover last night I says shut up boy I wasn't even here last night he was talking through the pillow and I could see there was blood on it sho do like this shower don't you he didn't say nothing I says you want to hear about my dream naw let me sleep now Jimmy how come you hiding your face I tried again everybody at the cook tent is off this morning want me to fix you some pancakes and salt pork Emma showed me how to do it he reached down his fist in between his legs and yawned then he reached his other hand behind his head and he propped himself up I ain't hungry what you thinking about how about let's us have a wrestling match out there in the mud Indian style you can use both arms while I was talking he took the pillow from over his face both his eyes were black there was cuts all over him and places where the blood had dried up what in the hell happened to you what's it look like he says looks like somebody beat the holy living shit out of you that's what they did alright go get that mirror so I can look at my face they didn't break my nose did they it sho is sore they didn't bust it I says I bet you been messing around with that man's wife again hadn't you I bet you had to fight more than one daddy told you that man will kill you didn't you have a knife or nothing he says left on the bedside table there it sits how come you all that powder box a bedside table I says go get me some juice he says and shut up tell me about what happened first I says well last night I thought I'd go down to the dance hall and see the bootlegger what did you drive I says I drove that truck sitting out there anyway I was going down the road about dusk and here come this colored woman running towards me it turned out to be Miss Cassie she said could I go see about her man that they had been walking over to Mama Viola's Place when they seen up the road a car full of drunk white men with a fiat tire Miss Cassie said Hilo that was his name told her you wait here Cassie I better go see bout that fiat tire I don't think we be able to walk on by without hearing about it she said they could hear them swearing she said he said this here is a levee camp and everybody treats favorable but she said she told him them wasn't no levee camp men better leave them be but he said now Cassie if I was down under and broke down I'd sho appreciate some help so he is walking over towards the car but before he gets there the one driving yells hey nigger come on over here and fix this fiat tire HiIo didn't pay no attention to what the white man said he just said evening boss looks like y'all is broke down thought you might need a hand jack the car up boy the man said HiLo went around to the trunk it was tied down with rope he looked back over his shoulder and give Cassie a alright sign so she says before he jacked it up he said y' all mind stepping out the man said just jack the car up Cassie said the men was looking at her and talking so HiLo could hear them he got the car up a ways it was an old beat-up Dodge she thought and the bumper give way and broke off the men come out the car madder than hornets and that's when you showed up right I says yea one of them had a four way tire tool in his hand fixing to come up side HiLo but I grabbed it when he drew back I said ain't going to be no lights in this camp the man said you and your people think they run this place don't they I said no we just run a levee camp and we look after our own he said you telling me that nigger works for y'all I ain't never seen him before that's when I had to think fast Jimmy says he's the new bulldozer man I told them I ain't never seen that boy on no Cat one of them said you told them a lie didn't you Jimmy yea I did and I told that one he was so drunk he probably couldn't see his foot then one of them that never got out of the car he said to me boy you better shut your mouth before I four way you that was the woman's husband wasn't it I says I just kind of motioned with my head to the colored man I didn't know yet to go over to my truck and when he did I just back on off and when I get to the truck Cassie says thank you Jimmy and I met HiLo except he liked to be called Bacho by men so we shook hands and got in the truck and I took them over to Mama Viola's Place and they invited me to supper and I stayed and we shot some craps and then I told them I had to go over to the dance hall to see my man and Bacho asked me would I mind picking up a little for him so he give me a twenty and I say so long see you in about a hour and I leave what else did y'all talk about I says just the general situation I guess Jimmy says I asked him if he was just living in for a while if he was riding and he said he was looking for work except not in the fields he said he had skinned the car before so I told him the graveyard shift needed a dour man so he said I could use something like that tell me how you got in the fight I says well I was waiting for the bootle'er at the dance hall all those sapsuckers tapping their feet to some no count country band I think everybody but the guitar player was from Iowa or somewheres like that they wasn't no good and one of those piss ants that was in the car was there and he says howdi you mean you is coming to a white folks dance just looky here had enough of those niggers for one night son he was drunk I didn't pay him no mind my man hadn't showed up still then here comes that man's wife and I mean she was dressed fit to kill I was sitting in the corner she says how you doing Jimmy she said I bet you ain't done as good as we did last time I wasn't going to listen to her but she comes over there and sits across my knee and you know what she says Frankie what Jimmy she says Jimmy I bet you don't know I ain't got any panties on that did it man she said let's take a ride I told her hold on wait till the bootlegger comes she says why don't we wait for him outside I could tell Jimmy had a hard on it was showing through the sheet he didn't have it on account of his story though any fool knows anybody gets a hard one the first thing in the morning and it don't go away till you pee go on I says he says the bootlegger drove up and there wasn't nobody else standing around outside so I got my order took first did you get what you wanted he smiled and says and some of what I didn't want I dropped oifi what Bacho wanted at Mama Viola's Place and we stayed there awhile I says I bet that redneck's wife wouldn't go in at a colored place would she what you mean boy she hangs around those joints all the time she almost wouldn't leave once she started drinking that whiskey there was this real cool little nigger named Vash Ty he played the french harp she was liking the way he was holding and blowing on it you know but it turned out he had him a asshole buddy we stayed around there for a couple of hours then the electricity went out I says that's on account of the cyclone that hit up the river yea I know he says well the fans wouldn't work and it was natural hot she started dropping ice down her blouse and carrying on in front of those colored men and Miss Viola come over to me and say Jimmy what you want to bring trash like that around here for and Bacho say get that bitch out of here before one of these womens puts a ice pick in her back I took her outside and she passed out in the truck I went back in and apologized to Mama Viola for bringing her and she said I had ought to know better I ought to know she run a juke joint and not no honkytonk and I said I was sorry and Bacho helped me out to the truck and Mama Viola says come on back soon as I do whatever I was going to do she was chuckling she says why didn't I bring that girl back that she met last mondi and I says cause she got married and she said speaking of married folks you better watdr out for that big galoot husband of this one she said that cracker will cut you down I told Cassie and Bacho I'd be back later on if they was still open and Cassie says Viola's joint don't never stop rocking and I looked over under the Chinaberry tree and behind it was thundering and heat lightning and there was half a dozen colored men sniffing dust through a hundred dollar bill Jimmy stopped and watched a car go by don't stop I says keep on going and one of them says Mr. Jimmy this here is what you need and I blew a little of it and they told me about a plan they had for a boxing match but what was really going to happen was they was going to spring a couple of convicts and asked if I'd have transportation available and I said sure and I looked at what was driving up goddamn if it wasn't your mama's car but she wasn't in it Charlie B. Lemon was he got out and said I have arrived I said Charlie B. I'm gone now but I'll be back the boss is in Memphis so we going to rock tonight and he turned up the radio loud as it would go and it looked like rain but I knew Miss Viola didn't mind a tracked up place so I went and got in the truck and slapped that peckerwood's wife cross the face and said wake up baby you going to get fucked tonight and she had that skirt off before we got to the levee we got in the bed of the pickup and I mean she fucked the daylights out of me I comed and she corned ever time it thundered that old husband of hers don't know what he's missing I said Jimmy how come them women is always after you he says it sho ain't cause of the size of my dick how's that I say well my meat ain't much bigger than yours what's that got to do with it I says not much I don't guess cause sometime they got to play around with it or suck it for it to get hard I guess I'm like what Vash Ty told me I was what's that Jimmy I says he said I was a little piece of leather but well put together I got to ask a question Jimmy I says shoot he says how come Baby Gauge's and thems' dicks is just about the same size when they taking a pee and they have a good morning rooster is that the question he says it is I says but how is that your dick and my dick they is three times the size when they cockadoddledoing and not peeing well that is just some of God's handy work Jimmy says say Jimmy I says you know I sho want to be like you those women will travel a state line for your ass won't they I reckon they will he says boy I got to ask you a question what's that I says he says how come and where you been seeing all these dicks oh well I says we have pee wars sometimes and others we'll circle a snake or come on to a fire in the woods and all of us will pee on you done it with us before I remember a long time ago you peed on O.Z.'s foot and he slapped the shit out of you yea once we all clumb a rotten tree and waited for this river rat to walk by all seven of us peed on him he thought it was raining but the limb broke and we all liked to killed ourselves anyway tell me about the fight we had to get back in the truck on the figure of them mosquitoes was getting so bad look here all these bites on my ass humidity was so bad you couldn't strike a match until it started raining she's just a old country girl never been out of the state but twice and she goes in to how her husband don't love on her right and how people probably thinks she's fucking everthing that walks but that ain't right she just shows it off and how I am the only one she is screwing and goes in to her husband some more I tell her to shut up and she starts bawling because of some song that don't come in right on the radio and then she starts wanting it again I mean really wanting saying crazy things like she would like to be sleeping beauty if she could sleep forever with my cock in her mouth crazy stuff you know well we do it a few more times and one of them she tries to stick her thumbs in my eyes she says stuff like I am the rain beating on her don't that beat all he says sure does I says and the last time we done it she opens the door of the truck so she can get her feet wet and then she scoots back the other way and opens the other door so the rainwater can hit her lips she says Jimmy you took them lights out didn't you yea he says so nobody could see me when I shake my dick and change the rubber you must a had a pile a rubbers on that levee last night no I didn't he says she wouldn't let me use one she wanted hot meat and that's what she got wasn't it Jimmy you damned right he says well what else happened I says we fucked in the mud he says I believe that last time was the best I ever did it you know that old girl ain't too much older than me and she's not so bad to be around after she's been flicked a dozen a times that' s all she needs isn't Jimmy that's all he says that and a little love she got any kids about four he says you know what happened to the one she lost don't you no what's that I says she must a started having them when she was thirteen she did he says that oldest kid the meanest one that takes after his daddy well they say he seen his old man with a mirror and a fiashlight one night drunk as a skunk talking to himself saying baby are you mine you look more like blackberry cobbler than peach pie later that night the kid went in and got the baby nobody is sure what happened exactly some say the galoot paid the boy six bits to do it but for sure the next morning when white people woke up they heard this kid just laughing and laughing and then they heard some dogs barking and then the girl screaming and running through the fields she didn't even have no blouse on for a while folks thought he was just beating her again but the story goes like this you know how a baby has a soft spot on the top of its head when its born I do I felt them many a times I says well what that kid had done was taken that baby':ad out to the porch swing about dawn and punched both his thumbs into that childsh did it die hell yes it died but it didn't go to hell what was all the laughing about that's because the kid walked into their bedroom sucking on one thumb and holding up the other bloody one he woke his daddy up and said you wrong both times paw that baby was cherry pie ha ha ha ha like a mooncalf he laughed and when the mother woke up and got some wind of what in the world was going on she went out to the porch and saw her little daughter and a Rhode Island Red rocking in that porch swing there was one hound with his paws up on the boards licking the blood and another one under the house sucking on what came through the slats no it might a been two cats two mangy cats I believe it was what she do she wrung the master's neck I can see it Jimmy you can see what in my dream I can see the headless bird beating his wings against the sheet on the line like a sail a crossjack with the insignia in blood of Sagitta I can see the saintship of the lowlands putting out with the red arrow turning black I am Carina the keel I have an unseen companion the binary Sleep I am Lupus the wolf of the night sky you going to do that shit or are you going to listen to me my dream Galileo dream Francisco Goya dream Vincent dream the geometry of a lunar eclipse dream an ode to the atomic weights dream about six years a go a woman was hit on the head in Alabama by a meteorite dream about the turn of the century in Siberia 1500 reindeer were killed by a fireball from the heavens you want to hear about this fight there are men who have their photographs falling off the wall and they don't know shut up you fool I'm sorry Jimmy but I liked the way you told that and it set me going did they bury the baby no that kid poured gasoline on it and set it afire it was a daughter you said that's right he says you think I'm crazy Jimmy no I know you ain't but some of these others might think you are why is that well I know of what you is talking about but I don't that much about it but those other folks they don't know their own shit from a dog's so they think you are plum loco you got to admit here and in Memphis and just about everywhere you go you run into some strange folks and you take up with them right off the bat like you have known them a thousand years people don't know what to think of that you hit it on the nail Jimmy that's the way I feel like centuries ago you scare me sometimes boy I know when you have to you act like your mother wants but I seen you do some crazy looking shit I never done half the shit you and Charlie B. lemon done well that's different some of that what y'all did ain't too much different like that time y'all was down in Florida or somewhere and y'all met Harpo Marx on the beach in the middle of the night singing in the german language that was just a coincidence hell it was what about the time y'all stole the organ out of those white Folks' church them holy rollers didn't like that a bit they didn't like it that we put it on a barge and used it in a fioating whorehouse down the river he says daddy didn't like it either I says shit boy I bet you we fioated that son-of-a-bitch a hundred miles including all the backwater and cutoffs and islands we went through I never will forget the look on that motherfuckers Face whose face I says that river boat pilot's he says well why won't you forget it I asked him cause he says it was a lot of fog on the water and that captain couldn't do nothing but hear us until he got up on us he must a thought there was a baptizing I says he must of had twenty barges in tow but I know he had to lose one of them when he saw us what did he see I says the pilot saw Charlie B. playing the organ and twelve whores singing While The Blood Runs Warm Jimmy y'all have some high times don't you I like it when you get drunk and ride horses I like it when you and some of the men and some convicts play baseball with no baseball I had a funny dream last night don't be talking about those dreams he says I dreamed that riders rode up last night and fired three shots a shotgun and a pistol is what I heard I dreamed that I saw the buckshot and the bullet coming towards the window I got up I was naked with my boots on but I wasn't in the shack I was in the big house in Memphis they was having a dinner party everybody had on suits the glass broke like a bucket of water and the shards put out the candelabra the shots fiew over the table ever so slow like when you see mosquitoes coming at you on the bayou now they were sailing to the other picture window I got my catcher's mitt and walked outside in the backyard 0.2. was combing the dog something clicked like when you say get on up mule I thought I saw myself in the front yard making a peg to second but I was in the back and the ball come through the window I caught it it was a strike I know it was cause the priests in the sycamores clapped I dreamed I was sitting at the end of the table cause daddy was dead I saw the old baseball pass over this was after I dreamed I threw it Rufus Abraham whispered in my ear tag him I could smell his breath I held out the ball in front of me Rufus Abraham called the man out but there wasn't any batter he held up three fingers I did not know if I was playing catcher or pitcher or second base I don't think they was playing by the rules in this dream but I do know that Rufus was the umpire and I do know that when I looked way off through his black fingers I saw a colored woman stooped over washing a child you listening Jimmy I says yea go ahead he says but she was washing her with milk in a wash rub the girl was my friend down at what's there names' plantation who fell ofi: her horse and broke her neck last year and do you know what kind of milk it was the woman was washing her back with wolf milk there was a mother wolf standing in the tub and the colored lady was milking her I walked on over there they was next to the pump I remember them lavender butterfiies two by two lighting in the mud I remember I worked my toes around in that mud something had happened to my cleats I was barefoot the pump was pumping by itself with a growl black water was pouring up out the spout and little green snakes was swimming out when they hit the ground some kind of bird was eating their eyes out I heard a racket going on behind me like steel in a blacksmith's shop like two automobiles hitting one another at ninety miles an hour like iron battle ships plowing into each other it was a huge snake like the one they didn't believe I saw last time the one that esmped out of that circus and stayed around here for a year it was shedding its skin like God sheds his grace and what a commotion it was making the wolf wouldn't give no more milk the lady turned her head to spit and I readied over and touched my girl friend right where her breast was starting the wolf howled and I heard hammer and nails like you do early in the morning when there is going to be an election or a circus or a picture show or a revival but it wasn't none of that it was Mr. Rufus tacking up stuff on trees I thought it was money cause he was unfolding them out of his billfold maybe they was pictures of naked women Jimmy says no I says I'll tell you what they was they were the paintings of Jesus by the dead artists I knew some of them by name but most of them I had never seen before the ones I hadn't ever seen before was the ones that sent drills through me there was for sure the Resurrection of Christ by Piero Della Francesco nailed up to a Chinaberry and there was Christ Healing The Blind Man With The Violin by Ludovico Carracci hung on a Shagbark Hickory and it looked like wild plums I saw Jesus Among The Teachers up side a blackjack oak who is that by he says I don't know how to say his name I says there was one I know who done it but I don't know the title of the painting Giovanni Bellini where the lord is unwrapped and the top three holes is showing his eyes are shut in pain and he is looking at Mary and a fellow on the side he is looking 0&- to the right like he was crazy there was another one by Lorenzetti where one man was taking the railroad ties out of one of Jesus' foots with a pair of ice tongs and his mother she was kissing on a bleeding foot the hammer is at the foot of the cross Jimmy says sounds like those dagoes had it sewed up don't it you know I use to date this Italian girl from Leland I went to church with her a couple of times and what you is talking about reminds me of the stations of the Cross those Catholics call it I looked at some of those pictures where it showed Jesus getting horse whipped and all the colors is all the same you know just like a plate of spaghetti of course now I never said I knowed much about Italian art but I do know those whops like that tomato'looking blood I says I know what you mean Jimmy but it's different from that but talking about whips I believe I saw Jesus Driving Out The Money Changers From the Temple by Giotto the lord is mean eyed looking in that one say he says I thought you said Rufus had a billfold with all them pictures wadded up in it I did I says well he says that was your billfold I know it I says I already figured that out see he made it for me out of leather and he put a wolf head and my initial on it and one of the last things he told me was boy don't let them white men dig up my money so that is how it got in his hands in the dream I says I see Jimmy says then he asked me was any of them pictures by the one you got hanging up in the outhouse now what's his name I says no there wasn't don't worry about that name it's hard to say I know he says Geronimo nah that ain't it he was a Indian hu hu I says that ain't right he's got two names so I just let him go by Jerome I had enough of that other name I wasted a whole can of blue paint trying to name my boat after him I had to end up painting the whole damn boat blue what did you end up calling it he says I painted Savonarola in black on the bow on both sides too I says Seven who he says Savonarola I says he was burned at the stake almost five hundred years ago he was a stray monk oh Jimmy says I thought he might a got that name cause he shot a lot of dice no I says they said he was a heretic or a lunatic or something they got a picture of him hanging up in Italy in his bedroom I hear I sure would like to see it one of his buddies did his portrait did they do it while they was burning him up or what Jimmy says I don't know 1 says I just know I see him in my dreams I don't guess them Catholics burn up people anymore do they I don't guess so I says I guess about the only folks that get burned up these days is triggers I reckon so I says I reckon Hitler burnt up a lot of them jews though didn't he I believe he did I says did you ever see that picture show Diary of Anne Frank no but I read the book I says that show got to me I waited until everyone had left the show house cause I knew I was going to cry I walked out of the dark into the lobby and there was a whole other line of people staring at me and me a bawling my eyes out one of the fellows I knew he says look over there at Jimmy look at him crying what you do take a sock at him no I just walked out the picture show drunk a few beers I tied a real love knot with Anne he says I says Jimmy I bet you when you leave out of here this fall you ain't never coming back I bet when you go to that college you are going to knock up some girl and get married the first thing no I won't he said I'm going to get my degree in sipping whiskey and pussy well you already done got Phd. in that I says Jimmy you ought to run 03' and be a sailor yea I thought about that I'd like to do it you ought to sail around the world and get you a woman in every port that's what I'd like to do don't you know a line or two about a sailor talking about his woman he says yea I know lots of them I says but right now I'm thinking on that dream did you ever see Mr. Rufus again in it I sure did I says I seen him taking a crap in the outhouse and drinking a bottle of Dr. Tichenor's and eating a mashed Banana Flip he said come over here boy and get this wrapper you know how he'd always give us the paper to lick the sweet stuff off yea I know he says well I beckoned to his call but I had to walk through a forest a mean one to get to the outhouse and I saw Jesus hanging on every tree pecan sweetgum hawthorn cottonwood bald cypress weeping willow mulberry dogwood chinkapin sassafras persimmon catalpa bitternut buckthorn ash and wild black cherry I saw men walking through the woods at nine o'clock in the evening with fiashlights and rope I saw the astronomer giving a lecture on how in a few years the rocket ships would be powered by sails and they would call it solar sailing and the wind would be the pressure of radiation I dreamed I was a wandering star among the black dwarfs I walked through the halls where the limbs of animals and men and trees were grafted to one another it was an inarched way of rocks and water and light and tongues and fingers and unholy dark without its usual enemies and speaking of dark a few of the lines of one of my favorite poems was grafted to the mast of a sailorless ship the waves they were dead and the tides they were asleep in their grave and the moon the whore had taken her own life with a knife and the battlefield was silent and rotten and fioating in the abyss and I made myself a home in my soul I the Wanderer I am alone as heretofore as my brother standing on a hill with myself music of beggars so black the dream passes and you hear the words of your brother of dreams outlaw of black dream brother lord Byron brother of mad friends of youth I take you out in the third round with a cross to the jaw with your clouds like horses I remember all of my life I had a dream which was not all a dream where did you find her the same place I did with her great black eyes with her black hair blowing in the wind with the water coming towards her with the lightning tying the sash about her dress see her on the mountain holding her breasts in her hands if you are eleven I will fall down and stud your belly hole with an onyx I will unfasten the chanfrin binding your palfrey I the rider I dream the sick roses sitting up in their blood at your feet rubbing the hill with the vines like pig tails let me kiss you like a gambler in the shadows of a charred table I danced once to the pistols like a funambule I tip-teed out of my room at night I got in my boat I met the frigate of my dreams I got my socks wet and you know how that is at dawn in the fall on the river I sing to your eyes like little bells heard from aloft and the moon putting the slips of paper in my hand and the side-long glances I give to your jet black hair when will I meet you daughter of mirrors skipping down the road when will I retrieve your tangles coming about and leaving again off on their own sojourn daughter I see you wading with your jeans rolled up I see your dress sleeping in the closet I see the water getting dusky between your legs and I see the crawdads saluting your toes there you go jumping rope by the light of the moon with your only fi'iend a black willow and here I come with my definite limp taking long strides with one hand behind my back through the ruins watching your carnival watching your mass listening to the drunken monkeys throwing their lemons at the pony let me tell you with the song in my strange eyes you are no stranger you splendid animal circling the gables of the blind I take off my hat to you but someone stole it while I was sleeping so now I have my diploma in despair in black and I watch you bathing yourself from afar with my eyes half closed a sight to dream of daughter with your blue stockings crawling off your legs in the dark with your headdresses lined up like a caterpillar oh my midnight lamp oh my ribs caving in like waves the sighs I must one day give to the skull I renounce the breath of the angel of death polishing his apples in my melancholy my steed bound for the old mansion in the lowlands I see the plows fiash in your bath water I feel then in my dark wanderings I feel your cars like passageways if only you knew how I gaze this proud outlaw that I am if you knew the revolutions I want to live I am watching you in the foothills of oblivion and I want the real thing I don't care for the handmaidens anymore I want to stay out all night shooting craps I want to drink I want to turn it up and empty it and break the vessel against the bricks of fatherless water that is what I want the mountain and you the mottoes I've forgotten them all good night wind is all that I read breeze of deep water and lisping children and pungent books I want to draw your eyebrows like bows to my chest I want you to know my dreams volant as I know them I want you to hear what is unheard the unsheathing of my sword daughter the procession has served its purpose I have forgorren the world and I have watched you run through the woods in the morning like censors suspended and making in tandem for a moment only you spit out the bit and all I see of you is smoke you who have dianged my mourning into dancing my plight into singing and I see you passing away and I see you making a victory out of death the columns that surrounded your past are talking like shipwrecks I bid farewell to the harpsid'iords in your temples hear the prayers to your down the tone of my sword goodbye to the sonatas at your lips goodbye to where I want to enter the caves the guitars under your arms you must of got a letter from that girl in Memphis Jimmy says what makes you say that I says the last time you got a love letter from that girl you sang all night by the time I'd finished my dreamsong the devil was whipping his wife and Jimmy was dressed and drinking a Jax beer the rain had almost stopped and he says when you going to shine my jackboots I ain't doing any such a thing I says will you shine them if I tell you about the fight I'll polish them so you can read a fellow's hand I says what happened we was fucking in the mud she was on top I thought I heard somebody drive across that cattle gate but she said there wasn't nobody coming to the levee on this kind of night I still had the radio on and I mean that sax brewing like Maxwell House cofi'ee in a Lake Village Deer Camp I wasn't studying about the battery though I was just letting that woman have her own way and rubbing the back of my head in that black mud when I opened my eyes you seen them then uh Jimmy I says boy I seed six or seven of the ugliest looking peckerwoods I ever saw they were standing around me in a circle with yellow raincoats on they must a been out coon hunting cause they had those carbide lamps on their heads stinking up the night one of them stepped forward he had on one of those ponchos camoufiaged like the woods you know what I mean I knowI says I seen a bunch of them down at the Army Surplus Store in town well he pulls a fiashlight out from under his belly that must of held a dozen batteries he turned that light on and I mean he hit me right in the skull just like he was stunning a hog I bet those cars in that Eveready made your eyes shine didn't they Jimmy they sho did man my head caved in like dirt did the first lick draw much blood I says not as much as the second he says one of them come crossways with his boot and I got a taste a mud in my mouth what did the woman say Jimmy she say don't y'all touch this boy they didn't touch you did they Jimmy no they plumb near stomped the holy living shit out of me they didn't toud'i me though he says I say I bet you knew which one of them was her husband didn't you he says I'd know that galoot anywhere what did he do to his wife he had some of his buddies hog tie her with bob wire then they dumped her in the trunk like she was meat I says you going to get killed one of these days boy did you ever get a lick in atall I got one good one he says I done that Indian leg scissors and busted one of thems' knee pretty bad I might of broke his leg you going to teach me that trick I says if I get time I will he says they didn't pull no razors did they Jimmy hell yes they pulled them but I didn't give them no chance to use them but I almost didn't have to shave he says how's that I says you know that fat greasy looking one with all those bumps on his face the one that goes by Dirt Dobber that one that tries to wear them muscle man T-shirts and goes around with that little cracked mirror always squeezing them zits in between his fingernails like he was pulling ticks oil: a dog we talking about the same person alright Jimmy says he tried to do you in hu I says yea he opened a straight razor on me but 1 just kind of kicked out with my foot and shut it on his fingers I bet he was yelling blood and murder wasn't he Jimmy he don't need a mirror to look at his meat down to the bone does he did they stand you up and work you over with a chain you don't see no chain marks cross my face do you I want to know how you got out of that mess I says well I stood up so one of them could get a good shot at me I let him hit me and I reeled over and fell back so I could roll down the levee that was my getaway plan you see rock rock rock and roll I says hell no then: wasn't no music to that song the man played me I was luck to come out like I did you was luck to be born I says it was luck Willy Ed got news of his wife was having child cause he never did move that water barrel down what are you talking about I says that barrel is what stopped me from rolling it give me a hard lick itself what did you do didn't they come after you I hid in the barrel how come they didn't track you in the mud cause one them Government Engineers drove through and told them to turn those lights 0&- he told them that with this storm and all people look to the levee and see all that commotion they'd be thinking a fiood was up and everybody and his cow would be gathering up there oh they moseyed around and they almost got me I heard that man who was her husband say I believe I'll get a drink I heard him fetch a paper cup out of the box and blow on it then he uncorked a pint I knew I was done for if he ever put his thumb on the spigot cause the water was low in that barrel and I was crouched down low as I could get trying to get it to rise but it lacked yea much about a quarter of an inch I says bout that he says so what did you do I says I peed I'll be Jimmy you Fucked his wife and then made him swallow your piss damnit to yea he just cut that whiskey with a little of my water then he cussed the niggers for making bad ice that was fast thinking you know it I says it was just a coincidence I believe the Lord is on your side Jimmy if he ain't then the Devil is winning by a long shot I put on a pair of trousers and followed Jimmy out to the porch he propped the chair up against the wall and sucked on his beer you want to go to town I says what town you talking about there ain't a damn town for a hundred miles I thought we might go to a picture show I ain't driving a hundred miles to see no picture just wait a couple of weeks that man in the tent will be back yea he'll be back maybe with one we ain't seen a dozen times Jimmy looked around at me and smiled he says just think we might see a talkie I got some firecrackers I says so what I got a half case of dynamite sitting in the back of that truck we could go bring up a couple hundred pounds of fish and go up to the store and sell it don't need powder to do that we can use green walnuts will pecans work I don't know I don't even know if I can get any this time a year what about that old telephone that' ll work alright but all we'll get is rough stuff I bet you we could sell a lot of white perch on Saturday you is fixing to talk me in to something if we don't clean them I reckon we could get a dime a fish I could buy me a fishing reel you know that one I had my eye on you don't need no reel around here just a pole and you could buy that Confederate pistol it'll shoot that chinaman told me he shot a mad dog with it quit dreaming I ain't dreaming I seen it in the back he keeps it hid but he'll sell it he found it when he was diving for clams in the bayou he found this old bucket filll of lard and when he pulled it up out of the water that pistol was buried in the grease I'll blow them up if you'll net them wouldn't that be something if I had that pistol I could fight a duel with the midget that's the one that's going to kill you he says no he ain't I got eleven different plans on how I can kill him and I'd have twelve if you'd buy that pistol why don't you just blow him in two with a shotgun that's too easy any drunk Creek could think of that I want to kill him like they do in church I want a ceremony I know what I'm going to do he says is that chainsaw still sitting out in the woods I reckon it is won't nobody touch it they think its got a conjure on it I wonder if that thing will still run he says why I says cause I got a idea he says talking about that midget done give me a idea Jimmy do you mind if I finish telling you about that dream make it short he says well I kickedyou in the buttwewas in bedseeIsays toyou don't hog all the cowrs Jimmy and a man turns over and puts his hand over my mouth and says shut up I ain't Jimmy he's dead I pass out along about then I hear some gunfire I got to go to the bathroom so I reach under the bed for the slop jar and somebody shakes my hand the person says he ain't dead yet here take hold this pocketknife it was Rufus he says don't tell nobody where I is and don't you let them men dig up my money and when I look down under the bed there ain't nothing there but a run over dog the house is shaking like it does when the pressure is dangerous so I walk through the other rooms to the kitchen and open the back door I have to duck cause a whole fiight of knives like geese passes over my head and when I look in the back this time it ain't here and it ain't in Memphis neither one it is some place though but I don't know where and it looks like this sea that goes on forever going blue going green going black an oval mirror sapphire where whoremonger morning moon is seen it is above the heads of the young dancers tying ribbons in one another's hair now they are on the rocky shore Iimbering up the children berating that maker of thieves and a dog trots up to where they are putting their slippers on their feet with his gold teeth he unties their shoes the ballerinas watch its breath on the mirror and the moon disappears the clifis which were heretofore unnoticed are noticed a woman is looking from the window of a stone dwelling if we could see behind her she would be undressed and way in the western horo zone would be a tall black mast about to make sail and sleeping in a skiff would be a youth about my age but crippled now in this dream I saw a spoonbill catfish rolling over and playing like a dolphin as the wind came up before I could notice it I was standing by the water praying and when I looked in the water I saw the annual Cotillion the girls walking together in the country club with their long white gloves hanging loose on their slender arms a dark looking man stepped forward from the audience and said his name was Rood the visitor he snapped his fingers and the most gorgeous of the debutantes came to him and kneed him in the groin he smiled and you could see all the black in his teeth the girl then got down on the fioor and raised her hand to his lips as he bowed he opened his mouth and a hawk stuck his head out and gored the soft part of her wrist with his beak Rood was able to accomplish feats such as this for he was really a snake swallowet who is now serving time in the Shelby County Penal Farm the reason I know this is because the tale of the visitor is told in an unfinished libretto bequeathed to me by the world's smallest man Jimmy says boy you ought to set up a sign and pay folks two bits to listen to you get one of them old scratched up opera records the astronomer gave you and I bet you could get every loony tick on the river over here I says Jimmy I just have a little ways to go then I'll be finished ok but cut it short I got to go to the bathroom well you better go on then cause it'll take a little while well he says I feel like taking a long shit so follow me on out to the outhouse and while you are at it set the record player on the back porch so I can have a serenade I don't feel too good I'm down what you want to hear a little BB. no he says I feel like a sinner put on some gospel who I says Dixie Hummingbirds singing I Been Buked and I Been Scorned mother lent that one to Sadie I believe then I want to hear Mahalia Jackson doing Didn't It Rain I see I says you going professional go ahead and put on Old Ship of Zion by the Pilgrim Jubilee Singers while you are at it I says hey can I put on the Pilgrims' Overture too yea I guess so but put it on last Jimmy thanks I really like those trombones this time of day with the clouds the way they are and all he walked on out back and set his mind right and I set the record player up and set a penny on the arm so the needle wouldn't skip the music started up and Jimmy started groaning and I started telling him my dream where I left off was that Rood worked in the carnival and knew my friend for a very brief period the world's smallest man had mentioned him one day it happened like this I saw a man in a bathing suit and a carmine cloak he was standing up on a platform swallowing snakes I says how does he do that and the Count says he learned it while he was in the Army and I says what army and he says the Foreign Legion he says it should be explained that there is a difference between snake swallowers and snake charmers and snake handlers Jimmy says what did he do it with a mirror was it a trick no he really did I says he done it with poisonous snakes but I guess they was operated on to take out the fangs like they do a skunk you know yea I know he says and I says say didn't you ever run into a man twenty-two inches tall down on the river he had him a outfit down there Charlie B. told me he thought he'd seen the one-eyed nigger he run with well he says I seen a lot of one-eyed men but not no man two foot tall I was just wondering I says anyway this here Rood goes back into his rent and while he's in there a strong man comes out of the tent next door the first thing he did was tear at Memphis telephone book in two he was a stout son-of-a-bitch wasn't he Jimmy says I reckon he was the Count told me he seen him rip up a New York directory once but the twist is this the Count told me the snake swallowet and the strong man was the same person he was crazy he had what you call split personality I don't believe that Jimmy says I don't care if it is a dream yet it is the God's truth I says and I'll tell you why and how come a body was to dream such a thing it is because I read it in the paper don't you remember back a few years ago when the headline every evening was another victim bitten making the toll of snake bites within the Memphis City Limits ninety-seven don't you remember how there was a crazy man going round putting cottonmouths in the Catholic churches well they caught this mad priest who had a run-in with the bishop he was letting them out in the oonfessionals well this give Rood a idea see he started letting loose poisonous snakes in all the libraries in the county hell some folks run up an awful bill cause they was so scared to bring their books back Jimmy says I recollect something like that happening the police department put a whole lot of folks on it but couldn't none of them crack the crime and all the time they were taking their families to the Mid-South Fair every other night and paying two bits to get in and see the culprit don't that beat all how he got away with it almost a year well not with the snake bites cause they went to sleep during the winter so he went to ripping up books I mean he'd pick out a subject or an author and tear him to pieces however about the time Cotton Carnival rolled around a tutty-fi'uity man that worked for the library had just about figured it out but he didn't tell nobody on account of his favorite reading was about crime Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown and all that don't you know anyway he put the water moccasins and the books together cause of the fact if there was any freak of his specialty and he'd go see them over and over and over and it got to where all the books he didn't like he'd just set out in a hidden away nook of the old library like a pie or like a woman who fixes her stockings in the elevator in front of you when they ain't nobody riding not even an operator when she watched you look at her and she makes the holes in her nose spread open and her low lip drops off like deep water say man that ever happen to you Jimmy says I says yea it did he says once I waited on an elevator a long time and I figured some kid had got it stuck on purpose then got oil but see a colored man told me how you" can get them free if you open this special box and push the button well that's what I did cause it was stuck on my fioor so the doors open and what do I see but but a Mexican woman leaning up against the side with her legs spread out and a man on his knees eating the stuffing out of her I mean he took out when those doors opened I says what did she do why she reached her fingers down into her wool like she was knitting a sock ha ha he says damn your hide I says you just funning me now he says you tell me how the visitor got caught if the fruit didn't tell on him and the police couldn't catch him easy I says a fifteen year old colored boy caught him how did he do that he says he done it like this I says Five that was the young one's name he decided that Lula Mississippi wasn't quite his speed so he stole the undertaker's lawn mower and decided he'd push it all the way to Memphis and cut yards on the way for pocket money when he got to Bluff City he was going to roll in the dough he heard that some of them people paid as high as fifty cents an hour to have their fancy yards cut well all he took with him was a pic comb and his sombrero it only took him three weeks and bed a made it quicker than that except every other day he had to get some cardboard and trace out the pattern of his feet so he could make him a new set of soles for his tennies he arrived in Memphis in high style he said to himself now this is what I call a City because you see it was the first night of the Cotton Carnival and the first thing he saw was the all black drill and precision team from Melrose High and I can tell you he wore out some soles high stepping along with them on the side of the street yes he went up to the top of some building and looked out the window and seen the white Carnival going on at the bank of the river he saw the Queen and King fioat in on a barge and all the fireworks and the double ferris wheels that dip you out over the Mississippi and he heard all the music and that's when the night janitor told him to get out of the building and since I was in the same building the Cotton Exchange I believe I'm not for sure I told him to come on look out the window with me we shot the shit and decided to go to the white Carnival so I had to be his escort so we got in one of these girly shows and while I went to go pee the barker run him olfI didn't see him until the day after when he had his picture in the paper but what he did was won a pair of spy glasses and hid under the tents so he wouldn't have to pay none of his hard earned change out and he got about the best look see of everything there including the freaks that night he slept on a bale of cotton that was on a broken down fioat that everyone had forgotten about on account of all the good time and all at dawn he saw two negroes throw out a bundle of papers and he says to himself well bless Five's ass and he saw right there how he was going to make his breakfast money and how he had something to do until the dew dried off the headlines was the statement of an old maid librarian who stated while on a ladder in Biography she saw two strong arms tear a copy of Volume Two of The Life of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton in half Jimmy says it had to be Volume Two cause you stole Volume One there it sits she went on to state that on each arm was a tattoo on the left arm a zarf and on the right arm a xebec a what he says nothing I says it'll come out later now personally I couldn't tell you if Five read the paper or not all I know is that he pushed his lawn mower downtown and ate a two dollar breakfast in a White Spot and after he got through with that he turned right around and ate a Lemon Ice Box Pie that the waitress said he couldn't have until eleven o'clock when they started serving dinner but when she and the rest of the help seen how it was this boy wasn't studying about not waiting all morning on his pie they gave it to him and when he was finished he left a two bit rip and asked them was there any charge for the Air Conditioning they laughed and said no and he pulled up the cinch of the cord that held the sombrero on his head and went outside and wrapped the rope around the pull starter and cranked his lawn mower up to see if anybody had poured sugar in the gas tank while he was eating well it cranked right oifi and before he had a chance to fool with the choke to get the lean right a policeman was yelling his head OK at the boy but Five didn't hear him so the man give him the old pilot's high sign the finger across the neck and Five thought the policeman aimed to kill him so he pushes the mower over the white man's foot and takes out running down through the middle of town but it really don't make no matter cause everybody is still hung over from last night anyway and here the policeman he's on the sidewalk with his eyes shut cause he afraid to see if his toes is all gone the reason being just the other day the second page headline was man turns around to give directions where gas station is and while he is talking lawn mower rolls over his feet arnputating same but there wasn't nothing wrong with no policeman's foot all he needed was a new left shoe and the police department would give him that the first good cut of grass Five saw was already being mowed by another boy about his age so far Five hadn't seen one big fancy lawn that he'd heard about he was thinking about loosening the lug nut on the blade when the boy shut his machine down for lunch but he figured it was liable to kill somebody so he keeps on walking and where do you think he sees the mighty finest longest looking grass he'd ever seen and it hadn't been cut in nigh on a week where Jimmy says the Police Station I says and just the very same day a city official had called up and cussed the man at the desk out for not having their lawn cut why what with it being Cotton Carnival time and all and so when Five arrives the men is cussing the general nigger situation how they is so unreliable and all especially after a holiday or a fisneral or something so Five he sauntered up he what Jimmy says he sashayed on up to the two captains and he says look boss how much that nigger been charging you to cut your yard the two explained to him how an employee of the Park Commission was supposed to cut the lawn but to get the City Office 06' their backs they accepted Five's offer of forty-nine cents an hour and all the ice water he could drink he offered to do the edging and the trimming but they said a inmate would be assigned to that so Five cranked his lawn mower up by the way he called it Eleanor after Miss Roosevelt and started singing verse 490 of the song he had been making up in his head ever since he lef Lula you want to hear some nah Jimmy says just finish the story I'm about through in a minute go get me some paper you don't never put it back here's a dime go run down to the store let me finish first I says along about two o'clock Five says shit it's hot and shuts off his machine and goes up to a prisoner a white man from West Memphis no from Twist I remember now Arkansas who got drunk tried to pick a fight with the Planter's Peanut Man a robot who tips his hat at you Five asks him what you want hit a man glasses on fer the man don't like the smart aleck little nigger and he's fixing to say so except Five has took the shiny object he found in the grass out of his pocket and is saying to the white man hey why don't you see who lost this key I ain't got time for that shit I got my own company and I'm too busy to be turning in lost articles so the man lays the clippers down and takes the key and says sho boy and Five undoes his cord and lets his sombrero fall over his back and walks into the Police Station and asks please to meet you Five Spoke speaking could you show me where the ice water is a man points the way and then goes about his business but then grabs Five by the collar and says spread out boy I'm going to frisk you now sir ain't no call to do that I ain't carrying no dirk I sold it last night where you from boy I's from Lula riginally but late I'm from Memphis where you stay uh yes sir I stay over on a let's see Bale Avenue where he says over on Bale I ain't never heard of a street like that no sir Five says I don't reckon nobody even heard of it being that small the way it is why it ain't even worth mentioning I believe I'm be moving soon as I get my money he says and the man says how long was that knife boy it wasn't but four inches boss see Five Spoke knew all about the city regulation of illegal blades cause somebody had wrote in red paint on a road sign just before you get to the Tennessee Line important put them butcher knives and razors up you can do it with a jackknife just as well signed Zero what's that in your pocket a pistol no sir boss them's them spy glasses I won last night running that dragline I was after a real camera but uh I'm through with you go get your water so Five found the Colored fountain and stepped on the pedal but wouldn't no ice water come out so he tried to double clutch it still wouldn't no water come out so he finds him the white fountain and takes a long drink out of it by Jesus the water shoot half way cross the room on that one he gets his handkerchief and wets it and puts it back inside his sombrero then he lets that cool stuff hit on the inside of his wrists and looks up at the ceiling fans and while he's daydreaming he remembers what some of his buddies told him to do look at the wanted posters and see if the law had any paper out on them so they'd know if they could come to Memphis or not but before he does any favors he cleans the lint off the lenses of his spy glasses and buys a Big Time candy bar out of a broken machine that he gyps he's chewing on it and looking the warrants over when he comes across one with a picture of a man of the cloth on it and it reads The Snake Priest accused of freeing poisonous snakes in many of the Memphis churches Five is saying to himself all that hocus pocus shit don't fool me and beside of that one is a warrant with no picture that says Mad Bookworm wanted for turning loose dangerous reptiles coral cobra swamp rattler copperhead and cottonmouth in the bays of the libraries of Shelby County approach this man with caution he may be armed and carrying it said and while Five Spoke was thinking about the worse crimes he'd ever heard of in Lula men buried alive in the levees men nailed to a sycamore and burned a hog butcher selling his wife to everybody in the county babies beat up side the barn like rabbits that were still kicking men tied to gars and Hadreads men poisoned by sorghum children blinded by sling shots cofiins open with hack saws not once did he ever hear of a loony tick crime this or like these the desk sergeant removed the poster with priest's picture on it and tacked up another one in its place and Five says caught that devil uh and the desk man says yea we caught him boy but a couple of these whop politicians got him sent down to Bolivar instead of the electric chair so he can call Bingo say boss what that is there a called Bookworm something like a chink bug or a Boll worm or some kind of fish bait y'all use over here no the man says that was the nickname the papers give him a bookworm is some kind of egghead that bores into books oh a queer bait I see wall did they get him yet not your the man says but I don't believe there is another man I think it's a gang of that catholic's altar boys cause I heard a woman say they seen one of them in a red robe and that's what those friends of the devil wear you know that Five says I seen them cooking gopher dust and ringing bells at midnight on my way home fiom coon hunting once them a talking all that mess makes me sick the desk sergeant was tacking up a warrant beside the Mad Bookworm but you couldn't read it cause his big belly was in the way Five was thinking I bet that woody ain't seen his thing in ten years and the man saying hadn't been bothered with the snakes too much lately this here is the one they trying to latch on to now they call him the Library Molester he goes around ripping up the taxpayers' books of course now I've never been in one of these libraries myself but every citizen has got a lot wrapped up in them so that is why there is a thousand dollar reward leading to the apprehension of them or him that's when the desk sergeant moved out of the way and Five saw under noticeable marks TWO TA'I'I'OES a zarf and a xebec Five swayed his head from one poster to the other like he was fixing to strike well fuck a duck Five says to himself and he is olf alone in his dreams like Napoleon at Elba he knows that all he needs is someone to hold up a light and the bar will hit the plug he threw in the air yes indeed the vampire will catch hisself on the lure with three treble hooks and he knows he can tie that on his line and catch god knows what he can do it like when you hear the bagpipes in battle you know they can win he knows it like mule carts like tunes in a water jug like the name Daisy Bates like jack boots full of minnows like a preacher with a pompadour like Ben Tallow the Griffe so he asks the desk sergeant say boss you got a dictionary over there I could borrow I got to look up a spelling and while the sergeant is telling him sure I got one you know the captain don't like us: not to spell Mississippi right and thinking at the same time look a here at these niggers from Mississippi even go around spelling like a white man and Five is thinking he has studied ever letter in the book in the outhouse except XY Z cause the teacher said to spend more time on CST he is thinking batfoul on Moon Lake and how come a thousand dollars for this and not for a murder and who goes there spoken at night and washing Windshields in the summer and white women with their dresses hiked up and legs spread for a breeze he finds the meaning to the first word and goes with a whistle like he seen a good looking girl and the colored wash woman scrubbing on the stops the isometric torture under the sponges for a second to look around the building because she senses something funny going on and now Five is looking up Z like a dress like a thousand dollars a Kansas City roll and thinking all the time back last night with the white boy he goes to take a leak and I get run out I win the spy glasses I hid under the fiaps I look at everything the red headed woman and the bull dog the other one with and now his eyes are port and starboard as the men trash and quality alike beat each other on the back and rear up like cattle laughing on the benches in the big top full of cigar smoke and now Five remembers how he crawled out without being seen and looked at the spectacle again with his spy glasses another one with a boa constrictor over her shoulders like a fox stole and he looks at the crowd ofwomen gathered outside around the snake swallower's tent he sees them gasp with one hand over their mouth and another over their breast or lower he sees in red and blue the two designs on the Arab's arms and the performance is about to begin inside for those who will pay and away he goes back into his abode and next door he sees the strong man in scarlet and he sees the same tattoos and he knows they are the same but what of it now he knows a zarf and a xebec ain't nothing but a tea glass and a sailboat and he knows he sure wants to claim the reward but he don't know how so he thinks best to take the warrant with me and go finish cutting the yard and then say something so he goes back outside and the other man trimming is gone and he starts Eleanor up and goes about his business thinking when I get around this when I get this part done I'm going to be rich and so Five cracked the case so Five got a thousand dollars uh Jimmy says no I says then he gets five hundred and splits with the desk sergeant no I says he don't get nothing but six months what the hell you talking about didn't you say a man named Rood appeared in one of your goddamn fucking dreams and he was actually based on a real character who is now serving time and that a colored boy named Five with a sombrero got his name in the paper for catching him didn't you say that cause if you are trying to give me the run around I'm going to beat your little ass you hear I hear I says but you won't let me finish you see that dog asleep over there under the house he says I says yes well when that dog wakes up you are shutting up and going to get me some paper got you I says see the white man from Twist Arkansas was a rat fink that's how come he got to work outside and drink soda pop and look at legs he decided to make up a story and tell the captain that he found it out the story was this the nigers according to him was going to try to make a break cause this little prick had stolen the key from the desk sergeant and give it to him the man that was telling it to give to the head steve Jimmy says I'd sure like the pleasure of killing that son-of-a-bitch you don't have to he's already dead see they sent Five and Rood up to the same camp on the same bus cause how was the visitor going to prove he wasn't colored the guards even gave them the same cell and they turned out to be buddies but the circus finally got a lawyer to get him switched to white man's jail and do short time they was able to do that cause they had some dirt on all the court people who went to this one performance and did some nasty things Rood told Five it was a dirty trick that fucker from Twist pulled on him and he made him a promise to do the rat in so one day while all the bands was working in the peas Rood found a cotton moccasin sunning himself in the shade he picked it up ain't no snake mind the visitor he's easy going and on and put it in his hat and that night he slipped it in well let's just say Smart Pants Sammy the Rat Fink from Twist met his maker that night what'd he do damnit Jimmy says I'll tell you I says every night Smart Pants slipped out of his bed to go be this other one's sweet boy cause the other one had a connection in the kitchen and he had a lot of extra food well this one particular evening Sammy decides to jimmy open the other man's trunk and while he was doing it he got caught and oh there was such a commotion and this is when Rood slipped the snake in some say his pillow others say his pants but Five says it was his pants he had took off before he went to steal and be sweet boy anyway the guard quiets the two asshole buddies down from fighting and says if there is any more noise that night everone will work this coming Sunday so everybody shut up and when Smart Pants come back to bed and got bit sometime that night and started yelling snake bit snake bit his so-called buddy that worked in the kitchen come over and knocked him out with a spoon the visitor done short time like I said and then he got Five out and sent him to India to learn all about how to charm snakes I mean he paid the whole fare there and back and now they got them a quality act worked out now that is what really happened and not a dream right Jimmy says right I says I want to know one thing maybe two he say what's that Jimmy I says how did that old lady that worked in the library know what those two tattoos were there ain't nobody that smart to know what they meant if a body were to know that she and some other ladies in her congregation spent their summer in a sd'iool bus with their priest in the Mediterranean then it would be easy to see how she could recognize the rarf and the xebec but as to what they mean that is another and a very complicated question the tmmbones of Wagner are making me forget my explanation they are making me remember my dream where I am gazing into the pool of water where the ballerinas are weaving the backs of their hands to the glow of the balefire the trees of dried blood making on the clil'foh moon you whoremonger maker of thieves mirror of dogs' breath a sanctus in the loins of my dream the astrolabes where I see the circulation of the red liquid in my fingers where I am lain out naked to the dancers bowing and heaving great typhoons of hair over their shoulders I see myself on my dolmen but I will tell Jimmy what he asked for do you remember me telling you what a rebus is Jimmy yea I kind of recall what one is but why don't you put that cave man story on me again and I'll bring it up to date and get the picture he says I will do that but I want to point out that what I will be saying is what the astronomer has told me and what I have pidted up from my eleven girl friends and twenty-two pen pals all over this world let it be known that I Francis will explain to you however I will not violate the secrets of the rebus cut that shit out and tell me he says before men could speak they enjoyed confounding one another with signs they enjoyed this as much as a mirror enjoys an image as much as the evening like a ship enjoys its sapphire grave they came to this not out of folly or spite but love the love in their own eyes like rivers of no return and the other eyes like two dead moons so it is that some youth who had grown old before his time due to the barnacles of sleep to the impossibility of anyone comprehending his dreams as he remembered them at dawn decided to retell them not as a member of a dwelling or a tribe and the matching of hands but in a manner where he made something more than was there before he forgot about fish between his legs and the fog in his head he embarked on the water of his soul alone he went out among sharks bringing things into his bosom and making them one he walked around at night pointing at things he allowed himself to be ravaged by wild beasts and the beasts allowed him to mount them say they started that stump breaking away back uh boy he says I wasn't talking about putting their heads over the mantel he began to wail out his dreams from the rocky crags he began to dance them out in the afternoon while the others were hunting he began to bring home more game than the rest and thus gained respect he began to be thought of as a devil by some and a god by others he began to spit on the hot chunks of stars that buried themselves in the earth he began to clip his fingers in violet blood and write his dreams by a light in a cave he wrote them in the dark also he began as a mark in the dust not a word he began to collect bones and clay and hair and then one day he put things together and the others threw rocks at him until it stayed there while even he was gone they looked at it it was a combination of three dreams that he did not have to go back and perform over and over like making a chorus in the pond with a stone and making an animal yell no it was this when the moon was full he drew a circle in the cave he came outside and cut a hole in a tree and looked at the moon through it he had a fit of laughter that caused so much commotion someone had to knock him out he got up and went to a mountain and never came back they could hear him laughing and weeping and yelling at the butterfiies he learned to track the dinosaurs and check out their shit he knew the ones to watch out for night was nothing to him but a song one day while he was dancing he saw people picking lice off each other and pointing at a stump he had carved into an oval he pushed loose some rocks and started another fit of laughter they tried to come after him so he ran off and for a year he carved something on every cypress knee he saw in the early morning fog his army of carvings was a sight to behold the tribe thought it so horrible that only once a year was anyone allowed to look upon it and this was always a young girl who hadn't been taken by a man yet she would return to the cave and tell the others what she saw one of them when she was finished would creep up behind her and beat her in the head with his cock until it got hard then they would put a knife in her mouth and make a mark on her neck and set her upon a wild beast that looked like a horse and with a sharp branch puncture the horse in the eye and the girl in the side they knew the blood would draw the tigers the youth saw these goings am one too many times when it came time for the tiger to leap upon her he leaped on the tiger of course he was almost eaten alive but he was now better than anyone else they wanted him to be back they said they wouldn't laugh at him all he wanted was the girl he got her and left now they could hear both of them dancing around in the snow leaving mysterious trails this made the others so mad they decided to ambush them 155 IZIO an it took them a year how to figure this out all the while the youth and the young girl were fishing everyday when the appointed time had arrived for the two to be done in the others licked over each other and clicked their heels already the youth had created two different symbols or sets of symbols for two Ways that were closely related he noticed that when he practiced his fighting with his knife he moved it from one hand to the other this would make a tiger or a man turn his head and follow it with the eyes one day he saw his reflection in the water while he was doing this and it looked like he was throwing many knives from one set of hands to another he thought now this looks like a man myself not a man yet balancing apples or making sticks dance in his hands as he looked at himself he saw that he could do this without looking at his hand of course he could see his hands in the water but he could look at his eyes if he could do this without looking at what he was doing then the enemy would fall prey to his eyes before he used the knives the last day the girl and the man were together he saw a tiger crouched behind him on a cliff he saw it open its jaws and leap he had spun round and was ready with his weapon before the tiger was firlly extended in the air of course he could have gashed his neck open but he didn't he let the tiger go he dodged out of its way so as to gather more information about the habits of the tiger he formed an elaborate rebus commemorating this experience with all the elements he had heretofore known about now he was getting somewhere for the weapon that he juggled was what he would sever the tiger's jugular with in his dreams at the time these two words were as far away as sound cameras but he still could see things and hear things and so he'split the rebus and made a rebus for each thought later that afternoon the tribe using one of his own tricks a simple law of motion but an elaborate construction to them rolled a twenty ton stone down upon his wife she raised up on her arms and looked down upon her crushed legs and with her tongue pointed to two things crawling out of her belly a day or so after she died he cut two of his fingers offi for the girl child died too because one of the others' dog got her and buried them and his Family members in a wooden tree and set it afire it burned on for days untold and when the channels of blood of the two girls burst in the heat a multitude of streams fiowed out of the hollow tree gushing out the knots like corks and flying fish and sharks danced on their tails like dolphins after the sweet juice and bears and horses and tigers pranced around in a circle on their hind legs with honey on their pates and hooves and this put such fear into the tribes who had gathered to celebrate their victory that they all crawled home on their bellies and not one fly remained in the land when they left they carried them with them like tongues and in their retreat they came upon a mother wolf as large as a bear suckling her brood and what they did was peel the hide off the cubs while they were alive while their eyes were still closed and under the not forgotten spell of that other world that dream world the youth seeing this removed the two stumps of his fingers from the boy child's lips his sustenance thus far and took him to the mourning she wolf the weeping mother and set him down to one of her gorgeous tears and as the winds blew he dreamed and this became a reccurring rebus as the three or four or five whatever the number was of two humans and a handful of animals wandered throughout the unexplored dreams of the living the treks over the plains became like waves they were so many often times while the child played with the tiger and the wolf the youth would lay back in the shadow of the great mare and anticipate the next rebus he would watch his son get down on all fours and lope like the animals now for some reason he knew it was time to tell the child of the rebus the rebus that would lead to all rebuses he dreamed of a time when his son who was all the sons that ever were and will he would be enticed by the same enchantresses challenged by the same sword lodged in water in stumps in rocks in trees in other men and he thought strange that the names of these things come to me and 1 do not know them even as he dreamed the sources of rivers and the components and cells and veins of his son's rebuses he saw the baby fat of the underbelly change into muscle and the cheeks molt with black shadows he saw with astonishment his son lift his head at the same moment the animals did when the musk of the sea sailed up their nostrils fiared like concave mirrors in his loins he trembled for his youth which was thousands upon thousands of years old now and he wondered as he watched the morning and the evening subside how he had come to know so much ' with his still finger he would make his last rebus in this life one of the stumps put to the mouth of his son which made the son remember his first rebus and his last rebus all I can say hereafter is that the journey has never ended it is going on even to this day it is being undertaken there are two more parts that conclude those parts that made the latter possible but I haven't finished reading the letters fi'om my friends properly one is from a boy in Japan and the other is from a boy in India jimmy says that Hindoo who lives on the mountain in a orange parachute yes and then there is a letter I'm expecting from Arabia I can say that while reclining in the astronomer's observatory and listening to the harpsichord compositions of Francois Couperin I heard another a more sombre piece being played on another harpsichord as it were I left the lighted dome and entered the dark corridor leading to the planetaritu'n and there if my memory serves me rightly I heard D'Anglebert's Tombeau de M. de Chambonnieres and the last image of the last rebus which was the first rebus of the son was made known to me the child looked over his left shoulder and saw something if he had looked over his right shoulder there is no telling what the world would be today all I know is that he saw what was probably the first crew the first seamen of the seas and all twenty-seven of them were pissing on a ship yes they were peeing side by side upon the charred and upturned hull I could of course give the description of the design a cyrna an ogee arch but that is another rebus in itself what I will say for now is the child put out with these men in a ship that he helped construct while his father died on the beach where I will take up from here is when the child is a man and living among men the first seagoers of the seas you go get me some johnny paper jimmy says I still don't know what the fuck you are talking about but I just ain't in the mood to mess with it today as I walked up the road to the store with the money for the paper I saw in my dreams the astronomer showing me the fine blooded unicorn on his wrist I saw a compass untouched in years I saw a catamaran in the foreground of the water going blue and the dancers of the dream were hiking over the side I saw men tasting the substance that dripped from underneath the engine of their truck and I knew where I was I saw bets being made I saw cartridges ejected as I walked along I remembered the stone over my dolmen I saw negroes dreaming in the open road with white dust in their nose hairs I saw my fingers two years ago when I was ten smelling like hickory wood with my palms full of spit like the fire I saw the sweet animals I killed and cleaned I heard the spirituals being sung outside Indianola I watched the didts slipping through the belts of boatrnen I smelled the strong coffee of the hunting camps I saw what stuck to my ribs I saw the jitney cabs broke down I heard my grandmother playing Chopin I saw the winters gone by where I knelt in front of the hearth and looked through the annuluses of screen mesh I dreamed I saw the burial of Beowulf I thought I saw a knight with a fiaming sword it was only a man in a welder's helmet fixing a bulldozer track I gave the chinaman the dime I took the toilet paper back to Jimmy I went back to the porch I called out to him'Jimmy there's got to be one thing I'm right about I heard shots fired last night he laughed and told me to look at the wall in the shack I looked through the broken window 1 saw the pattern of buckshot in the tar paper and calendar and Virgin Mary and Yogi Berra I felt sick to my belly like I had the worms 1 went back to the porch swing I looked at the clouds the devil was whipping his wife Jimmy pulled out a knife and threw it into the tree in the front yard it quivered there for a long time I dreamed of a thousand pocketwatches and I was pouring salt on them like slugs for no reason Jimmy slapped the shit out of me he yelled as loud as I ever heard him yell like he was crazy he looked at me real close and he said Frankie louder than that he says ain't life sweet man coasted down the road on a bicycle with a mudfiap he was singing blues before sunrise and tears standing up in my eyes shit I've seen all kinds I've seen baptizings at the levee where a big woman will take a preacher down why I've seen them get the cross around their neck hung up on a root I heard tell of a white deacon who kept up a awful preaching he kept stepping back into the river saying come and be drenched in the spirit I'll be damned if the fool didn't step off in a blue hole and ain't never been seen since yea I've seen the one get dunked get snake bit before I've been out there a half dozen times myself and I've felt the gars brush up against my leg I seen a man get religion driving a bulldozer I seen him drive the Cat in the bayou shit they ain't even any point in talking about it what do you think somebody got an eye put out ha ha 0.2. was the oldest so he ran the show he was the boss Jimmy was next I guess me and him could have told him what to do since it was we was white but we never thought of it anyway he was the oldest and the best daddy was going to send him to college he read all the books mother gave him he was a photographer he got a developing set off a comic book we made pictures at night in the tent I got a telescope and the complete songs of Roland Jimmy got a beat-up car and a gun Baby Gauge got some cool shoes Melvin got sick and a coat with a knife in the pocket lucky stifi" Ray Baby's folks were too poor so he didn't get nothing so I gave him the radio I got last year so I cried Born in the Camp With Six Toes got to go see his daddy in prison he took him a pegleg he said was made out of elephant bone it showed a herd of deer crossed the levee my sister has all the luck Emma got the pistol back the same one she got took away from her for shooting a man she got a new dress for sundays Louise Fazenda sent my sister a ring and a brooch and 100 U.S. Savings Bonds 1 gave daddy a new Panama hat I slipped Charlie B. some dice Mose Jackson got murdered so did 3080 there could have been a fiood in the spring I gave mother The Poetry of Emily Dickinson and kid gloves I know she woke up one night she said look Frankie at the cross in the heavens it was as she said the cross was a fiaming mast that is what it was like to my friends I gave a surprise to the secret pact of warriors I gave dried rattlesnake hides l tacked the skins out on an old barge plank everyday I put salt on them everybody had a rattlesnake hatband i had a hat with twenty-seven kinds of pop and beer bottle caps on it the first day we got back from camp I walked in the Peabody and tipped my hat Daddy said the woman was a whore but she would appreciate the thought Memphis is alright with all the parties and all I was supposed to go to Cotton Carnival but I let Howard have it because he was fat and his mother gave me five dollars I didn't like the cross-eyed girl they had in my grade besides these young ones are alright for falling in love with but the older ones give that hoochie coochie I'm a man Bo Diddley Jimmy says when I'm in Greenville with him I tickle their palms that's pretty cool he says I drink beer and smoke and all that shit one night we riding around me and Jimmy with a bunch of colored caddies we must a put two hundred miles on that man's Thunderbird Archie Lee knew how to turn the mileage back he said De Juan laughed cause he already unhooked it Jimmy say let me drive man he was drunk too we all got out and peed right in the middle of the road how about that for fun when De Juan has his chin on the back of the front seat turning up a pint like a rooster drinking rain water and we are fish tailing through some man's burnt up cotton and drowned soy beans I'd like to take a moving picture of it I'd get a stunt man to ride the hood so he could get a picture of the faces you know they ain't no curves you got to make your own I wouldn't play no juke music I'd set a classical piece to it Island of the Dead by] can't spell his name he's Russian over yonder way back in the mist of the evening once we were riding like that clean through them woods stands an old mansion they use for a country club now no cotton around it for awhile they made a 18 hole golf course then you get to the cotton 1 want to tell you can't no pro find his ball during picking time if he loses it no sir if you are just traveling through as I'm sure you are don't even fiash a five at a caddie there ain't no use well we seen this place burning the smoke was winding around like a staircase and the fire was like a chandelier and the evening was going into the mouth of the night like a panther the house was headquarters for my daddy's camp fifty years ago when they used mules instead of cats the house was a home and a headquarters during the civil war we all watched it burn from a distance we got up close on it and a wall of an outbuilding they used for a locker room had fallen De Juan says look at that hundreds of bags of golf clubs burning Archie Lee smiled like he played an ace I believe somewhere in some backwater fishermen with fingers cut so deep and divided like railroad tracks was watching the old timber burn like a ship I believe they was checking their lines and bringing in a lots of catfish that night it was somewhere in Mississippi I know that we laughed and laughed for most of a three quarter hour until someone in the backseat moans haw me like he was crying we only cruised home you might of asked if you was from the east or west or north now why didn't you guys run out through the fields and lend a hand with a bucket cause my friend that'd be like swimming out to a burning ship we was all too young to die and still is but we all will give it a chance wasn't no bucket nohow yes yes shiver my timbers I want sardines for breakfast and a lemon for lunch for a afternoon snack I'll get in a fight and you can keep my supper warm for three days I'll take six foot of ground sometimes a lonesome feeling gets me in a mighty good hold you know a lot of the way peoples live is a pile of shit don't put a After Six around my back I'd rather shoot the bones with the caddies the help is always better than the ones in the bow ties the loner that is me I loan out pieces of my heart like tickets to a picture show where there ain't nothing on the screen but solid BLACK did I ever tell you about Denton that's my first cousin my age real cool got a Letter in everything including Love man First String six pairs of shoes his pants is so tight and his billfold so thick he can't even get it in his back pocket man that's what I all got it made we drive down to the levee and play chicken dragging for five dollar bills there's only one person run us off the levee and that's Jimmy new we pulled a fast one on him once we hid Charlie B. in the back seat under a blanket and he drove Jimmy wrecked that night well we always show up late see bad manners to get there early at a dance get this me and Denton at a Ball showing up drunk at a Cotillion see and the girls really dug it we don't dance though we just loosen up our ties and go over to the bar slip the man a five he gives us a toddy and we go to gambling craps and slot and cards when we get through we done lost our ass to the nigger and I want to make amends you is got to see and he is known by THE got it nobody can beat him in poker or black jack once he gets the deal you might as well take off your studs and give him your cuff links too he is the bartender that tends to all in the future he gone tend to me I know but he don't know I got the power I lose on purpose so nobody will know if they was to find out it'd be all she wrote for me yes one of these days Roundtree gone do me a favor you see that look on his face it ain't right he ain't in no good mood with the white jacket and all and him that can play the piano no it ain't right he's studying long ago he was in the Jew's house working on a song see the man had a piano and the one I call Roundtree is thinking what happened to all those tunes in my head and the Jew is looking through a magnifying glass at his stamps then he look up with the big eye oh yea he remembers the big eye and he say to Roundtree that couldn't be a train could it and Roundtree who had predicted bad weather the night before at the juke joint saying hell naw ain't no freight train coming through heah got to be a tawnaydo him thinking how he jumped up thinking about his boy by hisself at the shack and him smiling at Denton beating the socks off him at craps but not really high inside but thinking about the tornado not the good looking girl or her daddy who is buying that is asking for her first drink he thinks as she has been ripped and robbed of her virginity but he don't know it and even while he mixes it and smiles saying there you go little missy he's thinking about that day at the Jew's house and him saying come on Roundtree let's get into the shelter that what the old man call the storm cellar but sometimes calling it like he calls other things you don't have common use for the Shtoorem over and over without the the and Roundtree all mixed up shaking his head naw it ain't no train and not knowing if the Jew is talking about the tornado or the storm cellar all the while the old fellow saying like he's still asking the question Shturem or not and Roundtree knowing the funnel probably done bounced off Albert Franklin's levee and gone set down in Spider's bean field but the Jew still wants to know so Roundtree thinking now the jew word for train of which there is none is Awpdahkh so he is shaking his head no Jew no Awpdahkh and the Jew holding out his hands and saying even as the roar and trainlike sound approaches no Opdakh and Roundtree saying nah man but in such a hurry the old Jew thinks maybe he wants to get somewhere which indeed he does so the Jew now saying as he is thinking it this is what it must be just a Tsug and so saying Tsoog to Roundtree with a smile since the lonely fellow lonely for such along time now I think then is happy that someone is come to pay a visit to his friend the piano player and Roundtree mistaking Tsoog for tornado damnit all he thinks he don't know jew talk so he nods yes so to speak but I know this without words being spoke I know it past for sure and present certainly and sometimes even in the future I know it even if it's in a different tongue I know it if I got a whiff of it like you would give to a bloodhound say then I can follow it once I get the trail it was dark as all get out Roundtree thought taking Denton's money and beating out a tune and nodding when the father hugged his daughter the debutante and my boy the only one I got of any woman the only one I had was on the porch steps or under the house I know it and the Jew motioning come on I'll take you to the train the one that was not and even if it was it wouldn't have arrived until three-thirty that morning as the freight don't run through these parts too much no more and so the two of them got on the bicycle and the Jew having second thoughts about Roundtree telling him that there wasn't gone he no storm that his relatives was coming on the train and as they both pedaled the Jew turning around and pointing back to the house as if to say they are welcome to stay at my home to have a drink and to refresh there if you would like but Roundtree taking his meaning to be maybe I should go back and get into the storm cellar while you go fetch your boy maybe it would be faster going and coming both if I did that and so Roundtree nodding in approval so the Jew dismounts and runs backs to the house saying in jew talk I hope he's right in any case let him meet his kin by himself I'll tidy up the house and crank the Victrola up so they will have something to greet them when they come to the door Roundtree thinking all this as he looks at himself drying the hollow stem glasses they have just toasted the white girls with at the country club in the mirror it wasn't none of his fault I can't say that he thinks how could it a been he meant well it took me time to talk wid him I lost time but he meant well and him remembering it dark as all get out dark as the tailfeathers of a blue andalusian rooster it was he thought that when he opened the last bottle of Sparkling Burgundy with a fooup and the cork came out the cork he puts in a cigar box and saves for the cooks and maids so they can use them for fishing bobber that's how my boy flew away the wind picked him up and sucked him away and he went like that offen his pet pig's back the one he was riding out to meet me on that boy of his that weren't old enough to know the difference tween new year and the fourth so he had them sparklers lit it took him awhile under the house with the matches on account of the wind but he done it by golly him saying look yeah pappy look at these spoklahs you buyed me ain't they sweet it dark so I can light them now can't I pappy as I said the boy knowing it's got to be dark after midnight on the first of the year but having it all mixed up with the fourth and him and the pig and the pink sparklers sucked right up like the wind was a carp eating duckshit on the bottom of a cattle pond and he never seed them again not never nobody ever did didn't find hide nor hair he thought all this and even had a few fuzzy memories of what the Jew played on the Victrola what was that the old man was telling him what kind of songs was they on the old discs he'd brought over from his old country Russia the Bashkir songs was that it the songs in an untranslatable language in fact an unwritten language but songs nevertheless by a race of people fearing some kind of God no doubt but it was dark as the black hornets' nest that took away his boy and as he thought this he came out and said I say he come right out and said maybe it wouldn't be so bad if only if only the words everyone has heard and is said to themselves but mostly to others sometime in their life if only he hadn't gone away then it wouldn't be so bad that I ain't never gone play no piano in New York City no Roundtree you blackassed nigger who never been past Kansas City and then only to see a Army buddy a Army they never did let you go nowhere with cepting Texas no Roundtree he saying to hisself ain't never even had a chance to cut a record in Nashville too many people in it these days too many folks but it wouldn't be so bad if the boy had lived thinking this as he sings a melody of a man who he personally despises Nat Cole so all of a sudden he just stops not a note more does he play the people on the dance fioor stop and look at him but he is far off looking out the picture window onto the golf course and swimming pool next to it looking at the two boys belonging to his new and third wife fourth if you don't count the one he had in Texas Roundtree Roundtree who it was once said of he had the booginist finger in the delta but now he sees them the caddies with one foot up against the wall and he knows he won't cut no record and they won't mind him a bit he knows that until the country club decides to get rid of him whenever they find or hear of somebody new who can do it all too like he has done it these so many years they will fire him and hire the new one oh yes he is thinking he'll be doing this probably the best he'll ever do just playing what they want behind the bar the money is fine though he thinks taking it off the underage rich folks kids who just gamble to be doing it all under the legal age so they give him the big tip so they can drink and he sells them that no count powder they think is Spanish Fly and now word has got round to some of their fathers even about it and they is wanting to purchase some too so they say to get the spoks fiying gin wid they wives so now he has to get hold of the real thing if there is such a thing but he knows he's still got one thing going he still has his looks he ain't lost them yet a penny will still bounce off his belly like it would the top of a pie he gets it from those he won't talk about the ladies that come in and never make the fifth hole before they take to the bar he hasn't lost that but all and all that ain't what he thinks that ain't nothing of what he really wanted to do just play just sing go to New York to Harlem a place he'd dreamed of and make it big but he knows that now and I know he knows it but he don't know how come I do yet he don't but he will I just has my fingers in my thumbs to be right in my suspenders and I know and I give him the fifty cents and he thinks what evah happened to that Jew and it is New Year coming up soon for sho but it wouldn't be so bad working at the country club if his boy was alive but he ain't he thinks and I am thinking Roundtree will do it he'll be there when I need him I know he will he don't know it now but I can feel it just like I can feel it when the mule kicks me in the side or when 1 get a bad hold on the bat and get a good piece of the ball I can feel it on my forehead irredeemable as the astronomer has taught me to say like the raindrops after it has quit raining tick tick tick on a saddle or a papersack and the horses and their riders with their brandished swords jump into my eyes as if that grey sea creature in my head was the thick of the battle oh yes I can feel always have and always will not I hope just like the bad food at the orphanage I feel it how after the meals feeling it I would sit in the windowsill it was awful big windows you see and sit there with my thumb in my mouth not sucking like the rest do but turned over the other way clicking my thumbnail with the permanent tooth on the bottom in the silence of the attic room the dormitory on the fourth fioor I'd do that and do that until I took the notion to bite the nail off and I would I'd beat down with what teeth I had like ['5 trying to get ahold of a knot in a fishing line and pull sometimes it'd take most a minute to pull it off but it'd come and it'd bleed too like never you mind and you couldn't stop it and then I had to do my chore the swiftest one I had not no hard labor to it or nothing but it was the one I hated most and especially right after supper with the sick feeling in my belly on account of that mush food that tasted like puredee shit and I hated that job the one that would look easiest to you if you was to compare it with all the rest I's made to do but the only way I could do it once a week without throwing up is if I'd bite a nail off and soon I didn't have none left so I got to where I could bite my toenails oEwithout feeling no pain so when I walked down the fiight of stairs into the dark hall where there was a big nook and there stood like an evil and wicked king no a brutal general the grandfather clock that had to be wound so the ones that run the place told to me lucky I was run off from that place or I might a plucked an eye out to keep from winding that thing up how I'd go to that place and get the key and the only way I could keep my mind off of getting sick if I didn't have the pain is if I'd pretend the key was a knife and the slow levorotatory movements I wound with was just a working that blade in his gut but he was tough he never yelled in pain once except for the sound like a ship's bell like him an admiral giving commands and each time I left some of my blood in the clock and at night I couldn't stop the tick tick tick like drops of water like a moom pitchu show you has to see over and over again without no sleep you tied in your seat and ain't nobody else there shoot they ain't even no popcorn and just you and so one night the night I stole away I taken that sardine key offen my neck and the St. Francis medal too the one that fool give me foe he passed out and I went down to where the clock was it a good nine foot tall and I unscrewed that which I was told never to touch and I seen all it was too it just a goddamn gimmick damn they hide I was thinking it weren't nothing but a fat tick tock it wasn't no general I seen it didn't have nothing inside but steel wheels so I puts the sardine key tween one and and it slips a gear and I bust out laughing me all along like a buck private or a prisoner of war but I had to hold it back lesting I should wake that son-of-a-bitch or one his mens up I taken the medal he give me and chunks it in a likely spot and did it mess up oh I tell you it did the hands commence to going around and around backwards and so I didn't have to pluck my eye out so I went in the hymn room and got that fan with the triangle an the big EYE on it and I cuts it out and reach under my desk and get some chewing gum and chews it a little to get the sticky back and sticks that EYE on that thang that goes back and forth ha ha I packed my bags that night and says to the ones that was up outside kneeling in the snow on account of bad manners see y'all boys I'm getting the hell out of here and I did I can feel that I did like I was trading licks with Jimmy you know when you plays if you can take a lick you can give a lick he always wins and my arm it so sore the next day I can't even hold a fork or pick up a bucket but the astronomer says these things must stop I must devote myself but he ain't never gone find me heah I'm so far down the river now ain't nobody can find shoot I don't I don't even know where I is but there is one thang for sure if I pull through ain't nobody gone have call to want me for no reason cause I'll just be a kid nothing else won't have no power ahh if that was a cottonmouf I say good show brother jolly good show like the Englishmens did before they went out and got they head blowed ofi- fimny how the water does to your skin make it all soft and white looking makes little channels in it like the wrinldes in an old man's face I declare when they ask me who was I tell them a stray that same bird been here a long time maybe he'll be a friend if I'm on top of the water my brother must be under the water he can hold his breath longer than me anyway I learned how to ride when l was twelve days old I remember but I still had a hobby horse and when l was rocking I could see my brother on one right beside me his was black and his was asleep and I kept saying wake up wake up what wrong cat got your tongue and the mammy woman would look through the peep hole and say come heah missy he doing it again and they'd all come listen to me and call somebody on eh line they done that if we's in the town if we wasn't she just asked them to pray for me it can't be another fiood again the river can't get that high I can live off scraps they don't have to be warm I scare the shit out of some people I bet all them letters in my toe sack got wet I bet nobody can read them now if somebody happens along and finds me it'll be good if they can't read the hand writing that way I won't break the Seal in some respects I'm like one them priests I can't break the Seal strange pen pals you have the astronomer tells me but he knows they got it too especially the Hindoo and that Jap I got a letter from the Hindoo right there at my feet hold on wait a second nah it ain't I got my head on it for a pillow I knowed they was something soft under there the raft timber might be waterlogged but it ain't that soft if I was to tell it what the Hindoo said I couldn't talk like this even if I was to say it like he said it I'd still have to talk right I bet the handwriting is ruint so I better recollect it one more time afore I forget it that would be the dogs if I forgot it I couldn't figure it all out if I didn't know it that's how we make it us who is like we are I send them letters that is just as important as the ones they send me now you'll be able to see right from the start the boy's english ain't so good but he's a Hindoo so it don't matter I'll cut out all the Hindoo greetings and tell it like it goes from the third page but I'll have to talk different he don't call me Saheeb or nothing like that either he's a for real Hindoo with the power just like me but it's driving him loony too friend as to the origin of that ancient race of individuals you inquired about let me begin it as it is begun in my country and recount it as it has been told for centuries and so it goes the voice of the primogenitor get out of here they told me I had no boat no weapon clothes or shelter no food I left I thought on foot it will be seven times the distance about a mile into the woods the wives turned up with those things I would need on my journey my return home may what ever spirit that it was which sustained you here in the first place guide you back to your people the oldest wife told me they were all there with gifts of farewell and with that which I had planted in their bellies already I hear your sigh it is a strange tale the lad tells us but I swear to you it is a true one they all bade me goodbye with a kiss and permission to touch those that were part mine high in a tree that evening I could see them outside the gates of the city the young and the old with children being lashed by their husbands just as they had beaten me just an hour ago I was outcast by them I who came a stranger will leave a stranger but I will leave knowing I have done what it is l was sent and found to do but before you shall know what that was I must begin with my birth the woman who gave birth to me was the last woman in our village shediedsoitisthatuntilafewyearsago I had never seen that which they call woman before being the youngest I was trained from the first day onward for my task I was taught to survive on nothing I spoke nothing I are nothing I was taught nothing I had to be made ready for my solitary voyage and I had to succeed otherwise my people were doomed long ago before anything was written it was said and acted out by the wise ones men and women that one day such a child would come to you and by coming it would take that which is vital to the rest of you away I did this I was the one however I was never taught guilt I was never made to feel it I departed in a small ship of reeds at that time I was what you would call six years the gallant men waved me goodbye I don't know how long it was that I sailed alone perhaps a month perhaps a year one day I was found in an inlet by a young girl and her mother who were bathing for a time they tried to hide me but they were soon found out I was guarded and watched clay and night by the men I was to them an animal I imagined they were men they were so unlike the men of my village these new men had their women do their work they sent them to the field while they sat around within the gates of the city and talked they spoke much faster than the men in my village yet they seemed to say nothing it would seem that a man who used his mouth a lot would develop strong muscles around it just as a man does who is given to rowing not so for these men seemed to flop around the jaws like swine what was strange about this place I wondered and then I noticed there were no young men from the women as I was sent out to work with them at the time I learned that their husbands had lost interest in the spirit of two things themselves and wine two spirits I had never known the pleasure of but was soon to know after a while I learned that these men were easily bcsuficd their minds were set to petty things as is the mind of the dung bug without even trying I was able to send them off while I learned what it was I was to learn from women and wine each one taught me something different one at a time the old and the young took me deep into the woods and lay me down they touched my body in a way only the wind could they showed me how to enter darkness I breathed hard as I would if I had climbed a mountain when they buried their heads between my legs it was like diving off a cliE never before had I smelled anything as fine as their hair whenever my member woke there was always a woman to stroke it but these pleasures did not last long one noon a girl and I bathed one another in wine and the pleasures were so great I was forced to yell out at the top of my voice she did the same before we knew it we were surrounded by the men of the village they beat her and did unmentionable things with filthy animals to that part of her where the spirit dwells I was chained and marched back to the village for their odd pleasures I was forced to mate with everyman's wife and daughter they stood in a circle and made jokes many of my ribs were broken by their feet for fear of endangering the lives of those I had come to love I submitted to their beck and call I will not state the acts I had to perform I am an honorable man now fortunate to be one of the sources of the primogenitures and so I left the city that day and so I returned to the men of my village real men if I may say so I told them that soon there would be women over wine I also let it slip out that there would be children if they were allowed to live enraged at the thought of their danger they suggested we all return at once for the women and children hold on my fellows I said living men among men has made you forget that there are some who live by the sword one fellow close to me boasted if these men are as you say they are then they shall be an easy enemy to defeat if circumstances were equal that is true my brother I told him but tell me which one of you here remembers how to wield a weapon I dare say which one of you remembers how to love a woman at this put to them as I did they shook their heads in dumbfoundedness and said you are tight little one we are no more any longer men than these swine you speak of how shall we return then we are doomed another said that is not so said I give us a plan yes give us a battle plan I will I will in good time my line fellows but first aren't you interested in hearing of the women with that there was a loud roar from each hearty fellow and much wine was put away I told the rascals you were sending me 01fi with not one word about a woman for a while the women of the village thought me quite odd not knowing what to do and all tell us little one a friend true to me said tell us what it was like to look upon a woman for the first time I cannot say my friend you will have to see for yourself in good time in good time that night there was much feasting and drinking and all listened carefirlly as I told them my plan of return but little one these women and this wine have done something to your head that is no plan at all we are all sure to be killed at such an offer as you will make them you do not understand the hate in these mens' hearts my brothers I said in their eyes what I will offer them what we all will propose will be nothing more than a show of strength a challenge I hope you are tight little one otherwise I fear we shall all be dead before we get one foot on land another one quite true said also I think I fix one will not mind dying so long as I have the sight of a woman before me there was a ring of laughter and we retired to sleep that night my dreams were filled with the women but most of all the girl the one they beat before my very eyes that morning we set out in our boats one man to each boat which was part of my plan the voyage lasted for days but it was seven times as short by water our small fieet of ships arrived just as the men were sending the women to the fields at first sight of us they fied leaving the women behind to think what would have happened to them if we were a real enemy the women were at the beach waiting for us as our prows touched my men trembled at the knees on seeing such beauty the mother and girl who found me were the first to greet me what is this little one she said how is it you come with a navy without a weapon you shall surely all be slaughtered not so kind woman said I look she said already the sloths are donning their battlegear I looked up the hill to the fortress there they were the swine all of them standing high up surrounded by the stone walls seeing the time was now or never I looked at my beloved and said where are my children her eyes went towards the water speak girl I said we have come for you and my children the mother spoke up little one all your children were murdered save one my daughter's child who gave birth to the only boy child upon hearing this I felt for the first time that which they speak of as hate if I had a sword I would have used it I looked at my men and said these words I swear to you more children will be born with that I gave the command to pour the wine each man stood in the prow of his ship the women pushed us out again from above we could hear the other men shouting look look they are leaving ready I said now we all waited for the right moment just as the sun shown brightest in the morning haze raise your goblet men I shouted salute them I said drink to the enemy I commanded toast the swine taking the glare of our goblets to be the fiashing of swords the men were prepared to surrender without a fight they threw down their weapons and ran my lads let up a resounding cheer and we put into shore once more each with the woman of his choice in his arms the old went to the old and the young to the young thus ends the tale of how a noble race of men was born in one sense a race of bastards born of men who had lived among men and unfaithful women that race of singers and makers of song we now call poets I kind of like it didn't you the Hindoo sort of has a way with words don't he I have to admit that was one of the best letters he ever wrote me though golly it's getting cold out dieer first it's cold and then it's hot if it ain't one thing then it's another oh yes it is the way things is going I'll never make it something gone get me if it ain't something gone be somebody what was that what was that put me out my misery Lawd I like to smell my mother's purse at night I like to reach my head down in it like I was a horse with a sack of oats around his neck I like to take all the bills out of her pocketbook just like a payroll stack I like to smell each one I put them the twenties over my eyes I hold them up and dream about them where they come from who had them last once I told the hypnotist I knew one of the fives was stolen sometime in the past and the man who lifted it had his throat cut in a prison cot I could feel the sheets like wet clothes on my back in the afternoon a cloudy day I could tell one of the bills stayed wadded up in a nation sack next to a fat colored woman's thigh I could see the rolls in her stockings above the knee I could see the girdle like a merry go round some of the money smells like juicy fruit gum some of it is like the perfume the actress sends mother from Paris I look at the wounded photographs and the cartridges of scarlet lipstick the leather is like what I would like to be wrapped in when they bury me at sea over the starboard side I love the cracked mirrors the pennies drowned in the bottom and the broken lifesavers the toothpicks like bowsprits I hold up the dollar bills like five cards I want you to pick one isn't it fine to have folding money that purse is like cloth hung up in a castle it has cold and secretive doors like frogs in a circle by the outhouse like the bayou tapes my own like an old sign you can throw rocks at the strap is like a whip nailed up to the wall in the old gin at night you can hear the wheels turning because my old cousin hasn't been in the Strand for twenty years he never had enough money and when he did he bought shoe polish or if he had a lot he sent it to Alexandria to help take care of his crippled sister that worked at the school sometimes I think I can fall into the purse as if it were a well with no light I would wander and wander through the circle I would touch the wet caverns I would yell moon and it would echo a thousand times and by the time it got back to me it'd be soon it is time to get up and go to school go to school go to hell hole on a second I'm free I ain't got to go nowhere now ain't that just the way it really is though you get up on Saddey thinking shit I got to go then you say wait it's Saddey and from now on brother evahday gone be Saddey no more sucking hind tit for me I ain't kissing nobody's ass no more so I take my hands out of the purse I put the lovely money back I might steal a dollar now and then she'll never miss it oh Sunday how I hate you like an unforgiven sin great grandmother is a hundred years old in six years and taking down her hair will she make it folks my aunt with a spoon of milk of magnesia in her mouth so she can shit Elvis lives right up the street maybe they'll drag race tonight I can't load the pistol Charlie B. Lemon stole it I can't go in the attic and scare Hatti because Hatti is gone she is gone there is a body in the attic touch it I vow to spring all traps in Mississippi I vow to make it safe for all animals come now the astronomer saying you will find yourself wandering through the rainforests pulling butterfiies out of spiderwebs a lot about it he knows forget the rotten teeth in the skull sucking the nipple dry don't listen to the canticles of death the madrigals of dust on the biers don't listen forget the litanies wearing a black patch don't lift up don't look underneath the bed the water sing so long to the world where the liars are gnawing through one another's back my dreams say you will not hear them again the voices will quit gashing your underbelly my dreams like the fiight of an antediluvian spear that knows no mark like arrows on a plain in Greece like oblivious ships of death I shall walk the log in the Bear Creek Woods with my hands behind my back like I was commanding the wind singing the psalms and songs I know and have known I shall whistle up the moon in the Diamond Woods everyone I meet I will sing to I will sing to take my leave I will use what words I like I will sing do you hear me my song on the trotline my song in the bogue my song on the paddle my going in the water barrel in the ice my song like a pair of lost gloves in the river in the rose gentians in the climbing buckwheat in the pokeberries in the snaketh like a knife through a belly like a sack of fiour like a cadillac on fire like catfish talking on the fioorboard my dreams are dogs in the fog they are embarking from the spot where I lay in the fields they fioat like feather stars they wait for me on the levee they have always been true like a blood brother like saber toothed tigers with stripes like a prince when you eat my dreams they are sowbellies hopping john hoe cakes and molasses some them gallop in at night and I sweat you call that succubus with her sexual hooves that's how you get nightmare I suffer from pavor nocturnus the outworms in the soul for bait death to the tyrant I make a vow to always fight them I francis gildart knight of the levees and rivers and ships keeper of tears and virgins and horses with lucky markings I will do this even if I have to say it again somebody left two cents on the dashboard I won't go into what happened to Jimmy and me while he was in prison because Dark is going to come by and pick me up and take me to the Sunday Baseball Game in fact I see his mule kicking up dust down the way right now you know I finally figured out how they play the game without the ball and I know nobody in the big leagues could do any good with us I forgot to say they is letting me play catcher which is lots easier than being a spectator the other hind catch went to Chicago my mitt is made out of old saddle leather and I mean the pitcher can really burn them in I have to really watch his curves and submarine balls my hand is all swole up and red after nine innings I was a little bat shy at first but I found out a hickory stick up side my head don't hurt nearly as much as that ball when it hits me square between the eyes or right on the nose but now I say ball but there ain't no ball like I say but we say we got a baseball and it don't really matter I am the only white boy on the team except for Jimmy unless one quarter white counts just the other day a representative of Dr. Tichenor's Antiseptic come all the way from New Orleans cause he heard how it was our team the King Snakes don't get us mixed up with the Crawling Black Snakes they is convicts and is bad at first and lacking in the outfield hadn't lost but one of forty-nine games they was thinking about sponsoring us and giving us uniforms with The Best Antiseptic In Town across the shoulders but when the man saw one of our games and found out we didn't use no ball he said shit these crazy niggers now I seen it all and got in his car and tried to slam the door but the dust is so bad won't none of the joints and grease slip together like they do on the asphalt he just left out of here like that just like he came didn't even buy no ice to put in his air conditioner or nothing we could see his trail going back and forth like a blue racer snake for most of ten minutes he was naturally lost again like most who end up around here I guess he was mad cause it took him so long to find the place you know there ain't no real road to where we is you can look on any map and I'll bet you can't even find the name of the village we are staying in this summer and I'll be damned sure you can't find no road to it unless you got a hold of a bootlegger's map by the way we wanted purple uniforms with black stripes but I will say why he got at even six months for getting even with those peckerheads that tried to kill him you remember that chainsaw he was talking about the one that's been sitting out there in the clearing for a long time well Jimmy went and got it and took it to this shade tree mechanic he knows who is blind and part Choctaw the man got it running for five dollars and wanted to sharpen the chain but Jimmy said what he aimed to cut wouldn't take long and he could cut it dull as a widow's knife he threw the buzz saw in the back of the pick-up and went over to the chinaman's store to buy him some varmint poison then he drove down to where them white men had their honky tonk when he got there they was outside drinking beer and barbecuing drunk they might of been celebrating some holiday no they wasn't I remember now I'll tell you in a minute this here honky tank is kind of like an arbor you know with the shaved tree poles whitewashed and buried in the loam holding up the roof they got them a juke box but it don't play no juke joint music it just plays their kind of music the bar is an old fishing boat a fiat-bottom turned upside down resting on two saw-horses the place set right on the slew and they was so dumb as to put a horse shoe ring to the side so if you was to make a long chunk it'd go down the bank in the water a bunch of chickens was pecking through the goat guts that's what they was doing barbecuing goats and the pen firll of coon dogs was trying to dig under the chicken wire to get at all of that good meat some of the goats was still hanging up by the hind legs bleeding out their throat and still another one wasn't even on the pit yet and the pit now they had about fourteen of them was these fifty-five gallon oil drums split in two and hinged together again up on some scrap metal structure they had some nigger weld together for nothing they was all painted black and the reason I know this is this we seen one of their and by we I mean me and Melvin we seen one of their buddies making the barbecue pits he got the barrels at the river off a barge and he had him one of them acetylene torches going cutting through the metal now you is supposed to fill them drums up with water before you put a torch to them cause the folks up north ship that paint thinner in them sometimes the fool burnt hisself up just blew his head to kingdom come Melvin said he would this happened awhile back me and Melvin walked over to where a dog was barking we seen the man's head come off but we didn't know where it landed at sure enough it was him he still had the goggles on Melvin said man he was stupid and this here barbecue was in their friend's memory don't you know Jimmy said he saw about five more goats skinned out and hanging up on some buckthorns and he started getting ideas right then he slipped over to the dog pen and when the mean one set his nose through the wire Jimmy caught hold of the snout and pushed down on the back of his neck with the other hand and broke that coon hound's back he skinned it out real quick and waited when the men went back in to where the wash tubs fiill of beer was Jimmy crept over to an empty pit where the coals was hot he salt and peppered the man's dog and put him on the spit and put his bloody hand over his lips and broke out laughing and snook back to his truck but I forgot to say he poisoned all the other meat and the dogs too and he almost got caught doing it cause one of them mens who wasn't drunk was whitewashing some trees in the back he seen Jimmy but not what he did and he was fixing to yell hey but Jimmy was smart he reached in his pocket for nothing and when he pulled his hand back out he let about five dollars worth of change hit the ground and you probably know that when a bunch of rednecks is gathered together and drinking and one of them is working then he is the fool and would probably like to kill a few of them hisself this man the one Jimmy had shucked the spending money to had tried to kill one of them by gasoline but he set hisself a fire once he was real ugly didn't have no hair or eyelashes or nothing he was singed like a pig but he had a rich queer uncle in California that paid for him a operation but them doctors must of hit some wire in his brain cause now he's always teching himself in public playing with his private parts he's like a loony now you can yell Leo you better quit that and he'll jump and stand there like a hog until you go by I guess that's cause so many people have caught him with his hands down his pants Jimmy was going to hit the fool in the head but he put him on his bicycle and told him to ride on out the man kept wanting to shake Jimmy's hand cause nobody is ever kind to him they just poke fun at him but Jimmy didn't want to shake his old nasty fish smelling hand the fool rode away pedaling like crazy looking back over his shoulder and he ran into the ditch and some trees four times while he was waving Jimmy just saying low to himself get on out fore you get me caught now the men were calling at the fool they thought he was working they had them a naked woman calendar and was looking for fun Jimmy took this chance when he had it he poured the rest of the poison in the bucket of hot sauce and run back olf down the bank and waited he kept raising his head up and looking over the rise like a soldier waiting on the enemy to show himself he done this for a long while he wondered if anyone was going to eat them goats and especially that dog and the time went by and still wasn't nobody come out the tank finally a man and I'm telling this story exactly how Jimmy told it to me come out and basted the meat but he didn't touch a bite this made Jimmy so damned mad he run up on the man and beat him up Indian style so nobody could hear he tied him up and shut him in the dog pen where all the dogs was dying he almost give hisself away again by laughing at what he was doing but he sucked it in he crawled back to the slew and listened to their music then a fat man stole away he come out and looked around you know how they don't want nobody seeing them when they is slipping food on the side I have seen and been where these fat people will walk right up to you and invite you to eat with them they try to find some restaurant where there's not too many folks and they walk in real stiff and look around like they was hot shit and they always hold that chin out like they was shaving they do it at the movies too they pick at their face like they was trying to take the slack out of a store bought suit don't get me wrong now I ain't got nothing against fat people that would be like saying I didn't like albinoes or mexicans or cripples or string beans no I like everybody but Unferth and his multitude of descendants and I pray for them like I was knowing they was going to execute me and my friends one of these days I don't really think they got it in them to kill a twelve year old and some colored boys more or less the same age but you got to remember they done worse in other times gone by what about the sleepwalking sword babies not to mention the ATOM BUM as you know colored people is more worried about the peckerheads and the devil and the evil eye but since I'm white I get scared a studying that bum like I say it ain't all those fat folks bad they is Okie Dokie lots of the time take Fats Dominoe what I don't like is the ones that makes a habit of it asking you out to dinner to all kinds of places high and low a telling you what to eat and how to eat it one time I was asked out of the blue and I said hell yes thank you I'll take a hamburger and some grits and a pineapple soda that's what I told the waitress but while I was fiddling with the tooth pick machine he changed the order on me they always end up ordering what they want then they shove the empty plate on your side and take the full one and commence on it I tell you what's this world coming to you bend over to rub under the table to see if it is tacky or not just looking and feeling dried up gum and they try to steal something off your plate then they tell the chef bring this boy something more to eat on while I finish my dinner and they eat another plate of that shit they eat once I got took to a high class joint and I felt under the table and there was a team full of gum I guess that means that what use to be tacky is now high class it's a sight these fuckers pay your way into the show and at the best part they say go get me some more popcorn fuck it what was wrong with the fat one that come out the honky tonk was this he had what they call a gland problem so once he started eating he couldn't stop along about last year he got up to about four hundred pounds they tell me pretty soon he'll have to weigh hisself on the cotton scales at the gin Jimmy said Fat Man tore into one of those goat legs I guess that's what he called him he didn't stop eating he couldn't he had the sauce all up in his moustache and his nose in his ears and hair the fool he was grunting like he was hung up in the outhouse there he went to scratching the dingleberries in his ass he can't wipe right cause he so fucking fat and got red hot sauce all over his khaki pants I take that back them was duck he's got to get them special made at the tent place he had eat about two goats before someone coming out to take a leak caught him yelling goddamnit Stoole is eating up all the goats get a rope somebody the man only had one arm got it blowed oil: in Korea he had to use a hook you ever see anybody shake his dick ofi' with a hook I bet you they get pee all over the side of their trousers the dumb ass men come running after what they heard Stoole was doing Jimmy said when they dropped their beers little ponds of foam rose up but they wasn't no dog come a licking cause the dogs was all passed out for dead Jimmy said he shut his eyes and rubbed his hands together he said they all jumped Stoole and tied him up he was rolling around in the devil's convulsions he burned a design on his face from the grill like a fisherman's net to make sure he didn't roll around and knock someone eating off his feet they laid three railroad ties across him man I'd like to seen those idiots trying to drag Stoole away from them goats I'd like to seen them get the bellyache when they started gnawing Jimmy said it was just like the bible a whole lot of that gnashing of teeth one fool bit clean through his tongue then he spit it out like a fish bone a blue chicken eat it the music box was playing that song and Jimmy had to knock his head up against a tree when the one armed man chewed his dog the song that was playing was the one that come out by a colored man and a country singer at the same time since white people owned the radio station they told them not to play the colored version but you could get it from WDIA on your dial in Memphis it was a big deal if it ever come on the radio turn it up loud in the car and be sure your windows were rolled down this pissed the white men OK it was their theme song and some nigger was singing it but the nigger he wrote it what about that Stoole was yelling that's my song he was talking about his little girl 1 went to see my lil one dancing at the hop she was sock footed at the school sliding round on the gym fioor I heard one them boys say she fucks like a snake I whupped her good took her out to the shithouse and done it cut all her hair off with a cauter knife then he was saying why don't no one love old Stoole don't nobody love me fellers how come y'all tell me is it cause I'm big y'all think I'm soft don't you please boys what's wrong with me go get me some cookies Doyle I helped you wid] your barn last spring do me a favor untie me and let me get some that goat he was my friend too get me a drink my belly hurts for sure powerfirl I need one everyone was talking out of their head but him most cause of the poison according to Jimmy while he was telling me the story I dreamed about the civil war forget which battle but he socked me one so I'd listen to him a raft bearing a granddaddy clock was moored to a black willow in the bog and it was four minutes past six in the morning there was a whole lot of shaking going on it will be night if I see broken soda bottles in the garden of love jack in the pulpit and sweet flag in the water like stirrups like chains around my ankles if someone is pumping the water out of the accordian on the bridge I'm going to dig a hole and put the devil in it I was dreaming this when he hit me one of them saw the bloated coon hounds he wooped ambush the triggers is on the war path he done this cause Jimmy crawled around back and put the colored version of the song in the juke box he had to steal a dime out the cash drawer low down stinking black ass triggers was coming out of their mouths they was all sick as a dog unto death all the tongues swelled up and everyone was passing wind a man who had become fairly diuy said he saw the mau mau and a hovering machete the rifies were sleeping in the cab windows of the trucks like turkeys some of them were holding doubled up fists between their legs Jimmy was just laughing his ass off they seen him out in the open rocking in a regular chair under their arbor they yelled trespasser done it they called him Trespassing Dog they rolled around puking and cussed him out for ten minutes I reckon he went in the honky tonk and turned up the juice box loud as it would go he come back outside and got on the teeter totter with a fifth of whiskey he told them to go to hell after a while they wasn't yelling at him calling him the mad dog they wasn't saying he bit me or white man done it Jimmy done it or running up and down screaming mad dog mad dog they was begging for mercy asking for the vet to come see bout them and the dogs please Jimmy oh please they said on their hands and knees Jinmy went over and peed on one of them give us a break boy we gonna die if we don't see no help lots of these grown men were crying Jimmy let the emergency brakes off some of their trucks and let them roll into the slew he told them all y'all ain't worth the powder to blow you to hell come on let bygones be bygones he said bygones shit and went over and got the hide of the mean dog and walked over to one of then and said Henry Tilt this here is what's left of your dog I skinned him and you ate him ha ha Henry was crying and making the hook go like a crawdad not one man or dog died from the poison it must of been too old to kill anybody that's what I told Jimmy that it set on the shelf of the chinaman too long if it had a been me Id at sent a letter and the box top in to the company and got my money back while they was thinking they was all dying Jimmy got the chainsaw out of his truck and commenced doing what he came to do to saw up the honky tonk he done it too he cut the damned thing down like he had a crosscut saw and them watching him all the time him drinking their whiskey and cutting down their dance hall in one of the back rooms he found the piano keys and the chandelier that got stole out of a old widow woman's mansion a couple of years ago he put that in the truck bed and smiled at them the ones that took it he got in his truck with a piece of barbecued goat he hadn't poisoned and put his panama hat back on his head and drove off as he was leaving he said out of the side of his mouth so long motherfuckers I forgot to say that when he sawed the juke box he got the holy living shit shocked out of him like I say I don't really want to go into what happened to him while he done time in the penitentiary you all heard enough songs and story to come out of a prison anyway don't never get caught though at doing a crime Jimmy said cause prison is perverted he said he met more flicking wild men in one day than he had in his whole life I was riding with the man called Dark he smelled like alcohol that had been asleep and his smoky clothes that he hadn't changed for months were like ship wood when he spoke which was seldom his voice carried over the fields and the bogs and yet it was not loud it was deep like a wound or a cool well when he sang like a blue hole with no bottom the words made no sense at first but then if you looked out the corners of your eyes without looking you saw what he was singing about there might be a night snake choking to death with a chorus frog there might be women with big breasts walking at the turn row there might be water for the hands spilling out of a barrel on the back of a blue school bus it will be many years before I can tell about Dark before I can remember that low down song as the sleepy mule swayed back and forth down the road the dust curling under his wet belly I was rocked to and fi'o like a careening boat I dreamed with my eyes half closed about the practicing carnival workers the violinist and the juggler thinking about stretches of sea through their windows where they were born I saw them in time I saw them going to sleep at their work 1 saw them as children before the wars with extra spending money along a coast in Europe climbing diffs and talking about the days to come the handkerchieves tied around their necks and the sea below I felt like the wounded man being painted by the drunken artist in the picture show Odd Man Out I felt like he did when he remembered the words fi'om the bible and he stood up amidst the states of the living paintings and said his piece I felt the two words Power and Dominion had been betrayed by the lawyers of property I dreamed that these days the union carpenters in the suburbs have joined the same houses together for the sake of joining them I believe there is no sanctuary for me and my strays in the subdivisions and I dreamed the cathedrals built by the unknown I am like grass cracking their concrete I am a horse confused on the highway I am carved by a blind negro in the shanties where I learned to speak and the ones from town are automobiles made in the assembly plants of Detroit and my brother is the bleeding child of hit and run he is bleeding in his sleep I am the rider called death I sit in the saddle with Dark the negro and his crazy blues sinks down like a diver into my belly of dreams like terrible adventures like unknown poets going down with their ships centuries ago in the kingdom of dreams where the unicorns and the oars tried to roll over on the beach I was dreaming to be stalked is to be rescued and to be rescued is to be stalked l was dreaming about Jimmy going back to the penitentiary in the Spring he done it again somebody fucked him and Charlie B. over so they put the quietus on them it was Saturday evening along about five o'clock Charlie B. and Jimmy was washing up out at the pump usually there is a bar of Ivory Soap in the prime jar wasn't nothing but Lava one of them yells boy get me some white soap they was the both of them naked as hell splashing cold water on one another I run down to the store about half a mile got a great big bar run back they was already drinking and talking bout what they was going to do that night hayar bastuds sending me afia soap and don't want it don't be talking that way boy I mean we done some work today I knew what they meant ain't nothing like a good cold bath what y'all gone do night but they didn't answer we was camped at that time pretty near a big town about four hundred people least it was big enough to have a Drive Inn Picture Show this here town must have been twenty miles away maybe twelve I don't know I want you to know had my eye on y'all last week I said I said this cause I figured on what they was thinking from a week back I went in with them when Jimmy got a haircut see there was this advertisement in the window saying Coming Attraction I never should have laid eyes on it neither a Easter Sunrise Service was going to be held at the Drive Inn but the night before the first sunday morning after the full moon they was going to have a all night picture show marathon which was this particular coming Saturday night I had it all figured out that's what they had in mind you might want to knock me for mnning down to that store after the soap like I did you might think I should have give them more lip uh uh but you'd done the same you'll be a bootblacking dummy when you want somebody to take you somewhere then after you get there you can tell them off why hell I learnt that from a colored boy when I was six years old which was nigh on six years ago and he wasn't but seven at the time you got to think reckon we ought to go get Tang the real cool one said ya bout that time the other real cool one said what you gone weer he said that black silky shirt then why don't you let me wear the burgundy one don't spill nuthing on it I won't he said I wonder I said real loud what I'm gone wear both of them looked at me you can wear a chinese nose guard Charlie B. said seeing how you ain't going nowhere Jimmy said I'm gone tell I said I know plenty let the sonvof-a-bitch go Charlie B. said you better get ready we got to go get Tang going to have a carload ain't we it should be explained these damned country drive inns has got them a gimmick they ain't no difi'erent from nothing else see what they do is advertise about twelve moom pitchus to get attention now you know they can't show a doun in one night except in the winter maybe unless they got some short ones oh they might once in a while on special occasions but the people they come anyway hoping they'll get to see a couple at least some of the pitchus are kind of new and ain't busted in the middle but a lots of them don't even have talking they're what you call Silents it don't matter they charge the same these fucking rednecks make a dime anyway they can about this particular drive inn now we hadn't never been to it before but you can't pass something like that up when it's just that far away you might know or have heard how they shoot a lots of these moom pitchus on Location that's so they can get free acting and won't have to build no props these here kind of pitchus are sure fire money makers so they keep shooting them over and over so the people will always come back to see theirselves even if it just shows their backside for a second or two you can be in a drive inn where they have one of these shows on and you ought to hear the folks making fools out themselves honking their horns and yelling poking their head out and laughing just listen at them there I am there I am they'll say look honey it's me that's me pumping gas see me striking a match it's sickening I believe if a hick was to walk in front of a huge mirror in a museum. all he'd see was hisself they make these so-called racial pictures that cause a lot of controversy these dumb rednecks the fucking idiots don't even know what they're about they just go looking for their face on the screen the only ones that raises a ruckus is the ones that didn't get in it and they is liable to get drunk and kill somebody them Hollywood producers ought to take that into consideration the character who is the hero turns out to be a hero to them colored people like to go see themselves too why not they're just like everybody else they carry on too when they see themselves but it's difi'erent from white people course there's always some jive cat yelling but the nodding and humming like they do like they was in church well it's different as if they was listening to what the pitchu is meaning as if they was looking for real at what the people was doing like they identify with the character of course they bound to do that sometimes cause it is them I want you to know they ain't paying no quarter just to see theirself I know that in Memphis in the colored theatres they play Hallelujah and Baby Doll over and over they play Intruder in the Dust too which is my all time favorite this way all the folks that live over in Mississippi can come see themselves they make a lot of money on them just like the white shows do I have seen all these pitchu shows many times I know a lot of people who was extras in them Tangle Eye the root picker you get to see walk by in Hallelujah and Charlie B. hisself is in Baby Doll and that's a lot newer it don't have no busted ends and the talking comes out of the lips right them two was a couple they was claiming to show the night before Easter a lot of folks bound to had been coming I thought I was going to have to beg them to let me go with them but you saw how easy it was when you got something on someone Tang was waiting for us in front of his tent he got in the backseat with me Charlie B. and Jimmy sat in the front I could tell on his breath he was already drunk hi you Mr. Tang evening boy what you want to drink Tang give me a beer Charlie he said they had three cases of beer and six bottles ofwhiskey looks like I'm gone be driving back tonight I says to myself Charlie B. was claiming he could a been a moom pitchu STAR he said they wanted him to go out to Hollywood 1 don't know if he was telling the truth or not I don't even know what he looked like in the pitchu we just cruised around waiting for sundown Tang was mumbling to himself he was in a different mood cause that pitchu he was in was a long time ago one and you could tell he was recollecting the past it didn't take us long to get there I guess cause I was excited and as we got nearer to the Drive Inn itself we saw other carloads of negroes going past us they were sitting down low in the back and the mud flaps drug the road as they went past they would wave hi y'all said ain't gone show Baby Doll nite and the old man Tang would raise up and look out the window Charlie B. said shit Jimmy another car went by a woman said tell Mr. Tang Hallelujah won't play this evening I looked at him I said you hear that Tang he nodded his head Charlie B. told Jimmy to pull off to the side and he got out and flagged another car down he asked them did the ticket man tell you he wasn't going to be on how y'all know you try to get in a man said naw man we can read the sign they wasn't posted I yelled out maybe he run out of letters lots of them is broken he's missing a lot shut up Jimmy said I said he can't spell anyhow he has to get his son to put the letters up they told me in town about him Charlie B. says y'all means you didn't even buy no tickets maybe after you buy a ticket he'll tell you what's on Tang mumbled damn ticket taker he didn't think I was paying him mind he thought I was listening to the talk going on outside the window damn ticket taker night foe Eastuh ain't going no show that man ain't gone let no nigger in ain't even gone let a man see hisself on moom pitchu that son-of-a-bitch and here it is dem niggers ain't even tried that gate he spit that's the reason he said even as evem shoot they know the sap ain't gone let um in night foe Eastuh like I say I had never been to this Drive Inn before none of us had but what the old one was saying was making sense Charlie B. was cussing mad I figured he was fixing to knock somebody's block OH I said we can still go we can still go what y'all so blame upset for they got ten more shows I seen them in the Barber Shop no call to back out ain't that right Tang the old man he just snort out his nose like a horse so what those two y'all in ain't on tonight we'll catch then down the river somewhere won't we I was really shining shoes cause I had my heart set on seeing them moom pitchus and I had this hunch that on this night before the Lord rose again I was going to see twelve shows I knew down deep they don't usually do it nowhere except in the winter if they ain't closed down but I knew it I just did and so I said you like Harpo Marx don't you Charlie B. he's your buddy ain't he they got one with him in it I know Tang you can't tell me you don't like them no talking moom pitchus they got one called the Hunchback of Notre Dame Jimmy I know you crazy bout James Dean they got one with him that right he says yea they got the Count of Monte Cristo too night don't seem like a total waste does it Charlie said there's another one 1's :1 Fugitive From a Chain Gang I go to see that one you hear Jimmy I hear he says I ain't never hear of what they call Wild Orchids or The Southerner l have Jimmy says Tang mumbled these words they didn't hear a damn white man caught the catfish what about Dracula y'all like that nah you ain't getting me out the night foe Easter looking at that Charlie B. said they got one of the Charlie Chan's sure it ain't Mr. Motto Jimmy says I says I don't know hey they gone play Viva Zapata Charlie B. says no I says I'd like to see me some Edward G. and some Peter Lorrie Jimmy says they crazy did you see that one where he was always combing his hair with a silver comb yatdawg that hand coming after him while he's playing the piano in that castle I see them both I says what else Tang says that old time Buccaneer ain't that got Boris Karloff Jimmy says hell no I say he's Frankenstein shit I know he's Frankenstein in his spare time boy but he plays a pirate in one them shows they got one by Edgar Allen Poe I says he didn't ever write nothing bout pirates he says that was Mr. R. L. Stevenson don't you think I know that I says wait a minute I says I recollect something about a pirate don't make no difI'erenoe he was dead drunk and a dope fiend anyway tell me what else on the one of his is Murders in the Rue Morgue don't want to see it Charlie B. says sound scary sho is a bunch of shows you reeling off Jimmy says I might a been looking on next week's on some of them but it seemed like they had that one where Lionel Barrymore keeps them people in a jar he shrinks them up like dolls want a beer Tang Jimmy said yea he says then he tells me that John was the one I took to what kind Jax boy my Brand open me one Charlie B. held on the wheel and Jimmy got the opener and when he opened it beer spewed all over due dashboard get me a nuthun Tang said hey Jimmy let me drink the rest of it I says can I have a swig give me a drag boy you too lil to smoke and drink Tang said I was talking out of line cause I done talked them into going to the all night shows but when we pulled up under the sign and waited in the car line all they had in bad spelling was science fiction and hillbilly music they weren't another colored person around let's get out of here Charlie B. said fuck Jimmy said damm they lying hides anyway I yelled go to hell as we peeled out loose chat went all over the rednecks cars one of them yelled hey look at the Trespassing Dog and his pack of niggers somebody else said Wolfman even got a coon's tail on his radio pole I shot them two love birds and Jimmy fishtailed a little give me that pistol he said get on out of here Jimmy Tang said I ain't getting killed on account of you I said give me that pistol listen to the old man Charlie B. said go ahead and shoot him Jimmy I said ya you do the shooting so we get shot Charlie said turn yo radio on Tang said ain't even got a goddamn war movie on Jimmy says not noun western either Charlie B. says Tang says next store you hit stop and let this boy run in to get me some lunch meat I hadn't had no supper yet y'all come for me too early yessuh Jimmy says didn't I tell you Jimmy was cool you should have seen the car he had it rode low with tear drop fender skirts spider web decals on the headlights and naked women on the glove compartment glass packed pipes with chrome extension and sponge rubber dice hanging ofi- the rear view mirror when him and the B. dressed up I mean they was cool they took a long time in front of the mirror until everything was just right and fine the night went on and we cruised on they was getting pretty high The Wolf and Midnight and I just sort of let their talking drift off and I just leaned out and looked and let Tang mumble and I just did that a wash woman was emptying her scrub bucket and I thought about how you want to kill yourself on Sundays and how much I hate going to school in Memphis it was kind of like a haze when the pilots go home when she wrung out the mops and the sponges it was like lifting weights except it was useless like when they put one of those bars up in their closet those men that sell in the city and it's like they do it cause they ain't got nothing else to do except make money and she's got to do it to earn I have to admit I might be wrong about a lot of things though I might be prejudice so don't pay me no mind when I get a idea as we drove on I was only remembering this because for a few seconds it was daylight and hot and I could smell the mule and me and Dark was all riding to the basede game that is the mule he was riding in his second mind cause we was on him but this only lasted about as long as a pop up fly for soon it was the cool of the darkening evening after a day of work it was the night before the first sunday after the full moon and my lord he would be risen tomorrow on the morrow as they say and I was riding alone with an old negro born in the 1880's like my father and a young negro born in the 40's like Jimmy and I for a moment was silent as Sleep my unknown brother and I am Death and I felt in were to get out of the car that had just now just a fish rolling over moment ago left the new road and struck a path into the woods that if I were to open the door and go touch one of the dogwoods it'd be as soft as a doc I felt as if the warm sides would move slowly like a dream everything would move ever so slowly like a river guide's scull I could read the letters on the hubcaps and if I could do that some old man sleepy eyed cause his whiskey didn't have no ice was laying on a high back couch and day dreaming it was hot I tell you he was thinking about a fight or a pistol or a horse I could watch Tangle Eye's adam's apple as he took the long draw on his beer bob like a fishing cork and how complete how as the astronomer says circuitously perfect and returning like a cottontail always running always fieeing always vanquishing his hunter within the same circle of ground that the fishing bobber was usually a liquor cork anyway now the hunter can shoot the hunted or the hunter can shoot his dog or sometimes even the hunter can shoot another hunter or he can miss yes I could pee on a flat rock and the mayfiies and mosquitoes would drift away I could trot down the river and see the lantern in the fisherman's skiff I would listen to his voice like I have a thousand times carrying over the water as he counted his beads to the fish as he said his rosary of hooks even now with my flat palm riding the wind out the window like a ship on the sea just as a bug a snake doctor or a pair in tandem hits it square and leaves its or their insides there in my hand like a great bird beating itself to death in the high rigging of a mast don't you know that I know I ain't doing no such a thing I'm riding a goddamn shackling cotton mule with Dark but even as the rabbits scoot out of the way of the cockeyed headlight still I could know what will become of me I could feel the splinters in the oars I could see the faces I knew like the back of my hand turn around in the light now we have left the woods and are turning onto the good road again we are going back to the Drive Inn at least we are going by there on the way to someplace else and if we are doing that going to some store for to get Tang's supper then we aren't now because I have just looked up towards the screen and seen before I tell you what I saw I should tell you the rebus I found out a very long time ago in my father's camp are many tents I see I saw and I will be seeing since I'm on die mule anyhow but what I saw was a face in the moom pitchu they said they were going to have but they didn't have we thought but now they have and I say heh Jimmy look that's Dean I say I know that face anywhere what's gone on Jimmy says shit yes it is Charlie B. said y'all want to turn in there they might be having some those others fine with me Jimmy said under his breath Tang said they just put that other shit up there so they could turn those niggers away shit I know he cut a hard left and we pulled into the ticket window he said put your beer down before we get there he turned the headlights 05' he said three dults and one child and handed her two dollar bills the woman ducked her head and strained like a goose to look into the car she had red hair and Tang said when he heard her talk I bet that gal's from Texas she was chewing gum she said ain't got nobody in the trunk do you lady we got what I said we got he said then she shined a fiashlight in to see if we was hiding anybody under a blanket on the floor board and said my husband told me to check I run this booth for him lady I said you from Texas ain't you shoot how'd you know she said my husband says you can't tell I can tell I said she shined the light in Charlie B.'s eyes and then in Tang's I bet that got her when she saw his they squinted and turned their heads away shoot she said again and went back in the little room Clyde she said come here we couldn't see what she told him he looked out the window Jimmy said hey Mr. could we have our tickets we'd kind of like to see all we can of this show here it's pretty good ask him what's gone be on Jimmy say man ask him what's next Charlie B. said the man looked at a clock advertising shoes he said hold on and picked him up a microphone and turned on the switch the sound coming out of the pitchu into the car spearkers went off and his voice come over loud and clear ladies and gentlemen we have a real treat in store for you with our next feature we'll take a five minute break now though so you can go to our two modern restrooms located on the east side of the building and while you're there why don't you come on in and buy some of our delicious intermission drinks we got candy and popcorn all sizes dill picldes and fresh fried cat from the river remember we sell ice cream and watermelons at Clyde Miller's Sunset Drive Inn and folks we want you to know that recently we joined the Commonwealth of Southern Moving Picture Drive Inns so now we can bring you popular entertainment at lower prices and of course we go by a standard code of ethics so y'alls children can always accompany you to our home local Drive Inn people was honking their horns to beat hell I guess cause they wanted to hear the picture but he kept on a talking out next feature will be the Count of Monte Cristo and after that Nashville Hit Parade a short shit I done missed Harpo Marx and The Hunchback Charlie said doggonit Tang said tell that white man be quiet we missing something I said loud and the man added folks next week we going to have a guest appearance of that up and coming rising young star from Jonesboro in person Zeek Tate people was really beeping their horns now they was what you could call going crazy I heard one man say fuck Zack and Jonesboro both show the movie turn the sound back on goddamnit another man set his dogs to bay I said Jimmy get his attention ask him if he's gone show any of them again hey lady y'all going to have repeats tonight friends the man said we'll only have one more intermission this evening and that will come between the two local shows shot near here we want you he began but he couldn't be heard on account of the racket they going to have it Charlie B. clapped knew they would shit Tang said say they are ask him I said must be Baby Doll Charlie said they ain't showing Hallelujah to these white folk hot dog he said come on Jimmy ask him the rednecks was laying down on the horns now shut your mouth up Clyde Miller we want to listen to some music if you ain't going to let us listen to the show a man's pregnant wife yells I still got hope Tang says Jimmy was looking at the pictures trying to read James Dean's lips there were for real tears coming out his eyes the man turned up the volume folks we want you to remember our sunrise service tomorrow morning we'll stop whatever is showing as soon as the preacher gets here we would ask your cooperation in picking up the bottles and cans under your vehicles before the preacher arrives there will be he asked me to announce a collection taken up aw shut up Clyde Miller a kid says hymnals will be passed out at the concession stand after five o'clock this morning thank you now back to our feature honk honk honk he switched the mike off and with a quick glance he reached in the till and got the two dollars Jimmy give him and give it back to Jimmy saying sorry you can't bring those nniggers in here tonight we got a religious service at daylight and turned his back to Jimmy and says to his wife Ronnie don't pay no tention to what the customers say I'm running this Drive Inn Jimmy yelled what'd you say the man's wife said honey you should a heard what some those people called you the man turned around said get it they ain't coming in here this woman said colored night was last night Jimmy said we drove along way ma'am sorry she smacked her gum Tang said uh uh what I say now what I say the woman said y'all come back on another night and me and Clyde will be happy to let you in see tomorrow's Easter and it just wouldn't be right be too much scuttlebutt wouldn't honey say boy didn't Ray Charles record that I just love Ray Charles he's one of my favorites next to Hank did you know he's not really blind I read in a magazine it was a gimmick hey Jimmy I said tell that mother fiicker who I am and tell that lady Ray Charles's blind as a bat and while you're at it tell her she's bat fuck too Jimmy said sorry but you can't bring them boys in here I don't care what your name is that didn't work either the woman chewing gtun said the others are welcome to come in she smiled y'all go head and go Charlie said Jimmy rattled the two bills in his hand like he was going to lay down and bet ask him if we can come in just to see Baby Doll I said what about me Tang said ask him about Hallelujah too I said he asked Clyde Miller he was getting mad at Jimmy he said get on out the niggers couldn't come they was having a revival service in the morning he said the man said hold on cause his wife says it's time honey he picked up the microphone and was about to talk but Jimmy yelled out why don't you and Mrs. Miller go get fucked the both of you I added Amen Tang and Charlie B. said it carried over the sound system to every white man's car and truck I know there must have been a tense moment for a moment in the moom pitchu Drive Inn cause all the peoples turned around and looked out they cars I figured we'd be dead inside a minute but those folks had more sense than I ever give them credit for I know them like the back of my hand I thought but I guess I don't cause they just passed they two brown faces on they must of know'd who we was although I'd like not to think so yessiree they commenced to honking and yelling and laughing at Clyde Miller it was a sight to see Tang looks over in my direction he says smart cracker jacks Jimmy shoved it in reverse and scratched out backwards he left two dollars worth a mbber in the man's Drive Inn driveway he runned into his ticket shed on account of the slipping and sliding then he hit another man's car he said get your ass out the way Jimmy should never have riled the white man like that cause it tiled all of them he peeled out forward and we tore up some dead bushes Clyde Miller had planted Jimmy was mad I guess before long we was doing a hundred miles an hour fucking shithooks he was mumbling I didn't think that car would do a hundred you dmnk Jimmy I said sorry bout that he told Charlie B. Tang was laughing to himself saying told you so he touched Jimmy on the shoulder slow this thing down boy he hit him in the head you crazy or something we cruised on some more boy that pisses me off Charlie B. says don't it though Charlie Jimmy says shuckit I says goddamn motherfiickers Jimmy says be what I told you wouldn't it Tang said y'all won't listen to an old man shit y'all just whipsnaps I rode a hundred mules you want to go back and shoot him Jimmy I said nah could of clone that then open me nothun Tang said say what about my supper we stopped off on the way home about the time he said it can a buy some firecrackers with the change Tang I said yea but you better get me some soda crackers I got some under the seat Jimmy says good then they'll do he said Jimmy gave me a dollar and told me pick some shells up they had a sale on fishing worms and hooks so I took advantage of the bargain I got enough to eat alright so did Tang and the test drive up to the levee I want to yell a little bit Charlie B. says the night got darker and we drove up there and parked turn the damn radio back on Tang said going to run down the battery if I do Jimmy said piss on it you can coast start it if you have to I got out the car and drunk me a lemon lime lemme have the pistol I want to shoot tin cans don't shoot yoself Charlie B. said give me that box of shell too I just bought don't shoot up all my bullets Jimmy said I walked down the levee the high road now it is getting colder and I am getting madder but an idea will come I thought I'll dream something up here I am saying this and still ain't off the mule yet I ain't hit ball one ain't caught one either I kept shooting at the can keeping it on top of the levee sometime having to reel off some might quick shots to keep it from rolling down whenever I missed I yelled missed I didn't miss too much after I'd shoot a full round I'd eject the empty cartridges out of the chamber into my palm I'd warm my hand on them and smell the gunpowder smoke it curled out of the brass like a garbage fire I walked way down to a place I hadn't been before some clearing had been done the remains of snakes that had been cut in two by the bulldozer blade stunk to high heaven the flies was buzzing like a radio station that won't come in the trees were like wounded soldiers bent over on a battlefield men that knew they had lost the fight and were going to die to boot I can't see it but I know its there gaunt and gallant like an old man with a pistol and an ace up his sleeve reserved and noble with a silver moustache mean as a convict's widow the river I can smell it at the edge of the barr pit I heard something moving in the dark I made it out to be a possum it was walking away from me towards the water why not shoot it I said to myself I knelt down I raised the gun up following the possum as he crawled towards the batr who cares if I kill a goddamn possum anyhow it don't mean nothing it ain't nothing what good is it playing dead before its dead it ought to be I shot I sighted him in he got back up he's gone die like a bull I thought I lifted the barrel of the pistol ever so little I cocked the hammer back and what did I see far away but the square of the Drive Inn like a tiny photograph I looked so hard my eyes hurt I looked at it so long like you do a star and then it starts moving around on you it did like a Whirligig water bug it danced in front of my eyes such a way 03 I thought I made out a hillbilly singer but this really wasn't there because my mind made it out and not me cause I knew that was what he said was coming after the Count of Monte Cristo so I thought that but even before I had time to remember it was a short and think by now the country music is off I knew before any of that what I saw even though I couldn't make out the image right I knew anyhow what I saw was a strawboss with a gun and men working with sludge hammers in striped pants even though I couldn't hear from that far away shucks nobody could I could make out I could hear the shovels like so many graves being dug I could hear the sludge hammers ringing and somehow I could even make out the ball and chain around the white man's foot but what I saw was the strawboss with the shotgun I saw this before I had time to think of any of the other even before I had time to remember that the next show was about a chain gang and I aimed without knowing the exact location between the boatswain's eyes oh yes I could see the cocksucker from a long way off I held my aim still and steady I squeezed the trigger at the little picture screen with the barrel raised a little die you son-of-a-bitch cause 1 cause I knew I was high up but the bullet would still drop and I didn't want it to go in the ground and I didn't want to go over the top of the tiny screen so I fired the gun when my breath was just right and I knew if there had a been a real man standing there he would be dropping right about now but with my luck they probably changed the scene they was playing out and I could have shot somebody I knowed but who did I know in the Drive Inn that night no one except Clyde and his red-headed wife and they could both drop dead for all I know but I would like to think I shot the dog sergeant I yelled I killed him I shot the Sadducee right between the eyes and them in the car who was used to me yelling I missed sometimes like a whippoorwill and others a bullfrog they cranked the car up and come down the levee after me with the coons' tails dancing off the high powered antenna to pull in the good stations they jumped out the car before it even stopped rolling scared to death I done shot somebody down there gigging or something they was drunk I said I killed him just for meaness but that wasn't true at all and all I did was smile they was stumbling around looking for a body I reckon I said I done it I killed the deputy on the screen see I pointed way off so they could see the Drive Inn and they all laughed and Tang said open me nuthun I was dreaming the way vanifia smells Jimmy said damn I sho wish we could see them shows I'm getting tired of that word I thought on the mule cause Dark was saying over and over that woman that woman that woman I call them blue bottle fiies I said they worse than that Charlie B. said think up a idea boy Tang said I been drinking I said back there at the store where I got you die lunch meat they had a couple of pair of Army Surplus Binoculers we could go back there and rent them from him I bet then all we do is drive back to the levee and sit down and start watching for nothing you quick Charlie B. said and good too Jimmy said dumbass how we going to listen well I already done figured that out in the space of eleven seconds we could get the deaf and dumb man to read lips for us he can use the chinaman's spy glasses what the hell good that going to do Charlie B. said I can't read sign language I can I said where you learn that at boy Tang says I learned hand signals from an Indian I said I give them the hand signal for in the morning the children can sleep I told them what it meant but Jimmy said so what he said shit you taking the long way around by the time we know what's happening with that old fool the damn show be over and another one be on ain't it the truth Charlie B. said the store is closed anyway I said hey what about your telescope Jimmy said don't you think I done already thought about that I said the damned mirror is cracked wait a minute Charlie B. said hold your horses I got a fine idea he was so crazy drunk don't see how he had it with that wounded man look in his eye he looked around the levee where bouts that engineer shack at he said to make a long story short what we did was stole four transits from the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers we stole some bottle cases too we sit on them I ain't supposed to tell this but Charlie B. stole a case of dynamite I told him to put it back but he wouldn't listen when he gets drunk you might as well forget about living until you wake up safe the next morning we lined the looking pieces up and they put the beer where they could reach it Tang put a bottle opener around my neck and said when I say attack I wont you to bust me open a can when I say charge I wont you to pour me a drink of liquor you got that yessuh I said I got your number Mr. Tang it was good that they was all dnink that way they couldn't get so mad not being able to tell what the actors was a saying yea we sat up there on the levee like four generals looking at a battle Charlie B. said these here is what I call box seats hey Jimmy these is the white man's bench alright Tang said the two negroes and the white one Jimmy and myself sat in the balcony of the delta we were like four noblemen in the loges at the opera women of all colors and ages vibrated their fans in sexual motions a black hearse arrived on stage and a musical instrument was dumped out before the mask of the woman in mauve soon the clock must strike twelve and the comedy must end even for the Italians there we were four clowns on the mourners' bench I must be some memory some bastard son of David why do I pet this harp so much where do all these songs come from the blues if I go on a journey I want to embark from the bottom of a river there are enough boats full of dead men going by I can see that so I shall fioat the currents on a cello surely the tow won't take us under I am going on a journey everything was fine for a long time we seen a whole lots of good moom pitchus but after a while our eyes started aching Dark said did you know this mule ain't got but one eye but it's a good one we had to give ourselves a couple of eye baths in beer Charlie B. accidentally knocked his looking piece out of place Tang was yelling charge and attack too much he said to Tang uh oh I got a fight he told us directions and sure enough we seen a mean fight taking place it was like coming in on the middle ofone of those picture shows Tang figured out the plot foe anybody else he said they was fighting over a woman most likely he said one of the white men had caught his girlfriend loving on somebody else they had probably snook off thinking nobody gonna see them at the Drive Inn but I guess the man decided to tail the the woman he said he stuttered on the the one lad had the other one pinned with his knees on his shoulders it looked like the one on the bottom was getting peed on the other one was pounding his face in like a jack hammer it was rough watch out Charlie B. said but it didn't do no good of course one of the guy's buddies I guess walked out of the blue and hit him on the head with a bottle we tried to find car with only a girl in it that would be said gir Charlie B. called what we was looking for the Coming Attraction Jimmy said green Oldsmobile sixteenth row left hand side quick it was a girl laying in the backseat all by herself no go he said damnit we missed it she was putting on her clothes we saw her climb over into the front seat that some quality pussy Charlie B. said I seen her in town one day she's count wonder how many of them she's fucking Tang said she got out of the car without even looking at the three or four who had started up the scuffie again guess your plot was right Tang Jimmy said she was heading for the rest room that gal's a gypsy Charlie B. said she ain't nothing but trash you say Tang said if you going by the book maybe alright but that girls daddy he done got rich how Charlie B. said he had his junk wagon someplace over in Arkansas where they have them diamond mines he wasn't selling nothing but ice and vegetables that daughter of his she started dancing round the camp fire one night and the man he got his whip out and beat her like a slave he told her now this is what I hear from another white he said that'll teach you to dance around in front of your paw with no shirt on I believe that white man was lying cause he said she wore a black patch she didn't take to the beating so for meanness the next day she tied her daddy's leg on the wagon with some rope and drug it pretty neat five miles through that country foe he found out that what was making such a racket his wooden leg well he beat her again foe he put it on they say he walked around with that big diamond rattling inside for nigh on two days foe he looked in there to chunk it out he thought it was a rock he chunked out too that gypsy daughter of his was stretching herself in the bed of the wagon and seen the diamond flash in the moonlight like a knife she went and got it like a nigger's dog gets a scrap I'll fuck her any day he said no you won't either I said she's mine I give her that black patch so now you see how I found out about the gypsy girl who by now was a woman all three of them laughed at me Jimmy asked me the usual question did you get any pussy no I gor forgiveness for my sins boy you got it bassackwards Charlie B. said yea Tang said next time get the pussy first then ask the lord for forgiveness all y'all be in hell fore the night's over I said and with that a cloud like a fallen horseman passed over the fulvous moon there was some heat lightning and a little rumble of thunder it was a coincidence while they were looking at each other hangdawg like I thought how I saw the same complexion on the girl putting her clothes on in the backseat the belly did look familiar so she kept the black patch I thought they was looking through the instruments again not paying me no mind she's coming out Jimmy said yes there was the gypsy girl buying a sucker in the concession stand you could see the fat boy behind the counter giving her the eye she put the evil eye on everybody she met I reckon look at them tits Jimmy said I seen them you hadn't I said don't talk about what you ain't seen shit I can see um from here Charlie B. said all y'all shut up about that girl I thought as the mule stood there I wonder if she's any kin to Abednego if she wasn't they'd sho make a hell of a pair she was drinking soda pop now I couldn't make out the label look at her sucking on that licorice stick Jimmy said you're filthy I said they wasn't even looking at the shows anymore all they cared about was the for real life show I had my eye up on the big screen though I was planning my strategy take a guess what was on here comes another fool Tang said and some man comes up to her and they talk awhile he points to a car and she smiles and they head out to the corner he stopped off and got in another car she went on and got in this one way off from the others going to have a gang bang Charlie B. said I didn't know what else to do so I was giving the world sign language after a while he got our and followed the same path she went on he got in the car we could see the back of her head all along but he went out of view it looked like she propped her legs up on the dashboard everybody had a aching eye but we was all looking at that Jimmy made fun of me said I wonder what they doing now Charlie B. laughed and said I reckon he's looking for a dime she dropped Tang said she dropped a lot of change on the Ho we noticed that lots of the cars had bad shock absorbers Jimmy messed around with his tripod and got an unusual angle her head was bent back over the seat like she was waiting for someone to chop it 05' her eyes weren't closed they were open and looking at the moon it was her alright no doubt about it look on the side look on the side Charlie B. said there were four or five boys with their pants down the two that had been fighting was standing next to each other looks like they all got the same woman Tang said taking his eye away who's that I said the gypsy nah he said Mary Five Fingers can't you see sure enough all of them was looking in the windows jacking off if that don't beat all I said anybody here get a thrill out of that Jimmy said nah Tang said nah I said we'll look again in a minute Jimmy says look now I says they is fighting again sho is Charlie B. said one of the fellows had pulled the other one off the floor boards and they was all outside rough housing it now the gypsy crawled over and got in the backseat we had a full view because of the moonlight the boys was a good fifty yards away form the car by now she was off in the corner in what Tang said was her own car she just had bought so it didn't belong to nobody else Jimmy said I think I ought to get my young ass down there quick while she's melting you ain't going nowhere I said leave her alone can't you tell that's what she n she needed herself it was plain to see just like you might have seen if you had been spending the night with a buddie and accidently walked into his older sister's bedroom while she was laying there without any clothes and doing something I just did learn about it wasn't nasty I would have like to have an artist paint a picture of it I wouldn't mind being down there right now Jimmy said me either Charlie B. said so sweet Tang said she'll be coming round the mountain in a minute Jimmy said he almost fell of the coke box it would be a lie if I said everybody didn't have it up we was all breathing like we been pumping water all day long when she comes when she come Charlie B. said someone could a cut a onion and not one eye would have been batted her eyes were closed now and her arm looked like it was trying to find something lost somewhere it was like she was blind and feeling around for something it was a matter of life or death Charlie B. screamed loud as a man got stabbed she opened her eyes and her mouth at the same time like she was going under water and she knew it and she aimed to get one last breath before she drowned that is when the figure appeared on the screen the figure I had been seeing all along why they hadn't the black spectre Dracula appeared in his cape just as the gypsy was drowning it was like having someone meet you at the time of death it was unexpected for Jimmy and Charlie and the old man too were frightened perhaps it was the unusual timing something I would call a rebus that made all four of them tremble in their pleasure I saw the girl bring both hands to her eyes I saw the mute scream I was use to reading the lips by then the one hand already glistening in the moonlight as the tears were forming and seeping between her fingers like blood my three companions had their heads in their hands too if all I saw was the ball and chain of guilt then I was free for I did not feel it at all I only felt like I'd swurn a long way it was midnight or after I knew by the stars and the moon and the animals and fish and insects they forgot about the gypsy the gypsy couldn't forget about us because she never saw us but she might as well have Tang said ain't that the doublecrossingest thing for a gal to do by herself like that the night foe Easter I thought she stole the melon from Jesus He said damn white preacher be out there fo long and there she was fudting her self like a dog ain't it the truth Jimmy says it is Charlie B. says drunks I said aw shut up boy all three said I went ahead and looked at the shows while they talked if there was one thing they didn't want to see again that night it was the black figure if there were two things then the other was the gypsy I commented on the one in black without ever taking my eye off the picture I said I sho wished y'all would of let me had my way and got the deaf and dumb man we could have had the words instead of y' alls belching and farting what's wrong with the radio Jimmy says what's wrong with the tree frogs I says the night became morning and the shows kept going in the background like a fish playing on the top of the water every once in a while to break the chill of the air one of the three drunks would stammer seen youself yet or has it done passed by yet or what's happening what's happening then the voice or voices would break off into snores or mumbling I always get mixed up with drunks they're fine until they go out on you wake up I said I got the wash tub of ice out of the trunk I poured cold water all over them that woke them up am I on yet Charlie B. said nah you just drunk I said Jimmy said any of you planning on going to church this morning not me Charlie said I can't the deacons think I'm after some woman won't let me in the church door I ain't been inside no church building since my wife passed Tangle Eye said been to a lots of funerals and wakes and picnics and baptizings though ain't been into no church house and I ain't intending to go when I die I don't want no words said over me in no church you hear I hear Charlie B. said be quiet y'all look hey Charlie look Baby Doll is coming on he fell off the bottle case he stumbled over to my transit but I knew he couldn't see nothing both his eyes was fogged over I focused the transit in again he was saying ain't this the shits can't even see your own ugly self in the moom pitchus ain't it a shame indeed it was agreed Tang said so why you wasting yo time looking in that forget it to hell with them but you could tell in his voice and the way he moved that he was kinding of hoping in the back of his mind that Hallelujah might be on before dawn you can't blame him even if he was a old cuss he wanted to see himself like everybody else why not it's a free country then he broke down like a bulldozer his voice broke I mean he sobbed and couldn't talk directly we found out why you see he wanted to see the pitchu awful bad it was cause his wife of long ago was in it just a little face over to the side a few times maybe a song we come to find out she was young and good lookin in them days before she passed away just eighteen then when she sung with the Dixie Jubilee Singers and a mighty fine and pretty group they was he said most naturally they was Tangle Eye took off his old hat and covered his face hah Charlie B. Lemon said there I is right down the road not twelve mile I reckon and there you going to be too Mr. Tang most likely and we can't even see our own face close up can't even hear the girl's voioe she had a pretty voice Tang said I mean she did real and true she could sing bout that gospel ship yes she could didn't she wade the water he said amen she did Charlie B. said where bouts is she in the show Jimmy said well son they got a good close up of her on the left hand side right near the start if I recall got anymore I said sweet Jesus it's been so long I think there's one of me and her strutting down Beale like I say that was long time ago I could had dreamt it I don't know I think so yes I was cool them days don't laugh a real dirty cat a racehorse man I was that you better believe it I had me a real silk top hat boy I remember when I met you daddy about nineteen and ten he come into Pee Wee's Saloon next thing I knew we riding down Gayoso in a police wagon arrested us both goddamnit he bailed me out and we been just like that ever since he snapped his fingers when he said just like that we was both still drunk so we stole two police horses and rode through the streets all night long passed out on the river we did that long time back it was but they's one more I remember me and my wife over on Hernando Street what time is it Jimmy said I don't know 1 said but it'll be light in an hour or so more like two maybe I said can't tell on account of the clouds and the moon Tang said Jimmy hung his head down low and spit in both his hands he rubbed them together and said the way 1 figure it if we can't see them last two moom pitchus shouldn't nobody see them leastways no white folks Tang said I don't want them fools looking at my dead woman he shook his head I could tell the liquor was wearing off just enough for them to think up something low down and mean Charlie B. run his hand through his hair he cleared out his mouth with his tongue and sucked on his lips he squirmed awhile and answered cousin what you got in mind Jimmy cracked his knuckles and winked let's just say well go back to jail for it for how long Charlie said not too long Jimmy said I said Jimmy don't you go getting in no more trouble now how far is it to that Drive Inn you reckon he said oh well Tang said let's see by boat if we cross on the other side of that clearing I reckon that's where the water is hell son it's just a hop and a jump but now if we got to go by road like we did the first time I know it's fifteen mile more or less cause we got a lot of backtracking to do we'll have to drive he said then Tang said we better get going hell if it's mo than twelve mile it's far away as camp is can't be too fah as the blackbird fiies but they ain't no ferry what you got in mind Jimmy Charlie B. said I aim to go the senrices this morning and get me a little religion that so I said you too drunk to drive all of you are why don't none of you ask if I'll drive you or not cause you don't know how to run a bulldozer Jimmy said what's that got to do with it I said Mr. Tang how long you think it'll take me to get a bulldozer over to that Drive Inn about a D Seven Caterpillar he said hum Jimmy I believe I think I know what you got in mind ah man what you gone get me sent up this time fah Charlie B. said he was on the ground on his back too Jimmy don't you pull nothing like that I said I reckon you can get there in time for the sunrise service Tang said now they was all trying to sing they was helping each other in the car Lord bless us and keep us this morning I whispered Amen can you drive Jimmy you ok can you drive I say he turned the key on but the motor it wouldn't start wouldn't even turn over give us a push Jimmy says I guess he meant me I was the only one that could walk I was stout fah my age but they aimed to go down the beam road anyhow so it wouldn't take much I put a crow bar under the bumper and pried like I was rolling a big clod of buckshot with a stump or a root in it here we go I say you hear me here we go over the side of the levee boom the engine backfired get in son Tangle Eye says I hopped in the window head first just as we was coasting straight down me looking at the driver who was looking at me slouched down and the only thing he was holding was the knob on the steering wheel the blue one with the naked woman squatting down and holding her tits it was a Three D picture I figured Tang would talk the two young bucks out of it but now he was mean assed drunk too he was as they say fair game I'll see you in the mawning honey I'll be there he mumbled telling us now y'all be watching for her I yelled out Tang peed on himself Charlie B. old men do it all the time I don't care I was just glad the fools forgot about the dynamite he stole there it is Jimmy says after we had :1 went a ways parked on the side of the levee like a yellow bull from the east the blade of so many tons glowed blue by the light of the moon honed and shined like a field hand's hoe by the earth and now is the time of year when you can watch before your very eyes the change of the paint on a new plowshare like something being born yes I say I know you can see the dirt polish it like a servant shining silver get up early and walk behind the mules or ride the tractor that's what they got nowdays and look down at the ground like a great sea at the plow cutting through the water like that part of the keel under the prow of a ship sailing upside down underground look back at the wake and if you is tending mules like topgallants you can't help but go down in the Whirlpools of dirt see what you've made always see what you've done fore and aft there they were the both of them two rebels if there ever was Charlie B. Lemon and Jimmy cranking up the little engine that starts the big one now they were like the people on the picture show because their lips were moving but I couldn't hear a thing on account of the noise the bulldozer was putting out listen here I say but they didn't notice Charlie B. took the Maxwell House CORE-e can that keeps the rain out off the exhaust and then he hopped down off the dozer give that wash tub of beer and one them bottles he said give it here yes he got his rations like a soldier in my mind they had a tank those two again bound to know whatever it was they was going to do was sure as the sun will rise going to get straight back to the penitentiary for it why they want to break the law like that I don't know maybe I do I'll have more to tell you on that later Jimmy circled his hand and pointed straight ahead like a charge called by a calvary officer doggonit there I go again tripping up on that word I mean cavalvalryl mean cavalry I know it like my name ever since I missed it at the city spelling B when the teacher called it out I spelt the wrong word I tell you I know them both like the back of my hand I knew them then it was bad elecution on his part I say it was the way he pronounced it I should have asked them to use it in a sentence that was my right but damn it all there was only one more word to go and I thought I had things all wrapped up but he called it out wrong no not once did I ever have trouble before but ever since then I can't keep those words straight in my mind why didn't the last boy standing get calvary and I get Caedmon why didn't I draw it I guess that was my lot why the boy didn't even know who he was but he knew how to spell it he knew it was a capital C and he knew about the a: but he didn't know who he was but I guess the spelling is what counts the most I found that out I lost Charlie B. turned the bottle of Early Times up I believe he kilt it he was sitting beside Jimmy and now he give his signal seeing how they was both up on the dour and Tangle Eye was delirious I took it for granted they wanted me to drive the car what Charlie B. and Jimmy meant was lead the way I did follow me you crazy scoundrals wake up Tang we leaving the seat was far back as it'd go and I couldn't get it up to the wheel I couldn't see over the dash board all I saw was those dice on the mirror I grabbed a soda water case out the backseat and put it under me still when I shifted gears I had to stand plumb up on the floor we cruised on towards the outskirts of the town at a pretty good lick they was keeping right behind too one of the damned headlights was out I didn't really know the way that well Jesus Christ I didn't know what was happening I didn't even know how to drive really I couldn't shif gears oh a standard ain't so bad when it's sitting under a shade tree and you is pretending but I was really driving clutch and all what made it bad where I couldn't keep my eyes on the road is that Tang got the pistol out of the glove compartment and he was shooting at cars when they passed by going the other way and he was shooting through my window I had to duck all the time so I was running off the road if I put on the brakes to slow down they'd run into my rear in with the bulldozer I had my hands fit" right after we hit the pavement I remembered how cat tracks tear up a asphalt road real bad a cat will chew it up like Double Bubble for fun they veered off the side and tore up a man's field I guess it was already planted they must of not like him there wasn't a damn mailbox left I can tell you that I had to keep looking through the rear view mirror and giving hand signals out the window to quit it Tang seen a man slapping his daughter or his wife up the road guess she come home late or something he said Mr. fuck that noise and shot at him it was thundering and lightning and a sprinkle began to fall you know how a road stinks when it just gets wet and the steam rises up the mist was like silver Persians trying to jump up in the trees after birds you could barely make out the ocherous sun but the moon was there I thought about talking to companions around a campfire in their own language I thought about being a guest in the summer at the home of wealthy people I thought about the manners I knew to use there I felt like the way I did ten minutes ago when I saw the dago I lent my shanty boat to he had many a fish and he was happy] saw him fioating darough the trees in the backwater the same water the high water that brought me the boat I found it the other morning out there in the fog like a solitary captain the Italian had the crucifix around his neck he had no shirt on he was kissing the cross for the good catch he was say asolando or something that sounded like that I carved a rebus in the transom of the shanty they were tunes like on a buried boat I felt like an apprentice of songs of night and of day I carved Tintagel on the bow I felt like I'd done a hard day's work and wasn't guilty I felt anonymous like I do when I find the star on my own and the astronomer says leorningcniht I felt like dust that blew into camp just like nothing all I've done is ride around with three drunks and now I'm taking them to break the county law I might as well slit my throat right now but I didn't because I knew I could turn around right now and drive back the way I came and get out the car and call and look and somewhere I'd find that naked brother of mine tall and I mean dark there he would be I know it like my own blood the young one the negro sleepwalking through the forest with the pet master on his shoulder i felt something knock the shit out of the back end of the car it was the damn blade again hold it I said I heard footsteps on the roof then Charlie B. stuck his head through the window we getting there ain't we he said what you trying to do I said he said gettin me some Lucky Strike cigarettes what's wrong with that nothing you gone make me crack up though shit boy Jimmy'll keep you on the road he's gone get me killed is all he's gone do Charlie B. said wake up Tang give me a weed the old man shot a hole through the roof damnit put the hog's foot down Tang said we there yet nah I said it's right up the road a piece I can see the lights the screen was at an angle where you couldn't see it y'all better hurry up it's getting light he said we might be late already Charlie got the smoke and jumped back on the dozer shut yo light 0": boy he said Mr. Tang please don't shoot nobody I ain't he said what they gone do anyhow I says testify I reckon he said and I thought they'd probably get a hundred carloads of town folks to do that in court a couple hundred yards from the Drive Inn on the right hand side of the road a stationwagon full of kids was broke down a man was jacking up the rear end I said look there ain't that the preacher looks like he's got a fiat damn if it ain't he said and shot a hole in the other tire as we passed by I believe the preacher's gone be late he said I was fearing for the children but Jimmy and Charlie was already making their move they cutout to the side ahead of us and crossed over into the other lane fast as they could go the fence come right down I looked in the rear view mirror and the preacher was shaking his fist I cut a hard left and followed them through the hole they made in the fence I don't like this a bit I said I do Tang said with his eyes like a fish he reached under the seat and got Jimmy's Old Spice and poured some on his big brown hands and patted his face what are you doing I said never you mind boy just park this thing while I get fixed up for my wife Jimmy and Charlie B. was taking out the back row of speakers the honking and yelling was beginning it was light enough to where you could see the morning and the screen where it was now saying the end and over the loudspeaker Clyde Miller was saying folks the preacher ought to be here any second we'll stop this last show soon as he gets here I don't know who that is on the bulldozer I can't see but don't y'all worry none and the words Hallelujah were appearing on the screen just as we drove up to the ticket booth where the man who was taking stuck his head out the window to see what was going on and Tang leaned over and said Mr. you touch that contraption and I'll blow your fucking head OE and Clyde Miller lifted both his hands and says anything you say anything you say and his ugly wife Ronnie swallowed her gun and screamed and dropped all the dimes she was stacking and the cars was honking at the dozer to beat hell and Tang says you tell your man I said roll'um and I says Tang they rolling now the one you want and he says with a smile so they are so they are and hands me the pistol and says if that peckerwood says a word shoot him and I nodded and Tang sunk back in the mt relaxed now with his head swaying and his voice humming to the low down music that was coming through the speakers he was nodding now not out of drunkenness or sleepiness but out of his memory out of that long row of his dreams time seemed to pass quickly for me with the pistol in my hands it's hard to remember just what happened 1 know Tang got to see his young wife several times I could tell the way his bottom lip was just jumping and the way he crumpled his old dusty and oily hat in his hands and brought it to his breast when he sighed he sighed he sighed like chords on a guitar he let his quiet breaths out in the midst of all this commotion everything was silent like when you standing by yourself in a long grassy row of a morning how can that be you might say you might have it all wrong you might say all this was like a parade but to me it was a funeral march it was as quiet and listless as the mule I'm riding how can I tell you maybe I shouldn't tell you about drooping eyes and turned down lips if you think I'm trying to be fiinny you got me wrong I might let on bout how the good times roll but they roll without a sound like a wheel through a plowed field like a negro boy yawning when he looks at the casket I know for a fac: Charlie B. and Jimmy ain't intending to draw attention to theirselves no they ain't doing nothing more than what an acolyte does when he puts out the candles when everyone is gone the sound they make might sound like a fart to you but it's only a sigh some people laugh at cripples you smile if a colored man tells you at a wake well that cat just boogied on off didn't he though but you know he's got a toad frog in his throat just like the altar boy practicing his voice in the dark in the cathedral it is like being in a daze and seeing the silence of two friends on horseback galloping on top of the levee the sound of which is no sound is like a careening phantom ship it is the sound of a dream it is the sound of death even if you have to get up and go to work in some city you're bound to know what I'm talking about which is nothing you might be listening but I'm not talking quit jiving me man that's chinaman talk you say that's the stuff that comes out the gritted teeth of a squint-eyed coolie the kind of talk that is not talk that comes out only every once in a while because he's got his mouth full of water and if he ain't got his mouth full of water he's spitting on your shirt or he's making his calligraphy with his laundry pencil in the back of your collar and I'll be damned if you can read it you might say I'm long-sighted or short-sighted but I ain't neither one I just can pass my hand through things I can look at a minnow until I get dizzy and it is making the sound of death sheets fiapping out behind of some shack is making that sound I can kneel down beside of a creek and lift up the moon I can kneel down beside a deathbed by and by maybe I can tell you what it feels like maybe I could show you the way BoBo fought that fish if somebody would ever invent that contraption but I doubt that anyone ever will so I might as well get use to the feeling the blues my residence is not important but a couple of year ago I was living in a shack it was the night before Easter and my sister lost her new shoes I stayed gone all night long and filled a cottonsack up with dogwood blooms and flowers and lined the way clean to the church from the shack so she could go to the service without any shoes I went barefoot myself so she wouldn't feel bad you might of laughed when Tang said that gypsy found a diamond in his wooden leg but the way I see it that there is as dead as a run-off dog's pan I say fooey to the smart-alecs I will say what I have to say and my voice be it only a murmur like that of a wolfling with no mother wolf's teat but I'll wean myself I'll fend for myself I'll enter the old mansions invited or not where the furniture is draped in sheets like ghosts where there is so much dust on the mirror I can finish writing my given name be it nothing more than an afternoon spent at the bedside of a dying jew I baked the cake I put the stamps in his album the others were playing mexican stand off outside the tent I was dreaming be it nothing more than the odor of a gypsy girl if you can teach me I will hold my tongue until then I curse the night in which it was said a man child is born I should have been as though I had not been I should have been carried from the womb to the grave it was water last time they say it'll be fire next time there are two words for my crossreyed visions of what goes on by night and by day in my antediluvian residence where these mules and people stanchions of stillness these folks taking the fishbone out they throats with that look in their eye adagio delta eye pavane by and by Sylvester squeezing his pocket watch like a weapon saying I ain't got time fah that shit and the eye in the back of my head pas de trois ahoy there I'm sinking down into the eloquence of words like a riderless pony in quicksand what was those words one doom and the other destiny sounds like two dead pan troubadours a couple of bootblacks singing farewell and one blind he white and the othern got something wrong with his tongue what they call speech impediment draw a check every month and the othern who used to run with them he died he ain't in the act no more he's blacker than this one passed away last month of a bullet wound what the women won't take the whiskey will but it wouldn't have done nothing more than syphilis did two signs on the side of the road one say present in the ditch the other with a arm and a mallet say past love she don't fade away in this daydream not by a long shot who says they knowed it I want to know which one it was geometry the astronomer was teaching me is in music like the warden said to the guard put that nigger in isolation said it like a chink does Isola down around some neck of the woods if I have omitted anything scuse me I beg your pardon nocturnal emission don't matter nohow noway it done already happened it is being happening done like a tragedy where you get a belly ache from laughing like a loony in the nut house a biologist told me where to catch the fish they are in three layers under the water but they really ain't they say they only live in one on account of the temperature and the pressure I better check on the one outside the Liquor Store it's getting mighty ho: that if you put your bait in the right spot the fish'll take it drop it on down but he couldn't catch no fish so now he crazy and telling me how the dago he pissed on the mologist the negro said boy I bet you don't believe fiying saucers look up there in the sky at that big white belly slit it open while I made the journey on the raft the cottonmouths crawled through the spaces in the willow timber they were like hands off a church tower's time piece be with you did you get any I folded the dead man's ties up like a carpenter's measure for the hell of it I stole it and put a hook line sinker on it a fish broke it in two Carmine going to have twins one dark one light the doctor said what she going to do to pass the time of day I stole a watermelon I admit it don't knock it this particular one was planted over a grave everybody steals melons Carmine say there was a man from Jackson holding the heel of his boot in the palm of his hand smelling his skin rolling his shoulders Jimmy was chewing gun with a Panama hat on he said see that man I said yea he said I done his wife now watch him chew his fingernails when he sees me he don't care he likes the rodeo too much that so I said why sure it is Jimmy had a suit on but his pants was down so low if he took his coat off and bent over you could see the crack in his ass you need some suspenders Jimmy watch me take this pistol out of my coat pocket boy watch that slicker run the man was gone you see me do that boy yea I seen you Jimmy he slapped me up side the face take off your hat and let me see your head of hair Jimmy he tip his hat the guaranteed natural wolfman he was driving a truck just for the hell of it he could a had a T-bird but like he said to the law then whenever they catch him and whoever he's with which is usually someone not of the white race I just got a soft spot in my heart for trouble didn't get him first Carmine say I saw a man left for dead with a slit throat he couldn't talk he writhed in slow motion then he jumped like a silent picture show it was unnatural beside him was a fish in the dust the lips were like an infant's a crow was walking around in bright daylight beside them the fish eye was in its beak I spit on the crow when it's bright there are many colors in black it spread its wings at me the feathers were like scrolls naturally I dream of a voyage where the country is silent the water is still and if a fish jumps everyone will hear it everyone will turn their head the dead man walked through my country no matter where I hid or how fast I was he always saw me first like two animals apart in years feigning a mirror to one another he didn't wonder why he needed nothing no food no drink his body needed no sleep one day I noticed the scar on his jaw just about the same place my cut is it was as if it had grown like a negro's does it was a lie that he never slept I thought though I never saw him sleeping he was far too quick for me I know it was a lie that he was dead though he wasn't alive he was death hanging around outside the towns in the hinterlands waiting for them to finish building the scaffold I am told constantly by myself that it could be said of him that his imagination was likened to the moon and his intellect was likened to the sun or vice versa to the east and to the west of those orbs in solo but how could that be the bayou was green as the night though when I threw the knife in the tree the blood fiapped out on one wing like it does when it comes out a pig's nose the illusion of the snout was seen in the kettle Jimmy ya man did you eat jowl on the new year did you bring it in right no I didn't he said I eat me some fish oh I said while I was looking on the ground he stole the double five and scored he held the bones in one hand and picked the beer bottle up with his teeth and rolled a cigarette with his other hand how you do that easy he said did you know you was ugly he said yea I know that I said hey hey hey he said when I get old if I'm married by then I'm kicking the old lady out and marrying me a young one might not even marry her I thought they made you get hitched if you was white I said no you can common law he said you can ride what are you talking about they didn't kill no hog in December you'll have a pot belly by then Jimmy I said yea he said but I'll be happy with that girl the gypsy's daughter ain't but two years older than me I might presently I live out my past so presently I can live with the pressure like a diver has in his ears like the hourglass in the saddlebags with the broken crystal 1 wish somebody would find the horse I need this here cotton handkerchief wrapped around the other hand I need it like a vine in my fingers like a shroud when I draw the knife and call out the night when I ask someone the time of day as if they'd give it to me there was a whole bunch of them singing I wonder which one was his wife the people were on the tops of their cars yelling at the bulldozer Charlie B. did too have a stick of dynamite that's why nobody was pulling them two down and whupping the fire out of them if the cars didn't get out of the way then that was it is that me on the ground bleeding I see the shadow is it really me there's only one way to tell so I felt around my belly my hand stepped in a hole it hurts awful bad boys the wound was like seeing a rabbit not ten foot from you you didn't know was there one of them goddamn federalies shot me what's that hole y'all doing what if I was dying it was a hole I put my hand in it not the hole in me the one in the ground Si Sefior that is when we attacked them when dey was beelding de fence his son was looking at my boots don't you take my boots OK you hear me Si where's Jimmy at I think he got captured what about Charlie B. I think he dead what about Le Couteau oh Sefior you should have seen what he did to them how come ain't none of y' all dead oh many of us died look out there in the field it was dark I couldn't see anything hey vaquero what happened to my girl she's supposed to be here when I'm dying and I'm dying you see this hole those son-of-a-bitches shot me why'd they listen to me I thought it was a good idea to fight a war of liberation hey you talking out of your hade Sefior where's the gypsy she was captured by the troops she was damn y'all going to build some statues of us if we all get knocked off Sefior we have to win the war first well goddamnit that's what we come down here for me and Jimmy and all them niggers to fight a war on account of good against evil it hurts Sefior there were many heroes today younger than yourself even look at them out there my other son he was among them I had to put him out of his misery myself his brother here had to watch sorry bout that looks like my bunch got pretty well wiped out too I don't mind telling you right now that was the stupidest idea I ever had about coming down here and helping y'all in this war I wished I'd never said it I understand Sefior it is not a good thing I will die I know that I will die for my sons even though there is only one left and if he dies first then I will die because there is nothing left to do man alive this is just like it is in them damn moom pitchus here I was always spouting off about it ain't no good unless the good guys get killed in the end well I'm fixing to get killed I know that I'm dying sure as shooting Sefior there are many calls I must pay tonight tell that Tang to bring me something to eat some fish or something I ain't dying with an empty stomach there is not much food and I do not think you will die tonight goodbye vaquero goodnight soldier of fortune shit that damn Jimmy here I am half dead and Charlie B. he's dead and that damn Jimmy I bet he makes out with the gypsy before I'm ever buried and that smart-ass Sylvester who does he think he is anyway with that you sho did it this time before he died got us in to one hell of a mess every datburned one of us you and your ideas the hell I say you told me nothing could whup a guerilla I figured we'd do something right for a diange all of us shut you mouf boy I didn't say we had to come join up with them hell what country we in damn mexicans you better remember where I'm buried at so when this here war over you can come get me and take me back to Arkansas where I belong why the hell there I say you live in Mississippi not no mo I owe too much money there I live cross the river now but I knew that wasn't right cause I seen them taken his body down from the tree I seen it with my own two eyes I knowed he was dead as a nail I talked to his mamma and can't no nigger die twice but there he was up now off the field in the black burnoose he walks wake up Tang I ain't asleep leave me lone he grabbed the pistol and shot at a man creeping up on them with a four-way lug wrench I had a blue suit on the rest of them dressed in white or off white they were asking me about the tests from the school you can't say f-k accidently in private company or they'll shun you if you automatically say f-k in closed company you are in bad taste like hand-me-down clothes that don't fit out of date and you're not considered to be having lasting admirers I slip like the organ grinder did the city put his monkey to sleep his music box is in the window of a pawn shop somewhere in Arkansas I was passing through there you might ask why in the hell was you doing that and I would have to tell you the truth of it is I had run oifi from home again and bought me a bus ticket to Mound Bayou Mississippi to see the hypnotist at least I thought that's where I was going but the deaf man give me the wrong ticket and put me on the wrong bus I kept telling him loud as I could where I was aiming to go I had to yell through one of them things that looks like it come off a hand crank phonograph and I was getting kindly embarrassed saying I was going there seeing how it is the only town without one white person in it in this whole country and ['5 afraid the police might hear me so I just wasn't too all fired up about being real careful I just wanted to leave out of that goddman city and school and for that matter the bus station too why I never seen so many afflicted fools in my whole life I aimed to have me some good times in Mound Bayou I was going to learn how to swing that silver pocket watch and put people to sleep I was going to take up drinking liquor and dipping snuFf and that way I'd always be drunk or have my bottom lip full and wouldn't have to pay no tention to what nobody was saying to me ticket please to Mound Bayou Mississippi was all I said what's that laddie I say I'm going to Mound Bayou I had my hands around his Thanksgiving thing in his hear like I was drinking water you ought to be on a pension instead of selling tickets old man what's that he said that's what I asked you I yelled how much does it cost where you going I told you a wasp fiew in the horn and stung his eat so you can imagine I never did get nothing tight with him holding his hand over it I didn't want to yell too loud didn't want nobody white to hear me it was might crowded in there the negroes with shoe boxes and paper sacks in their laps would turn around and look at me all at the same time whenever I'd yell where it was I wanted a ticket to if I was doing it over now well I'd just gone up to some lady and asked her ma'am I go by Bellerophon any name will do see and I was wondering pleased to meet you if you could tell me if any of these folks is going to Mound Bayou that's where I'm headed but I didn't do that I was too stupid instead 1 got the old man to go in the rest room with me so I could really yell it I shouldn't have done that either go in the one marked white I knew that slick wasn't about to go in the one marked colored that's where I usually go because you ain't so liable to run into such peculiar stuff as you do in the white ones but I didn't you can imagine what I seen one dipshit asked me to pee on his leg then he wanted to smell my shoe I wasn't about to take off my shoe cause that's where I had all my money wadded up another peculiar man was down on the fioor scraping between the tiles getting all this nasty stufi' under his fingernails I seen him do it again later on down the mad he rode the same bus as I did and this bathroom was a heck of a lot nastier than the one I left out from then he went out in the cafe and bought a donut and went over and played the pinball machine and smelled his fingers scum scum trash goddamn there some crazy people I finally got a ticket the old man even showed which bus to get on which was naturally the wrong one I should have looked on the front of the bus where it says where it's going to but I had been looking at this man's naked women magazine and I had a rise in my Levi's so I had to hold my head down with my suitcase which was a cigar box over my front that made me look like a kid and all these old ugly white womens saying little boy you want to sit here with me I always go back to the back I went to sleep see this was my dream like a book where the german sees himself riding by in a black cape I didn't dream none of this dream in Tennessee all you can do there is think among the many individualired forms dead or living upon the Hill there was one neither dead not living it was the creature which had lingered outside the illusion of Eden for the man who had consented to its company it had neither intellect nor imagination so it couldn't have been me cause the knife fighter Bergamo he calls me bel esprit but he could just be letting on ah come on I tell him the strange one it could not criticize or create for the life of its substance was only the magical apparition of its father's desires it could not be a rebus it is said in the old tales that the devil longs to become incarnate that he may challenge the Divine World in his own chosen house of flesh and that he there fore once desired and overshadowed a maid but even at the moment of conception a mystical baptism fell on the child and the devil was cast out of his progeny at the moment of entrance he who was born of that purified intercourse (that use to mean talking now it means f-k I ain't gone say that word more if I can help it otherwise I will not be considered worthy) with angelic sacrilege was Merlin who wisest of magicians prophesied and prefigured the Grail-quest and built a chapel to serve the Table till Logres came to an end and the Merciful Child Galahad (get it) discovered the union in a Mass of the Holy Ghost which was sung by Messiahs among a great company of angels since that frustrating transubstantiation the devil has never come near to dominion over a mortal woman his incubi and succubi which tempt and torment the piety of anchorites are phantasms evoked from and clouded and thickened with the dust of the earth or the sweat of the body or the shed seed of man or the water of ocean so as to bewilder and deceive longing eyes and eager hands I dreamed that in Mississippi nobody could dream nothing like that in Arkansas you couldn't even read nothing like that about the only reason I can see for somebody to go to Arkansas is to look for diamonds and I wouldn't even do that cause about the only person I ever heard of finding a diamond was that one-legged dago and he's crazy now and besides it was a accident shoot I miss that girl I should have asked her to come over and eat melon with the black angel and me the land of opportunity my ass I was trying to catch this pigeon one day I was going to take it over to the store and let it roost there so it'd shit on Chitum's head when he was out there on the porch telling lies when I come on to this man from New York I could tell by the tags he had him a brand new Roebuck tent and a wool shift on a lumberjaclt's right in the middle of summer he was eating a lemon icebox pie he said that's all he had that day since he was on a diet I said what you doing he said he come to Arkansas this was a long time ago this happened see I had swum across the state line to get that shit bird to get a slice of life for a magazine and to lose a lot of weight I said you'll get it alright if you keep on eating that pic in the middle of the summer like this in this heat you'll get you a slice of poison he wanted to know if I had a few ribald tales I said no I'm sorry he said that's too bad I said what's that you putting down he said how many times he'd been mosquito bit since he'd been in the state of Arkansas I said hell why don't you just go on ahead and get snake bit while you're at it you'd have a lots to tell about then a marvelous idea he said I never thought of it where could I find a reptile I said oh just about any place around here let me go look in that hollow stump no they ain't one in here I can take you down to the bank and guarantee a moccasin though he said that's fine he didn't see the pigeon shit on the pic I guess he couldn't tell it from the meringue well I said to myself I'll tell him later maybe he can use it he went ahead and did it too can you believe some stupid slick giving me five dollars for showing him where he can get snake bit it's the gods truth he put his hand right under that rotten shanty boat and a bull took it the first time hell Jimmy made twenty-five driving him to the Palm Reader's place and she made a hundred a Hat hundred for putting antidote on it she told him it was a potion he believed her hell Jimmy told him next time somebody got kilt he could get his picture took over the body and he was sure the one that done it would let him stand trial for it and that way he could tell everybody he actually had kilt a living man but the man said he was against violence and Jimmy said you don't say he said I wished everybody that's after me was against it and Charlie B. who got fifteen dollars to sing a dirty song said you ken second that so Jimmy seconded it and what was fiinny the man thought it was a old song and here I done made it up not two weeks ago in the boat when we was engaged in some bootlegging activity I sho wished I'd a had some tales to tell the man though he was a alright guyl talked to him like I am now so he'd feel good and think he was right after all I wasn't going to mess up no good deal cause why he was laying there on Marna Julinda's bed he told me and Melvin and Baby Gauge we could make lots of money catching poisonous snakes and milking the poison out they fangs and sending it to New York City to the hospitals he said they do research on how to save people from bites I never did get his meaning how come they needed it there if all the people that gets bit is down here oh I guess folks must go on vacations to some other place in the country and carry it with them but hell they don't need to do no research cause it already works Mama Julinda can make it and so can this chinaman I know about that time Ray Baby came in and he was mad cause he didn't get no money he had a pocket knife with him and told the man about how Ray could give him a scar and he said no thanks he'll just keep the one where Mama Julinda cut him with the razor he called her Mrs. Julinda and told her he was for civil rights and I said it was good to hear that on account of how me and Baby Gauge was intending to go to school together at last ever since that young colored man come driving through camp throwing our papers with headlines about the Supreme Court there was a good time in camp that night daddy shut the camp down the next day for a holiday but Ray Baby was still mad so I said maybe if you dance for him or something he'll give you a silver dollar so he danced a little and sure enough the man gave him some money and when Ray Baby held out his hand to get it the man smiled at him and Ray Baby said you sho is a fool man and Mama Julinda said shut yo mouf child and we all went outside and looked at each other and Charlie B. said you meet all kinds and Tang showed up and we told him he could probably get the man to loan him some money so Tang took his hat off and run up the porch steps and went inside for a while and I said watch out and Clyde Miller and his ugly wife jumped out of the ticket booth just in time cause Jimmy and Charlie B. flattened it and then Tang come out with his hat full of bills and a smile on his face and he said boys let's go to town and we all went and had a nice time on the man we poked fun at him but it was all in fun cause actually he was kind ofalright whenever I'd go to town to get a haircut or get somebody bailed out I'd always stop off at the drug store and get me some ice cream and look through the magazine rack but I never come across that guy's picture I guess he was a liar I looked for a long time and the soda jerk said quit looking at those girls buy it or put it down and I said I ain't looking at no girls how about that and I gave him the bird in this place I was telling you about where I got off cause I just had woke up and I seen us going across the Ferry at Helena but I didn't believe it cause just right back a few miles I seen a Moon Lake sign on the side of the road and that meant we was about halfway hell and with them stopping at ever rat hole so I said after I had my long dream on the other side of Lula just go back to sleep by and by you'll be there I had made this run so many times I knew it like the back of my hand I did I say but goddamn I just thought I was dreaming about that no-fingered nigger friend of mine selling pot holders that he made and watermelons on the ferry him coming on the bus saying boy what you doing going to Arkansas I just said I didn't see you and he said still mad at me huh Ok I'll wait until you in a better mood see you in a couple of months see I thought that was a dream but it wasn't after I found out I said let me off this goddamn bus I don't want to go no place in Arkansas but the driver kept saying leave the driving to me and said just leave me off I paid a colored man a quarter to pull the stop cord and when the bus stopped I socked the driver in the eye and jumped off the bus before he could shut the door everybody looked out the window and waved and this one woman she said good luck and I said same to you and I hitch hiked until I got picked up by another bus going the other way and when I got off there I seen this barber pole that was green red and white instead of blue so I walked out of the station to go look at it and that's where I seen the music box in the window under these three cannon balls just by chance I wanted to give the fellow five dollars for it but he wouldn't hear of it he wanted six he was a real hick he said kid you can go fly a kite so with my finger I wrote with razor bladed blood on his shop window Mr. you can go get f--ked and a policeman put his hand on my shoulder and said through his nose I see that let's go to the station downtown and I thought what town I didn't know what to do it called for quick thinking I thought about talking like I do with the astronomer but I knew that wouldn't work I looked around across the street 224 at the newspaper office that old man who sold me the ticket was a foreigner I remember seeing a hearing aid in the shop there was a book for ten cents in the window covered with dust I give the policeman hand signals for I was deaf and dumb he didn't know what I was doing he didn't believe me I took out his ticket pad and wrote officer I can neither speak nor bear but I can read lips I am in this country with my father who is a scholar somehow I have lost my way and am without funds how do you say in english I am stranded yes I'm afraid the proprietor of this shop has mistaken my meaning it's so hard you know all I wanted all I was looking for was a small out of print book edited by franz kafka I put a period down and pointed to what I had fingered in the pane and began to weep the policeman's jaw dropped like a long turd he shook his head and patted me on the head he said I'm sorry as loud as he could then took hold of his lips with his fingers and said understand loud as he could again and I pretended to concentrate on his mouth and then I give him the hand signal for yes I see what you mean and smiled and wiped the tears out of my eyes and he said Gee it must be awful tough on you getting folks to read that sign language especially you being a foreigner and all UNDERSTAND it shore is a good thang you can read lips UNDERSTAND he said this he pronounced it like an old whore putting on lipstick in front of a mirror he looked at the tablet that had made four carbon copies of my spur of the moment lie he repeated my words over and over to himself very slowly he went over all that I had written nodding his head as he read along saying my words aloud and matter of factly in the strange approximation of some tongue I'd never come across before stopping here and there to correct my spelling and the way I penned my ['5 giving me tips like directions out of town a sight it was I ain't suppose to be able to talk like that yet my teacher told me once I was thinking but I'll be dead before long so it don't matter but it does cause I seen this john law had some redeeming trait he wasn't near no quality though he couldn't a touched that with a ten foot hickory stick he looked stupid he looked over to the window at the dime book a soft spot for trash sucker that one I just seen let me see how can I describe the joy and surprise in his ugly face when he saw that he had found something that someone else needed someone in such a stress like me for instance going soft if you think a goddamn police has a heart of course it was the same book why else do you think I'd made up something like that why it just popped into my head like that why that particular book was there don't ask me it was a coincidence like the time I got caught in the girls' orphanage that night shoot I told them I was disturbed and a suffering from somnambulation I was Francis Gildart the fimarnbulle to hell with it I told them oysters reminded me of the number zero which isn't a number at all but it makes young girls go to sleep and they all drew lopsided circles in the air with their fingers and I went through the routine about me being a sick dog that eats graveyard grass I told them how sensitive I was how the stars give me tattoos I get tan in my sleep I played dominoes with both eyes shut felt the foxholes in the bones who are you one girl cried I am a seafarer without a sea I said I am a wanderer with a place I want to abide in told them another lie about me and my pony better known as the fioating statue of the north to the wise and aged seamen we went riding one day to a deep wood where we found a frozen mirror the pony wanted a drink so we fell in we became an iceberg in a great black sea where there was never light only the stars to keep us warm all was quiet how quiet the littlest one asked I said in this land there was a river so silent a hundred children have drowned oooooooo they said from their beds the ones up in their teens even listen mates says I it was odd indeed how we returned to this world how was that says they like this I said a great hull run up on us and cracked us free nah we didn't hop aboard we swam for it we swam for years it seems the background music was Mahler and I dreamed as I stroked a gaunt sort of fellow who owned a printing press made out of wood a live oak it was told me sonny in a scottish accent whould ya be wanting me to bind any of yet songs up so the first place me and the pony got to where we could get land underneath us we stood up and I made motions with my hands like a sleight of hand man and all these songs came out of my sleeve and I didn't even have a jacket on they come out like blank playing cards but sure enough my songs was on them lassies and be bound them and the cover was confederate grey and my name maroon but I didn't see the book he told me about it but I kept doing my hands like that until it was in a courtyard and I was singing in sign language to a bunch of deaf and dumb children and the next thing I knew my boat struck something submerged like a clock striking midnight and I woke up and I was here then I do my bow like the Count taught me and the orphans are happy and clap and I put my finger over my lips and say shu then I go over to each bed and kiss the orphans goodnight and one holds out her hand with a pillow feather in the palm and I blow her a kiss and the feather goes sailing away with me and we hit something else under the surface and at home I fall out of bed and there is a copy of some book tied to my ankle like an anchor and quick I get up and draw a picture of the warrior Beowulf then I have evening clothes on real tails and I'm at a opera eating oysters that make me sleepy the girls on stage are lined up in their boat beds I ask the usher for my cape and hat and cane and I depart with water on my shoes and in the streets of the city which looks more like an isolated shore I hear a storm coming up I get down on the ground and open my mouth and try to swallow the moon but I need some water to make it go down then there is this spray coming from the sea it hisses like a panther like a thousand virgins saying hush like the fiower of death oh this must be the wake of the ship of death I get it now another round of applause however the authorities at the orphanage made certain I could never return disguised or not my dreams have become silent like picture shows unmade in the twenties not made at all just dreamed by the dead directors and actresses the horse and myself asleep in the ice there are wheels and dust and rings there are souls within the knife there is dampness and a hobbling infant there is a dirty comb there are fiying children of those I am one there is the phrase death is functional I made up two years ago there is always my spit there is always my brother he used the rudder Ibr kindling there is always the possibility I will remember the dream the bedroom there is someone whispering in the labyrinth there is that worm that fiies by my broken window at night there is the glass in my bed there goes that hearse again there is the time I rode clear to Baby Gauge's house wasn't nobody home there is that life of waiting for snow there is that sail sheet of blood there is that wake there is that abode under the surface there was the time I was a sleepwalking baby there is the thicket of snakes and honeysuckle where I kissed my hand there are the dead and the dead and the dead and the dead like the Mississippi River there are the dreams Huckleberry never thought about telling I know there are hovering over my hair dead butterfiies there are the shudders of the mothers pleading for mercy there are the tunes I've sung to the animals there are the times I thought I was a saint there are preposterous lies I can't even remember come morning there is a kingdom in the wind with no king there is silence and roses there are the adult males leaving the house in the dead of night to get something to eat there are the fiies around the bedposts when they return there are my swaddling clothes there is a great poet called Browning there are the minnows eyes on the back of my hand there are people shooting their mouth off in word and deed there are girls about twelve clutching their new breasts there are and there are orders and liars and dead things fioating but I will settle for the quivering breasts then of course by way of comparison there is Francis Solitaire making a poor showing and all of you with your teeth full of beeshit don't tell me there is only one way don't lie don't tell me about the football and the crowd at the same time don't lie don't give me that double talk don't be constantly saying you are right and they are wrong let there be silence without a word without another speech in behalf of silence without a mouth without a word let the dead rest in peace without the doubletalk the two-faced are tongue-tied here I go again exhotting those less fortunate than I father forgive me they know how to speak listen to the policeman his calculated and earnest speech his attempts at precise elocution on my behalf as if he were standing before his congregation on a sunday evening and giving his reading from some chapter this awkward unsynchronized soliloquy of breath and speech and ignorance to do a good deed when one fancy word means more than the life of a man his good intents he means well but this is only a brief encounter with the best of his syncopated heart but I will forget my hatred of him and his evil for one second I'm going to forget what him and his kind did to Sylvester the town nigger THEY SAY and his people I'm gone forget the hearts beating in their boots and the go ahead signals while the coast is clear signals like broken wind on his lips I'm gone do what the boy in the temple said to do (you already missed the punch line there is no sockdologet for the gospel truth) I have known the evil procreated in the offspring of the bad ones in bad times I would like to say something good but the way I figure it if you can't say something good about nobody then don't say nothing atol that's a white washed lie right there some of my own kin folks tell me you ought not to say that spitting in the face of God and the white race they're not all bad if well if I say I could find all these white folks I know so good was good where I wouldn't have to all time be telling them then maybe they might be right but ain't so if you take them all as a whole then they is evil quality and quantity I ought to know I'm white but now just as if I was some writer or something I'm going to enter these minds this mind that mind of these characters men I didn't like all my life but later if I'm dead tomorrow that is after living and breathing with them for so long these whites I got the right to speak my mind you can't help but say yes some of them are evil but you still have some feeling for them not cause you got the same skin that's like the same name a coincidence a rebus as if they were something out of the past but they are present he is right here but it is like that part of the past where values are without value where you no longer distinguish between fear pleasure it is just the past which is the present it is like a dream a memory of winning or losing it is all things that have already happened and so they will happen again and even after they have happened again you still say do you remember and just like Dark has said to me Dark the only negro I know who has killed more than one white man and can tell about it boy there ain't no such word as if he says so they hung Sylvester what of it I kilt me a whole sty of white mens kilt them in the war and kilt them at home kilt um up north and kilt them down here boy don't talk to me like you doing you can't say if only this or that they hung him and that's it all you can say is it happened and that's it when you think of him you got to think of him ventually getting hung cause that's the way it was you can't think back on something that didn't happen because if it was it is now but it ain't so when you think about it you can't change it you got to think on the whole thing the whole truth and nothing but the truth shoot I wish I's young as you was again I'd go through it all gain just to be your age but I'd still do it I go through all that hell again just to do it no I don't wish none of it happen different that's like wishing I was white like thinking some of that going be white when I get to heaven that's woman talk that ain't nothing but bullshit all my young days I wished everything was different but I wished myself I didn't never wish I was no white boy but I still wished myself out so now I know you better quit it sure as you better tag the man out if you drop the ball when he strikes out and so now I don't even think about tomorrow I don't even think about what's up this road I ought to know it's a baseball game you say but I ain't even knowing that no suh cause that be like saying we play with a baseball and we don't it gone take you a long time to learn that about us but you will you'll get up one morning and you'll say I know that and I'll tell that don't be saying you know how to play without the ball already hell you know how to fish too but you ain't got to keep nobody alive you might have a pretty good way with the water but you ain't got to keep from drowning sure as shooting I'm telling you the gospel ship is coming in one these days it's on the way now but I ain't thinking about it I'm just my sassing back self ain't even a christian I'll talk back to yo daddy anytime I ain't scared nuthing it's coming fah my people let them take the long walk up the catwalk but I ain't going somebody got to shove the boat back out in the water I got plenty chilluns on board maybe when you get old they'll be chilluns of yours on board white chillun maybe everybody gone he in the same boat then putting out to some different place it gone be the same country but I don't know how to say it just a different place you might have to stay behind and get it too would you do it I think you would things is changing just not like they use to be they might quit that scufiling I don't know gonna have to learn one way the other though there was a time and maybe still when that man right there see him pumping water I see him I says could a shot me down offen this mule for spitting in the wind I done scoundrels like him in befoe I know it I says so does you pappy he says but still I seen that man when he was a different mind when his girl child fell off Turkey Buzzard's fence in that pig sty when all them sows had them new ones wasn't nothing Turkey Buzzard could do bout it he been blind all his life them sows root her to death or she sufi'ocated in that mud one we'll never know never will I says never he says but that man he got down on his fours like a dog and wailed them sows come at him and he fight back like a blood hound I reckon the first face he seen was mine my big black face and he says and this hea boy it is the God's truth hep me Dark hep me he says down in the filth like that the sapsucker talking to me him I had hated all my days round hea you daddy having to hold me back from blowing his head off many a night but I reaches over the fence with my hand and heps that peckerwood up and says to him now and I says some out folks gone find her reckon she's gone Dark he asts me and I says believe so Selbey and he heard me for the first time call him by his last name but he know'd I never called no white man Mr. for nigh on ten years not even you daddy but of course we call each other by the given name but a long time I know'd he'd been telling the other white men in the store that nigger he'll not call me out and get away with it and the others they knew he was scared to death of me but he liked to talk it that way I could smell that white man being scared of me from his front porch when I rode by I just knew in my second mind it weren't gone be me that started nothing but it weren't gone be him either it was just gone be something to make him break so he could get rid of that fear he been carrying round like the sickness for so long a time like a still light inside his white trash heart I could know in my second mind he'd shut the lamp off when he see'd me coming up the road and he'd go inside and tell his wife and chilluns hesh and he'd look through them curtains and cuss me under his breath when I passed by and me knowing him like that I'd just turn my head round and look at that house like I hear you calling my name what you want I ain't coming but my ears and guts they hot and itching for a fight like I had the worms but he was there all the time and he knew I wasn't no scared of him they wasn't no call but I knew what he'd tell them with his back to the door and his face to the store counter and the stove a warming his hands when I walked in the door outen the cold and how it would get quiet and they'd turn their head but he wouldn't cause he just knew it was me but liken both of us come to the same bridge or to the same fence with our coon dogs at the same time which one of us is gone pass by you better believe it'll be me but when I got hold of his hand he pulled hisself up and I looked for a second at this butterfiy in the mud and I thought reckon this man gone take a swing at me but befoe I had a chance to think on it any longer I sees behind him this other white man with a crow bar and this other one with a spade and they is punching the ground and listening for that sound like it do when they is a body under there and all of a sudden it hit me I wouldn't want no child a man with no hole punched through her I'd just as soon get down there myself and find his little girl rather than that so I give him a pull and yells out hey there what ya'll mens doing with them tools we can find her with our hands and the two white mens his friends I knowed they was for a fact they leave off and one he rests his great big foot on the shovel blade and leans up against the handle and spits all the time looking in my eyes but I ain't aiming to be no mean nigger with a child's death like this but I still got my lip pouting out looking at them mens now since they give me their sign and all this ain't took but about two seconds but it seemed like most a half hour and the one with the crow bar says to the other 'n he's right hold off Sam and Selbey he letten go my hand now and says Sammy you put a spade through my daughter's face and I'll kill you and we dug her up with our hands and he ain't spoke to me since but he don't hide and watch me when I ride by no mo he don't tell the other mens he aims to kill me neither but that man right there he sees me but he won't wave and even if he do I might not wave back but I know he got that soft spot in his heart the problem is what you do with it once you find it I still hadn't made my mind up about that yet what do you mean I says I mean boy do you keep the tender and throw the tough away or do you chew it all or does you once you find that soft spot just shove you a knife in it there's plenty that'll do that I use to but I don't know anymore about this killing and this hating but when the ship comes in if somebody got to do some shooting to get it shoved out or if somebody got to get killed I reckon I just as soon do that cause them chilluns got enough misery to go through in they life anyhow without having blood on their hands and colored chillrens they know what blood is but I don't know if the white ones knows what they daddies do or not but the youngs one come right on along and do it too I can't see that who is that up the road that there is the Indian I says well tell him I said I sho enjoyed those fish and see if he wants to go to town with me next week when we go there I gave the Indian hand signals for what Dark said and asked him a few questions myself the mule didn't want to stop it just kept on going so I had to turn around and give the hand signals as long as the Indian could see me and I give him the one for so long until then old one but the Indian wasn't like the policeman but what Dark says is like him that's what I mean Selbey and the law are all alike like that if only I could castaway but I can't I have to stay behind and look after the others like Dark says it is like the time the time I keep saying that word I had another word doom in the shadows of horses and pool halls I had the cue balls and wounded masters I had my childhood of harps and fishes and out of date maps I had her ladyship the virgin and the courtyard of the moon and angels I had my reverie of strawberries and timelessness I had a time tagging along behind a man in a brown frock coat all day I had come from a country so different wherever I'd go I'd feel like a stranger I have not been there for a year or so I feel like a foreigner even in the southern capitals where is my country I ask the men and they don't know what I'm talking about there was so much time and space between my people myself and those others now I am old enough to kiss a girl on the back in the country club she lay on her stomach and asks for the straps to be loosened I write obscure words nouns and vicious and silent verbs on her back with lotion I touch her booty where it comes out like a phase of the moon after great pleasure a formal feeling comes bullshit I had the notion that many would hear about the land but only a few would tell it the way it was so it just as well might not have been said at all I had fun spitting on the steps of the fimeral home there were sharp knives and heaving bellies I had subterranean camellias on Maundy Thursday and I watched the goings on with a nude's lorgnette of parquetry and riparian hooves I dreamed I had the gumption to splinter my fingers on the rudder of the moon I had crawdads waiting for me after church I had somnambular calves and coves of loins and berries and thorns I had jasmine that spurred death in a furious arc I had insomnia over apples and mistresses as faithful as a swamp there were navels and satin and gallant foals I had mornings as long as a root and coach rides that smelled of soap I had enough oranges to juggle I had a roar like a bear and the melancholy of a clove I had to throw away untried knives I had to watch crosses of blood painted above the doors there were lamps I could hear being blown out and pools of crickets and drinking water there were panties that gave like guitar strings there were ceremonies of wet shipwrecks between the legs before the afternoon bell and love for all sends me dying in a swoon like a betrayed gypsy movie like a lover I had the pick of the crop I never had it bad I hold out my arms and birds fiy out from underneath I make murderers look like saints and saints look like thieves as a boy I will not tell on the others I had the hair in the stirrups there were drunken husbands who wished to slash their wives' wrists for them there were deaf mute children baiting their books there were red-headed women who gave birth to black-headed children who grew up to be dashing gallants with no hair at all there were times when I did not wish to sing but these were bad times I sang about death like the second coming I drew the ace of blood and threw it away I never played my best cards the ones I left to the rain in the balcony there are ashes and moons and ponies going away forever never to return I had a belt of dock rope and a bicycle prayed over by nightingales there was com and naked infants and unfolded clothes yes I undressed in front of silence and peed in the creek there was a shimmer I wanted to burn in the mammy's rocking chair there were lies of nightingale: when there were only whippoorwills I had islands within easy swimming distance I had dice that no one would shoot and a black horse just one negro would ride I later was hired out to widow women I tell you there was a time it was the last time Tang ever saw his wife I reckon the policeman said seeing how you is affiicted I'll just buy you that book much obliged I translated into the colloquial onto his ticket pad is it easy to read lips he said quite I wrote did you know Harpo Marx ain't got no voice he said no I didn't know that I jotted down when he went into the back of the shop I sneaked in and stole the music box he came out with the book I left on the bus and said where are you heading across the river I said then you is going to Mississippi he said hey didn't you just tell me where it was you was a going he said I shook my head jesus he was stupid could I pay your bus fare for you kid he said loud as ever why sure you could I thought and I give him the hand signal for yes and he understood that in the back of my mind I was thinking about the taclde box the other bus made olT with I guess I'd never see those lures again but I had to get all-of that bus the son-of-a-bitch bought my ticket and everything he even waved goodbye I want you to know I sure as hell was glad to get out of that state I aim to redeem myself from low down ways one these here days that'll teach me to pay tention where I'm going some fool driving me to Arkansas and I'm running off to Mound Bayou shit I'm on the right track now I guess that particular John Law had a soft spot but I don't want to go overboard about it I still hold a grudge against some his kind I intend to come back out of exile one these days like Odysseus done with a magic bow and let some them son-of-a-bitches have it that's what I'm gone do I'm gone write my history on a tin whiskey sign and use it for a shield I'm gone get me a wooden cross and say onward and didn't that crazy man get that white gar with a magic harpoon I don't know what I'm talking about I got to get thirteen before I can do any of that but goddamnit that sailor he never did aim to stay gone long as he did he kept getting waylaid I ain't gone do that where in the hell did he go OH- to in the first place the astronomer said you will do battle with the notion of time you will allow your person to plumb it so your ship may pass through it again everything has already happened already has happened now what the hell was he talking about just look at that now just look out the window at that how come does it remind me of the Old Testament the way the jews leaned on their hoe handles and looked at the road over their shoulders they wasn't looking at no chariots unless it was a fiashy one they was just looking into a long fiat tunnel of time they had done wondering at themselves what was coming next but mostly thinking about the past shit I got to start getting objective about things here I is stop off and walk 05 one bus I just got on where is that no-fingered nigger at how come he ain't on the Ferry I'm warped and buy me a Zero candy bar and walk back outside with my cigar box full of personal effects damn I'm gone make those cocksuckers look up my tackle box if I decide to go back home and this here music box and what's this bus doing with the lights on (get this) and me eating that candy and go to the back and the bus it leaves and the bus driver takes out of there like a bat out of hell and I fall down and look at all the niggers up front what is this what's the point in sitting in the back and this colored man with horn rim glasses on picks me up the music box grinds out and I say much obliged and he says glad to have you along and I say well it took me a long time getting here but I wasn't going to go into my mishaps and tribulations and I says this bus is going to Mississippi ain't it and all these folks turned around and looked at me with a smile and shake their heads and I says ain't it real loud and a kid my age handed me a chicken neck and says won't oun soda watah and the man who helped me up was a preacher and he says son you on the right bus cause we is going through Mississippi and everybody goes Amen we going to ride ride ride Amen and here I has done got on a freedom rider bus without looking I'll be lucky to be alive they done blowed up eleven of these buses in the last year and nobody will never even hear about it cause the mens that owns the papers won't put it in and pieces of my body blowed all over that cottonfield's face shoot I stepped in something this time just back in the cafe in Arkansas I heard them talking about a burning bus woe is me and woe is they I'm getting 0H: this bus well that's Broadway no I ain't I'm going to Mound Bayou in style and if we all get blowed up before I get there well then nobody will know who I was and that way I will play my part anonymously just like I never was which was what they had in mind all along so I clapped yassuh Brother and took a drink of that boy's soda and walked back to the bathroom and on my way a great big dark man holds out his white cane and says over his sunglasses you packing a rod no suh I'm just going to Mississippi and he said I ain't blind I'm the body guard and I has to check on all the white folks go right ahead I says while ago I was lost but now I'm riding for freedom and he says happy to have you along thank you I says and went inside the toilet and found a dollar a coincidence I was wiping my ass and hoping we wasn't gone get blowed up yet you might think that was funny but I seen the body of a colored man from up north who got murdered in a field hand's outhouse and that wasn't funny one bit it always goes though you laugh at the tragedy and miss the comedy the astronomer is always telling me about indirect understatement of the facts how a body can feel something from way down something he knows like the back of his hand and the one listening which is usually him cause the rest think I'm crazy except some of the girls and Baby Gauge and them will think now that's right I knew it all along but I didn't really know it but now I do and this person that is doing the thinking he will think ain't he fair and square and didn't he call it like be seen it but I don't know beans of what he was talking about not in this mind but really I do cause I know it but I ain't suppose to know nothing like that yet so I'll play like I don't cause I is tired and I'll say is instead of am just to spite the teacher but you can tell when I really say I is like I was breathing and when I say it to make the teacher mad of feeling like I do I'm getting out of focus cause there is things far away you has already seen up close in my heart but they is things real close you couldn't even pick out hell you didn't even know they was there and somebody knocks on the door white boy you better come on out of there if you gone march in the bus station wid us I'll save a place for you at the counter yessum I says I'm coming on out directly and so I go and sit down but before I do I take a look at the desolate bus I thinks to myself do Lord remember me which might be selfish but it's because I think maybe I might not never be in no boat in the barr pit with the sundown in my eyes and a man walking on top of the levee with a bucket I was reaching for the catsup to put in the hot water that there is soup vagabond but this other man I sat next to picked it up and sat it back down and snapped his fingers at the kid behind the counter and held up two fingers and pointed to his plate like he meant to say bring him another drink just like mine I said Mr. I ain't got no money and he give me the so what look out of the blue I lied and said I'm a outlaw on the lam and I'm one mean bastard they kicked me out ofschool because I was a communist I wanted to sing Tramp Tramp Tramp Hear The Feet Of Many Children but they said it was a communist inspired melody then why in the fuck is it in the songbook is what I told them over the microphone when it was my turn to lead the song actually I meant to tell a lie but what I ended up telling him was the truth I just can't help but lose he nodded and kept looking at my mouth before they brought me the hamburger I told him look if you are a queer you can have this hamburger back he chuckled I ain't in no mood for no horseshit I says cause in the next few days I'm liable to get blowed up I took a bite and turned on the stool and pointed my finger at him and says by redneck dynamite and nodded myself thank you for this food I says and asked him could I look at this magazine somebody had left in his place he nodded it was the kind where you flip the pages real fast with your thumb and you see a living picture in action this one had a woman fucking a donkey on the other side it had a Italian looking man nailing his hand to a board the man looked up and crossed himself with the other hand he had one them white robes on like Catholics wear oh go on I said you never can tell what you'll see until you pick it up these days I says then I looked at the man sitting next to me and sat up like a zombie it was him I says that's you ain't it you look younger but that there is you he turned his mouth down and shut his eyes which meant yes he looked depressed about it like he was ashamed of having appeared second billing to the ugly woman who screwed the jackass how much did they give you to do it I asked he shook his head as if to say nothing oh come on I says ain't nobody going to do that for nothing why'd you do it tell me I says what's wrong cat got your tongue he pulled back the sleeve of his right arm and with a twist of his wrist a little violet card appeared between his fingers shoot do that again I says it was like he was a magician who had read the card I had selected in my mind but this weren't no playing card no it was the alphabet of deaf and dumb people at last I thought I can use my sign language I don't have to speak so I give the stranger the hand signal for I speak your language tears came into his eyes and I thought this here is a coincidence and he give me the hand signal for brother give me your hand and we shook hands and I thought this here looks like a greek and he says how is that you know the way of the mute I give him the hand signal for Eight Moons son of Black Horse and Lay In The Grass taught me sign language when I was only a child and I have picked up what lingo I need from the poor deaf and dumb ones who go in and out of the buildings and sell those cards like you gave me I met these people in the city and he said with his hands it is a fine thing you have done by learning the language of the deaf and dumb it gives me hope that you took the time I give him the hand signal for shucks he give me the hand signal for I am a man of many faces as you will undoubtingly soon see you must understand howl feel at this moment my spirit is paroled I am no longer in the valley of death and silence for many years I have wanted to speak my mind with my hands and not with a pen with words which always seem to smell of the glands or the burning structures of the brain with all its forged and faulty symmetry and now I see before me not another deaf and dumb child not another affiicted face but I see at last someone like myself of course you can speak and hear and I cannot but I see something of myself someone who will appreciate what I will say with my hands so far I am the only poet of my kind in this country though you have probably noticed by now that I am from another country (I ain't never heard no real life poet speak his own words I have heard them in dreams the ones that are dead but I have a feeling you could put twelve of them in a barrel of shit and they wouldn't say hockey the ones I haven't heard but that is hard to say since I ain't never actually heard them but this man could speak songs and poetry with his hands even if I hadn't a known hand signals both of them would of danced like a man and a woman in a ballet don't get me wrong he weren't no sissy cause I seen him knock a man's teeth out for sicking all his boys on me but this man I tell you he was something else) your face he said with his hands has sadness and faith it has something swarthy and something holy I was turning red usually they say my face is ugly and no count or conniving ((it might be that he wasn't no good at all since he might a been just letting on about me so I'd think he was special maybe he just had a way with words like a mirror has but a mirror don't lie)) say I give him the hand signal for where was you born he gave me the hand signal for Italy you wouldn't know the town but I am of Greek descent just like I thought now he was trying to rhyme his words which was not near as good as a nigger can do I give him the hand signal for how about another Grapette but of course he signaled and made the motion with a snap of his fingers at the kid and the kid looked at me with the evil eye and I remembered that I was traveling with freedom riders and I said with my hands you know I'm figuring on getting killed and he said until a moment ago I was without hope until I met you I was only riding with them out of some memento mori but now with my faith restored I will ride more out of faith than hopelessness tell me he said I have noticed your unusual and sighted ability to go with the wind with the language if I may compound the analogy you seem to be able to row through the motions of the hands without ever looking back over your shoulder without ever missing a stroke I suppose you get that from the Indians but I've also noticed in your speech by reading your lips how you can change your dialect like the gait of a horse I give him the hand signal for I don't want to talk about that you see when I's small I thought I's double exposed I don't know what I thought I still don't know but I showed out and give one of these boys a fork and says to him go head on and stab my double standing beside me and watch me yell except then I didn't say double I don't know what I said well this smart alec boy who was bright for his age he was white he said you know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna stab you and listen to the other one yell shit I liked to bleed to death but you know what someone yelled in a child's voice it gave a sigh and the white boy heard it and he said did y' all hear that to the other ones and they said oh shut up Warren and he got scared and started running away and yelling I heard me a nigger boy yell ough when I stuck him with that fork I swear on a grave I did but like I say I don't want to talk about it cause I go crazy and so I have to be ofa different mind when I talks to dim-rent people so they won't get their feelings hurt and don't give me any shit pardon the expression for why don't you go ahead and hurt their feelings and be yourself cause I don't like the sight of pain and suffering I don't mind blood mind you but I don't want to go crazy seeing people in misery and I ain't got the call no call to put them out of it but I just wish their bodies would die and their souls would go somewheres or something just something cause I really get the blues and he said with his hands there there let's go out to the bus with the others the bus is leaving and the kid who was giving me the evil eye says here give this wet rag to your friend he's got catsup all over his deef and dumb fucking hands and while you is at it why don't you show me what the hand signal is for nigger lover I hauled off and socked the freckled kid in the nose then I said watch this Trash Can I picked up one of the stranger's hands and got a fork and poked it right through and the kid fainted then I give the man the hand signal for sorry but I had to show that cocksucker up pardon my french and then on the bus amidst the singing and speeches he began are you any good at riddles and I motioned I use to be but I give up at them long time back cause I know this chinaman that can ask some can't nobody answer and that's why he asks them so won't nobody say nothing then he give me the hand signal for what is he handed it real fast a monk's key 8t nun's drum I give him the hand signal for that's a riddle and he give me back precisely and so I give him so let's don't fuck around with no more of them OK and he does done and I ast him what he was doing and he said where nobody would see his hands when he moved them slow like for the last year I've been robbing banks I walk into some establishment and hand over to everyone I see one of those cards like I showed you then after collecting a few dimes and pickles and pennies I go over to the teller's window and hand her a card and on the back is written this is a hold up quite simple you see and I says you mean you is a for real bank robber and he says perhaps that will douse your premature misconceptions of my Christ-like attributes whatever you say I say and he says for that matter what you probably see in me is some figure of the anti-Christ since our civilization has been so long without some moral avatar no I just think it's nice that you is a bank robber I said back in Memphis why I could take you around I know lots of rich folks with big houses and we could rob the fire out of them and he says Prometheus always the Patrician now he was beginning to sound like a smart alec like the world's smallest man that's the way they all get soon as they think they got whoever it is they is talking to over a log and so to keep him in the dark I let on with the yassuh socrates jive Mr. I says don't be pulling my leg about the history of Rome I know all about it and I was thinking all along see how it is see how it is even in sign language somebody is going to take advantage of you believing in them and he gives me the hand signal for I only mentioned my birthplace after you asked me and now I could tell he was testing me he was still a cool and a for real person but he was putting me to the test seeing if I'd let all my past experiences sway me to taking a prejudice point of view like a sucker asks and I seen this and we was playing chess about what do you really think when you come right down to it with our hands and he give me this look outen his eye like I had done past the first of many tests to come but I done told him I didn't want nothing to do with no riddles but what was happening now was for real it wasn't no drunk man's mud pie it weren't no piping daydream so what I wanted to ask about was his hands how come he's got them holes and he gives me the hand signals for ah the stigmata strange they should be impressed after I gave up the priesthood in my heart and I says after you what thinking damn if 1 had them holes I could do some of the god awfulest yo-yo tricks you ever seed and I says you mean you is Catholic dammit I knew they was the ones that put you to hammering your hand to that board and he says no child I did it more out of body than spirit and I was breaking my vows by night now I seen what he meant by all his faces and I says why don't you start from yesterday and work backward and tell me what happened he nodded like a Arabian Knight with a but of course in a stealthy manner and thinking all the time if they didn't put him up to it who did he wasn't the devil and he told how his life had been one absurd misfortune after another how he spent his years after that time in the monastery acquiring twenty-seven languages and what happens when he is about to he says contribute one of the most original and promethean treatises on linguistics he is drafted into the local militia of his country and his manuscript is confiscated by way of a jealous professor now a colonel and published shortly after said linguist loses his voice at the front from a piece of his own troops' shrapnel ordered by said colonel how now his wife and adopted family think him dead and before that he worked in the Diamond Mines of Africa and I said no shit and he said that was the problem he and the band of Africans had become brothers in the blood and he had figured out this way they could steal a percentage of the diamonds what they did was swallow a whole handful everyday at work and then that night they'd go home and take a big shit and be rich but the European bosses they caught on to their plan about diamonds and guns so they got this witch doctor that was a stool pigeon to make up this potion where they couldn't shit that was one word I never learnt in sign language constipation how come you was to go to Africa I says cause he says I found out I was descended from an African and a greek you mean you is a nigger I says partially he says as you can tell I'm translating into my tongue not his cause that takes too much out of me how much I says about one quarter well that's enough in Mississippi to make the other six bits of white don't count specially since you got that dark skin while he was in his little reverie there in the back of the bus I opened the black medical bag he was carrying under the seat it was just like the one the hypnotist has got sure enough he was a bank robber cause it was full of dough I took my shoe off and stole a twenty dollar bill just couldn't hep myself looked like he was dozing off I turned the reading lamp on and go: that magazine of him molesting himself and thumbed through it seven or eight times while he was asleep I punched the colored boy on the shoulder and says say man what's this cat's name he bought me dinner but never did catch what he goes by he say ah man that's Vico much obliged I says and he put his head back on the seat I was getting bored so I punched him again hey I says he opened his eyes what man he say you want to see something cool what man I pointed to Vico's hand and smile seen that already he says oh I says I tried to think of something else I punch him again hey I says hey man what you want I'm trying to sleep seen this magazine and he lets out a sigh and gives me one old and tattered thank you I says and thumbed through his this one had a bunch of russian dancers going around on the fioor six big negroes got off the steamboat with the casket on the other side of the reds was a eerie looking moon aintimation they call it but you spell it animation and it weren't none of that Walt Disney shit neither these monks with candles in a dark corridor where the ceiling was so low they had to bend their necks when they walked through the door and in a white sheet with pierced hands Vico looked like a damn circus act shoot he don't fool me that liar and him wearing those wore out white gloves with no lingers he might a wanted out of that monastery but he still had that religion in him any minute I could tell he was liable to come out with it but no he was going to sleep dozing off with both eyes open and that there colored boy he punched me this time and says say can you get that that music box to play and I says sho we can and I picked it up and whispered in Vico's ear which was like throwing a knife away reckon it'd be alright if I play this music box it wasn't no joke you know it was like asking a blind man could you turn on the Friday Night Fights when the TV. it's so old you can't get no sound and that is like them monks like a silent movie and that is like the Cloisters of my country like I was telling you about the silence but with sound of the wagons and mules sardine cans cane poles breaking motors that won't turn over a negro holding a hearse horse on a big boat saying betta watch out white boy and the red tassel on the head and hands bent over and the hoes at noon like pieces of a shattered mirror and now it is dark and the one they call Vico is talking in his sleep and used to the somnolence of his tongueless bell he hands me another one of his cards nothing but death it is violet and on it is written not the signals not the note about the hold-up but the words in hoc signo vinces and I sit up in the seat and say with my hands to the sleeping paladin yes Vico I stole it out of hock in a pawn shop in Arkansas then I sort of stand up in my seat and grind the music box and the heads nod as if to appreciate a foreign music and I open my eyes and my mouth and look around and pat myself on the chest and a woman who is cutting out a picture in a church calendar gives me her scissors and I grind it with one hand and snap the scissors with the other and look around like a loony tick and the colored boy snaps his fingers and says shit you don't fool me you ain't no Harpo Marx what you talking about and a barge horn blows twice on the river and it is silent like this I thought a freedom ride was fun but it is like going out alone when a tornado is sighted down the it is like we were troops on the way to the war it is something so simple it is difficult to say like after you read a book and say why I never did know nobody like that ever was but they was all along driving in the night without your folks songs of branches and being alone and about to swallow water to see the bypasser who died of fever at dawn there is no shade in the saddle no hooves heard on deck harmony of evening and lightning bugs and socks rid me of the bony feet under the sheet the two skulls with the toes in their teeth holding the bow tie and dogs barking on the other side of Spoon's there is solitude in pecans and hooks and shoe laces and there is solitude of the barges and shed skin and solitude in the black shadows of the hairdo of the forest at one o'clock solitude in aimed pistols in bridles in breaking rope what can a miter want it never misses a thing sir a deaf mute is talking to me in his sleep he is saying things with his hands like infinitesimal instant of death the solipsist the veterinarian who has contracted the disease from reaching into the rear of the cow without a long white glove on the rider is reaching into the saddlebag and so the language of sleep is always the same nothing but death he tells me of one man who came from the Vatican to investigate him concerning the murder of a prclate of the mother church and I am thinking why didn't I get to talk about the history of Rome so I start in with my hands to the man who is asleep listen Vico I know all about Rome there was a time when there was so much unemployment they hired this man to give them bread and circuses kind of like the way football is now days then they wanted everybody to break ground cause they wasn't no food so they hired this man who wrote poems about how nice it was to plough grapes and then they had all those men with clover in their hair lying around in mausoleums on marble tombstones eating grapes and cornholing each other the virtues of agriculture it was and I was just sort of giving my hand signals and listening to his turning the crank with my toes like a monkey and that boy was blowing on empty bottles and Vico he was way 09' the track and I shut up a second to look at his hands close cause he was using them so much they had done started bleeding and I didn't cotton to that so as I was listening to the fine and difficult words l's trying to dab the palms with a clean sock I had in my cigar box damn them folks lost my taclde box and he was going on like he was giving a lecture to a bunch of fools angels he says not in the sing song way he was angels are beardless sexless being winged human in form and barefooted often they are arrayed in the vestments of deacons and carry the wand of authority again they are shown in long tunics with golden girdles about their waists I'd like to see Sylvester in some get-up like that sometimes with a stole or pallium angels are pictured as carrying various objects if they carry a pilgrim's staff a scroll a book a sceptre or a sword it is a representation of their ofiice as heavenly beings or as the guardians of mankind shit I might as well be reading a no count book if shown with a censor or a thurible it is the symbol of the adoration which they olfer to God they may be pictured with musical instruments indicating the praises which they sing to God if they carry a palm branch or a sprig of olive leaves it denotes victory or peace if shown placing a wreath of laurel on the brow of a human being it is a mark of distinction high class either in poetry or literature in the service of Christianity made it rhyme with insanity not me brother I ain't hoeing that row I ain't catching no fish by no Popular Mechanics theory they don't know shit they ain't never caught nothing on that lousy fucking bait underwater bats bullshit ride to Mound Bayou the laurel wreath is not for warriors a wreath of oak leaves is a symbol of strength yew leaves express the idea of immortality and cypress leaves of mourning an angel with the right hand extended slightly palm open means guardianship of human beings the blood sprinkled upon the doorposts of Egypt was a symbol and the angel who slew the first born of every creature spared the households upon which this sign was placed shit I know that fuck these angels wonder how they pee bat night desolation death charadrius frog panther scythe decadent nimbus l's going to say I wished I had a tape recorder the seven-fold fiame and the winged wheel he says he was descendent of the Moors which is not nigger but it might be in Mississippi who is Vincent of Saragossa vox clamantis in deserto if this son-of-a-bitch don't come around I'm gone wake him up schemhamphoras all I could make out was some body down on their knees looking up a hog's ass I'm gone tickle his ear he said that he must of been trying to talk like me son-of-a-bitch gone bleed to death truth is not something external to the mind now he's talking like the goddamn astronomer it is never found in knowing as in doing we make things come true we can have certainty without knowledge as when we improperly substitute dogmatic certainty of mere opinion for the tmth we can and ought to create or properly supplement with faith truth that is beyond our power to create I guess I got that right the only reason I didn't let them stick them wires in my head was on account of if they found out I had it they'd put me on caster seals and on little hourglass boxes on counters so people could drop dimes in next to the mints and toothpicks and football schedules and fiicking rubbers I didn't want that nohow on the certainty that attends erroneous or dubious opinions there is no need to dwell manually knowledge must include an acquaintance with the past but it must do more than that it must be accompanied by an imaginative ability to put ourselves in the shoes of long ago and other peoples and to see whatever period we are studying (.) through the eyes not of our time and place but of those who lived in it our Failure to deal with primitive human life in terms of itself and our tendency to read into it our own sentiments and conditions lead us to errors like the contract theory for example guess he was a lawyer too however if we can see others as they see themselves we shall find that primitive beliefs and customs are not based upon ignorance and superstition hadn't you ever heard of burying a chicken Foot beneath the house it don't work all the time but are rather a kind of poetic wisdom which grasps in its naive and imaginative way precisely the same truths and principles as more mature civilizations exemplify in a more refiective and sophisticated manner sounds like a crock of shit to me what about you he talks enough maybe he had oughten to been a stump broke politician oncet 1 like to die cause I eat a destroying angel oh did I have a bellyache (Good Friday Goodnight) I finally figured out a name for it now all I need is one them contraptions I wake up and it rains on the raft a thousand chinese tortures an orchestra and a bestiary so the hole in the bucket doesn't matter you find me undressed and dead beside silence and water you see the wolves whimpering over my tracks in the snow the voyages I have taken the fiies I have swatted death is in the ruins of the earth bowing in the handkerchief it is in my body that casts two shadows in the bloodstained evening and in the disfigured bosom in a sack of stolen apples it is where girls touch themselves when the wind blows on their blouses death is its own desecration especially it is undone clasps and towels death perspires like an e' in an incubator you can taste it in milk and in stamps it is somewhere in the bottom of the boat it is lying in ambush for a child alone it is just like the child in his eyelashes and knees and elbows in the mark in the garden death is like an anchor like a ruined net it is undulating under the blue sheet like the corpse of a snake-bit girl you see it in the night you throw stones at it and it comes back and spawns on your pillow it wants to make a drum out of your skin it wants to catch your attention with a blue light cast your shadow under the judas tree it whistles marry me have this ring and it spits in your eye like a grasshopper it gives you warts and makes it impossible for you to pronounce certain words you see the smoke and when you get there the altar is a booby-trapped juke box it rolls by with its passengers wet as broken blisters the school bus of death with the water barrel on the back and the haunted shovels when you listen to its nuptial lyrics you sink down at the cross-roads it confesses rose water and horseshit if and when it reads it has no eyes it reads from the book of the dead you can't tell it from the bride or the bridegroom it never shuffles the deck it makes you dance on ants it walks by like an angle in a letterhead seen from outside the window always it will make you two minutes late for the matinee I was not chosen so I don't accept the curse of the father I am chosen by a woman didn't the Laws shake creation my first mammy said it so happens the pallbearers are hauling up the gangplank the horse walks in a circle my father's horse black as Sunday without the moon sits death is no gentleman when you address it address it as if you'd never met it as if you didn't want it to get where you were sending it just five letters like the numeral eight written on a mirror death that drives the cheerleader next door to leave the curtains parted when she takes off her sweater death that drives a cadillac car a coup de ville death that says why he's a genius so you can hear it when you tip toe past the door death that points out your undone fiy and wants to zip it up death who makes dye run down a head waiter's cheek who makes grown men tango by themselves in their offices while thinking of ceiling fans south of the border that wolf that buries its fingerprints and tickets that leaves deceptive traces behind that kisses with no lips that turns the lights out and goes to the theatre that makes the fourteen year old touch her womb that makes me two years her younger lay awake in the guest bedroom with the door wide open so the sister will pass by dream on at midnight the assassins arrive with a spit shine death that makes animals lose their shadows death like a missing carnival do you know the lords of death the salutes in the rose death who wants you to forget the body odor of the fishermen when they come to town to the picture show death who also says forget the lost child throwing photographs at the moon this odor is Ivory Soap and shaving cream the clock on the bed and the white horse sad as the island the dress and the double suicide and the unclaimed baggage death in the port giving away free round trips the mothers that want to throw-up by themselves the wasp nests in the radio in the outhouse the tunnel where you give people you don't like the finger the arm chair in the room with the comma on the wall perhaps the slope of twilight made it so a Bedouin dagger characters in books as real as strawberries and death makes you stumble and give yourself away to the lovers death makes the priest scrub the rug around the rail it makes common thieves suffocate in boxcars death that makes you write your epitaph on a drannel buoy that makes you wonder why the widow woman buys bananas she never eats the things you find in the bedside tables when you spend the night the big brothers looking at themselves all the time the lumber camp that smells like puke death has a piano oh yes but the keys are dead when you punch one it is like a broken bone death has a knife of sweat and a scabbard of tears long walks won't do any good horses fisck inside me and a river makes a bend in my shoulder that is all I have up on death I have wild dreams I live a wild life I'm: seen things better not to tell I am the son of the river just another bastard childhood is not worth living no matter what you hear that voice coming from the parlor holding my hand good luck is all I can say DEMOCRATIC MOOM PITCHU REBUS BLUES how two infants one invisible landed on earth after a journey from another planet fioating dirt and became one with the people and told their story in song and dance and the only one invented in the last two thousand years and the others too and now Vico is telling his hands his sing song way (Francis became omniscient when he opened his eyes blood fiows existence ends) I looked up at the moon like a cold bath in the dark in the east wood was burning I looked up at the sun like a hot bath in the light in the west steel was fiashing I said these things when I try to tell the truth I forget the words they are like drops of water nmning down a sword the truth is why you can't see Dark's fist when he hits someone I've learned a lot I know nothing I should have learned by now that better men died trying to say those things that cannot be said I listen to some men talking in longwinded and precise phrases they circle over the Truth they hover like vultures the words buzz like fiies I think I would respect humming if I couldn't hear it I'm not talking about bees they shit honey (Francis loved philosophy it was ambrosia it was water it was ichor it was ice it was gas it was music) when I want to know the truth of the matter I stumble and fall when I try to say something smart-alec you've heard it before it is like dipping your finger in the meringue when there is no pie you can get away with it when it's cool ((notice the stings black eyes scars and bites)) I want words that will soak me in blood I do not want to be bushwhacked maybe my brother is a spirit that leaves me in the cold I would like to break my back on the truth then (his body) there is only one ship you can board for truth and all the adventures will be like a dream ofa dream there will be mental journeys and physical voyages you will be the captain and the ship will be the ship of death I stand by even on horseback you might not know how to ride the opponent is death it is on a mountain by itself the blade has not been burnished the angel of death ( ( (the paradox of danger) ) ) if the natural order of the delta was the river of death then the early failures of the US. Army Corps of Engineers was false order if the victories of dirt and my father and men and levees was a higher order then the concrete now without a fight is order for the sake of order what is forged is broken (they were broken Maldon) what is well tempered will stand it will be broken over the knee so long to the river I'll see you when I get there ((son of death)) the colored boy is beating his fist into a catcher's mitt where'd you get that at I says found it that's mine I lost it the bus company lost it was in my tackle box see the man give me the wrong ticket and they lost my luggage I says finders keepers losers weepers he says if that don't beat all I says to myself what you looking at me fah he says I ain't looking at you I'm looking at my mitt you mean my mitt man he says I was drinking I can't say look at my initials cut on the inside strap cause when I cut them on there I done had changed my name again and it say F V so he'd think I stole it hey Mama he say make that white boy quit looking at me what he doing that fah son she say cause he say why she say I done give that boy soda watah now he saying this here his catcha's mitt tell him I found it Mama tell him it might be his son she say well he ain't getting his mitts on it if I has anything to say bout it what you so nervous bout boy she say cause I tired riding around on this bus with y'all we got to ride she say I want to do something he say now the kid is beating his fist in the catcher's mitt harder and harder and he's looking out the window at the people looking up fiom the fields waving cause they see the headlights on in the bus but soon every bus will have to have the lights on cause it's just now getting dark and I can turn the reading light off cause I didn't read nothing anyway but the dark thunder clouds made it like night now it is really becoming night naturally it is and that boy looking out the window and a car passes us real fast with the horn blowing and a boy with freckles gives the bus the finger and the colored boy says hey Mama that there was that peckerwood that broke that egg over my head it was the same one and I look and it was the soda jerk and I tell myself what's the fair way of doing this so I say to him hey what you want man he says what position you play I say I plays pitcher man what you need a mtcher's mitt for then I says cause I ain't never had no glove befoe well listen I says I play catcher and that there is my mitt my mitt he says but at home I got a good fielder's glove that I didn't never use so I took it to the leather place and had them make a pitcher's pocket in it cause this colored man I know he pitches for WDIA but the glove was too little for him so what I'm saying is let's make a swap I'll send you that glove if you'll give me back my catcher's mitt look man first off this here is mine and next how I know you gone give me the other'n where is it in Memphis I says shit on Memphis we ain't in Tennessee boy you bettuh hold yo tongue talking them nasty wuds his Mama say give me the mitt back and I'll send you the glove no deal he says how da I know you gone send it to me I run off from home see to go see a friend in Mound Bayou but I'll go back I got to have that glove I says I can't catch with nothing else it was special made from saddle leather and the regular catcher went to Ching and I is the youngest on the team and the only other one that's white is Jimmy and you don't know who he is but we got a team that can't be beat but ifI was to screw up we'd really be in a fix they'd all think it was my fault and it would be cause I'm the youngest and they is letting me catch I say no reason to get upset he say it's mighty important I say look now he say when I'm up on the mound I got to have me a quality glove and I just don't know if you gone come through I'll pull through I say give me a chance you can trust me I don't know he say if this glove you speaking of will do me any good what you been using I say uh well I'm use my hands he say your bare hands I say well one these days a baseball gone to cripple you up your fingers won't take it so you got to have a glove let's swap I'll say the catcher's mitt is yours fair and square if you trade it don't like it man sound fishy how come you change your mind so quick he say cause I remembered something I says what he say I remember that the mitt was made and give to me by a colored man his Mama looked at me and said chile we saying Negro now yessum I say a Negro man give this to me since then he done passed away I'll buy that but I ain't gone give you my catcher's mitt until you send me your glove a deal I says put your hand on it he says we shook on it say you want some Nugrape yea I says Vico bought a whole case fah me he says he's kind of screwy but he's alright he says hey whea'd you learn that side talk from a Indian I says that right he says I got a fouth cousin is a Indian ain't he Mama I been working on it for a long time I says is that glove I'm gone swap for broke in good shoot yea I says a real ace used it for a while say he was pitching fah WDIA radio un huh I say name wasn't Lemon was it that's him alright I say he kin to some singing entertainers ain't he yea I says reckon it'll fit me sho I says well I'm gone get me some shut eye he says good night I says same to you he says I closed my eyes and Vico was still going in his sleep then a voice behind me you want to play with while I' m asleep the boy says if you'll let me I say he gave me the mitt and says boy you got to give it back soon as I wake up sho I says I lay back on the seat my eyes dizzy from lack of sleep and the excitement of the afternoon and the concentration on Vico's hands and the persuasion I thought my family was probably looking for me I thought the whites of my eyes ached and the Negro kid was putting himself to sleep with fiip fiop and fiy I don't care if I die I thought about how one year the geese going or coming I forgot the season of the year how they were brought too low by the lights From some city and when they passed over the country lower still they fiew into the Drive Inn screen it was like the death of the moon 1 could lie and say a movie was playing but none was just white and scarlet and the blue cloud like a hearse casting its black shadow and this is another one later now and the preacher is driving up in his wagon but now is not now it is then and so where the moon says I have lost the country of light I never knew it was like the night it always believed it was alone I beat my fist in the catcher's mitt the one who looks in the mirror and the one in the mirror a fire as silent as an orphan days and work that have passed on like dragons and wands abode: that only exist under the water forgetting the anchors the ridges the foreshadowed and those that are happy the contours of pain that saved myself from myself I lied I went away one evening to confess to the water the melancholy of torture of drifting night that sleeps in a bed made up by Savonarola I would like to blame the astronomer or the world's smallest man or Jimmy or the Black Angel or the bullet or the water or my tongue or the moon or the silence for my voyage but I can only blame the truth and my dreams I only blame myself I look for the time that is lost like a place to fish like a pursued man I hang on the hands of a lost clock I admit my guilt but I don't know why sometimes I dream Baby Gauge is standing over my deathbed and telling me you bettuh watch out then it goes black like a statue in front of a castle a beam of light illuminates a few words on a scroll if only I could remember them then I am standing there on the cliff and the wind is giving up its death breath in my hair and my cloak fills out like an equinoctial sail I kiss the map of the island and point out to sea to sleep on the land of the island if the astronomer were there and I am glad he was not he would have corrected me with equidistant the bus is smoky I pinch the corners of the windows for air I am like a mime carrying glass the letters from mysterious pen pals from all over the globe keep coming the post script on everyone is you mustn't tell what you have seen so far I take these letters to the astronomer to translate and sometimes he takes the glasses off his nose and looks up shaking the tassel on the fez out of the way and says the spirit of these words defy translation who are these children where do they come from and I answer they are the light off a long sliver of steel when you dream of a sword they are the stripes of the tiger they are over there on the sand naked and fighting in the sun in good fun they come from southward fi-orn the lake and wesrward fi'om the river for a long while he looks at me over the long table he brought from Egypt his face is almost green and I dream of the desert enough of the astronomer that is another story I should have never asked the yardman about him 1 should have never talked to his daughter I should have never read his diary he's insane or he's returned from the dead I am frightened at the way he says Memphis and when he slips up and says I when he speaks of ancient times when he makes references to me and he tries to cover them up like a fart it is like he knows my destiny a word I've always been fond of I doubt that it was an accident that he left those books at my father' s house I wonder about him but I never try to tell about him perhaps it is because he is so mysterious and so resigned to coincidence that split in his teeth and his tongue when he talks how he can look up without ever raising his head or straining his neck that time at the lake not too long ago when I went over to their cottage in the boat and no one was home at night the shadow of the astrolabe on the huge wall bare as a lie his manner of speech sometimes when we talk about my firture as if he is anticipating something the way he looks off into nothingness like he was preparing for some journey his frequent slips in tense and point of view when he is the one who is always correcting my way of speaking whatever it may be what voyage is it he means well but what does he mean why all the concentration on his personal speculative astronomy as if he knew a short-cut through the woods for a long time I suspected my family of hiring a headshrinker and having him disguise himself as an astronomer since they knew that was my field I feared this was his unusual interest in my dreams I don't think that any longer I know better because I know he knows about me it is strange that at my age I mention my mother and father least of all I feel guilty it is like they would read a play where everyone but them was mentioned this problem won't ever go away it comes back ever year like the geese next comes the astronomer as if he was in league with my brother don't tell me I don't have a brother either I'm bored with that talk why just last night when I came back from the show a poem and some battle plans for our journey to help them out south of the border were finished Charlie B. says he's in league with the devil and that what I need a brother fah but enough of this Charlie B. is dead drunk on a bulldozer enough he and Jimmy are in prison enough they are in Chile enough they are waiting for me and Dark to come to the baseball game enough I'm glad I didn't tell that boy in the next seat we didn't use no ball he never would a made the swap to tell the truth I don't know where they are enough Vico is still asleep why now the bus rolled through the first neon lights of the little town just another mail stop no matter it slowed down and seemed to coast past a Billups service station and a Flying Service and an Ice House then it stopped under a street lamp now what town was this I thought I know the route like the back of my hand it was on the tip of my tongue they take on freight right up here at a dnrg store and then make a little circle and head on out the highway again past a Drive Inn and this time a year I had ought to be able to see something on the screen and we are stopped now and the passengers are all seated except for the man with the collar on and he's at the head of the bus giving instructions about how to remain non-violent no matter what when we all get off the bus to take a rest stop but the driver turns around and says wont be no rest stop on this stop cause ain't no real place to get off at this time of evening the drug store be closed on up the run a way everyone will be allowed to get off and I noticed the way the white driver said the words like he didn't mean to be smart alec just that there was no point getting off here and so the preacher asks would it be alright to stop off at a service station somewhere cause a couple of elderly ladies is kind of sick and he says oh yes we ought to be able to do that but we is pulled up under a street lamp now beating my fist into the catcher' s mitt and the boy and Vico still ain't wake and out the window on my side I see four or five white boys sitting in the back of a pick-up and there is a man looking back through the panel window at them with a smile on his face and look up in the sky now but seems like I recollect one them faces so I looks back down and the bus is fixing to start rolling again and the driver of the truck now he' s outten the cab standing on the running board and looking like he' s biting the stem offen an apple and he tosses it to the boy sure enough that soda jerk the one with freckles and he looks right at me now and throws it in the window but it gets there before it really gets there like it was a slow motion way of doing things which is unnatural but this here was a natural hand grenade and I seen it coming and I held out the mitt and it was for real alright and nobody on the bus seen it atol but me and the bus is rolling again now and the boy that threw it yelled catch nigger lover and I caught it I really did but I never would have ilfen I had never played baseball with no baseball and so I taken it out of the glove and I remember what Dark and Jimmy told me and the other one that went to Chicago too don't HESITATE if a man is stealing second base and they ain't nobody on third throw it and so there weren't nobody going to first so I reared back with the ball and pe'ed it to second I don't know if the man was out or not but there was a boom and I was squatting down in the seat of the bus beating my fist into the mitt saying come babe come babe and so Rufus is dead now he's dead so now he's dead one of them say he was dead so now he is but I seen him first so I said it so I know he's dead nobody else say a thing I said it to myself that he was dead now that he's dead and the wind come up and blew that hand of Beleaguered Castle solitaire offen the wrought iron table with the glass top and I climb that tree and jump through the water of the table but that was seven year ago so I don't know it anymore and which nigger had them Easter Egg laying chickens Rufus say come on and look if you dont believe me and I go and sure enough it was and he called it Araucana but that weren't all he had he had a stamp collection that was colored too and he were that beanie and he walked with a cane all over the county and nobody ever called him nothin but The Jew and he make us scrambled eggs of a morning once but how come they lose they color I say but I can't taste it right nohow cause of this glue on my tongue but that weren't all he had a stain glass picture window to look out of I figured it to be a portal but no no he say that when you look out his window you look out a grave so he's dead now with him a stamp like a picture in the Bible on his tongue with those colors and all them decks of playing cards like the Admiral's fleet them that he called Father Time Rouge et Noir Four Intruders House in the Wood Harp Faerie Queen The Wish Gavotte Idiot's Delight Osmosis Napoleon's Square Forty Thieves La Belle Lucie labyrinth I thought it rhymed with baby Tam O'Shanter Contra-Dance Nestor Puss In the Corner and Rufus saying he's dead alright yessuh he's dead would you look at them cards I reckon he's been playing by hisself like that fah seventeen years been gambling like that and the chickens got to be fed too go head on and see to that boy I'll prepare the boy yessuh I says to Rufirs but Rufus weren't dead and them chickens got in the house and got after them playing cards the Blue Andalusians pecked the wild cards and the bantams had the Queens and the one-eyed jacks chased the Mottled Houdans out the back door and the seven of clubs slipped under the screen and the Black tailed Japanese went after and the Plymouth Rocks shit on the three of clubs but the nine of spades was in the bed and hadn't no chicken got to it but the Laltenvelder was roosting on the jew's head and Rufus say I'm gone ring one these chickens neck with all them stamps in they belly and I say won't do you no good unlessing you was a foreigner cause them stamps ain't fit for nothing in the United States and he says well I'm liable to go to South American States one these days and I say oh go on and he says I mean to catdt that Argentina and take in Peru and Chile and some them other south of the border places and I say go on and the dog wanted in but that weren't right either cause it was really part wolf he said so I tied the neck tie around the dead man's throat I couldn't get the knot right to save my life here boy let me do it no I say I can do it so I did it I tied it around my neck first then I take it off and tie it around his and Rufirs took a long draw and says whew that jew drunk stout whiskey and he opens the lid of a music box and a tune neither one of us had ever heard and I say oh go on you ain't going to Latin America and I didn't even know where it was and for sure that was nigh on I can't count but now he's dead like that night before Easter and I can't find the white gloves and I know you wear a white rose if your mother is dead and a red one iffen she alive but I must had been sleep walking that evening cause 1 got up foe dawn and them gloves wasn't on my hands and I sleeps with them on my hands but they was gone so I says I better go find them gloves cause they got to have them at die service so I put the derby on my head and goes out in the chill and yellow fiowers and takes a look off the porch I asked the rooster say you hadn't seen them white gloves nowheres has you and he don't answer and so 1 goes off down the back road and run into this here colored boy with a white moustache and I says has you seen them white gloves and he says nah has you seen the Bunny I says no what you doing he say I'm got to fiag some my kin folks down so they'll know where we stay and he's drinking milk and I got to find those gloves and it thunders and I say to myself if I'm quiet maybe I can hear them no so now I go under what use to be Mr. Rufus shack but the white people got it now so I got to be quiet and I can see the new lumber on that new outhouse the white man's wife made the white man build cause she says she wasn't gone have no nigger man's privy on her land but it weren't her land for real cause they took it after Mr. Rufus died you call that chicken squat but the old outhouse it' was still there but with vines growed up around it and I put my hand up over my ear and listens for the white glove but all I hears is this crying I don't know what is whining like more than one maybe three or four it's got to be animals I thinks so I try to find them nowI remember where I left them gloves in Rufits outhouse yessir so I forgets about that noise cause it was light now but I forget to walk so I just crawl towards that outhouse and the crying it gets louder maybe the Palm Reader making them gloves do like that but I know she can't do nothing that badass the sound is like cats I reaches in the crack in the door yotdang that thang scratch me look to see how many make sho it weren't no snake it was that wild cat alright the white one that nobody can get close to I reaches back in and feels around for the white gloves I get them and put them on and the mamma cat scoot out the door like that lightning that just hit so the kittens is making a racket now and the bullet comes through the windshield like a pick laying open a two hundred block of ice and I say Tang they shooting but what I felt the first time wasn't no wet toilet paper it was a kitten a white kitten so the marnrna is gone now so I best leave or she won't come back and if you touch them when they first get born the mamma at won't have nothing to do with them that's a fact so I run off under Rufus house and say come on back at come on back and feed your chillren but the mamma cat won't come and that was that Easter along time foe the one now cause I know how to drive a car now and I wait on the mamma cat for a ever long time and she might gone let them die so I got the white gloves on now and she might not smell me if I pick one them up and turn it over so I goes back I walk this time cause I don't wont no chickenyard dirt on my hands and I picks up the kitten and all of them still got the mamma belly guts ties on them like they having to drag they guts around in a war and they trying to crawl around grey not white with they eyes shut and stepping on the mamma baby guts and they is all tangled up like a fish reel and so I taken my knife out but I just can't cut that thing I can slit a fish but I can't cut no guts loose so says I got my two front permanent teeth in so I can bite them in two so 1 do and they make a racket I mean and I spit the blood out and Tang say duck and they is up in what was Rufus house now and I ain't through with the last two but I got to hide cause that white man say he gone kill me for what I done if he ever catch me on his property but it ain't his land not by a long shot but he claim to have the paper on it now but that the way it always is somebody shooting and lying over land or a dog ain't that the truth is what Rufus say but he's dead now and the white man he's yelling that damn white cat done laid a little I can hear them out in that nigger's shithouse and I say whoop I'm better be gone so I ducks out and he come out in his long handles and barefoot and say shit they'll die the mamma done gone I ain't listening to no squalling all morning though so he lifts them all up like he was picking up peaches and throws them down the outhouse him saying you'll keep down there now I can't hear you but as he leaves I can and I'm saying to myself come back cat go get yo lil ones but the wild cat is gone and this bullet burn like a poker and so I go down afta them and it's like a cave but all but two is dead and it my fault cause I went looking for the white gloves and got lost in a sleepwalking and I should a knowed better to mess with them kittens cause ain't no wild mamma cat gone tend to them now and the two that is alive is twisted up around one another and hanging on a nail by the mamma baby belly guts them I didn't get a chance to bite free so I gets them and take them up and the man don't see me and please come back car so I run with them up the road and how you make them pee is you lick they belly so it'll come out kind of like listening to running water I reckon so I does that the cat won't come back and I says is you kin folks come by yet nah what you got two kittens ain't gone make it least they mamma comes back she's wild why don't you take them ova my house my cat got a litter last night so I do but it was my fault that the cat wouldn't come back and I give him the derby with the two cats and Inigo says hermano no es bueno pensar en lo pasado and I felt guilty with them all slapping me on the back and saying brother I only said shoot it was just a coincidence I had the mitt and was looking out the window and just think 1': the one that opened it up in the first place no I couldn't accept no thanks it was just one of those things that happens I said and the kid said boy I'm glad I let you stand watch with my glove and I said anybody could a done it and I didn't know what to say when they asked me my name cause by now I had changed my name so many times I couldn't recollect which one I was using so I just say I go by Inigo and the kid says I thought you was Mexican you look like a wetback and I nodded and Vico gives me the eye like why didn't you tell them your real name and I give him the hand signal for I done forgot it and he says that's impossible I ought to know you can't forget your REAL name the name of your parents but I did that I sho did I get up outen my seat and stroll up the aisle to where the driver is and I says Warren when we gone get to Mound Bayou and he say leave the driving to us that's all he ever says but he ain't so bad I had already done figured out like I had remembered what Dark said about white people and on the way back to my seat the man who pretends he's blind tapped me on the knee with his cane and looked over his sunglasses and said mighty fine thow brother whead you learn that and I told him about me and the King Snakes and our win loss record and then the man that was the leader he said all bow their head in prayer he said Lord this catch that this white boy made wasn't no piece of luck like he say it was nor was it made by the skilled hands of a man no Lord this was inspired by you and you alone and the body guard leans over in my ear and I could smell Gypsy Rose wine and he says bullshit no Lord it wasn't the happy accident or the grandstand play it was a signal sent in from the bench up there Amen whose bench and everybody said the Lord's bench and the bodyguard say you believe that shit man and I said nah and he said I'll give my life fah that man preaching that's what my job is but I sho don't believe in Jesus you don't huh I say nah man he say I'm Muslim is that I say I got a friend called Bergamo is a Muslim he's got it in for white people awful bad hum the man that wasn't blind say and the preacher say the Lord run that play in heah yes he did brother for sho he did that's right some white folks sitting up front from New York was saying Amen too and it sounded like they was ordering something extra on they hamburger and I asked the bodyguard say what all them pictures and he say them's the folks that died in the cause I see I said you must be like them mens that guard the body of the president ain't you and he says kindly but they is keeping me away from him and I am keeping them away from that man up front there I see I said and Vico motioned me to come there so I told the bodyguard so long and the preacher was going like I do when I get a Harp Psalm Song Poem going and I dreamed that Harpo Marx was David and that I lived in Medieval times playing a psaltery and all die singers rung the bells on their toes not in their sleep but in their death kicks and I was the only one left but I won't go into that because now somewhere in Mississippi I heard the Moonlight Sonata unless it was only a dream I hear but for sure the man in the white collar is saying the devil was on fust and he tried to steal second but the Iawd threw him out yassuh he had two men on he wanted to get a walk and load the bases the devil wanted his men to scoah but they shan't do it and a man said no they won't and a bull in a field bellowed like a barge on the river and Vico said you the young light hearted master of the waves in quotes who gone be the one to strike the devil's man out I is the boys said then go head and chunk the ball the preacher said thow him a fast ball a woman with a purse in her lap said Satan ain't gone get no mo times at bat let him take the field and we gone swing we gone swing brother a man said sister take a stand at home plate and hit you a home run look over yondah and show them whea you gone hit it we ain't studying bout no pop up foul no infield ground rules when they play back what you gone do brother gone bunt when they play up what you gone do sister hit that line drive into left field ain't gone swat the white fiy no mo gone get a piece of that ball who gone be in the blue suit calling it brother the Holy Ghost Sister who gone be watching evahbody but we ain't selling tickets to no Wuld Seeries we playing for keeps we ain't looking at but one thing the ball looking at Jesus we ain't trying to watch the grandstand and I busted out this here is something Dizzy Dean can't call Amen they said listen to that boy talk bleeding Jesus let me take a drink let's ride brother and sister let's ride so the bus passed through the towns like a ball nobody will ever catch the pictures of the dead were raised and the living were quick indeed about their tasks quick on their heels the preacher said let evah bootblack in the country sing farewell so they sung and the man with the sunglasses on is sitting beside Vico and Vico is trying to read his lips but Vico is drunk because the bodyguard gave him the Gypsy Rose because he said it was against his religion to drink I don't know ifI am travelling or meandering Vico goes to sleep and the bodyguard says you best take care of your buddy and so I sit beside him he is motioning how he killed the professor in the old country but he keeps bringing in the Moors with the other hand now I get it the colonel and the professor are one I guess that what's be saying now the colonel was a traitor a friend of the Nazis he killed him with his finger I don't get it he was reeling off the names of places in an accent something like the Mexican blacksmith I know but it was different from that there was a place called La Pampa and many cattle and an old railway station where some men talked out of the rain there was a victim a villain who had been stalked for years there was a river called Negro and many towns and villages I don't know what but the names of the places were recalled in an ofi'hand manner as if Vico was quite familiar with them names like Cipolletti and Paso de los Indies and Coronel Pringles and Ingeniero Jacobacci and a place on the coast in another country Saavedra and Lago Buenos Aires and Nahuelquir and Las Plumas and Bernasconi and Bustamante and Mazarredo and Cavo Virgenes and Zarate and Lobos and a saloon in some place he'd forgotten where he first saw the colonel and his men and now he was making some circular motion 1 did not know the meaning of then I got it was the way you throw the bolas yes he threw them around the legs of the professor as he was running out of the saloon but did he kill him how with one finger he sent a telegraph message actually he said a telepathic message with his finger but he was drunk that reached Buenos Aires where it was delivered to a strange band of Jewish men but now he falls off into his further past before the war before what I don't know just before and there is a street in Germany somewhere and he is a boy in a choir passing through and he sees a strange man through the window at his writing desk and up the street or down the street are a lot of drunken actors and painters but I can't translate rather I can't even make out the name of the street but the man at the table is angry at the debauchery up or down the way and he comes out of his house he even gives the number and the way and shakes his fist at them it is dark Vico remembers and much later now I would suspect and he mentions attending a lecture in London I think on the 315: of October 1942 delivered by on something something something Tyrrell there was a description of Oxford and the courtyard much as I had read it to be by many others who had been there a brief reference to shadows refiections footsteps and the like yes I had expected it to be like that and now there is a word about l-ness and an allusion to The Producer and The Stage Carpenter but I'm not interested anymore because what he is saying reminds me of the movie the astronomer's daughter took me to see in Memphis with Douglas Fairbanks it was silent and we saw it twice and I think I had seen it before but I couldn't remember but the name of it was The Gaucho see what happens is the Blessed Virgin Mary appears to these children like she did to those Italian girls awhile back and while this is going on this no count politician named Ruiz is living off the fat of the land while the people is starving but what is so bad that there is this guy see who goes by Black Death and when ever you see him you know somebody is going to die but the good part is where The Gaucho falls in love with a whore who works in a honky tonk and Mary gives them a blessing it was a swell movie alright almost as swell as Nightmare Alley which wasn't playing the night I was telling about but it might as well have been there is a mind reader named Stan who is a no good fake but pretends to really be something well he does have a way with the women sort of like Jimmy but he wasn't near as good as Jimmy cause Jimmy wouldn't a never been caught dead workin in no carny anyway this guy was a big hit at first until he got found out then he turns to the liquor and end up being the Geek which is about the most low down thing any human being can be more than that though you kind of get to like the mind reader cause he such a fool what I liked about the movie was Tyrone Power to tell the truth I guess you know I met him and his wife over on Moon Lake one summer the Gods truth (the boy he saw he didn't really see his name was Gip) I remember the gypsies breaking camp I looked at blood I looked at boats I heard graves open up like fiowers I heard watches ticking in letters I heard Vico saying the words to the colonel when he lost his voice in the war he wrote in blood professor there will be a terrible reckoning for the betrayers and this reminded me of the dream of Claude Rains in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head where he tells the guy who took advantage of his gifts and pacifism to wage war so once again the partners part but in the end the accused turned out to be the accuser at least that is what they meant but I don't know if it really happened to Vico said such a man wishes to live with himself for he does so with pleasure since the memories of his past acts are delightfisl and his hopes for the future are good and therelbre pleasant his mind is well stored too with subjects of contemplation and he grieves and rejoices more than any other with himself for the same thing is always painful and the same thing always pleasant and not one thing at one time and another at another he has so to speak nothing to repent of (for his friend is another self) I was riding a horse and that survives I lie in wait I try to hold water like kisses in a hand spread apart like a pentacle it wasn't Germany it was Switzerland in a town called Zurich and the rabble rousers lived in number one Spiegelgasse and the Russian lived in number six and Vico walked through this street in 1916 and now he was making songs with his hands (((next comes the subject of Recollection)" where I was for six months you couldn't write but one sentence a month so I told the one who keeped care of us say how about letting me save up a long one if I don't write no line for three months so he said that'd be fine so I done that and it was nigh on long as Job and Jeremiah is put together take him he was too young and the people of Memphis was gone cut his throat and I kept having them dreams over and over the same ones like the same horse until I had to go to Mamma Covoe and ast her what ailing me and she said child at midnight tow a shanty out the water and lay in it fah one hour do this next friday then you do this she whispered in my ear what to do I went out to her outhouse and drunk that what she gave me and waited and waited keeping my eye on the watching tree until I took me a thirty minute shit and I had me a dream I mean I dreamed the same dream fourteen times in a row looking at the tree until it turned and a long time later after she dead I went back to the same place with the weeds growed up and the dirt dobbers in there and I had the same dream of this here man white as a sheet like a clown washing his hands in a tub of lye a scrubbing the skin off on a washboard and him singing the last words of this song go like even though your heart is breaking and he was grinning and then not before but then is when I hit on it who it'd be the only one cause they was saying what you gone do now that he's gone telling all us that what you all gone do now and I says what am I gone do now and they say can't nobody take his place and I dreamed in the outhouse ain't but one man alive can do that and they done run him out the Unity States while back but I seed him a thousand times all the better cause I got runned out too so I crossed my fingers and picked up a wasp and let him bite me for God's truth and I said ain't but one man alive could be my daddy and they run him out a ways back I had a dream bouten it but I believe it only one fellah and that's the Little Tramp he gone be my pappy l knows he will I sent him eleven letters in the Unity States mail them with the line that don't quit telling him why I aimed to have him for a daddy saying you is just the opposite from what you do and what you mean and that is the way I am I wrote the letters at least some of them in a bad hand so he'd think I never had no learning but the Unity States sent them all back and said return to sender no such person no such place damn if that didn't send me off when I knowed he was real me and the Jew boy went to see him a thousand times at that place in Memphis how else I gone get the idea him that has a tear in his eye when the rest is laughing and I'm like that go head on and laugh like the boys did when they caught me singing one of my made up songs go on but it ain't really funny it is all sad just as sad as a mule drop offi dead in a field by hisself and don't nobody see him I asked some folks where they thought he was but couldn't nobody give me a good answer but I seen in a magazine where he lives in a castle in Switzerland one day and I says ain't that swell I know the name of one street there it'll be a cinch to find him but the john law found out 1': stowed away so he wasn't never my daddy no for real he wasn't but he could of been but I never seed him excepting by myself in the evening when I dream seen him one day trying to catch a fish but I know that Jew boy seed him cause I was with him you can ask him if you want to maybe I should have said there is another one sort of like me a twin who don't eat much maybe I should had said that but I reckon it's too late now ain't you going to shoot him Jimmy said shoot Charlie B. said blow his head off Tang said but that didn't happen not in no border war and I told the kid who thought my name was Inigo how wasn't but one fit to be my daddy in that dream but if he would of even then I'd had two which ain't right but that was the dream I had once I dreamed Mozart seventeen times no lie fire Sylvester said but I didn't but it was dark in there and I was singing even though your heart is he said wave them away fiy their speech and smiles here they was trying to blame me for writing that word in the rest room at school I never it hurts awfitl bad I bet the dog is still asleep under Jimmy's pickup they wrote home I was a raving in my sleep they told them I ought to had been seed to and that's how they found out I could read minds the ice tongs were under the seat instead of photographs I carry library cards what good is my tongue anyhow the doctor oughten took that out when he cut the busted appendix out I never heard no bullet clink in no glass I aimed to put a hole through it and wear it around my neck like a charm I put a coal oil Funnel in my mouth and poured two pints of whiskey down my throat to get rid of the blues I tied myself on a appaloosa and rode through the country one night Vico was dozing with his head on my shoulder a big congregation of white folks was running around but Tang's moom pitchu still wasn't off Vico said this when I was still an infant my mother sold me to the black monks of the monastery near our village however I doubt that she was really my mother probably someone who had found me and taken me in there were many like that in the old days they raised orphans and waifs only males as they brought the best price the nuns never had much you see and sold them to the monastery for money and indulgences and if the boy's voice turned out to be good they were rewarded with masses she couldn't have been my mother I never knew her the way Vico talked with his hands it sounded like all this happened at the turn of the century but he didn't look that old to me to this day I remember the coins and the relics that later I found out to be pig bones as I worked in the reliquary and I can remember during choir lessons how the young girls from the villages would come to the cathedral and fondle the beads like seconds of pleasure until they came to the end how they would nudge one another and whisper when they thought they'd come upon a Face that reminded them of someone they were the mothers of course most of them in their twenties breathing hard when they recognized their child soon I caught one looking at me she sat apart from the others and Brother Zophiel switched me many times during the lesson when I missed my note but I still stared at her lips when she kissed the bead at the end of the prayer her skin oh how I remember it and the darkness of her eyes it was always as if she had something in her mouth that's how it was when she closed her lips her teeth that made me want to take another breath I was young then younger than you the lunar markings of her mouth like a Cloister I could not enter then Brother Sabas instructed them to leave he whispered it was that time and she got up with the veil over her shoulder as if she were passing through a bazaar the youngest one who you knew had spoken to no one I longed to pause by the confessional and listen to her confession burning circles stars fit" of wild fiowers living feathers from the sea floor the brown meat of the apple and the indigo banana the stranger the family secrets the enigmas of the grapes and the humidity crossing the prairie the train stations that do not exist and the coach of the well to do if I could prance up like a horse then already I knew enough tongues to understand what she said the iris shot out with a moan barcaroles for women who want to be alone buried like a key she crosses herself and leaves the church brusque mother goodbye I would come to know her by reputation my own reputation as a singer would help make it possible but we never met we never talked there were letters delivered by fishermen and gypsies and mendicants along the coastlines in the afternoon a child in the fog of the basilica hid her note beneath the portrait of Aurelius Augustinus of Tagaste and Carthage I heard of him I says but of course Vico didn't hear me he was asleep I give the hand signal for I peed in the holy water font once and stole a solid gold taper boy oh boy there was a drunk man outside by a lamp zipping up his pants and I talked up to him and lit his cigarette for him and I says brother have a light and he liked that I walked over niggertown giving everybody I seed a light with that stick I ended up giving it to a piano player the same Negro who got arrested with Jimmy for going around and peeing in those Country Club swimming pools I forget his name start with a R and Vico was saying let it pass sorrow and joy and fear and desire and he went on into some philosophy hell he's worse than me about staying on the subject I'm lost he said he tells about the investigation by the Vatican don't tell me he killed one of them things too that murderer somebody had ought to let his blood ship moon wandering light horse ballad of water and stone the memories and the lightning in your eyes in the bed like washing off a child and looking over your shoulder and a Negro is taking a drink of soda pop I said I bet you never knew them fellows had me under suspicion did you they sent one clear over from Rome Italy when I was born he come by boat and I was nigh a month old when he got there wherever it was the orphanage I reckon but maybe camp I don't know (there were twenty-four homemade poems done on location soon as it rained the riverbeds of the letters became rivets again and the dust became mud) but I know it never was no breaking Charlie sung it was even though go on a few is aching but they had lots a trouble over my birth cause the woman that had me now this is the way I got it she claims she never done nothing to have me I don't know if she was one them Catholics or not I sho hope not but whatever she said she never she was about fourteen year old I hear and them nuns they told me but I broke into State Govment building and stole my case history but before I had time to read it all the batteries went dead on my flashlight just think if I hadn't a stayed up all night with the fiashlight under the covers the night before reading that book mother gave me I'd a knowed I really would of known I might even not a got shot oh well let bygones become bygones (there are numbers that make me sleep well and comb my hair and suffer) I was barely awake and the Indian pulled my toe it was too early for me to tell you my name the one the way the Indian says it but it means boy with wild hair to become one of them I had to sleep on a mound with a gunnysack full of snakes for a pillow the next morning I had to swim a fur piece and then ride a horse naked and then drink a mixture of blood desperate milk and fog and tell them what I dreamed the night before I told them so I told them about twilight and the sojourner of forests without dominion and harbors full of the dew on their ships and new bread that smelled like wood like chocolate and the color of a blueberry and the women saying goodbye that was my dream but my toes don't stink anymore really I don't know it's been so long since I last smelled them and the moon that falls out of the wet saddle like a man who will never reach his black destination he said the equivocal bells the swallowed whispers the blades of grass the pitch black day of departure and I said with the dust in my hair like forgotten navies I put two butterflies one under each arm pit and I raised my arms and dove off backwards I am traveling through the stations of the heart and my palms like a steeple or a prow my feet like a lamented rudder I forget everything I know nothing give me a sign and he did for I stole the abbot's mirror and in his chapel in private I unbuttoned my cassock lay on the cold marble of the altar and exposed myself I traced the image of the crescent scar on my scrotum the mirror between my legs every day that passed that my voice did not change I glimpsed a little more of the past I dreamed that the other one was in the heavens it was Pluto and I dreamed it before the planet was discovered I scrutinized myself in his holiness's chamber I felt the solitary orb move like a sleepwalking oyster I held it between the two fingers Christ holds up like a magician showing the audience the egg wound like the long line of dirt beside a furrow once when stroking what wasn't there much in the same fashion a child strokes the sleeping spot of a lost cat violent tremors shook the village and an earthquake demolished a wing of the monastery and l attributed this act of God as the handiwork of my lost orb and the benediction 1 gave it Tolle Lege holy nugget source of my voice gold plain sang indissoluble in anything other than Aqua Regia almond of Mary at the age of eight I was already famous for my voice in every cathedral and capitol of Europe I'd already performed I was the chosen of all singers I was bribed by the greatest opera companies by the time I was ten I'd lost interest in Gregorian music as such practice bored me it was only in the lofts alone when I performed that I felt fulfilled Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth I began in secret to sing other music whatever my voice could sing I sang Dufay and Landini no longer held my attention I was at ease with the newer music and lied was my love I wanted another voice beyond my means I knew by then I wanted a voice for something other than the son in Schubert's Earl King mein Vater disgusted me I wanted to sing the part of the father if not the Erlkonig himself occasionally during tours through the cities I would slip away from the disgusting deference of admirers and make ofi' in the company of young men and women a decade older than myself but these stranger friend enemies were ready to accept me as I was a voice with them while Zophiel searched Paris Vienna Zurich Munich Venice Berlin London I was present at numerous literary and theatrical premieres long since forgotten over the years many years ago even after I fled the monastery I recall the chats over drinks and cards with some of those childhood friends that is friends I knew when I was a child I will never forget the year after my performance in Zurich we ducked into Montmartre it was 1917 sometime in June and Guillaume's piece was to be staged that night at Theatre Maubel what a night whatever happened to Tati and later my comrade Jean-Louis Barrault after the war or wars 1 should say I forgot all there was old man who had known Buchner he spoke of him as if he was his son many of them had attended Alfred's opening Shit it was far too late but how I wanted to perform once again 0 Fortuna velut Luna statu variabilis semper crescis aut decrescis vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tune curat ludo mentis aciem egestatem potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem Copeau and Renard where have you gone howl despised the pious poseur of this monk or that whenever I returned Montmartre to Casino I don't know what the fuck Vico was talking about I know Le Loup-Garous means the werewolf though I know that but they gave me books on Schubert's boyhood damn Ave Virgo virginum to hell with Veni Creator Spiritus my voice my voice cut out of my throat like another nut the adam's apple panting beside me like a cuttlefish all my life I've had to navigate around an armada of piss ants who won't even crawl in their home port they want to fioat in good waters in the abbeys in the universities in the sea I see how they have occupied with the odor of gas and urine in their socks vestments uniforms Vico takes leave of the Abbot of sham Vico vanishes from the building where lives the Professor of termites Vico makes the Admiral of piss ants walk his own plank he wasn't meant to float in the sea Vico the youngest in the history of Holy Mother Church to under go papal vilification at the age of seven I was drinking wine with my eyes shut in my cell I sipped alone a brew three hundred years old at the age of thirteen I broke all vows I dipped my cotta in blood a year later at Benediktbeuren I was so drunk I couldn't sing I took to drifting in boats with mirrors as I was quite famous I could get away with it I longed to be one of the monk saints so silent tending the fields then I wanted to be one of the wandering students that had taken me under their wing then I dreamed of a life on the sea a common sailor I sing but I am not a singer I write but I am not a writer whew I thought I'm glad of that I wouldn't be caught dead calling myself that that's like me being a bastard I know I am but I wouldn't allow nobody to call me one unlessing they was just joking around like Negroes do when they say hey nigger to one another no suhree I wouldn't be caught dead the more carousing I did the less I spoke then the more priors hated me and tried to limit my leaves from the abbey he had one hell of a growing up I'll tell you that at the age of seventeen I fell in love with a twelve year old girl I should like to point out back when I was her age I prayed for a miracle at Lourdes and one was granted to me that there is what them Italian women called it when I was born the one that was my mother she said it too but the man who came in the purple suit from Rome he didn't think so he asked her all these questions had you taken in liquor were you in a catatonic state perhaps you sinned in your sleep did you perform an unnatural act for the boy and forget to wash your hands when you thought about it and self-abused yourself can you imagine that a grown man asking a girl who just had a baby them questions I declare I'd a told him wasn't none of his business on the secret Diocesan record it said this a few years after the disputed birth a local parishioner reported the questionable mother as saying to herself as she was riding alone in her father's field isn't that my luck have a kid and didn't have a notion of getting screwed it said that sort of remark could only be attributed to a sinner not a saint so the Church called the investigation off but a lot of the folks it said in the State record still genuflecr when they see the girl coming down the road I she wished I knew where she was now they say she was quality and he was a no count but she claimed there weren't no he it don't make a lick of sense to me I don't believe in no miracles though Vico is lying I ought to wake him up and tell him so but there ain't no sense in it just look at me talking with my hands at him telling him about my mother finding out what I did was worth getting shot it was a miracle I tell you and has been recorded in a few dubious medical journals but of course I could never report this miracle to the Church the nature of it and the manner in which I found it out the way it appeared too is worthy of penance more than it is devotion at least in their eyes that is Juvenal classified his mimes as paradoxi I ain't listening to no more of that shit I says thinking thistle rhymes with epistle etenim si incertam vocem tuba det quis apparabitur ad bellum I'm lucky he ain't pulled a half a dozen of them other foreigner languages off on me him saying we have a whole lot in common the hell we do he's worse off than I thought he was going on about how he got gelded but God had sent his nut back to him the devil he did I say Mary Jesus Holy Ghost wouldn't a done nothing like that he went on about that twelve year old girl how they carried on a while and him knocking her up with child he say I see why he wasn't gone tell none of them priests about it shoot fire a monk here he wasn't old enough to buy beer in Mississippi getting a girl wasn't no teen-ager yet in trouble think about it a girl my age and all to each his own he said the older religious called him Brother Hellion like this he said most appropriate I should think oh do I miss those early days of wandering and singing in the alps in the taverns fate often delivers an undoomed earl Brother Lawrence advised me told me well after I had been found out leading a double existence I believe I was thirteen then when I captured the heart of a married woman with my act my act being thanks to God and to old Father or was it Frater Wenceslas the blind tailor under my constant prodding he fashioned a handsome man of about twenty-five gaunt and drowsy and from a first row distance he seemed the ventriloquist and I the dummy dressed as an old dwarf a Bavarian septuagenarian but I was the one who sat upon his knee and I alone was the one was the one only soul who controlled my enigmatic sidekick him with his anatomy which was nothing more than the discarded vestments of the clergy Vico was the one who showed me how to throw my voice I could throw it into all kinds of objects pencils globes shoes maps wine bottles dictionaries cuff links binoculars forks cream tickets from the Bijou record discs minnows and even into a young father standing in a plowed field with his child in his arms a cappella Gabriel was to get me the post at Notre-Dame-de-Clignanoourt as organist how they were shocked in his last years Faure is deaf they shouted the preview of L'I-Ioriaon chimerique based on Jean de la Ville de Miromont to this day as if they keys were black I can recall in my sleep Masques et bergamasques when we were there they shouted to the choir Asomati the duel where Wolfgang was commissioned to write the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio the Sparrow Mass Les Adieux L'Absense Le Retour I'd say he was having a bad dream wouldn't you and at such a tender age the irony was unbearable it is vulgar it is free from illusions the lemures with plenty of money my sobriquet the kid in those days in excelsis I could throw my voice like a smooth stone across a lagoon eight times it left the water and I was one with no trace of a human being memories pants too small are like that gloves like a snagged sword and I smile alone night and l are one the moon and l are one water and I are one lemures basic props scenes the taste of seafood how they came to visit bringing with them their hate like a harelip how they knocked at my door with a boot for the sake of protocol making forced entries while I was bathing or sleeping at young monk cannot hold up to a life like that I tell you he was trying to sing again like a dog with his vocal chords cut out giving me superfiuous advice managing my affairs I couldn't even listen to the vendors in the street women unbuttoning themselves and requesting that I unlace their shoes and bodices after dinner the brandy little ponds I looked into mirrors I passed through they supposed I wasn't aware of their limpid game of doing me in but I refused one nut and all not to bloom I say he's a idiot I was The Castrato of the century one of the last wouldn't it be the dickens though if the little tramp drove up outside my door in a limousine and honked on the horn a contradiction in terms the mystery chord sonata da camera sonata da chiesa sonata da soprano Vico sognando Vico smorrando Vico vivo the choirmaster said I was possessed by the devil he thought he was Magister Machaut why don't he shut up the Negro lad said he ain't saying nothing I says I don't like all that sign language he's using he could be talking behind my back I'll guarantee he ain't I said you doing it too he says you ought to see yoselves it sho do look silly maybe he'll quit in a minute I says I sho hope so me too see that white man up there the kid said yea I see him what that he got wrote across his sweatshirt oh that there is the name of his university that white woman got one on just like it too don't she yea that's so they can let people know where they're from at that there writing in that bull's eye it just like that shit on the back of spending money ain't it yea I said if I was them I'd turn them sweatshirts inside outs that ain't such a bad idea I says say he says iffen one of them asks me what y'all doing I'm just gone say they swatting fiies OK might as well it's a long story and they wouldn't understand it at the next stop I'll fiip you fah a pop OK OK hey you see this see what I says this black eye man you blind oh yea I seen that but I figured it just might a been natural shit naw it ain't natural how'd you get it we had this long stop while back this was foe you got on see I just got off to pee but this hea man he wouldn't let me use his bafroom so I cided to buy some gum when I up and seed all these chillren across the street thea coming out the Piggly Wiggly wif balloons I says to myself I'm gone get me one of those this hea market had them new magic does too is that tight I said you know how we could get rich man how I said swipe that contraption wit the seeing eye Memphis is just full of automatic doors I says you gone let me tell it yea I says scuse me we load it up in the trunk and take it way off back in the country where nobody never seed one afoe and one night we hook it up to somebody's outhouse next mawning man we'll have evah field hand on the place paying to shit but that ain't how we make the cash what we do is go round to the schoolhouses and churchhouses and sell Franchises or what we could do is keep it moving in an old Wonder Bread truck like Public Health does go from village to village camp to camp charging to shit what do you think I think I says how the hell you get such a good idea like that sounds like something I'd think up I just took a notion you'd have to get a patent on it though boy all I'd need to get on it was a crowbar and a screwdriver we could steel in Memphis and sell them in the country I says now you thinking he says what would we get for them oh round five dollahs how that sound pretty fair I says get them to pay on the installment plan about a dime a week like the undahtaker do we could have us a Delux model how's that steal us them baby juke boxes that sit ovah the table in them bus stops damn I wished I'd a thought of that I says I got some great Ideas plenty you want to see a pitchu of my daddy I says while I was getting it out I thought that damn wallet Rufus left me was so new you could still smell the bull on it or was it brand new it might a been old I can't remember this heah chinese watah torture work pretty good and the kid said we might could sell mo of them to white folks than I expected I showed him the pitchu you keep yo pappy's pitchu in yo shoe boy I nodded drop drop drop the bamboo will grow and the water ought to make a ruby right where the Hindoo girl has that mark on her forehead shit this ain't yo daddy man yea it is that's a pretty good line I believe I'll pull that someday no I says I promise that's him quit funning man I bet you a quarter it is look now I know this ain't yo pappy yes it is I promise I really do I swear cross my heart and hope to die this is a pitchu of Cholly Chaplain man he says you ain't fooling me he ain't yo kin I promise he is I do I really mean it he really is really and truly he's my daddy I know he is he might not but he does true blue I promise he really is he shook his head Vincent did a lot of self-revelations (but what is the use) I have no wish to be a hero or a coward Road with Cypress and Stats I got me anotha idea too what's that go round to the back of old white ladies poach and get them to sign sign what sign confidential agreement about what tell them I got a magic trick will suck out all the nigger blood ha ha that's pretty good yea they lots of Negro ladies would like to get the white blood out too he said you keep coming up with them man you evah been in a aeroplane lots of times I sho would like to go up in one wondah what it feel like to take a shit that high up I never had to I said but I peed out the cockpit of a crop duster once no lie he said the truth I said I thought about his idea of the outhouse with the electronic beam and the jukebox I goes in the store see and ask fah a balloon but the lady at the countah she say you got to buy something I could see them othah kids getting something blowed into they balloon so it'd fioat I bought me some gum and I asked the lady filling them up what about me now and she say she was just putting gas in the balloons I'd have to get one from her husband when he got back from lunch they was cool with a Face drawed on them and some clown shoes out of cardboard that'd be cool if I could drag a red balloon behind me you know so I waited I tell her lady I gone miss my bus if he don't hurry up and come back maybe you could let me have a balloon see I done bought something else I got Mamma some snufi: she wouldn't even pay me no tension she knocked off too in a couple minutes and I says to myself I can steal this place blind but I ain't I just wanted a balloon I went ovah to where she had the gas and this white boy working behind the oountah say hey you why don't you breathe in some of that gas it's good for yo breath and him and a nudden look at me I breathes on my palm but don't smell nothing but Juicy Fruit but I turns the valve on and draws a breath like it was perfume I chokes and coughs and was calling them son-of-a-bitches but something went bad wrong wid my voice it was up real high like a midget now if I'd a come on to that on my own it'd been ok but they pulled one on me so I drawed me a nudden and talked to myself and waited fah the man wid the balloons to come back I went outside and hid and tried to beat that doe but I couldn't I tried to slip up on it from around the cohnah but it seen me I's standing in the wrong lane and a woman wid whole lot of groceries come out wid a basket and that damn doe tried to kill me I fixed it I put my chewing gum ovah the eye I blinded it and the doc got stuck I fixed it and the man came back and he say you little pickaninny get on out a heah cause he seen me wid my moufovah a balloon trying to blow it up myself and he grab it outen my mouf and chunk it on the ground saying what you go and put your fat filthy lips on one my balloons fah get I said that what he told me so I thunk me up something on the spot I went crosst the street to that filling station that keep a padlock on they bafroom said WHITE I see why too I picked it see it was the nasryist filthy thing I evah seen a body liable to get him a disease if he go in there I sho wasn't gone pee in no place like that I took out the two bits VICO ovah there give me and bought some fucking rubbahs and went back crosst the street to the market and breathed me some of that gas and me talking like this he imitated the soprano voice of a midget asked that woman hey lady how's bout blowing this up fah me she got holding bof my sholders and tried to shake the daylight: out of me but all I done was peed I was gone pee on the Ho mat in front that doe to see if it'd look and catch me but I couldn't hold it her husband got hold me wid his lef hand see it now he points to the black eye he hauled off and busth me one and they got the sheriff down there and they taken me to the station and stood me up on the desk and made me sign my name to a piece of papah saying I did ask this white woman fah a piece of pussy he said if I didn't sign it he was gone beat up this old man they had in there man that nigger looked like he was a hundred years old too I said nah don't do that I'll sign it so I writes my name and then they asken the nigger man did you see this nigger boy ask this woman that question or not and he held up his Ief hand I swear if he didn't say I did looking down at the Ho and when the Law jerk his hand to point at me the nigger man fiinch like he was suspecting to get hit and 1's so scared I could feel the pee running down my leg it got on the warrant and the ink smeared and when they seen me peeing on the Law's desk they drew back and I yell please don't hit me I couldn't hep it I got my young ass out of there quick good thinking I said but if you told them yo name they'll come looking for you shoot boy I give them a false name what I said and he said I told them my name was Howdie Doodie they believe you white man believe a nigger call himself anything some of them will what you talking bout onct I said my name was Cold Dirt and they believed me did you get anything in before you made your get-away yea I says Howdie Doodie you Law you ask me gin I'll bend ovah and let you kiss my booty ha ha you told them didn't you you damn right I told them shit I wished this damn bus would stop I'm tired a riding it will it will when the dinner guests left they were so full of the meal they could not catch their breath they left I bloomed all Europe smelled me but the Church severed me for years I was under the spell of the cello and virgins I was under the delusion that l Vico was none other than Dante Gabriel Rossetti I painted words and wrote pictures in my cell I saw the dreams of Keats Scott and Malory as a moving picture when there were none from pillar to pillar I was persecuted I did unmentionable things with the blessed sacrament in the privacy of my illustrated walls I wrote illegible and cryptic epigrams on the backsides and undersides of pebbles there is a rendezvous of images and words the Vita Nuova was a sleeping tiger I put out the candles with my finger tips the angelus Ballade des Dams du Temps Jadis now he was saying something I knew about a figment of my imagination and here the lost hours the lost hours renew while I still lead my shadow over the grass not know for longing that which I should do as soon as a thing is imposed on me as an obligation my aptitude for doing it is gone what I ought to do is what I can't do the Sid the magic gone a maniac collecting mirrors the fieshly school of voices my bedroom against the wishes of the abbot is hung with mauve velvet I marked all kindred powers the heart finds fair through death to love moonclouds from child to youth from youth to arduous man from lethargy to fever of the heart from faithful life to dream-dowered days even as a child of sorrow that we give the dead boat that draws dark water of night like a burning sword across our souls look in my face my name is might have been I am also called no more too late farewell but the others were always waiting always waiting for some indiscretion on my part something that might cause disfavor in the eye of the Church waiting to do me in to have me silenced to have me watched I was adored I was loathed did he not take the name Dante himself the other ones in the monastery the friends of the mad monk were intimidated with threats and excommunication they were told they couldn't look at my paintings my papers were forbidden to be copied and recorded they were guilty what could I do why did they keep up their visits and invitations at sixteen what was Vico to do to keep from hurting them enemies leave me in peace they were all guilty their confessors broke the seal to tell me they were guilty but I was too valuable I was the one that made the heathens and peasants and counts and viceroys listen I was the one they came to hear the stooge VICO the fantoccino Vico the castrate at this time I'd like to call what you might call a seven inning stretch which ain't like Mexican stretch where you throw knives at one another's foot I'd like to tell about my first mess up what you call malaprop but I call fuck up ever since I was seven year old I have attributed the meaning of the disease gonorrhea to the word gongorism I was put straight at the astronomer's dinner table it wasn't no worse than being a stuttererl reckon play ball the words burn like the blade of a forged cauter knife the Heshly gentlemen have bound themselves by solemn league and covenant to extol fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of poetic and pictorial art to aver that poetic expression is greater than the soul and sound superior to sense and that the poet properly to develop his poetic faculty must be an intellectual hermaphrodite the way I take that is like Willie Mays makes his catches but that ain't a good example there is just always gone be folks to set a lay low for you if you don't do things according to their book you know how a nigger acts like a niger so he can get the best of you well the astronomer tells me I'm a solecist which means I ain't got no manners but he knows I just don't feel like having them I might if some people come over but they ain't so what I was the last to perform that song the last singer of the time to perform what they were to see for the last time Vico is death to an era Vico is a runaway monk who fathered children by a miracle a gonad served up by the Holy Ghost in a golden ciborium the kid says why he's plum nuts Vico gave up song to speak in other men's tongues Vico lost his voice in the war Vico murdered more priests and professors than soldiers Vico has finally given up the mysteries of crime and the rosary and the absurd to ride for freedom where he met a lad like two lads Tang said why shit boy keep a steady hand don't you know how to shoot with my head on the divine ground the kid was sucking on a lemon damn Mamma he say when we gone stop I who was sold into bondage by a seller of orphans I who have returned to Lourdes innumerable times in recent years hoping for another grace granted I attend the candlemass on St. Blaise day but it is of no avail my voice is lost forever and forever this is a riddle which 1 cannot unfold cried Don Quixote and now my friend pardon me that I have brought upon thee as well as myself the scandal of madness there have been and there still are we shall all the child Maldon too much monkey business the kid's breath in the bus window what pennon sir our sad bad glad mad brother's name familiar sounding ain't it the barefooted baby I am on the deck alone now once I had nostalgia wash me out to sea like a tide I yelled in the shadow of some ship the past is lost it has gone off course it is a pilotless vessel hour by hour I lose another to the past I am losing time now there are trains and time is like a half buried girl the white shift in the cabinet froth in the dark like a wolf's jaw oh oh the water from nowhere a caravan brood like a mourning dove brood my hair the fist fight in the school yard the first time it ever snowed angels waiting at my door with bruised knuckles a ship's wheel two monks walking down a corridor in the early morning shafts of light a slack rope a drab olive corduroy jacker a companion stood in the room near the piano it was four o'clock in the afternoon the moon rising was riding on in its sleep say goodnight in the hall follow her up to the top of the stairs lick the mirror a skirt galloping away it was only a girl mounting the stairs Voglio il mio cavallo Il signore e ferito look between the eyes I have no name the moon has no friends I am setting out again the bedchamber of the ventriloquist who is twelve years old if it weren't for the darkness you'd never know creek of night and you bobbing like the canoe of the crowned lovers with stolen apples in their mouths and their hands tied behind them when I saw them gathered together talking behind my back finding it hard to swallow after they had mentioned my name I would sometimes hesitate as if in deep thought and then pass on with no notice of them whatever then I would stop and say quite frankly over my shoulder casus belli as ifit were the rest ofa song casus belli to myself the Church the scholasticates refused to look into my telescope the experience of I maya Van Gogh a silence like a chill beside the mountain see that nigger where ovah yondah yea I see him what about him he so mean they had to let him out of the pentitentiary is that right sho it's right he raped a nun and the judge give him nine hundred years is that right sho that's right I'll be what he go by goes by Methuselah that what the othah ones call him how come he never got hung cause he's white oh I thought he was a nigger nah he ain't I'd say somebody shot them both in the head with a rifle you can't do nothing bout it I go: sick to my stomach dizzy like and my eyes give out I couldn't read it and finally I figured out it was a tree put me out of my misery Vico was making me throw up it might a been something I et (this is how he talks with the astronomer) no longer was he gesticulating an aged bitterness like a rare wine he was merely moving his lips he was actually trying to sing but it wasn't a song it was just like that dog the folks in the city had the operation done on it was pityfiil here is how it was not like this not even a rasp not even an expellation of breath not even enough to put out a match no just a tedious and mechanical movement of his lips like an insect in the weeds like an old mule who'll drop dead before sunset something waterlogged drying out on the bank I thought Elvis Presley ain't Orpheus he's too common once I pissed in the chancel in the cathedral in Ravenna and I dreamed I was singing a mass eight centuries ago at Isola del Corello you say I sola we already passed it didn't we there once was a race of people who thought there were some names too sacred to utter a yod in a triangle sholy that there sounds like a rebus to me and me tole him about it my father asked his death from me a respectable name I still don't understand it it's so unnatural so alien to me the child of caprice Vico punched the eyes out of a portrait of the Virgin and collected evidence brother this with a soiled corporal at his bedside brother that with his hands under his alb and that damn baritone of the Byzantine Rite who toiled in the fields how he hated the soft life of the fi'aters and choir monks from sunup to sundown he tilled always with his hands clean of blood and sin only the Italian soil and cuts from her rocks soiled them how he cursed Italy he was a real Greek I tell you a holy man indeed ready to tread no man's land for the Lord his litany was as natural as a bullfrog I forget his order but he would keep his Office under any circumstances engaged in a fist fight in the village once he ordered a halt to say None his stomach growled all through Marins he was careful to keep record in his Raccolta even his Ejaculations were counted a hunchback followed him on a jackass everywhere he went another Sancho I tell you that hunchback was quick with the pen and the Creek was always giving him the signal to mark it down Oswyn 300 hundred days for Jesus he would say I could never hold anything against him he was a saint to hear him tell of his pilgrimages Loretto in Italy Lujan in Argentina I too have been there Zaragossa in Spain Czestochowa in Poland Fatima in Portugal but what makes this monk so branded in my mind is the fact that he under some calling visited these places before the miracles ever appeared Lauds he was sweating from the night before Prime he was anticipating the labor of the morning so I know as I say there were some beloved of me and no doubt God himself praise be his name even from a blasphemer as I am Vico got his words mixed up sometimes Terce he whispered that no rnonk should ever pray to St. Cyril of Alexandria while he was around Sexr he would let out with a fart Vespers he cleaned his fingernails with a lance Compline he had enough wine he soaked his feet in holy oils the blessing of the dresses he put his hands on their thighs Benedictio Vestis et Cenguli he put ashes in his hair at night he slept like Mark Twain he claimed to have seen the Lady of Sorrows twice that kid was humming a song that the Dixie Hummingbirds recorded let's see it was Bedside of a Neighbor and here I just done bought Rev Ballinger's Little Black Train for Mama Covoe she gone like it too I know that I'll be in Mound Bayou soon and when I leave if you should chance to meet my mother or my father it goes some friends who I can't recall kindly take a message to the other side I got a telegram in the mail from the hypnotist say to come I told you this one come oh yellow paper not in my head I bet not you ain't never heard of nobody like me just in other countries maybe where you seen pitchus about them maybe if you ever read a book wrote by Charles D that's right I don't stay with no folks like most kids I got some give to me but they is something in my blood it runs so fast I have to keep up with it it is the truth (and also a fact) that I members everything even the dark tunnel just ask them doctors and professors but don't get me to come with you cause they'll turn me into the Law for what I done you ain't going to catch me telling you what I done either cause you'd probably find out bout that reward and use it as evidence no sir no deal not me sometimes my blood is cold and slow like a snake like a moom pitchu with no sound leastways no talking but it had ought to be the astronomer calls meiosis blooded so I looked it up in the summer the listening post on Livenu and the Greek shut up Vico I'm no recitation of Porphyry be quiet I'm talking now he don't hear me ha ha why ain't he a earthworm at first I kind of figured it to be a Egyptian mummy or something you know you ever et an Egyptian one eye for breakfast my mother can cook them that damn book must a weighed fifty pounds it was like a sack of chicken feed 1 tell you course now I know better since I got out and they give me that re-abilitating job working in the library first I thought they was gone have me cutting yards but I dusted books there some weigh more than that I know cause I got a hernia lifting one I kept a looking on that word and the instructions say go over here look at this and what I bet I missed half the show on account of looking at that word it said you could spell it miosis do you think I care me in Italian so I looked on that but you can't win for losing cause the next night at dinner (he even made me wear a long tailed coat he had my measurements took for it and everything) he changed his mind and calls me mimesis I put some chowder peas they is like field peas but not near as good on the end of my fork and hit it with my list and hit him up side the head ain't no damn body can call me a sissy and get away with it now that word was a hard one I got a mimosa tree but it seems like it sort of sounds Egyptian maybe he said Nemesis he's got a awful bad accent you know but that weren't right either that reformatory was something hell I don't care but I'm like that spent most of my time on water and under tents I don't take to houses too much less it's a good shack or a mansion nothing in between don't cramp my style Sylvester use to say but he was drunk but he wasn't really in that there orphan home now I knew a kid was a real head on his shoulders he could a got somewhere but one day after the lunch period he skipped out and went to a pitchu show and when he got back he threw his crutch through the window and wrote something on the wall and swallowed a whole bottle of rat poison and said piss on it his last words I remember last words if you had a seen as many folks kick the bucket as I had you would too damn fly whup I got him dead fly guts on my hand he keel himself but they didn't get no write up in the paper it depends on who owns it that's why least that's what they say white upping at night sometimes you can see it wouldn't it be cool to have a concave mirror for the lid on your coffin at the Jewish country club they call it community center listening to women talk by the pool side little ripples in their legs up near the crossroads like a mirage or when you are looking way off when it's hot and it moves a little how it does when the gas man pumps them hairs like a column of ants they catch you looking at them but them words you can't beat the spit and Whittle club at the courthouse I gotta pee men singing in boats just don't listen to the drops it ain't so bad I can take it if I don't listen to the water the torture ain't so bad the moon runs blood but fiy our paths our fevered contact fiy 221 the crooked councilor with ties that burned like a cadillac I believe in ships leaving at night he carved it with his knife Jimmy did when he took a grunt in the outhouse tick tack toe ha ha you owe me fifty cents signed Jimmy pee ass you better pay and cough it up or I'll beat the shit out of you frankincense the wolf from Assisi he should a never forgot them books plunge deeper into the babes of the woods call it the dream children I seen a whole bunch of kids die they don't tell you about it in the Unity States I'm gone see that one again she'll come back the mammy will come back she got to I dug him up for sho I did it weighed as much as a sack of hog feed three railroad spikes a milk snake sucks on his tail and he's long enough to go around the cotton picking world that was the name of my idol's sword what's worse a pen or a blade neither one for me maybe a wand or a bnish them peacock feathers just think they killed a pretty thing like that so I could dust off some old goddamn books I owe it to that bird to read them even if they is full of no count lies you could call me a no count if you want I been called worse a lots of people are worse off than me I got it good while the Jewish teenager was asleep on the lounge I kissed the bottom of her foot and sung raspberries and strawberries real low she didn't wake up Vico sho ain't the preacher wiped his mouth with his arm never did like them Beach Boys all them hot rods and whacking off on a surfboard but that's now and if I think about now I'm dead so I'll say do you remember when I first heard Uncle Sam was gone get Elvis I don't often times I looked through the keyhole of the Greeks cell and all he would be doing is dancing or tending his beard when it's a full moon I like to kiss the pond have you ever played bottlecap checkers with Bavon down by the river the college kids at Southwestern dug me they let me play touch ball with them they all went off to be Ivy League after the first year most of them were of the Jewish faith I nmg the bell and went on in that's how you do at a person's house with a maid but I walked in on the Rabbi doing exercises I told him my baseball was somewheres out in his fiowetbed and by God he hepped me look for it and damn if he didn't find it I'd rather play the piano than mess with these keys but I done fouled that up Le Philosophe Sans Le Savoir and the Abbe de the Greek perhaps I a Moor was half Greek had something to do with it never upset me I never had it in for him to the contrary we were quite happy together one morning he and the hunchback asked the abbot for permission to go fishing he sent the hunchback with a message saying he would enjoy my company his private privileges were a mystery and so I joined them I rode with the hunchback monk and he rode alone near the river we halted and he took something strange from the scapula around his neck the hunchbadt smiled I was astonished to find out it was hashish was this the source of his mysteries I asked him and he answered with a formidable no I only smoke during my excursions from the monastery ask the hunchback riding along after it was done I cannot do it justice such a ride through the countryside young mothers bending over in the fields beggars and soldiers on the march when I strung the worm on the hook I prayed to St. Francis it is best not to attempt to recount the best let it rise like the moon in your mind I be a walking down the street and it hits me I feel so strange I just can't say like I was some stranger or a foreigner I just as soon be walking through the streets of Alexandria these memories of the desert too I don't like it the astronomer watching me look out the window when he plays these records when Vico speaks of the old days in the monastery it makes me think of that book I read when I was working at the Library to tell the truth I ended up stealing the book what the hell I checked on the card and it hadn't been checked out since 1824 the name was written kind of mysterious like whoever done it had a confident air about him or her when I read the name I got dizzy like I was floating down a river or asleep what I done was this every time I'd read a page I'd tear it out and replace it with one of my own pretty soon though 1's writing 2 or 3 to his one I didn't never reckon nobody would check it out but I'll be if some son-of-a didn't go and do it I let the astronomer come to the Library and read about a thousand pages of it and he said self-involution and dreamlike continuity he's always saying shit like that I told him about how one night at work I went to dust it and somebody had done took ityou mean it is missing he asks me you know I just don't have too much luck when it comes to pen pushing whatever I do the river comes up and takes it off or I forget where I laid it or somebody at the house gets hold of it and burns it or I leave it at the pitchu show or something shoot I'll tell you though I've always thought the astronomer went down there and got that pile of paper I don't see how he got it out the Library looking like it did there was too many pages to fit in the cover I don't miss it cause it was kind of like me the guy was see he had the power like I do and instead of being a good sort of person and going to get examined down there at Duke (they didn't even have a good football team) he takes to the river with these gamblers cause it is he's got control over dice really done for a while too I was making good money trouble is these damn white men well one of them wasn't white was getting it all I didn't take to no penny a day for chewing gum that was a quality book I tore all the pages out of though and what I hear tell is that the fellow that pushed that one he wasn't too much older than Jimmy about nineteen I think if I recollect right a long time back I wrote kind of like him about a castle over there in France and all I missed a damn bargain and almost got killed on account of it it was the year I had the best batting average I pushed most of it in the outhouse I had it setting in a Dynamite box with some marbles well there was this kid see who didn't like me cause I was getting all them hits he knew I read it in there and when you is turning through something real long you got to use the Bible method of reading that is putting a little wad of spit on your fingers so you'll be sure and get every page you know what that goddamn little cocksucker went and done it was somewhere about 811 I think but that number could have just been a figment I's getting out of my head he put cotton poison dust in that box it was white and I never seed it and I was eating sardines so naturally I couldn't a tasted it oowee I shit up a storm if I had wanted I could a thought up a way of killing him easy as pie and I'd a never got caught but I swore that stuff olf I didn't get cold feet in a boat full of fish we took communion from the antimessiah you already had your fucking turn I saluted the women three times in the eastern Fashion then I heard where you could send in and get money for a story ain't that the lice there is a heap of these send in offers in the backs of these magazines there is all sorts of organizations you know but what give me the idea was I knew where I get a good deal on a Parker Broes shotgun and I heard it on Hoss Man's show on the radio fi-orn Nashville that they's a place would give cold cash for stuff they had a advertisement for Royal Crown too I put it in a Kotex box and had the address on correct and everything and mailed it at the post ofiice I wrote them a letter saying I'd swap for a even fifty dollars you know you got get the high bid on the first quote and I said I'd throw in a blue tic pup of good blood too it cost me nigh five dollar to mail that thang I listened on the radio ever night to see if they got it or not even wrote Randy's Record Company a letter but they said they just sold records I didn't know no better in them days I was just a kid I waited and waited I even wrote them a letter saying I'll let it go for five dollars whad you say no reply pretty soon I got a bill fiom the Unity State Govment Post Office and it read you owe two dollars postage please pay I didn't take to that so I tole the astronomer and he say it weren't nothing but a big slick operation just write another one if you like you'll never see it again I didn't neither so I wrote one in lemon juice (invisible ink) it was about Napoleon growing up and you had to pass it over a candle to get it I can't shoot with you looking over my shoulder I got to drive too shoot him I can sholy do it too iffen that one that pushed The Monk can that is the name of that book I tore the pages our listen hear I mean look here at Vico going on about how his voice got deep and sepulchral fiom yelling so much what a goddamn lie it was filial some of them mens sing the blues with a high voice I heard them every night they were like the willows how does a man get sent up for forgery if he can't even write his name Tang wants to know somebody tell him I don't why memory won't go away it hangs on like a bloodsucking leech out of the bottoms I had a heap on me once a Negro burned them off with a Lucky Strike that place in Nashville was crooked maybe I ought to have folks like everybody else and it wouldn't be so bad you probably think it's cool to read minds a getting hold of what people thinks about you and dirty thoughts and what kind of pitch you gone get let me tell you something buddy I wished I had it cut out Mamma Covoe tole me evah blessing has a curse I'm just gone mind my own business From now on live in a run-up Tug somewheres if I can get the wasps to leave who is that talking hell I can't even draw a check in Mississippi unless I got a guardian ever once and a while now this is when I get older I'll make my entry I'll come into town on a horse with a black suit on or a white suit depending on the season and I'll go into the country club and sho nuff Roundtree will remember me I'll show out with them dice won't say a word hardly ifI'm 18 in ever make it that age I'll swig me a beer and give some rich girl the eye I'll be pretty good with a knife by then if I keep on practicing nobody but Abednego could take me unlessing it was a Chinaman you can't whup no thing like that they can out think you I know I seen one paralyze a man with his toes once they can fight but you got to drive them to it he's letting me on to a few things too that'll be six more years just think I bet you Harpo Marx could give a man a pretty good fight you think he could shit he wouldn't even need to hit a lick he'd just drive you crazy when boats strike one another in the fog in the middle of the night was it St. Apollinare in Classe or St. Sebald's in Nuremberg how come the bus driver keeps looking out the side mirrors finally I was silenced and forbidden to leave the walls a papal guard was sent to confine me the fathers of the Church had come to hate me more than ever I was slandered in everyway of course I had sinned but their motives were quite ulterior I was even exercised from above I would stare out my cell at a woman selling onions a man smacking his lip a daild of about ten skipping rope my mirror was my only gate a simple entrance a fortress always beseiged but never in danger figures on the levee toujours I am especially interested in the touch of cold things a woman in her thirties with black hair and children who has just come in the entrance in December with the groceries undoes her shawl and is surprised to see me making a fire the cold metal on her finger like a bullet dreams there I said it again unfortunate accidents took place my music took on the air of that which is performed in private except for a few chosen confidants I sung in solitude like the winter nights the holy water would be frozen dementia praecox Dante the gypsy dancers huddled around the fire the village people stoning them the opera I composed based on La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades it was confiscated also a threnody a tragedy of unknown blood and General Lee's men spoke of themselves as Les Miserables the war of the theatres at the age of ten 1 had memorized every battle and cavalry tactic of the civil no the war to the states so I could forget it this stinking bird wasn't going to bend my back my whole life as the credentials of the family that took me in are excellent there is no need for me to go on and on I called my two boats the unicorn and the phoenix IXOYC there you go the older brothers always have it in for the younger one he can't do it they say I listen to the voices from water there comes a flood from wind a tornado from fiame a fire very simple you see two months I hid in the cave with the bats and the chinese handcufi's then I was struck like a slave with the most abominable design a scheme Dies Irae fioating in the chamber pots of the guilty such imagination and invent some concoction a stratagem only the devil could whisper in my ear so be it playing against the guilt and malicious utterings of the others' false charges against me for they had to be alone and afraid sometimes 1 devised an elaborate counterplot of incriminating confessions that would link arch rival against arch rival (from what he said they deserved what they got) I was most self-confident and proud of my machination as everyone in the monastery that would be pitted against one another were only men I should say eunuchs much less fortunate than I of talent that is to say it would take a man of genius to find his way out of the maze of guilt I planned to let fiourish like a garden of thorns a man of talent true might well be able to with much time cultivate an inferior maze as is quite that is I should say as was quite the case at the time however a mere prelate of talent could never in a hundred years traverse the simple forest of a genius for like a figure or a mirage on the desert the gifted spirit is quite solitary whereas the men of talent tend to draw together like flies around after-birth these are not my words but rather those of a young melancholic archaeologist I met while on tour in the Middle East it was after 1910 but sometime before the war and this Englishman given over to drink and an anile rebelliousness because of his illegitimacy this was my only meeting and at that a chance one with that handsome but recldess melioristic bastard Thomas Edward Lawrence (there was I think another with that name saying deep and dark) and it was like amaranth it was he was most self-conscious deafinute handtalk ain't like regular talk when I get back to Memphis I'm gone mount the daughter of the taxidermist we do horse and mare I had one confidante who had been sold into a Carmelite nunnery at a tender age I forgot to tell that she was the one Vico said was the only live sole survivor cause the abbot had hired a pilot during the first world war to bomb his own monastery cause he was getting restless on account of all the stuff going on that Vico was kicking up but the pilot didn't speak Italian too well and besides he got drunk and bombed the wrong castle way I heard it was he fiew back through over and over again chunking bombs out the cockpit yes we were lovers and she was proud of my plan the holy orders within the hierarchy of my monastery were such that each novice and tonsure and potter and rector and acolyte were personally chosen by the priests and by confessing this sin to that confessor I was able to watch the points d'appui form by themselves finally I done it this is what I said to myself I got to get one and I can't get one in Memphis or it'll ruin the family name I got to hire one from a town most the ones I seen is crooked so I got to look them over for markings I'll go into the quarters and ask around I can't stand it no more somebody has got to stand trial for it and it's got to be fair I tell you so I went and asked and told and they told and give me the way and I got on the mule of the evening and rode to a big two story clapboard house with a pretty garden and cut lawn and beat on the screen and a man with his back to me in a hepplewhite chair turned his head with a meerschaum pipe between his lips and said something but I don't know what it was cause I's looking up on the wall at the mural of seven girls in fiowing white dancing in the forest with the night sky so blue and the tarnished gold frame and now the man uncrossed his legs and set the huge thick book with the leather binding down on the little stand with a thud just like it sounds when you drop a fish or an anchor in the bottom of a deep hulled shanty like nobody likes to use anymore and this man had jungle birds and parakeets and monkeys and all kinds of yellow and scarlet plants and fiowers smelling up his sitting room but that pipe was too and I thought it was smoke but no it was the dust from the jacket when he set it down and I says is you the lawyer Orosius Bede who the folks in the section call Capum Fury I am he says speak your peace but I couldn't say nothing cause my heart made my head move real slow from one side of the room to the other as if I wasn't moving my head atol as if I was a statue turning on a pedestal and I opened my mouth but I seen this ship in a bottle and I says that there is something I know about I seen a picture of that vessel once I bet they call it Skioblaonir he nodded and said speak your business but I didn't want to do that right off that would be sort of impolite so I said the man in the quarters told me you have a Negro wife uh well I hear tell you was in Africa when you met I hear she's a for real medical doctor and she what is it that you come for he says and I says I come to get a fair trial had for me and my pals who sent you nobody but the spirit of the dead huh I'm sorry I just talk like that sometimes it comes right out see some of the ones I want to get a hearing is already dead but I come to get justice even if it means digging them up (dream of the moist spade) is it wrote anywheres in them Law books where I can get a court held like that his wife came in like a phantom and pulled the doctor mask down and says could I get you sarsaparilla or milk and I shifted a little on my feet and looked at Mr. Orosius and says much obliged ma'am but I'll take a shot of bourbon whiskey if you got it and it's all the same you partake at such an early age he says oh well I say I don't really like the taste but I got to have it sometimes the wotl will treat a fellow mean especially if you ain't thinking on yourself but on everybody else ain't that right I suppose so he says what brings you hear that bird here like I told you I've had enough I can't take it anymore from that duck fountain in the lobby of my daddy's well he ain't a for real one but from there clear to where my sister goes to school with them episcopalians in Vicksburg from there on into infinity I reckon ever sapsudting son-of-a-bitch with a lowdown tongue has got it all sewed up I been here and I been there but won't nobody listen whatever I see as the truff they turn it around like a pole cat and stink it all up I went into how there was this man who mm a newspaper and I tole him about the Black Angel getting hung and this pen pusher was going to tell the truf he said but he turns out to be the biggest jack-offing liar that ever was there was a couple of times me and my pals had to take the law into our own hands I got to get this off my ches cause I'm guilty of murder let's see I counted my fingers but I thought Rufus say watch that statue of lamentations wait seven foe you open you mouf so I shat up and said right now I can't talk too much on account of they is looking for me cause I sent a handwritten letter to the Govnuh a challenging him to a duel and they is sent out the State boys after me wait a minute I thought I almost told him though seven year is up by now for sure hold on I kilt that white man when I was nigh on six so I got another year to go on that statue I almost told him go ahead and tell him I was thinking go head on no I says best try to remember the dusty mirror in the school teacher's mansion in Snow Lake I sho did curry to her I got up in front of it and says if they won't believe you can read minds shoot some craps and they'll see show them how you can take everthang in they pockets they might be fraid you can pick they headbone like a buuard Baby Gauge said be nice he said go slow and take it easy and those books on his shelf like living things roosting in the night I recognized the name Saxo Grammaticus and the one called Volsunga Saga and of course Beowulf and Snorri Sturluson and Kalevala and Codex Regius and the last one on a shelf by itself with a vase of orchids under a mounted fish Caedmon and the shot of bourbon made me reel and careen and I went up the steps with the lawyer to their mirador with things I had to get off my chest because it was like I was toting a sandbag up the levee when we had that big rain and I got a hernia that time too and the skiff knocked me in the head and I dreamed I was in Nifiheim but I weren't nowhere but three miles from the Mississippi line so that lawyer knew I was the one he knew I traveled around with the Niger Hypnotist like that damn sunday paper said taking in fiJlks we had gone and cut up that orange and black Sir Walter Raleigh bacca sign with some tin shears and made us a checkerboard on a hollow cutting block and I got inside with a magnet and moved them soda water bottlecaps around and we made two bits a head doing it and it say on the sign come on in one and all and play a game a checkers with death and it wasn't to gyp nobody I promise it wasn't the hypnotist said it was worth two bits for everybody to beat death you see I always lost on purpose we never did intend to break no law but what I don't get is how them murderers don't get the law on them and all the time that baldheaded shyster from New Orleans saying the nigra had no business listening to the music of Richard Wagner anyways he role that to the jury but they never knew who that fellow was nohow and so even before morning when I finally finished telling him part of it he would put his hand on my shoulder like he was hearing someone out in his garden him with the white pipe in his teeth and say wait then after a little silence proceed and I told it till dawn the mirabile dictu but I left lots of things out so he wouldn't think I had it in for them that done us in I could of told him bout the Parvenew Real Estate Association swindling me and the hypnotist out of some land we found out the world's smallest man had left us but I didn't cause they done built a university with indoor toilets there and you be a baptist and have connections to go there I just tale about the important things but the chinese water is gone knock it out of my head I know it IS doodles in the river Melvin writ me a letter said them mens found Mr. Rufus change in the buckets had the National Guard come in with Mine Sweepers and dug it up one of these days I reckon they'll claim Abraham's Knife VICO sleeping like a log he's got that paramnesia and that's bad on a man can't talk I read a log once when I was a stowaway I found out what a thumb line was I never did find no paw though maybe I'd have better luck if I stick to looking for my brother I had the run of the convent but I only desired one outside the confessional I supplied innuendo inside the subaudition canard and tumor soon grew into this monk behind that tapestry even the Latin was spoken as if the Inquisition was in session and at the silence of the dinner tables ranks began to form the abbot alone in the center I poisoned the host that one priest placed in the mouth of another's novice and this triggered a chain of violent murders torture was the order of the day I confessed to have had seen the abbot visit the soprano from Palermo who had just newly taken his first vows this caused such a fit of jealousy among the priors that no one under sixteen was safe while all along I was searching through official records for the name of that bishop or abbot whatever and whoever he was who came to my village when I was but an infant and castrated myself and the others and I found such a person who passed through on December 28th of that year though I was able to bring the monastery to its knees in so much sin it elected me abbot and in turn begged forgiveness never was I able to confirm the true identity of this obese figure of horror until years later when Mussolini was strung up just put chance I strolled through a garden of a most meretricious nature so grown as to suggest profundity in the art of cultivation but at a closer look actually not more than a glance I was able to make out the artificialiry in fact the neurosis which plagued this garden like a destroying bug in a matter of minutes I reached the end of the flowers and saw perhaps a dozen youngsters stoning a fat man dressed as a cardinal I could have stayed and watched the youth I never had murdered the source of all my misery but I chose not to you see for the first time in a very long time I was filled with the spirit of brotherhood the community of language which was jumping out of my throat like a frog from the jaws of a snake I recalled the plan of putting the viper behind the curtains of the tabernacle and laughed I remembered the slab of marble swirled in blood and the old witch who held us by the foot as if we were just new into the world but it was a tragic spanking we received to force out first words out they laid me on the table I remember the huddle of black hoods around me as if some consecration was to take place to this day the memory of the fiash of the dagger in the candlelight burns like the wax on the blue blade they sealed me with just as if he cut the core from a peach the anonymous monk lifted the pitted seed from my thighs and threw it against the rocky ground where a chicken caught it before I knew it I was tossed into the straw in the back of the wagon and a hired whore midwife licked us between the legs a few of us died on the journey and as the ones who lived became of age they wished they had too there is not much I can say unless it is something of a musical nature true I was proficient in Bach before the age of reason but nothing of me will last excepting a few unoriginal experiences from the past I will pass out of this life remembered as and wanted as a bank robber with never a mention of the miracle of one nut I imagined I heard children his own age yelling Vico Vico as if flagging down the train of his childhood he never rode once the monks and I gambled for a novice in the convent and when it came time for me to show my card I pulled a piece of stiff paper I had fashioned myself out of my sleeve and it read in Latin DEATH and I won the game and I won the virgin but never did I win my freedom that is why I ride this bus in hopes of helping others gain theirs I Vico who has led a life no man could trace saw in my past when I waved the card a beautifiil woman somewhere in Paris or Zurich in the loges waving a fan at the opera I hoisted the host and I looked up and saw the moon here cndeth the tale of Vico the bus took a rest stop and everyone stretched my friend Vico woke up and said in my dream I had an encounter with reality my son I saw how just as some men look down on others because of the color of their skin then so it is that some men the arbitrators of taste the self appointed men of the easy life which holds no danger will always want to select your flavor am I right tell me you is certainly right I said to Vico just the other day this man in the drug store told me I shouldn't eat strawberries and he said I Vico tell you to live a life of strawberries 1 sho wished he and Harpo Marx could of met up but it's too late but what is this he is singing Und rings die Hande vor schmemnsgewalt Mir graut es wenn ich sein Antlitz sehe Der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne Gestalt Du Doppelganger du bleicher Geselle lch stand in dunkeln Traumen Auf einen Totenacker Hat mich mein Weg gebracht Habe ja doch nichts begangen Was vermeid ich denn die Wege A stranger I come a stranger I leave Hart ich tausend Arme zu ruhren he was in a happy mood at last and the kid winked cause he knew that meant pop the air brakes sounded like a thousand dollar tire going down and the door opened like a trick passage in a pin ball machine come to think of it maybe I need somebody to travel around with me to translate for me maybe then I could get it across it's like I was foreigner and don't nobody know what I'm saying when a Chinaman tries to speak our tongue you laugh at him I don't think it's so funny for every stretch of land there is a way to say it and with me it is like I live in an unknown part of the woods a geography way away deep in the water and dark forest like when you feel wild and run through the rain but some people come they come to take something away like those towheads took Mr. Rufus' buckets of change away I wonder what his soul is thinking yes it is like somebody left me something but you can't remember what just like when you wake up and so I am the proprietor of a strange hotel I own a part of a plantation where everyman is his own boss like I said sometimes the others come but they only stay one night and when me and Baby Gauge go to clean up the room something is missing what is gone was just as much hissen and Dark's as it was mine even my blood kin Sleep has got his X writ on it but it is gone and if I ever wake him up shit is gone hit the fan maybe he'll be able to make them understand the others the tourists who take pictures and doorknobs we know so do I it wasn't really the driver's fault he was trying to be nice he parked the bus on the wrong side of the road so The Wonder Bread truckman could back into the cafe there was a whole lot of red and blue circles and it said Helps Build Strong Bodies Twelve Ways the bus driver was all choked up and saying I was only trying to be nice if I hadn't a been playing deaf so long maybe my instinct could a smelt it out maybe I'd a knowed it was more than just loud pipes who knows when a kid is gone get run down they got off first the ladies were talking to the preacher but before the doors opened and they stepped down the steps where it says watch it VICO sang to the kid Ich komme vom Gebirge lch wandle still bin wenig froh Und immer fragt der Seuf'ler wo Die Sonne dunks mich hiet so kalt Ich bin ein Fremdling uberall W0 bist du mein geliebtes Land Gesucht geahnt und nie gekannt Das Land das Land so hoffnungsgrun Das Land wo meine Rosen bluck W0 meine Freunde wandelnd gehn W0 meine Toten auferstehn Das Land das meine Sprache spricht 0 Land wo bist du Ida wandle still bin wenig froh Und immer fragt der Seufzer wo Im Geisterhaud'i tont's mir zuruck Dort wo du nicht bist dort ist das Cluck the boy had his hand full of change and he said he's sumpum ain't he Vico had enough life left in him to give me the hand signal for move out in the open so they can't get a good shot he fiexed the muscles in his arm like that one on the sign with the mallet and he motioned as if drawing ofi- his dirty glove Das Leben ist ein Traum I remembered Franz J. Haydn became a choristet in Vienna at the age of eight another tale not the binding of the wolf by the dwarfs has it that some of these men were great individualists which was at once their strength and weakness now as it goes these men resented any fittters that would tame their freedom of action nevertheless they were most capable of a strange and considerable self discipline and could accept most adversities cheerfiilly without whining or self pity fi-om what I hear a man who was about to die was held in honor if his cause was just be he friend or foe and won a lasting love if he could die with a jest on his lips but anymore it is hard for me to think I bide my time his ring sounds like a hammer or a ship that looks like a cathedral good men have not been given their due the morning is unable to ride because of its thirst in every dream I hear the cool night all is past he give up the death breath with something about some road or rode as in riding I couldn't tell the tenses it all happened so fast like a fine blooded horse passing by your window at midnight but it was dawn and I hepped the preacher and the bodyguard pick up the body of the Negro boy a man who had just gone to the field came out of the field again and hepped us nobody noticed the time of year but the hand had a cottonsack which weren't right if you know what I mean but that is what we put the kid in never did catch his name but his Mamma membered it to me she was getting consoled by the sisters he must have been drunk that field hand the bus driver kept on a saying did you get the license number anybody get it until the bodyguard tole him hush but the swap was done like we said it was I sent the pitcher's glove through the Air Mail the man tole me there wasn't no point in that seeing as to how the Mississippi line was just on the other side but that's the way I promised so I did it I still had his address wrote on myself and I heard tell his older brother is getting signed by the Major leagues and that catcher's mitt well I'm sitting on it right now and it makes a man a good saddle cause Dark's old mule hits got a heap of back bone and the sun was getting warm and feeling nice and I seen my shadow as dark as the blood on the white line in the middle of the highway so the water goes on like the mule and a big congregation of white folks had gathered around the preacher some of them with song books some with bottles of whiskey still others had guns and I said uhoh Tang now Jimmy and Charlie B. done gone and done it wheah that baldheaded man going to Tang said I think he's heading into the concession stand they must have another one them mictaphones in there call tention Tang says and I grabbed the piece of silver outten the booth and the old man says evahbody stay put y'all heah me I'm calling the shots ain't nobody going nowheahs till my wife's bless her soul face is off the screen y'all heah that how you turn this goddamn thang ofi' boy just fiip the switch I said but before Tang had a chance to do that the equipment we had gone and went dead as hell they got a master switch up there I says to him well what you waiting for son let's go guard it the owners of the Drive Inn had slipped away somewheres I don't know but the preachers was at the other microphone now telling the folks to shut they mouths cause here it was Easter morning and everybody was drunk and fighting and fomicating and he didn't know if he's gone preach no sermon or not but the main thang at hand he said was to get them two fools ofibn that bulldozer afore somebody gets killed that's what he said in the background coming in over the system you could hear one of his ugly kids yelling it's them daddy its the same ones that done it and one of them's a nigger look at him whatever he was going to say it was too late he got his chance to see iffen it was the same two alright though and it was he was just yelling where'd my wife go honey come take care these kids and Tang said about his wife I reckon she's gone now we can go home Jimmy and Charlie B. kept a backing up and running into the frame that held the screen up I couldn't hear what it was they was yelling cause of the noise but Tang's show was still on but he didn't want to look at it no more he was passing out and they was bringing it down now the whole thing was fiat as a piece of paper and they got the bulldozer on it in the middle and spun around and around a tearing it to shreds the sprinkle was getting to be a hard rain and it was mostly sunrise the moom pitchu Hallelujah was showing on the rain and the trees in the woods and as far as I could see and the two drunks was passed out on the machine going this way and that far away and instead of being afraid of getting killed I just felt awful lonesome for some reason so I got the ice tongs and got hold of my tongue and tried to pull it out but it wouldn't budge so I drew my pocket knife and was a going to cut my tongue out and had it started pretty good but Tang he sees me and does he ever whup the fire out of me he beat me black and blue all the time saying what wrong with you boy what wrong he shook me good and says let's get out of here foe some body shoots us what you say he leaned back with one eye open his head on the back of my seat and says heah put this handchercuf in yo mouf it'll stop the blood it sho was hard to shift the gears well Tang said drive on drive on so that is what I did I am telling you what I saw what I see what I will see what you saw what you see what you will see the sun is a stolen mare and the moon is my screen I am the children chained down in Plato's cave my shadows are like movies of the dead who come back to watch themselves listening to the nigger looking at the fire in my boat my history on the river father son holy ghost and all that smoke I vanished to sing a blue yodel of that low born bastard brought up by the finest of families I locked myself in the outhouse when I wasn't but six and wrote a novel dedicated to my sidekick the night I got drunk and wrote suicide notes to my blonde headed teacher so I wouldn't fail and every moment I wasn't asleep Xanadu was in danger I tell you I sold my soul to the devil for a lettersweater and ten minutes with a tightrope walker's daughter every fall my corsage died in the ice box I whistled down the wind afterbirth of the rose was my favorite tune there isn't a boy who doesn't know what I mean I put together the moon like a raft for that final journey there wasn't anything else to do anything I hadn't done already so I hauled rocks for the devil and made him a grotto where I couldn't look anyone's daddy in the eye baby I rode out of town like a saint I sang blue yodel of her evening those sundown eyes and at that the schoolgirl lit out on a dilferent road she put me up to stealing lemons she was so goodlooking I had to bite leather you won't see me trying to hide it I did it look at the fine-spun blood on my jacket I admit I am in collusion with the evening herself there was a rundown church she called her home it careened like a ship since I was touched in the head she let me sleep it off every night on the charred piano she kept in her garden with those green eyes of sleep I knew how to unhook any speedometer I defiowered the darkness of the backroads leaving it to the thieves who let my blood on the hour for years I send them along with two or three good words and a pat on the back I'm so far off the rocker they say I spit seeds in John Law's eye she was so goodlooking she had the body of a colt you cannot purchase when she got off the schoolbus I'd plow the same row twice nobody could get any work out of me I got to dreaming that sorghum patch of mine was a river that ran for a goddess my mule helped lead them out of the promised land nothing was the way it should be wherever I went I left a wake the blade of my plow shined like a garnbler's knife I talked out of my head like a dancing Greek and had those circles of dark violet under my eyes while I wasn't looking she hit me in the temple with a rock and I went to dreaming again my hand was a hawk that could throw its voice and ponies a dead man left me would gallop into my shack and lick my hair every morning she was so beautiful the buckberries were late I'm done for I know it they say I'm a paramnesiac so the night birds came there in her garden of climbing buckwheat weeds and mystery at dawn the birds when I was fourteen damn if I didn't sell it again I go to the dances alone I always get beat-up blue yodel of the buddyfucker and the bloody boutonniere I stood up the first strings' girl friends like bottles on a fence and practiced my draw I walk through the garden with my arm in a sling I practice my bows in front of a mirror in the school teacher's hall she was the only one who would take me in to this day I can see her wetting her lips with her tongue in my palm I would wake up beside her in the middle of the night kissing my list but that's just another blue yodel of young ladies of time past I locked myself in the outhouse for her sake I put a quarter on the arm of the record player so it wouldn't skip I played the magic fiute by the light of the moon they say I was lucky because I had the power I could read minds the man who put out my eye he left me a uncleared quarter on a mountain a bootlegger wouldn't be caught on it came in handy when I started breaking the law I'd hide out for days at a time it all happened so fast I came home one evening my folks were dead and gone all I said was good now I can be alone I called it blue yodel come the long night I forgot who they were I dreamed I was a star or something like that I got drunk every night I was sinking down I love sweet water there was lavender and yearlings and the hangnail moon it was something to behold every evening it hung on the black hem of something was something I gave some thought to the ones I took home after school and forgot the snow on the dark roads the sail making her bed in the harbor everywhere the night everywhere like a blue yodel a ballad you better not sing on account of the blues everywhere everyone asleep the drunk in the garden calling out brother in his sleep the cowboy saddling his roan the orphans who weep because it is the first of the week again are fast asleep and the lovers swimming to their early deaths are asleep everything is dreaming it is asleep and safe the soldiers on dope with their boots on the throats of whores the grandpappy dying at night in another's bed the hunters getting their jeep out of the mud are asleep and their dogs are still dead to the world and dreaming they are mad as foxfire again the gauze which bears witness to the shadow in the shape of a nail is moaning on the wharf where the somnambulist fishermen feather their cars and a storm passes over like a pose after someone I use to know goodnight horse marine so long ballerina of the high wire and the unicorns coupling in the dark waters of your tent I remember your fingers that smell like honey the down on your calves like dust on a guitar which keeps a window open the moon through the screen on your belly a comb your hair too thick to be brushed by a soul one strand makes me think of an island not on the maps the way you sipped wine like a tight ship that never takes in a drop of water and you not even sixteen and me I was crazy I wanted to ride over a cliff the designs of your blouse roads that could lead anywhere your fingernails were like pirates coming aboard and my back that took a flogging like Mr. Christian I dreamed you put a spell on me that I had a wife a daughter that bled to death on their pillow and you signed their death certificate with a quill you stole from a blind fighting cock when I was in port your accent as I rode up to the Inn and you greeted me my capitan my capitan the first time I saw you I was hunting wild hogs with a rifle with a scope I took out the shell and kept you in the cross-hairs until you fell off of that bow line you had your daddy string across the creek I went crazy right there I had to keep a lookout in my drawers one of the old gypsies in your troupe went down so the priest came down the river to give her last rites and the wind blew the host out of his hands and 1 came down on that too like a ticket stub I heard you kneel down beside the water with the Father it was like a picture show what you told him your knees in repose of the dead snake doctor the gloom of your navel and your mirror giving a faraway look to a bareback rider the night before graduation I screwed you in the back of my truck and I became wonderful at saying so long now I am sleeping in that water where your children will come when it is dry and dig fish bait I remember before the old woman died she read my palm her old finger like a minnow that would catch anything I yodel the throats fioating in the cherry the tuft of your cunt like moss on the keel of a dark boat I was so lonesome when you put out strange bird I woke up on in the outhouse the rain did it on the tin roof wonder bread help build your body twelve ways it said a shower coming down like you passing water on the side of a hill I wanted a silk shirt and black gloves that fit I wanted to knock on the door of your wagon with a gold studded cane that disguised a cutlass I wanted to try to wipe the beauty mark off of your chin I didn't want to below bred and touched I got tired of the old men hiring boys to do their dirty work on me I wanted to slap the shit out of somebody to get a letter to not have that second degree manslaughter trailing me like a bloodhound if I was going to be low born why couldn't I been a frenchman who talks love through his nose in a blue and white striped boat-neck shirt why couldn't a midget play the concertina for us all night but you fell down and broke your neck if I was to find out where you were probably in some convent you couldn't feel it anyway they took you away in a wheelchair they said I was a banding a rascal and scoundrel a no count liar so what I didn't say I wasn't I didn't say nothing I yodeled a dream where I got an invitation to the ball of the ravished the beautifitl I put on a mask and hid under a cape I sneaked around like Romeo only I was really fourteen you circled around like a she wolf when you touched me with your wand I can't look my raft is breaking up on the shores of night and there are search lights up ahead and the owl is so much like an angel it hurts he struts along like an emperor white cape and all and you asleep in the pool of your gown and I visit the honky tanks to drink milk in the corner alone in hopes of seeing the ladies who travel by night come in from the rain that comes down over the valley where everyone must go it alone I yodel the devil only knows what you are thinking of me when there is a dead calm you can hear the horsehooves in the water on the beach along the pier up the catwalk aboard the ship on deck on the plank galloping into the water the candle I saw in your port hole an imaginary light this log I am keeping for you like a prom held for the departed I pay my last respects to my mouth it's weary as a prince without a kingdom the road 1 go down with the wind my tutor has so many ruts it looks like the broken neck of a mandolin I follow the strings the stalks that hold the fish eyes the blood in the air the mirrors they grind for the bees and their keeper you are lazy like the rose you do nothing but take off your clothes your step-ins take on the l of the sleeper when there is no I they have the musk of a spot I found in the woods two years ago they are like silent children dozing in a cave who have gone unwashed for years I have seen you take the slack out of your panties like a sail crossing the mountains somehow your elixir runs in me like a river through me like a dagger no one will take out the sexual milk that must make a noise like a shoal two mussels being done in swallon whole by a wildcat whose mate has been mounted by a bird stufi'er your new love the wheelchair has two negro women tied to the spokes who haven't given up the days of sandbagging the levee with cocaine dipping their snufi' like minnows out of the belly of the moon any good lad has held in his hand and the gentlemen of the road take refitge under the bulldozer my father's best friend the bohemian has paid 03' the foreman to read his hand of cards there a thousand miles from nowhere two gentlemen of the white race are partners with a Sambo who sings out his sambas like a stone in the blue hole and a convict who goes by Dark the ringleader but somewhere the shutter beats during the thunderstorm and that same fine looking lad is weeping like a silent boat that must be bearing away his childhood leaving before the good dog star of dawn is done barking its sleep lovely bear beowulf his father burnt up and sunk in the sword of first snow he cried so long for the ferocious seeds holding the bridle of the thicket growing over the grave of his pony the roots dissolve brother worm so weary of brother shove] the sound of the rigor mortis of parachutes like umbrellas in a cemetery my hair is mussed underground where the gypsies had a picnic and l smooth your wood out with my hands like lathes and Edgar Allan Poe my cousin fills his wife's pillow with shavings and your bed disappears in the spring when the water is high and I throw horseshoes at the wandering fins and the boiling crawdads come apart in a colored man's mouth to the music of that lure that looks so much like a spider god that makes your back its lair and your voice the pine trees in the portrait of dead women I associate with your gown the ghost of the animal soaked to the bone which leaps on my back every evening in the woods where the children are smoking out their horses with feathers and pocketknives and master spurs believe me the dark of night is so much the same as that quarrel your legs keep up leaning on the shadow of a head of water like an angel keeping two schoolboys from one another's throats is the job of a snake whose small heart beats like a dancer's bloody shoe it is the job of the stranger with a twitch in his lip who can talk about flying saucers and dirty playing cards in my sleep I mumble a dream I yodel about the hard scent of the dragon's sex and you live off that beggar the days just around the corner staying awake all night long wondering what went wrong why didn't I turn into a criminal and become your lover why did I have to knock that cheerleader up when all along I wanted to throw you over my horse crippled and all and ride off with you like they do in the movies I wanted to take that nail our of your dress where the orchid had been tenured for so long I entered three minds at once like a drunken prowler I am found out leaving the sanctuary with the sacred chalice a fish bone in my throat I turn to the bottle already an old friend and pay my last respects once again to my partner the long legged evening little more than a shadowy legend remains of that guitar I saw drifting down the river they say the dead swim good morning captain I told the mule that couldn't see I think like a picture show my lover is Camille the loner I peel apples by the water the pallbearers the star gamers the sweettooth didn't you cry when The Champ beat his fist into the wall somebody made a fool out of me this is what there is my heart a bequest giving out rambling through the tanks all I can chunk is snake eyes I am beyond time my sleep is condemned the wise and foolish virgins one tree takes the hand of another's only daughter I use to watch her bathe under the pump sounded like a jackass there is a dead swan and someone leaning over a fire and the places the children know there is memory who loses its river there is doubt the priest's only son there is someone walking on the catwalk in wet shoes or boots full of blood there is the shepherd scratching himself under the cover and he hits me in the ribs with his elbow and thinks I'm beating my meat but the dog has none of the fears of a man asleep but he still dreams of the ships where he was buried with his master the place in the field where she got sick forgiveness some eggs some berries some legs an odor between us a bruise some more blood some feathers I heard how they cut a good horse out of the herd and your hands made to turn bowls I believe at that moment exactly when the paramour's bride dressed in yellow takes off her long glove and walks towards the motionless arm of the pocketwatch on the wall the black dove has been known to fiy out of the numbers of the sobbing clock and lights on the jilted widow's damp fingers it has been known to come around its throat the fist of the hours at this moment a thirsty orphan is murdered in her sleep is sold into bondage is made to distobe in the company of merchants and bureaucrats the politicians of lice and there is a stillborn child a sputnik suffocated with the pillow at the moment it is known another orphan tears her dress and tends the wounded monk in white in the field Van Gogh is fainting and yet another orphan hangs herself in the attic with the belt of her lover and good whoever it is leaps from that dark window at this very moment the gypsy boy of questionable lineage takes the bull and falls into delirium himself over that crushed bird that sipped from the wound that drank like a fish a Zen Lieutenant prepares before he takes his mistress and his life there is the moon Gabriel took under his cloak of bad news the moon I wasted so many cartridges on the knight funambule I wanted to be in league with our Lady of Death I wanted Enid almost as bad as I wanted Clare a long life and solitude by my lord's house on the sea my brother should have poisoned me by now all of my prayers should have been chewed and swallowed I kept dying like Chatterton giving a shiteating grin like Burt Lancaster when the Lord slapped some sense into me eleven white horses chewing the plumage of my grave it is certainly so that you wrote like a child in your soap you remember the mirror that smelled like seaweed revolving between your legs Clare you remember slitting our wrists with a blade of grass and your gown begging for air in the water Clare your breasts like homing pigeons with deadly nightshade your sex another stigmata your youth lost climbing the hill your suffering ears that have come to the wolf for revenge your hips the holy the terrible the ravished and your censure a madrigal of clover your steps down the path to my cave in secret the pure at heart the victim I wanted your mouth with its invisible moss I wanted the silence that rustled under your dress when you let it fall a cloud that never can unwrap itself from the moon in Assisi you and I could fuck in peace we could pray between your knees I dreamed I was James Dean and Marlon Brando at the same time I knew it was Rosebud all the time so I slept under the bed of the river and you smelled like Elizabeth Siddal's sheets and the dark hair of Gabriel's best friend's wife and the water you made a spy's link a holy shroud The Wedding of St George and the Princess Sabra a holy and terrible sail Ecce Ancilla Domini a most holy and ravished canvas Paolo and Francesca my god in those days beside the lonesome wind of Carlisle Wall a man and a woman could make love listening to the solitary sparks of the naked garden and the motion of their own blood mystic a star with no light could make love dressed in white saying goodbye way into the night into the dark snow and do the lord's work there is our brother the sun there is our sister the moon and that is all I can say because I love you Astarte Syriaca I woke up the dear eyes of the lamb in the barn I woke up the drowsy snake I told the melancholy to guide me 1 startled the beautifirl things which had disappeared I died like a gambler I dreamed of sonnets of naked farm girls and black mares not a one of them rhymed I watched fountains come back that had gone dry from the elaborate I brooded in the valley the dusk quick as large eyes I looked at the sun on the bottom I was so simple it killed me I believed in hay I loved the night anyway I took the route of the petal apparent and not I forgot I was I I dreamed of a boy going back and forth like a hen feeding the earth I went insane with the mariner and this one I am I almost played poker with a cricket I was sudden and impure I had faith in all things I was genuine dust and just as silent l was interrogated by the Judge of Shadows time is the batr pit I drown in time is the wolf who dreams me time is the ice which melts in the bourbon I dreamed I sipped I was the charcoal I was the yellow butterfiy l was dreamed celestial triumphant and dead the prayer by Alighieri the sad I dreamed the orgasm of nothingness in another galaxy I dreamed infants born in the black space of an endless sphere I dreamed Robert Burns was a merman a Beowulf with gills in Loch Ness I suspected this life I sang what I dreamed to the monks of Hild I knew the great memory of pensive women and the orphan's bouquet I am unlimited and protoplasmic and you I survive the time of the grass on fire I feel and I am with you I foresee the task the twilight and the holy spirit who fingers the muse I know nothing like Keats I fought a duel against die rules I foresee the lad in gabardine rags singing his heart out I revel in pain with the wanderer's instinct I came close to the bone my past is simultaneous with my present I'm fiill of words like curve sod hair voyage smoke spear dtench figs fish I play bad piano for Eve Mary and Magdalene I'm part Indian so I dream of bird-like bridges and circular waters but no land I dream of long boats in the desert I dream of spawn and figureheads I swerve and I accept like a blue snake with feathers I am a path I contain the logic of the blood-sea the cosmos the full beauty of the loin I want to become and lured away alone at once I want to live with animals in the temple of Isis I chant the gentle the sweeping the cunt of the soul my eyes are wicked and dark I'm quick like a horse I take more wives than a kangaroo I rove through the thunder of the blood the lightning of the skin I cluster grand and mad like grapes I ache like the mast in fantasia's ship I have the general force of the frescoes of wrestlers and panting dancers I love the ignorant ponds I see the fields gashed and made into levees I am stout and burned not too tall and give off a strange aromatic shadow I abandon myself to the excitement of farmers and water I quiver now and the wrong phoenix below I come out of nowhere 1 merge with death in the weeds I go to the extreme I loaf in the black fiowers of the red moon rising like cornbread cooked over a bayou I live in the cello and the fiute that signal farewell to all good things I fiow with the films the fluttering strangers I learn from the incarnate I am the young bull in the snow I go mistaken for fair weather I call to the downtrodden I grew up early I compose the great poem of death and these States I dream the body hovering and surrounded by myself on the verge of Lady Chatterlcy's Lover I am the countryman the caul of the unborn I give you fair warning I have made a little ship I who was to come have come dark and in love I not too old not too bad looking omnisexual and sly keeping up with the grave I calm and low and sinking I with the expressive forest under me I leave the impression of the spun moon a band momentary for all time I two brothers in the brotherhood of grief I with the sprouts and children with hammers a sound a balance of journey work I know the message of toes in the water all and all I planted the mustardsced I with the songs the gross and the blended vision with the order of roots and blood of desire with myself fulfilled in the common and plunged hawk who wears the trees I solitary leaving land to die I who go slow in the heat I the sweet worm and sinew in every girl's dream sheet I felt hypnotic a dance in the good dirt behind the barn I who penciled in whoever you are holding me now in hand I crafisman and boy of bordellos and orbits indicted and convicted a sanctus beseiged saturated with night simultaneous and balanced as doom busting my gut indigenous transcendent alive for awhile I ascend from the big water of silence I ascend in the branch of the entered again men with no name holy in the compost I fioat through the bedrooms like an uprooted tree vital and in streams of bark and sloughs shed under a comet and the tabernacle of the fiag of the doe I come to a close before reason opens my wound again I grow in crescents and condensation I slide in the eyes of the crab I nobody else offspring of stars my dreams of dust that will settle in the serge and firr of myself in reality unsaintly in the shape of the sun Dionysian debris I hewn in mud lovely as women brushing their hair I grind the mirrors of the nighttime I make your refiection as simple as mine and yet I stump the pastors and teachers the men of war selling themselves to Class I swear the phoenix eats the bullhead's heart on my wrist l compress the language of the earth listen I hinge on the lips I heed the words of the new bosoms I dream dictionaries and principals that won't make mementos out of the wild flowers I am one who believes nothing is cheap I would rather go unknown inward without effect I stand at case like a cloud or a burning child I travel the road of the germ beware as I am easy and swift you will not touch me as I am authentic moving slow as black water you are afraid to dive as I am clown sometimes clairvoyant and blood brother of the fuse to cover up my tracks the countryside wounded you will laugh and be afraid to lace up your boots if you wear them I read the good book of the kindhearted devil along with Alice and Saint Francis leaving like air I dream weeds on fire I sorrow in stride with thorns unknown as I am only known down by the lakes and river only known by the swelled up virgins hiding things at night I renounce the illusions of the looking glass I stand in the sun I unfolding the dark gown of my bride oblivion soothing my living death I in the land of the darkly bound for the lamp of ashes your soul and sex I kiss the black of the piano like Scriabin I have fears that I may cease to be come I am the svvanboy that moves the cool slow thighs I prolong the moment of contemplation I suck up the dew and spit in the direction of Demeter I owe Alain Chartier a great deal I missed my chance with one of the lords of life hush suddenly I am on the deck I am born innocent and ungrammatical as a thirsty snake I make the perfect bed I wink in my sleep I am the dark bridegroom I belong to the loom I belong to poor Clare's suspended fingers I fuse the first-born and the has-been I warn the harbinger I devote time to nothing but air I buck up the plums to give to my invisible bride a lady always I ferry the nameless I lose my accent to the roots who can undo the tourniquet I keel over in the vision with its lingo of divided violins I am confined to the asylums of the dead masters I talk to myself and whistle in the honky tonks like Robert Schumann I run the long distances with the neutrons and climbing buckwheat I meander through the night sweats I am known as a braggart and a dreamer Dichterliebe I feel well with the moon I went to the garden of love in a cradle met like a hearse I stole My spirit was too weak I had no name I dedicated my powers to the fish and the nimbus in dejecrion I loved my life in the dark eyebrows I spread the word to the stunned I tossed coins with the martyrs I loafed in the bedrooms of the older sisters I vanished like the piper I etched out a living I slouched in the wands I knew the loins' Introduction I perished in the shipwrecked thorns I was a joy to hear I wrote the book of the thousand and one girls with no guitars all night I listened to Ieda's heart beat like a fish knowing how it rains in every country I met the crop dusters downed by gin I chauffeured the widows through the delta shifting down like the angel of death told me I slid OE the road in linking rhyme I cast lots with the dank underclothes of the backseat that made the windows tablets for the wicked's skeleton keys that made me leap prince of the bullfrogs from pond to pond from wheels to wheels with a voice deep as a fatal wound I followed the odors coming from underneath l sentenced the dice to be hung from the neck on the rear view mirror I waited for my love of the ages the Negroes and hypnotists who died in the ice boxes before the age of reason and I stood guard with combs and old radios while the poets slept we kept the iron warm for the sister women's hair we kept the whereabouts of the innocent to ourselves while the poets slept we stood sentry to the snake doctors who drowned in their breath rising in the desert like the wisdom of Atum we took the longest patrols and ended up with rat bite fever and syphilis in the seraglio we all thought was some kind of wine while the poets slept we cleaned the repetends of feathers from our boots and buried John Webster who drank the pure darkness while the poets dreamt of being captain of the drill team and quarterback at the same time all of us became quite lonesome watching the same movies all during the week watching the guests slam the door on the tips of out fishing rods watching the crippled geometry teacher fall in love with the bright girl too poor to buy notebook paper and class pictures watching for that other playmaker Christopher Marlowe defenestrating the other world this one watching Danae burn incense in to the coop with the blue fox while the poets slept the breathtaking Mamas washed us in Job and coal oil and the soap of odes and sorrows while the poets dreamt of possessing the stealth of my blood brother portentous and sudden my brother master of mud and woo and whistles who is night and like the night and the wind who was to rescue Christabel and slink away with the moon with child in his spit we divulged the lore of the enemy river we went through the particqu fate of the cataclysmic womb we shot marbles with Adonis according to his mystic-martial rules we solaced the schoolgirls forbidden to raise lavender who had to weave their long socks locked in the loft who were frostbitten by the english horn who were ultimately french kissed in the back of the sehoolbus coming back from the football game in the mountains O the water was cold as a casket left by the window to swell and my prick lifted its head like a lost loon like a man who has rowed out for good like a cardsharp who has cancer 0 the mad V of pricks the wing of fioating aces an alcove of consummate luck we knew whatever we were we slept in the shade and listened to oblivion's shadow arabesque the plums and firecrackers going bad in our pockets while the poets slept we were fast asleep like a clipper full of horses off course we seethed where the light never penetrated we stunk like the lemon we became cruel and nautical at once meanwhile the ramps delivered their soliloquies in the hallways like caverns where seabcasts grazed unbeknown O we waited so long in the waves to make a pass at the new one who wanders and parts her hair with ivy solitude and murder the dogs howl so quietly some frost comes up on your ring like the abandoned arteries of a star as if a sleazy fifteen year old was reading over my shoulder nudging like a colt a generative unicorn with a dense red mane while the poets slept in one another's joekstrap I was driving Miss Nevus down a lowroad in the dead of winter the haze rising out of the kiln of her blouse like breath in a meadow the small animals crossing the road at night swooning in the headlights of the black car a V-8 mudfish that rode low to the ground like a nasty pair of bluejcans the song on the radio was something the Prince of darkness could swallow I wanted to grind charcoal into fine powder like a lens maker I wanted the soot that looked purple at night to pry into the flesh of the snow apples I thought about setting fire to the cold fields I wanted her tongue to stick to the mirror and the owl buried deep in the head with an odor of blood lisps like a female prisoner speaking in her sleep taboo something fiying up to the side an invisible horse that reared up on the other side of the fence a little cyclone of mystery crazy like a girl looking at the moon in the water with thoughts of tangerines and a fading light a girl with the cold-blooded eyes of a lizard that goes for the fingers in the crevice of the cliff a girl with a streak of meanness like the dark lateral line of fish who can feel death through the water and maneuver by the sound of dust settling on land there are vibrations in the weeds before dawn like a rattling of dishes in the widow's parlor like a crust of bread which gives away a visitor there are faraway voices that come from beyond the constellations we have not named strange noises of light that quiver like tropical slime that arrive through the bedroom window when the sons and daughters are into the woods of one another there comes a knowledge of the deaf who dream of tentacles and beaks a sediment which forms around the tracks where the dead have often ridden together really I think of simple things of ordinary acts and nights that take place in the desolate minds of the very common words like water or a pile of branches gestures with the rhythm of plankton and the heartbeat of birds and hooves the steady growl of the wildcat about to pounce and smooth running cars hitting on all cylinders with rearseats that an sound like Tarzan's monkey I think of the intimate steps the dancer can make bold as the letters of the stonecutter's inscriptions that beautiful weapon the knife an instrument of peace the calligraphy of the seed and feed lists the crow on the horizon you see in the eyes of the Trappist who has gone so long without sleep broken glass perseverant lips the apostrophes of the man in the fire tower the woman who will drown herself touching the inscrutable fragment not the statue I think of the simple things of the spirit the last rites of the snow and the lovers who go to bed with a child in mind and when they wake it is so should she plait her hair with warnings I will forget my vagueness in the midst of the rose should she remember my ugly face which brought her to ruin I will live in the old bell like a vine and a burden I will envision the deserts laments when the going gets rough I'll take my eyes ofi- the road I'll look at the body of my passenger like a small ship underway the crazy one with eyelids of semblances who can camoufiage herself with shivers and the iridescence of fish who can utter milt and seaweed I think of the simple girls from the country who can get out of their clothes as Fast as a thoroughbred and a sailfish I go down the road dreaming drunk as a coat when she says to slow down boy I think of a throat under siege and the motto of a horn I think of a pyramid and an hourglass a voice that gives oifi its own light my life I love it in the dark under the water of my shadow music my form and substance lonely and blue as ever I give away my deluded clothes I fall by the wayside only the stones for throwing across the river and the girl who transfigures the predator know how I listen for that boat full of melons and sorrow alas was the word they used in the old days they had been friends in youth I wandered through the hamlets barefoot at times a two-bit troubadour going very deep in debt to the canebrakes they called me fisherman then and my pockets were full of blackbirds I dipped the good mug of the delta with its boiled coffee and crawdads the sailmaker sewed me tight pants for my bandy legs the gravedigger broke ground for my arbor I took roses to the pand'ter twice a week I came in heat I dragged a cottonsack fill] of books up and down the levee like a litter the Indians used for the sick and wounded oh well the cook mammas jingled their cans full of fishhooks they picked buckshot out of the churchhouse door with carving knives and used it to sink their lines and concocted bait deep into everyman's blue hole I am the ones who have arrived I am delivered by the dark light of a thousand glowworms that stand fast in the tree suffering I know the spinning wheel the Negroes turn I who take money from no one with the touch of the Virgin's crucifix in the palm of the dispossessed werewolf the query of firebirds blackberries and female tigers creedless and risking my ship I go quite phallic starting with the backwater of your corpus I discover myself beyond the laws aware of the ribald the sublime and the reckless taking holy water leaks in the big river of unconsciousness which fiows elemental under my shack taking my hounds and roosters all over again I exist in the natural musk of the farmgirl seer I exist in the miracles of the nebulous clitoris I exist beyond symbols and two-bit concepts beyond shadroe never accepted by the high class I assume the skill of evangelical beasts the good and the bad as well I fadeaway in my quivering limbs I fade away black and lighthearted on the wild seas of what I want you to do I utter in sad blossoms I admit the visitors with tears I wait for the schoolgirl who waits for me clear and strange I plot my garden is yours I live in the sung root of good-fortune and death on cue with the fodder I as fierce as the dust on the rose I loom in the hours where the dragon swims I jump from the barns of wasps and castrated ponies I dress like the holy spirit and smell just as bad I stink with the night of the snake I sleep with my arm around whoever is sleeping I motley boy on the loose with the mad and the rabbits I am taken for you at my age I suffered and earned twelve dollars a day being a guide I pivot like the runaway who sees his girl I stride through the grass not nearly as good as you I ride an old horse in the creek I marry the unknown in the poolroom I make out the great thighs of the shark I undo my pants looking for trouble I interpret dreams like Daniel I focus the bee I tarnish the mirror with slang and redeal the cards like a sonneteer of chalk and sapphires I glow with the venom of the lover moving forever and ever shall be without antidote I am the fair lead of the air's noose I invade the gutter and Louvre I strike deep in the drunken paws I link the naked I atone for nothing but her pink plectrum the moon I smile in the blackstrap syrup I blow like secret wind it is as simple as that sexual and frank I tinge the bold juice naive and delirious I welcome strangers I go down easy and solid like whiskey and found knives the Indians traded I appear insane and on fire I died in prison like Reich I wear an ancient cape that trails like a maze without cause I the hunted I the mocked I who carry the stones from one cemetery to another I who was most certainly mad once upon a time by contemporary standards I a shadow among shadows your chapters of faults in the valleys of death my stead I a fake and a starfish I who can hold the wounded hawk to my eye without fear of losing it I who bed down with your daughters and beg for their aims I the liar whose only curse is the sadness tying your lips I who was the richest poet in town I who was always the only I who never set foot in a city see what I mean I whitde wings and whore with the beluga I who know there is nothing for me beyond this world I with enough friends to bury me I who will go unread by the warrior caste I who keep silent with the feather and no furd'ier retinue I who deny the most noble trudas because I dreamed them singular I eat with the hogs and contend with the ages I drink with the mighty clouds of joy out of Tishmingo with a physique of pure lava I side with the daffodils and the foetus with a physique of a catch in tragic winter a keeshond on board I say with a lava physique I pass bastard of frankincense O stutter again friend of the axe O draw a branch across your arm 0 jelly of hell seldom on duty 0 paradise riding a mule O poets who sleep I write never never windswept and incredible O orchards for now 0 pasture in unison with a dozen naked women from Lemuria O wreckage of milk and tiger lilies O moon smooth as ever in the bull the unworldly which is worldly and rain the sadness habitual I pass out in the wagon of cotton I live for the day wida bruises in the lighthouse and the very scent of honey steeped in blood I say let this be a movie and you will live forever in the beginning there was the sound of the word and I spoke nothing of myself how long sister say I told you when you are gathered together let each one take a line to himself or herself or both let no one read me alone say I like the beautiful coal in the pulpit swamp say I like the king snake say I going round to your friend say it again 0 the man said heaven you say it now was a state twice as big as Mississippi with the grace of a monkey woman from Clarksdale with a rhinestone ice pick in her slipper and the devil in the spout say I seen through the glass darkly you say it for now you take the song and dip your hand in the creek the spice bush is ready it cost two dollars to enter the horse show say I Auntie Covoe say I seen him in the fog eating easter jonquils on the hill seen him cold as fury rising in the bloom sing I everybody don't let me down promise the egg you'll wander in your stocking feet that you'll be known as I am known you know how the leaves smile at midnight say I like the inevitable breeze rumbling through where two or one or more are gathered in me like a basket of snow in the meeting place skim the red stuff the marsh whittle down the locked antlers lament the mole of the Episcopal vicar's wife say it's curtains for the wisp and the lumberjack say I pass me around like whiskey bank robbers drink before they pull off a job pass me around like straws to see who's to ride for help sing each line of dark hair and melons say I to the face of the one you want whether they're free or not shut your big eyes and lift up your dress to the youthful wind the sash around the hill and rupture yourself carrying forsythia to the groom appear like a mare at an angle of release go through a small hurricane saying I to the disappeared meet me out badt when I'm dreaming say you will I will be there on time splashing the pool appear in a form of life from outer space stepping over the elbow of the mad violinist of night be waiting in the bedroom with sprigs of lavender or some such say I in slender fingers not knowing the vial I want to kiss you like a glassblower I want to heat your bathwater with prongs say I in episodes and lockets if you dream you will say I to the uninvited who go through their own kind of blemished death sit next to me with grey eyes and unfurl the flag of your breath if you cannot dream die with an emphasis on the disfigured dwindle down to the residue of lakewater and the bee's bad luck I go downstream in your throat I leave in your reverie saying I nuzzle the lowdown statuary of cypress knees cross the state-line and murder the bell will you sing the deep I of dust will you ripple in the stumps bringing pink I you say and the shovels whine under the bed rising up like an oven of dark loaves some dirt under the nails passed around to the drunks let the shrimp live alone in your bosom let the lobo sniff the ewer and foxfire thrive in the piano say I as you cover the and let the cabalistical testicles roam the range of your pale palm like satellites moan nothing but the sound of the drowned I said around the grave of slugs on the table salt the last supper the wake of the lace dress hoisted over my ship full of earth and sign-language for a bad girl in pursuit of the sweet mountain pass me around like a dirty photograph of a merlin falcon taken out of mid-air on a topwater lure let your lover say I to your face the small watch which slithets off in the dark pass me around outside the church like a wishbone in the sleepy-eyed chauffeur's stolen cadillac say I when your turn comes sing the part ofa child ofAdarn wear a dress printed with beasts 0 dark night of the eyelids pumice 0 dark night of sonatas and torrents while the poets sleep say I 21nd return the salute of the President's son join the MFDI' saying I heel and toe in the passive night of my father four years old and stalking a wounded bear with a slingshot and Edouard Dujardin was finishing his book of the night of sense dancing and carefree black fiag of destiny in the writhing sepulcher our middle fingers grew calluses giving the phoenix the bird of the dark beloved of the machete O assassinated leper wise liat O remarkable friend of the empty 0 church house of die elders of dusk return where form is in question like a kept woman beyond now and ever will be goodness and mercy follows me like a mad dog we swipe fi'om the dead having rapport with the poem Montezuma's wounds written by us she writes the night and the Aztec's wounded sex when the astronomers are meeting in secret I suppose it is impossible but she was also in Peru with an orange in her lap like a woodwind section she swam the Bay of Pisco and tread the Plain of Nazca with La Forza del Destino eyes she lives under foot in the country churches she's good and Lilith and all that she says I to the poets and turns on the grey beard in his old age she fucks a blue streak women as well as men she knows what to plant under what moon she cuckholded Modigliani and Chagall the same night she beat Isadora and the devil and Lauren Bacall she lit George Sand's cigar with a whip calling her Aurore her tongue and her spelling are marvelous she is in the splashed water and Canada Lee's shoe she is a tango sealed tight she lives in the where's hotel the vibes and the shotguns of those who must kill for a living she's not all that bad she has nothing to do with the so-called sport of the men from the city with their accounts numerous downpayments and rifies she is a Russian Jew who smells to high heaven she is Hilda Doolittle she is the elephant's lover and the child prodigy who lip sings the bell canto for the actress who lets the shawl fall from her shoulders so another can do away with the blackheads on the small of her back she is Etchwer's wife calling for Wulf her man through the ages who began revolutions with a boy yawning from her window who snores for the harp and the lad with the wheelbarrow of highhcels and lipstick none go hungry when she is around she dishes out light like a bread line she sops blood fi-orn the stars only ancient shepherds knew she makes ploughboys immortal for awhile she sets their songs to music in the barn she is the good schoolmatm one in a thousand she gives her breast to the wolfiing she makes the lofty struggles come true she is a woman she is telling you to get lost like Greta Garbo she is dodo's rubies and dedicated misfortune she is the ultimate mare without her man goes to his death on one foot her thighs are christs of the lowlands her heart is another woman a sip of velvet and torn gardens she vibrates like a dynamiter's pillow the goddess of okra and coffee when she thinks of her sex an albatross loses its way over 'I'ierra del Fuego as well as a feather she's like a cold book on your lap at night a spillway and a travois of exact worms a swordfish and lamp oil drunk by a baby a fire reclining like a vegetable or a keel she's a soundtrack of someone you intend to kill a blackboard of ravines for prospectors and insomniacs a deer fiy's larnbrequin she's a woman preacher with a log chain an incubus of mandolins she saves string to measure death's goiter she draws a dildo on the window of the stagecoach with frogspit I don't want to have anything to do with her for a couple of seconds she's aloof like a dagger I don't know what makes her tick she refuses to bring towels to her lover's vomit when the wild geese circle the pond to keep it from turning to ice and why wasn't a woman nailed down she wants to know why ask me I'm holding on to the waterlogged gallows who is it to say what man can say it was not a woman's blood which fiowed warming the cross like a gulfstream but she lives like Brenda Lee in her first couple of songs Robert Johnson never forgot her even in the grave she can get around with those fingers like the sonar system of a bat with the inner ear of Jules Renard's mistress she makes love like a porpoise and sleeps like Beauty her cunt is a karabiner in the high altitudes and I have a cowboy's rope I'll tell you where she dwells in the untrodden pathways of ambergris and she ravishes the pronoun her absence creates an ellipsis she runs a rare book store with a casino of dream literature in the back her best dress is like bloody marys after the services she is like a spanish Friend a dulcimer of black lashes and boots that take forever to lace up her only order other than Goethe and absinthe is the sloe-eyed moon she comes like the tide just thinking about it she writes bequests to Master Francois Villon at the age of nine she gave her blue panties to Elvis Presley thinking he I and another were Montcorbier reincarnated she gets dreadful action on the side she is dread she is the long lost sister of the Pleiades she has the silent sex of the caesura her loins are affiicted with paraphia and open work hose I have no idea what we'd do without her she lays with the gleeman of the backwoods although she drives a sports car rancid with moths she is without tradition or taste she is a woman turning sixteen like runes in ultima thule she lives in a room of her own without entrance she prepares you pears and smells like Mountain Melissa she sweats like a cortontail she winds through the willows of my raft like a snake and a Hula dancer she is ridiculed as a recluse at once she is dark like a board refiecting moonlight she's not but twelve at the most and you could get in trouble hanging around waiting for her to get out of school she is a framer a gangbang a solitary divorcee a honkytonk angel a backseat sidekick a fencer with a drawn heart she skindives for the loot of the passing shadow she can give the hearse a new set of points and plugs she is the shanty man's burnt christ before she had a son she makes a blister come up on the fife she is electronic music and all kinds of disease and slow rivers which come to spend the night I live on her island her mount of ashes the lunatic's zone skinning rabbis for Delius and Sweet William like deep cuts of love perch on the porch for spawning their lines of yellow fate like a rusty axe in the back of a fiatbed truck itwillbeused all in goodtimelikeafisselikeafiiselikeafiise help me Dark she is liniment as dipped up in a gourd by a girl from the backcountry who runs olf with a wandering no count she belongs wherever she is no strings attached I went on down the road I had to keep going back to get my lip my ear was a butterfiy yes it was I dreamt a pair of chinese handculTs so I could sleep the people in my grade in Memphis saved up and sent me a guitar strung with barbed wire I wore a panama hat with the brim turned down you tell me if I didn't I heard it I also had on a dark tan doublebreasted raincoat with epaulets the devil was whipping his wife and I was waving so long to my childhood sweetheart who was leaving on a train going north for good I thought about where I come from murder and miracles occur without headlines my past is a field of sleepwalking majorettes too poor to buy white boots a field of schoolgirls chewing clover learning how to baitcast live bait look at them sucking their thumbs as if honeybees were in the backlash I saw a big jet fiy over they say the war boys ask the pilots to refuel over nowhere places like this the gasoline puts out the lizard's eyes and does away with a few cedars they say I sing songs to myself and the eagles a feather in my lake like a canoe in Tokyo Bay that is the name of my prison sing song I mosey into town again sometimes don't you be turning up around here again they say what the heel doing down there not the toe what the hell am I anyway some kind of dream fiend I dream myself to sleep but every bit and pony of it is real the only thing I got is curly hair and a copy of Deaths and Entrances I cross my heart and hope to die I wear a black patch the field is my basilica and my name is mud I am the unknown minstrel but don't you go thinking I'm one of those skunks putting grease on my face no I mean the old times kind who goes fi'om place to place who don't never put down kill me Jimmy help me out I'm limping down the lowroad on ice skates in July I read every book in the library twice look where it gets me once to myself and once to the blind man I read them the pope is that peacock over there for all I care he got a dog called Pope if I had one of those Bells and Howell I'd go down in history if I lived that long the farms accuse me of rape I whittle grave ships to set them afire there is a German called Rilke he weren't no Nazi he wrote about a loony like me he dedicated it to this young girl who died on him he was crazy about her she must of been awful sweet when cold weather comes I go down to the cove amidst the gladiator crawdads and drunken crows I cut me a branch and a willow switch I whup myself and write what I can recall in the mud when I dream Lord Byron is there he gets down and kisses my sore foot and he really means it I tell you all of them are with me they are like seeds and lice of philosophy when it gets below zero the German's poems fill up with ice I am the ignoble savage messiah of the tango I am a word that dances way into morning I am the word dice in the poem and the dice rolling in the movie first snake eyes is bad luck then it is a symbol if I say fish you might think a bullhead in the shade when I'm thinking of a bluegill a word in a song is like an image in a moom pitchu Hank Williams he said there wasn't no light that's cause he never heard of St. John of the Cross he heard of the one who went to prepare the way for him but that was another John I call him talking John he saw the light but it was dark Gene Autrey got a song about Jimmy Rodgers and one about dreaming I dream yodel Hank \Villiams told my daddy he didn't have long this was in Jigger Louisiana it was some high water and all the roads was out he told Charlie B. Lemon and Forrest City Joe that he had a new song he got drunk and scribbled it on his guitar one morning in the dew he was in some bayou and he called it The Plot Of Life my daddy and them stayed up all night singing spirituals Not Too Long and Passing Through it took forever they were cracking hard boiled eggs on the counter and pricing this man's saddle the song ain't too long Hank said neither is the Plot my daddy said Greaser he was a big man now he stood up and said for you about six foot long and spread out his arms like an albatross they don't have none of them kind of birds down there they got black panthers and fisnny looking women and chinese bandits but not any of them birds quit talking like that the one that was coming he carried that long black rake look like a plow don't give me none of that two of them hung in a tree he said life was a county you wasn't allowed to set your foot in he said if you really understood everything you'd be willing to let bygones be bygones did you ever see Moulin Rouge I did with a telescope on the levee we saw a lot of good ones The Big Sleep Tarnished Angels The Rose Tattoo To Have And To Have Not Splendor In The Grass Tarzan The Ape Man Saratoga The Member Of The Wedding Scarface All Quiet On The Western Front and those ones about boxers all of them Bear The Devil African Queen never paid a dime either we could see them though we put a lot of holes in the screen with rifies Tang and Charlie B. and 0.2. and Baby Gauge was all the time getting perturbed at somebody up there I read that book The Moon And Six Pence to everybody in camp when the hard rains came Jimmy say he want to see the movie I even sent off and got some pictures by Gauguin Baby Gauge and Melvin thought they was high yellows eating watermelons but I said his name and said the name of his pictures Tahitian Women Eating Mango Blossoms Spirit Of The Dead and so on Ray Baby thought his name was ah go on again Marlon Brando married one of those women that's a fact the one he married was the same gal who used to date Clark Gable in the second Mutiny On The Bounty ships really send me I know a man you know the astronomer well he's got some pictures by somebody I forgot his name but they are like my dreams they are like what I see everyday lovers ride masters and white ponies eat fiddles snake doctors and bulls and angels and blood fiy through the air like we all really do like a song they remind me of Sweet Willy's Jesus when his mamma tells talking John to shut up he's got a dragonfiy or something in his palm it ain't bleeding if you are gonna dream then you might as well see galaxies and fiights of birds like jug bands and philharmonics underwater is what I say you take Ray Charles you know he can dream you can hear what his dreams see I had the opportunity to shake hands with him not too long ago now and then I drop him a line like I do Charlie Chaplin yea I told them about the Black Angel and Dark and how ah go on again married a 13 year old woman in Tahiti sho he did I was out in the boat listening to a song by Kitty Wells Your Wild Life's Gonna Let You Down and reading a story by Rudyard Kipling I had the radio on Memphis and a turtle on my line Ray Baby was yelling something to me it might of been time to go to town everything was pretty sweet I guess it was all like a cooing dove but what I really wanted to be was Lord Byron I was just itching to be him he's better than Jimmy and Dark put together and he said I rattle and strike at the whatnor's of verse on the shelf in a dream John Milton came to me like a serial until seventy times seven times telling me in my eat what to dream it was him and me and a man named Dark and she was the sound you here where west is east the story of the ninth light where we had to go to so much trouble to make the boat fioat I could of made it short and the end words connecting up but it was too long and pain ain't like that and she was Rita and Lucy if you don't sleep well my shadow will slow down while part of the wasp bleeds in my collar we can't remember we been tending plantation I so long like two lazy horses father and son after we come in from work the supper table is like an admiral or a poet the women they sing about trouble and love the blue fuse to dynamite in those days they talk for awhile until the stars have moved and Eadwacer's wife brings new straw to the barn for Dead Forrest City Joe until his teeth are asleep like fine tatifia and blistered fingers that have held down guitar strings all night like branded bullcalves with the arhwoolies and stomp virgins with no gasoline and first hand insomnia the sweet ice thaws in my mouth now you talk he says it's your time tell me about the two girls or are there daree you sing to in the fields what do you holler how do you stomp tell your father Dark about Rita about Melissa and that Judy with the shadows under her nails so I tell him about Rita how she make a hoe lose its warp and the water bucket dry and her ramose hair when there is sweat on the back of her dress then I tell him about Melissa the sun break his leg running after her she dark as a dixie cup full of berries when she goes through the lunchline with her quarter tied up in a knot in her pink handkerchief so she won't lose it I forget to get my milk and cookies I steady dreaming she always doing things with no call she like a dream panther she like cherries and figs that is wild as black snakes waking up the day after Easter she waves goodbye and gauges the overcast sky where she use the toilet like a lichgate give me relapse fever make me run Jimmy's truck off into a swamp John Milton got a good jack and logchain get me out dreaming was like the talcum dust covering the casket I grew fiowers in when it got cold and they all went to prison and the rest died I cheat out death three ways I ran way fiom home to become a bullfighter and master francois villon I forget so I could say I was deaf I took people who couldn't read a lick to silent movies they got it anyway I stowaway on ships and boats going down for years thinking I was a samurai and EA P you all should seen me coming up the way in my bathrobe kimono and sycamore sword Dark carved with a guitar knife I swaggered night was a tango schooldays was shit Weber was the one I listened to when the astronomer was out of town I who torture myself with movies De Quincey and easy living I who was called to a captain's mast on Buddha's ship I who signed my name Arasmas in the libraries with a mirror I with a bowl of contempt in hand asking for more I with the darkest kimono of all as white as yours I with a zenith of honey and a nadir of bees and bears I the cloud and the poet who wrote it who fiutters under a boy's belljar I who utter Gabby Hayes Buddha Amitayus for the sake of the knife I who must cut your firewood so the suicidal lovers may fisck one another's eyes out I who realize the monk chewing his quill I who write in the waterfall Om manipadme hum with lemon and your grandfather's bleeding thumb I with my Dojo the night I who celebrate the horse gypsy's lotus via Saint Matthew Passion I who have wandered farther than NASA will go I who was beat to death with a chitarrone and learned how to swim and sing dark songs from Beowulf when your mother made her first confession I who pay my respects to Napoleon Job and Jack of the green bean cross I who am one with a woman with enough hands like eight pallbearers who will dance on my faulted grave I who insinuated the sects of the banished I who yodel like Tarzan of the spirits I who whispered in Thomas D'Urfey's mask I who made a living at death I who made poetry alone possessed of a darkly lady in deep sadness on a dunghill altar I who vanished to become my father I who clothe the urchins of the holy ghost I who am followed by many eyes red as milk I who bought all the blue dresses of the delta for Isis to take off herself I who was betrothed to my mothers twice Mary Magdalene and I of the darkest tower I who was a gag in the mouth of a colored hostage I who learned how to beg and multiply seven times seventy so many times I who was so good at putting down the first number last and fine line between genius and madness I with no title at all other than the lament I who have dipped odes and sonatas from the cold waters like two different minnows from the mouths of the same fish I who will be dead before one word is read a suicide note which is sung too late I who will receive the homage of all the sick women who fucked over St. Francis I who will kiss the ground they hobble on I who have fondled the Virgin's breasts while she recited her own mysteries I more primitive than night more alone as wise as the blues I who couldn't hold a candle to the run of the mill I who fingered Elizabeth Ridgely while she stood there and told her Avt Tace Avt Loquere Meliora Silentio and meant every word I who hum to the blind and justify the fugue I who speak the language of the snake and love him I who will be buried alive in the clavier and the little Ace harp I who am obviously nothing to you when you are the Jen and the Yi to me I who saw half of them die for friendship that ran all blockades I who know my quiet is lost forever like big trees rustling I who will be the widower bridegroom for my infants now I who carve lure stops I who seek nothing but you and your understanding of peace and the moon's warble I who have plucked the driftwood from your bloodshot eye and taken a drink from your ear I who can say no more to the midnight mass of your hair without leaving my lair I who listen to the meadow undoing its ribbons I who can boast like Sir Richard Burton with my love in the wing and hear the blues of three men at once I who spit the sweet tobacco like a grasshopper I who was made low by the highest all the better for you to eat me with the mysterious pony who chewed Robert Burns' locks I ask you friends to pay the hermit a call 1 want you to pull the rabbits from the solitude of the damned I ask you to come see me alive and well spitting learning to use a bad axe I who ask to lose your way so I can find you I who ask you to drink wind and wind and save dead lunas in Ecclesiastes I ask you to come down to earth between the toes of Selene I who am familiar with most of the techniques have become personal with the rose is I who tend the plots of a garden whore no one is clever where no one wins I who know the clouds will be rain will be in the eyes of the youth looking up at the lightning in his boat I who will be forgotten like you and this and yours I who lace my feet with weeds I who have become the water the virgin has passed under her bridge I who have nothing on the tip of my tongue I who have swallowed the color black nobody showed me 1 a common thief and giver I not I this is the way it was my nose was bleeding and I had some cobwebs in it to take the slack out of the running and a nickel in between my teeth to make it quit I just came out of the barber shop and here was a awful sight the horse was strung up to the hitching post by a ring in his nose a man who looked like I don't know what a crop duster or what but not really was whipping the daylights out of him with a bullwhip if I had a been the horse I would of torn my nose in two for sure he had a. safari hat on and black gloves and a long stogy cigar in his mouth his moustache was white and with some slobber on it cracking the whip it hadn't rained and the steed was kicking up some dust and I had to yell something so I yell hold and the man with his high lace boots and tan raincoat and pistol and african hunting hat on grabbed a hold of his wrists saying damn arthritis like his joints had give out and I had my hand cupped underneath my nose wishing the spiderwebs would work saying who do you think you are a beating a horse like that and a Muscovie duck fiew out beneath somebody's building and he popped his whip and took off the duck's big white wing right there and I called a madman here a nut for sure get a hold of him and he let me have a right smart lash directly across my shins I'm glad I had long pants on blue denims and l tells him Mr. you made a wrong move there and now some people was coming out of the saloon and the tailor come out with pins in his mouth the rising he made was like a worm and I saw one of those fioating spiders come across the street towards us and he took that out of the air just like that some men was pointing at us drinking sips of whiskey on the sly and I called for aid the town was like it was asleep it being noon and on a weekday and dreary with no sun the wind taking slips of paper out between cracks like they was butterfiies just that quick morning wfiee still brewing supper thawing out dogs in the shade dreaming and that man with his bull whip and the bleeding horse you think you can I says but you really can't not here you can't beat on anything like that and he fiicked his wrist and the Indian head nickel in my mouth come out like a loose tooth I knew where a pistol was but it wasn't loaded but Last Time was cutting grass with a sling and I told him throw me your cutting blade and he did I was ready for the man with the bullwhip the man tried to pick it out the air but he missed getting some gnats you know how those russian dancers crawl all over the fioor the duck was doing that one wing out in the middle of the road like something spilled and the man cracked it again and feathers rose up this way and that and I had Last Time's weed cutter waiting on him to hit me again I could take the leather right off his whip come ahead on you son of a bitch I was thinking bound to have been telling him something of the same with that nasty cigar in his mouth and all come on you so and so he had his big left hand resting on the butt of his pistol in the holster chewing the leaves the moustache almost brown from spit I raised the scythe across my shoulder like I was standing at home plate come on and he chewed and studied and then it got real slow and I couldn't think or tell nothing and I waited like this shitfire my nose was bleeding the spiderwebs did some good he drew the whip back it took forever he looked like this khaki trousers with the cuffs stuffed in the top of long boots mean looking smart alec smile across his lips he hit the tethered horse I dreamed I could see the capillaries in its nose that's how it was held by a new bristle rope he beat him in the fiank and withers I thought he aimed to take an eye out of the steed he drew back again somebody looking who wouldn't help spit a piece of roast beef out from their teeth a baby cried and he laid one on the big dudt it was like a tongue of fire that could lick seven coats of paint off nobody does that when I'm around Last Time says to the man he slings the whip across his neck but Last Time unwinds it rolling it up around his fist alright Jack let's see you fight now oils and gasoline spots was all over Last Time's gray shirt it was a school hour do you think I cared I looked in the bloody quarterhorse's eye like a medium looks in a crystal ball and I saw everything the women said my eyes were beautiful they were tarring the roof it smelled a man on a ladder got bit and fell off a jet was leaving a trail the dark ones were stretched out under the saloon eating leftover easter eggs the latch was brass the crook picked I lived in the galaxy and couldn't forget why do you treat me this away all of them were pretty but not goodlooking they waited out in front of the drug store with a handful of pennies to see how fat they were and how much they weighed I don't know when it was we got the land but we did we got an island or sort of an island on the river but neither state would claim it the deed said Abraham's Knife but what do them surveyors know nothing Last Time said how come you kill the duck he wrapped the bullwhip around his arm I thought there was an egg in my ass and the vinegar and bay leaves were in the jar in the saloon those ventilators turning around on the top of the roof like a genie's turban I took nineteen vitamins and came back into the shoe store I forgot to say the sun was bright so when I went in I couldn't see shit the cobbler spit on a record and wiped the dust off with sweat under his arm he had polish on the blue apron he put it on a Victrola and said how about that Last Time was a card he fixed shoes like a elf he had a picture on the wall looked like gold of a Woman with big legs raised up over a couch it looked like Leda and the Swan but there wasn't any swan there was a box of chocolates on the counter and some of those cream jiggers he poured salt out of a shaker onto a pocketwatch he still had hold of the record player under his arm he was going to give me some white shoelaces to put up the side of my jeans if you want an oyster I got one in one of those shoes Last Time told me I said they make me sick this early in the day let me have some candy he give me some and said he about could electrocute himself licking his fingers he had salt and fish and polish and milk chocolate on his hands I wanted to clean some cellophane wrappers I smelled a lot of the shoes sitting on the counters I said what happened to all your goldfish and the record began to play I was dancing with my sweetheart at the Tennessee waltz he took out some lipstick and put it on the welt the crazy man drew he put some on my lips and kissed me and I said you smell like vodka the bugs got in the duck's white wing I spread it out like a geisha fan and cooled myself I felt Last Time's nose like he'd been tethered there wouldn't that hurt you I asked him you take your vitamins today he said I said that's the Tennessee Waltz the lasts look like a printing press where they tell about auctions he said he had a white majorette boot with a tassel he was fixing you want to smell it he said somebody took a picture with a brownie automatic and a fiash people come out of the store where they was painting and barn red paint dripped in their hair them not knowing it they was counting dollar bills I wish I had some new T-shirrs I told him just passing the time of day I'm going to open up a tattooing parlor for colored folks he said the woman had great big tits when an old friend just happened to did you see her daughter twirling the baton I said no they put handcufi's on the man with the bullwhip and took him olf we ought to roast that duck you know that it was the Tennessee Waltz maybe it was a Tennessee Walking horse I doubt that very seriously that Buster Keaton's a fiash ain't he I painted my boot gold like a chocolate box and Gustav Klimt maybe I can't say his name he said he might tattoo a waltz on my belly wouldn't that be a gas I spit at his electric fan I kept thinking about the horse with the sore nose I got a spoon and dipped up duck blood and mud and put it in my wallet with the famous painting and Jimmy's fucking rubber and the ace he could make money polishing silver I could see him in a white jacket I asked him why he run off from Atlanta he said he use to work in The Panorama it was a wax museum depicting the famous incidents in the civil war how about that don't hit me don't hit me he lit coal oil lamps and melted them all down he ruined the museum and cooked hotcakes in a restaurant for awhile he stole rich women's fiir coats when they came to eat breakfast before the football games 1 got to tell you about this job 1 had he told me he had him alots of employment in Atlanta but he kept getting fired he even had a job working on government radar when everybody was wearing Davy Crockett hats he went around at night stealing coon tails off car antennas I could fill up a crate of Big Chief tablets telling about him one of those Georgia Tech fools paid him to spike the water bottles at time-outs they knew he was doing some traveling cause he carried a spare roped down on the top of his station wagon any fool knows that he slipped out in the third quarter Georgia whipped them anyhow one of the backfield coaches was suspicious he paid somebody to switch water hordes he drunk his own bad pisswater Last Time put nails in the pancakes I was fanning him with the duck wing and he was telling me and we was listening to the Tennessee Waltz and the horse was snorting he had a hat on that said Country Club from somewhere I asked him if he knew Roundtree and then all hell broke loose his sunglasses cracked like it was a bullet I ate the potato chips I didn't care if they were stale the woman had a peahen in her backyard she was a friend of Last Time's she was a friend of Hank Williams and Kitty Wells too it's a small world isn't it she'd swing and shell peas in a dishpan when she got tired of that she shelled pecans and walnuts with some pliers I seen her kill a fiy with those pliers she saved men's neckties and sold gypsy skirts she got them from widow women Last Time would court her with me around that goddamn peahen of hers could catch lightning bugs at twilight no joke he'd have his arm around her smooching and she'd start to breathing and he'd slide back the hat on his head and wink at me they got killed in a car wreck the same night Forrest City Joe got his it beats the hell out of me why anyone would want to live in the steeple of an old church and shoot buzzards with a deer rifie you tell me Big Mamma said it was bad magic what I done so I had to do spool I had to stand out in the middle of a field until a web caught in my eyes you ought to hear them tell me how beautifiil my eyes are they are green like a lake before a bad storm you heard of china seas well they call mine china green my eyes look like olives I take off my shoe and pick my toes in downtown Memphis prices are going up I smell like the last tango beat a monkey if he didn't let the blood go to his head hanging by his foot on the bellrope people were giving directions with hammers and socks I squeezed a half dozen lemons all over my hair I ate a coconut in a boat the old woman sat on the steps shooing flies with a red dress on she had a cameo on her bosom the sun went down and the horse's nose was tender like a new mother's womb and wild geese came over about then and we fried the salt pork and eels on some Wonder Bread tin Jimmy put seven dozen shiner minnows in my bed and beat me in the head with an alarm clock the bastard I'll teach you he said he broke paper bags and stomped on the radio tubes he kept spitting on me I couldn't see him it was dark he said he was going to take me to the ice house and freeze me with a dead dog he put his tennis shoe in my drinking water and told me he was going to sell me into bondage with the carnival I said like hell and he broke the fin off my mounted bass he buried all my baseball cards they got soggy as noodles he took a dead man's ear and sewed it up in my pillow I didn't know the difference she said it was because he got mad and let the other boy cut off her spit curls I said hell jimmy spit curls are a dime a dozen they even got girls wearing eye glasses got spit curls he was insane if you ask me I was standing at home plate with the black angel's scythe the bases were loaded the man was on the mound with a bullwhip I had liniment in my eyes like Cassius Clay did just before he knocked out Sonny Liston girls wrap they sweaters around their ass and walk on by I had to eat rubber hands he drew back the whip and Last Time was playing off second and he caught it and the duck fiew away it was terrible it was beautiful an Indian said old old Hind legs had to sell his headdress he had to send his wife to the city to get her teeth fixed a white man bought it for plenty he was sad as Shelly about it Jimmy was throwing light bulbs at me telling me what old Hind Legs wanted us to do he wanted us to burn his war feathers when the new moon come in he told us how to dance and what to say and where to cut ourselves he said he'd never forget it I didn't have nothing but a sheet on we burned the headdress in the fog when we checked in the hotel the man said to Jimmy no girls we had us a room on the sixth floor I forget how we signed in Jimmy kept trying to get half rates on me but the man said I was too old I bet if he'd known a rattlesnake and a nigger was going to sleep in our room he wouldn't a let us in soon as we got in the door and the man left out Jimmy opened the window and sent a paper airplane made out of hotel stationary sailing out over the street that was the signal for Charlie B. Lemon to sneak up the back way with his black suit on carrying our bags that didn't have nothing in them but their bourbon and tuxedoes he had written room 666 and come on up on the left wing how was he to know a perfect stranger would get the note the first thing he did was jump on the bed and turn on all the lights and see how many channels would come in on the television he told me to get the gideon bible away from him it made him sick he cussed me for not packing his bow tie in my pocket I usually carry a bowtie around for him just in case he runs into a hot little number you know what I mean the rattlesnake had been operated on and I aimed to sell it to a pet store for plenty Jimmy said remind me to steal all the towels and soap when we leave I said what the hell for he said for his girl friends collection Jimmy got on the phone and said I want some room service he told them he wanted three medium rare steaks and plenty of shrimps and hot rolls sent up and to put it on the tab we going to do it right he told me when we come in the door everybody looked at me like they knew me that was fiowing like a stream in the back of my mind I told Jimmy hadn't I been here before and he said sure you have you been here hundreds of times but I couldn't remember I felt like I was a counter espionage spy the other side was stringing along I didn't know if I was the enemy or they were you know how they tricked those spies into cutting their own throats I didn't like the way the desk man stared at me when Jimmy signed there was a wadded up piece of paper behind the door it read keep death before your eyes I heard somebody walking down the corridor they stopped outside our door listen well I says to Jimmy oh why don't you go peek through keyholes or something I'm going to ring me up some poontang you better not be talking like that I said they might have this place wired fbr sound he frogged me in the arm oh get out of here he said we were expecting Charlie B. I says to whoever it was outside the door by God whoever it is listening is about to get a shiv the footsteps started up again you hear that I says to him go on get out of here he tells me I took out my water pistol and filled it up with hot soapy water and athlete's foot lotion the first character that tries to look in our keyhole is going to get it 1 says I heard someone playing the harp I pulled back the spread on my bed and a little seahorse wiggled let me out of here I yelled I had the holster on and the earring and black mask I walked out into the hall the stairs going up to the next fioor were tied OH with a barge rope you know how they have a purple velvet cord in movie theaters before they let you in just like they have in front of a casket in a Funeral home there was a little black satchel on the seventh step up it was dark the moon you couldn't see but a chunk of it was catching in the long crack in the window I could make out above the wallpaper was naked women with gray hair playing croquet I went under the rope and took off my shoes no one had dusted the banister in a long time I crept up the stairs to the next fioor the harp music seemed to be coming from the room at the end I smelled perfume I followed the trail until I could feel the fingers on the strings I peeped through the keyhole low and behold I'm not going to say all I saw I'm just going to say some of it near the window next to a tall green plant in the light of one of those stainedglass fioorlamps looking out the window putting lotion on her hands was a pregnant girl who couldn't a been over twelve year old she was sitting in a high back chair there was a marble pedestal next to her a tiny hollow stem glass was full of some kind of sparkling wine her strawberry hair was done up in a bun she looked like one of those paintings that followed you wherever you went she moved so slowly her lips barely moved her hands just worked the lotion into her fingers like she was kneading dough I could see pink cream she missed in between the soft skin of her fingers she had a big black ring on one of them I thought my heart was a bird that was going to come out of my throat into the keyhole and give me away she reached around the back of her hair with one hand and pulled out a long pin with a pearl on the end her hair fell down over her shoulders like the evening when it comes upon you like a panther her skirt was the color of autumn in the hills it smelled like gas was coming from the room I thought she was going to stick herself in the belly with the pin her blouse was silk the color of a makeup puiT in a compact she kind of had buckteeth strange looking people with sharp teeth I always hold up a mirror to and make sure they not no vampire I held my mirror up to the keyhole I saw her good as ever it was like looking into the future the look on her face was like sorrowful Ceres all you could see were someone's hands on the harp besides I'm not going to tell you what else I saw anyways I promised somebody said the lemon meringue pic was ready but that it was too hot to cut the girl in trouble got up and left she came back in a few minutes with the pie the meringue stood up like a bird with its feather out did I ever want a slice of that pie my mouth started watering she had a butcher knife to cut it with but the other one said wait until it cools or you'll ruin it she dipped her hand into the meringue the one on the harp lit a match and you could just see his face I wanted to tell them they were going to blow up bound to she licked all the topping OE her fingers I wanted to tell her didn't it taste like hand lotion I was itching for some of that pie just a piece she picked the pin off the marble table and pulled the light chain you couldn't see anything I heard a whimpet and a sound like a balloon busting underwater there was a fioritura on the harp Jimmy pinched me in the ass what the hell you doing up here spying on people you want to get us kicked out of here I said Jimmy there is something awful strange going on in there like what he says we got to come to the rescue I told him we got to eat supper and find out where Charlie B. is he said there is a girl in there who stuck a pin in her belly and a crazy something playing the harp she is fixing to have a baby and the gas is seeping let's go back to the room before you get a floorwalker on us he grabbed me by the collar and was leading me away I turned back towards the door it was dark brown almost burgundy I was going to leave my mark with the water pistol when I swear I seen an eye staring out the keyhole at me I swallowed a deep swallow and wished I had spoken up when we were going down the steps I heard a door come open and remembered I left one of my shoes up there or was it a golden boot I can't remember the Indian's headdress was like a steamboat full of cotton and gamblers on fire it was the Eleusinian Mysteries he socked me one and I picked up the note on the floor with my toes I read it to Jimmy if you want a real good time come to room 777 loaded with cash it was just some whore he said they do all sorts of acts for these traveling salesmen and scientists one of the things you going to have to learn is there are some mighty depraved people making a living on filth he let a sweet potato fart and said pokes before I did and hit me again I wish I knew where that Charlie B. is he said him and our supper better be getting here or I'm going to complain I turned around and looked him in the face and said you goddamn hypocrite here you is talking about filth and you making a living off rubber machines I put the fish in the guitar and poured sorghum on it it was cold weather and I was telling Jimmy I'd been walking for ever so long thirteen miles I bet I's heading to Snatch's for chicory coffee it was a saloon and short order cafe on the side of the state highway the big trucks fiill of cotton and folks who were moving fiirniture back they turned me around like a top I found a broken drill bit the sky was the color of a working man's shirt in between Semi's I did around the world with my yoyo 1 had cardboard in my soles the blue vapor light outside Snatch's place couldn't make up its mind a 52 black ford with sun visor and halfmoon fender skirts pulled off the road beside me where you going one of them said tave my coffee I said up there at Snatch's they asked where else I said you won't believe your eyes when you get there they said I believe anything I said you better be with your eyes when you open the door they said I see through them says I they peeled off and one of them called back he's big the only car sitting in front of the place except for the dead man's station wagon was Snatch's rig wine fiashed blue and GOOD EATS flashed yellow Jax Beer IS SOLD HERE Premium Prices GOOD RIVER CAT TOO usually folks was there eating that time a evening it wasn't that bad a cold wave my throat was kindly sore a little lemon and queen bee honey in my coffee would do it good it sho wasn't going to snow Snatch's wasn't one of those rolling kind of places just a few drinks and pin balls and eats a lot of truck drivers and family men went there I was drinking they might of had some action a fight to run folks off maybe the state boys closed him down Snatch was outside by his car down on one knee with the door open listening to the radio shaking his head he had on a day glow furlined cap and was smoking the last part of his cigar what's up Snatch says I he let me call him Snatch instead of Mr. Snatch because I's good on Big Leaguer Pin Ball he didn't answer like a man who gets served a grease white eg when he wanted the thing done with lace down in you side I asked he still didn't answer come on be a sport I says why he never lifted his face from the ground just shaking his head slow back and forth well I know you got some coEee on a cold day like this I'm going to get me a cup I'm going to make me some hot chocolate if you got any marshmallows by god the bells jingled on the door when I opened it but there was something keeping it from opening you got this thing latched from the inside Snatch how come you done that it was getting dark I had to go around to the window what I saw I thought I didn't see I turned around five times and spit on my floor with both hands over my eyes I cleaned my fingernails and turned on the hydrant to slick back my hair I needed sleep I ran back and forth jumping up in front of the window like a deer I tried looking with one eye thinking of dreams where the wagon comes unhitched I looked for cotter pins and washers and tried to get Snatch to talk what's he doing here I was studying shadow boxing with blackbirds I this is how he looked he was a big black monk all dressed in white the way the hood on his sweatshirt was I could just see some of his chin with black hairs under his bottom lip like he was the stock of a shotgun pouting over who was shooting him there was a crack in the window Snatch was losing money on heat says I to myself mosey on around to the other window and take a good look the air was slipping out or in I don't know which of the crack like someone who doesn't know how to play a woodwind I got me a sawhorse and rest it upside Snatch's quick stop I nearly caught his attention I made so much noise dragging it over to the other window everytime a mac truck went by I like to lost my balance he was an awful big man sitting at the round wooden table all by his self he looked like a knight come back empty-handed and beat from the crusades lions and gnats wouldn't have bothered him the moon was down and out on the other side of the building I could see it coming through the glass on the other side in mine I breathed on it and it turned to oil I smiled at him but it was like he didn't see me that made me afraid you know how I am I thought maybe a artist was drawing his picture he was so still like a bear taking deep breaths under ground in his sleep his hand was a dark squid wrapping around the quart of Stag thumb reaching clear back over to his knuckles there was two empty Falstafi's beside him and a big mug with a see through bottom that's how I saw Sonny Liston crying in a short order cafรฉ steam was rising OE of him like a ridden horse he made his own kind of fog the way a destroyer dies when it leaves a enemy harbor his running togs were grey he had a white towel around his neck for an ascot sweat was hanging off his forehead it was little loads of buckshot on his brow I thought about women coming home fi'om church a few sundays after Easter wearing the same clothes he had honey in his beer about nine plastic wrappers off those containers were scattered all over the table that stuff ain't no good he should of asked Snatch for some real honey on the comb there was the smell of dressed game soaking in water his eyes seemed to be fioating Sonny Liston belched I bet I could drop a window weight on his chest when he was sleeping and he wouldn't feel a thing I raised up the window it didn't make a sound I could smell Sonny Liston he was in his sock feet his black tennis shoes was on a chair to themselves like guests steam rose out of them too like genies from lamps a trickle of blood ran fi'om his left nostril some of it dropped into one of the honey cartons his eyes were half shut you been running too hard Sonny I thinks I looked at my white knuckles the first move he made I missed when he picked a bugger from his nose he seen his blood then wiping it on the side of his sweat pants moving his toes I lost my balance and almost fell through the window I jumped OE and ran around to Snatch's smoke house where he kept his jars of honey I couldn't open the lid I told him I was going to get some of his bee honey so you couldn't exactly say I was a thief was on my way to take Sonny Liston the jar of apple blossom honey and on my way says I to Snatch you got a real guest in there don't you Snatch he don't say a word just shake his head and fiddle with the radio its getting colder and darker now and I still hadn't had no coffee here goes is what I tell him he turn around at me and beat some of his ash offgritting his gold teeth I climb through the window and take hold the lid again but I can't open it Mr. Liston I say I'm bringing you some good honey here see if you can take the lid off try the comb you know how he take it off no hot water or knife handle I just barely could look him in the eye he was so mean looking you mind if I sit with you the blood wasn't running anymore he didn't answer what brings you training down this way Mr. Liston how many miles did you jog I wished I'd a known you was a coming I'd a had somebody fix you a proper training supper not no beer and hot sausage Mr. Liston look like he didn't hear me well I reckon you too tired to talk so I went I drew my coffee and got the can of pet milk out of the bowl on the bottom of the beer cooler it was good coffee I told him boxers ain't supposed to drink no coffee or beer are they Mr. Liston you was bleeding while ago there your blood is on the table he was still evaporating he was like a fire until he got the chills shaking all over he taken his false teeth out and set them down and reach in the honey jar and take the comb and bring it to his mouth holding his head under it like a platter honey dripping down his chin like tears he sucked some off it how you like it Mr. Liston he kind of smiled told me one word energy I went and got the bedspread off the couch where Snatch took his naps there was a big Flamenco dancer on it I threw it over his shoulders telling him best not to get too cold after a run a few things I said to him the coffee scorched my lips while he wasn't looking I got the little empty honey carton with his blood in it maybe I should have told him I had it he was chewing on the comb I pulled the ace out of my bade pocket and poured apple blossom on it I had me a comb too the coffee was doing me in I looked at the dirt on the fioor he dropped the honey on it I kept making little circles of pet milk on the table Sonny Liston stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs a four pound shell cracker hanging on the wall fell ofi" in back of the counter the chandelier rattled over his head he looked like a king who'd just lost his kingdom I had some slide pictures in the back I thought if I brought them out Mr. Liston wouldn't be so down in the mouth a champion ain't supposed to be like that these slides was taken in Paris back during the war I ask him you ever fight in Paris I got the slide show and set it on the table this is what I figured if he wanted to see them he could I didn't have no money for the jukebox it was silent and good as it was I asked him how about a massage Mr. Liston he kind of give me the eye over that I said I'll give you one no charge you been running up and down the levee ain't you I tried to get my fingers into his back muscles but they was hard as a barked tree I nearly broke my thumb trying to rub him down the cofiie kept me crazy as a loon I began to dream that Sonny Liston was dying in my arms Rudyard Kipling had hauled off and shot him I mean assassinated him from the galleries just when Sonny was about to knock the other knight off his horse with the jousting stick it was made out of white pine with all the rough spots lathed over the grounds was getting bitter in my mouth he seemed to be going asleep snoozing like I got him in a head lock not to tell nobody I got Sonny Liston in a hold but just so's I'd know it like a handshake like we was friends I wasn't going to tell no one besides it was getting rid of the pain in his neck I was applying a gentle pressure 1 know Snatch wasn't looking and he was asleep so I kissed Sonny Liston on his black neck I let him sleep Snatch said he paid him one hundred dollars to let him have the place to himself for a few hours that evening I felt like toothpicks were holding up my eyes my hair was full of honey I sucked my comb I was heading for Sue Lady's place when I found a letter on the side of the road something has got to give is all it said I couldn't make out the address moisture had run it over if I had a slow motion camera like they do blooming flower and eggs with I'd take picture of ink mnning and that no eyed boy who was born over in the gulch and how he memorized verses from the bible he smells like boiled eggs in vinegar then he drunk that left over green pepper oil just cause he didn't have no eyes it didn't mean he couldn't wash his teeth Sue Lady wasn't there I waited on her front porch with the pet buzzard Equinox under my arm her dalmatian had worms because it kept pawing its ears the warm turkey buzrard and the sound it was making put me to sleep so I dreamed I run a kind of gallantry show Sonny Liston got in a fight with a snake doctor he throw a left and the fly get out from under it Hank Williams told Sue Lady his foot hurt he poured a halfpint down his boot it was like a circus for the sake a Cajun picnic with pork and accordions the snakes come out to listen with feathers in their lips like they was choking on too many cornbread crumbs and the shadow walked the line there was a clock with fifty-five gallon drums rumbling under it and a man sitting in a white wrought-iron chair with along cane pole in his hand I don't know if he was talking to himself or someone else or myself but I could tell what he was saying every three or four minutes he would snatch a small fish from the water unlodging it from the tiny gold hook without even touching it with his fingers as if there was a certain kind of motion to snag one and another kind to unhook one and let it fiop not worrying over it eventually working its way back into the water at all as each one could not negotiate high high wall of tires around the dock and him not even looking back over his shoulder when he jerked them loose like a weeping willow with one switch or some cane the tractor did not mow all alone with the wind taking him one way very quickly now and then just as sudden the other then he was dreaming about a wild hog and a panther how the razorback will run away from the wildest most of the time not because it is scared but because the hog with the long sharp tuslts knows it can kill the other animal and also be killed as is usually the case if you have run across the remains not a football field apart in the woods the root hog or die animal knowing this just as a beautiful pair of geese know when to fiy towards the north and back again to the south the next time I seen him he come into town on a mule and hitched it to a parking meter on the square the meter man did not like it that he had to come by with his brush and dust pan to clean up after the animal but after all all he had to do was to write down license tags and give tickets and snatch pennies and dimes now and then from the meters there being no way his salary being so low his wife could not even buy a new bottle of calamine lotion if she wished to the old man had his cane and list and walked into the store tipping his hat at the mens seated there in the front porch one of them drinking buttermilk the other munching ham with his mind on the infamous wolf of the quarter moon in Sue Lady's well-hoed garden I seemed to hear the hog beater even before I saw him coming I followed him I stepped on the back of his cut down cowboy boots I followed him so close he reach around and grab me and tells me how he stole the hog back how no one would know cause the evidence was not there the marked ears were buried in a stump and the hog was shot through the nose with a pistol so no one could tell it just dropped dead on his place by the water and he skin him and in court they couldn't put it on him and lord jesus christ I seen it all and I'm seeing it all somebody get me off this river there's going to be a WAR I see it the high temperture bullets is going through me clean up into the sky like the stars the little nailheads in the coffins it's a place called VIETNAM goodbye mammy wind blowing through dead arnerican hair 0 these cosmologies sadder than the sea and the long presidential horseshit and the moon say get up you want some more so I open my eyes think see tell the old man was wrapped in a plaid blanket with doves about his shoulders he was looking outside under his pear tree with my house in the top limbs and his black and tan swapping at the poisonous snake he did not read he was going to die he knew that but I didn't what he wanted was to get it over quick it wasn't the suffering that mattered he'd suffered like the clouds all his green life his days of waving fire like weed and blown-out fuses he did not want to be lifted around by them anymore I had gotten a hernia from carrying him to the water no longer could he stand to fidget when the mandolin fell from the corner of his shanty when the new blue stove pipe came loose from the paper plate on the soiled wallpaper and the room grew smokey and his feet like jars of fig preserves grew in the vacuum with his wife's paisley scarf on who had been dead for forty-eight years and then some he wanted to roll his wicker chair out into the water like what had been told of the chinaman's daughter or the chinaman himself he was swatting at things that were not there he was like the night that works so long for the next day he was thinking of cold weather he wanted it to collect him an icicle hanging OE a CMfi where he could sit and wait for the sun to melt and then the great wing of bright ice would break loose like a door ofi- a hinge in flood time the great buoyancy of wood tearing the screws out of the wood and come down on him the power and the glory like bulldozer the blue plate was chipped like a vertebra and the angel Gabriel or somebody would invest him with the cold sword you could breathe and write your real name on the metal growing up with condensation like green onions the blood hound was coming across the bayou alter the coon or an alligator was after him he was in the Hotel Spud on the seventh fiight of creaking stairs listening to the man play his bugle watching the feathers drift up outside now it was like an earthquake seasick to his stomach and he didn't know nothing or a thing sing beautiful dreamer lady of spain I adore you at the Tennessee Waltz and the green peacock was in the water and the yankee bought the yard feathers for 15ยข apiece or two for a quarter and you know that's bad luck it wasn't spud it was something the weather beaten sign told him not like it really was it was the hotel where the harp was being plucked and the easel he'd seen three years before with the kudzu about it like green fiies where the mosquitoes swarmed in the ditch every evening laying their eggs sour and all they got a team of mules and called long distance drug the car back over on its wheels upright off the hood they could of pushed it over if it had a hung there but no it didn't a big semi come by and blew it over on the both of them they would of lived cause he had a hold of her jugular vein with his fingers pinching it off he was a good guitar picker so he held her blood in her her heart kept beating like a dusty quilt the coon was long gone Last Time spit up the moon was swimming around in the hubcap like a white tadpole some gin in a paper sack was in the glove compartment crushed paper alcohol glass and all like his ribs and blood and fancy shirt I was a go-between for rumps and melons the night was counting its money on seven fingers there was coal oil on the honeysuckle and people asleep when it thundered a girl played the saxophone in the gazebo an owl took care of her very well there were lures at the foot of my bed strange are the ways of love her hem was let up like a cloudbutst at three in the afternoon the moon was wealthy as people travelling on ships under blankets on the first class decks on lounges reading novels there was nothing to it each wave was like someone saying rack in a pool hall I took it all down Dante in the auricular delta like somnambulist's coitus like dark sleepwalker's tango like mournful feelers and countless fedoras cumbrous brilliantine and enough time to buy another six-pack I put minnows in my brother's wfiu pot I called the fog like a wild turkey there was nothing to do except pleat the water weeds in a grey shark-skin suit every weekend there was a death every other there was a funeral I knew them well like cousins who go to Greenville to buy shoes for a dance I sunk pocketfuls of tacks into soggy logs I waited with the others on the levee or another I exist with a target in my palm like a vaginal wound refusing the routine of the wicked and so my existence is denied by lawyers and teachers and police who moonlight selling monuments and ofiice supplies I was pillaged by ink and prepared to die Billy opened the dusty book of Blake the fiies foil off the rim of the old sleeper's jar of buttermilk and I fought hand-to-hand combat with the fioodwater of the lovely I had to graft my skin to the levees already breaking under the roundtable of midsummer like wishbone: when it was only April Fool's there were Negro whores from New Orleans and ever so beautiful with high lace boots kind organdy dresses their hair shined like constellations they wore cameos of spiked ginger around their necks they put cinnamon in their slippers and ate gravy after work lemons were in their bedside tables in the tents along with pictures of their families they day-dreamt of Chrysanthemums and rocking horses they walked through camp with a little white midget strewing leafiets and doing bows and barking through a megaphone even when the water was high and the weather was threatening they were selling oysters and dice they were palming off fish hooks of Iapis lazuli stockings to fetch back Jesus and sonnets to dolphins my seaweed rocking chair became haunted I took a splinter from the silent medium's wood I learned I could say the most by keeping silent I moved around the cable I swung from the beams in my chair like a keepsake Leda's moltings dashed themselves against the volumes 3 man was eating cornbread dipped in mountain blackberry wine another tacked up the saw from the sawfish's body there was always a Victrola of bumble bees I saw the covey of dark swords and transparent ladies in waiting it was a good thing that I had an assifitady bag and my father's drafting instruments in had never beat my meat ifI was pure at heart certainly I would have been called into the heaven of animals and did their bests delusions dreams facts real as a preacher who makes a living picking roots to say the least two fifty an hour back then wasn't bad when 1 turned to the drawing of dragon women there was goggle-eyed St. John the kid with muuleloading eyes with a luna moth ruptured in his lunatic fingers and the virgin told him to be quiet certaintly when I passed through the Divine Comedies of Ms. Chagall I fiew off too half-cocked at the mourning star a bleeding wingnut I let out of a beanfiip when I killed the mirror in the lobby with the ferns and ceiling fitn like circle on a shade you pull down for shadows foretelling of dead infants and smashed chapels devoted to adoration and goodbye at that moment I had a seaboard of thousands of kilometers and slow country miles with clover in my hair as the phoenix fiies to its well spent life in my heart I knew I was a very bad legend than I slept with terror and ponds no one had fished in I was very sudden with my eyes half opened and mysterious in my realness and deserted at dusk carried by sailfish of towns as seen from far off carried by shellfish of fire thinking I will come out of this very well I hang pictures of dead men in the woods I do minuets with the sounds coming from the deer licks I wished I had photograph of that German sometimes the frames aren't water tight and the daguerreotypes rust like sardine cans there are headlocks and drafts of effiuvium synonyms and compendiums of death after life once I saw a tadpole disappw in George Sand's hair I go out at night and catch the dust unawares I leave tracks on the harpsichord I the only thing I have to my name is a field where your love of the night has been turned under even Demeter carries a shovel you can dig for bait for death or give me an odd bottlecap or a picture ofH. Bosch you might turn up spines of swindled Indians or plantation letters I'm not picky take what you find see the twenty-seven whores kindhearted doing the snake dance in the east forty my field is full of gasping fish who took hooks in the guts it is a baseball field they're going to dig up for a stock pond there is nothing but the mound and home plate a buddhist monk winds up and delivers a knuckle ball I've been catching him since I was six like wingnuts in a beautiful scarf I buried my teeth in a wild plum jelly jar with the runover boy when I'm not hoeing cotton I sell shiner minnows to virgins to hold on to and suffocate I'm not a bad sort of guy for a common thieve I'm tired of using P I smell like a horse after you take the saddle off I am the Don juan of your spirit the Dante of your body it you would try to number everything I see you would end up in a daze like Einstein you could leave the Milky Way looking at movies through all time and when you returned you'd be younger than your son at that the gypsy women come around waking me up knocking on my pane with gritty fingers full of cheap and mysterious rings stolen of course asking to borrow my dream horse will I lend him out for free strange are the ways of love it is like a meditation to the east the way I clasp my hands and hoist the pungent sails their souls in the old days I let them mount my horse and they trill themselves riding bareback like drowning birds it is good they wear alot of skirts there is so much moisture generated between their lags like cheese and summer dew they gallop over my field with the grasshopper's blood and I get shuteye with the coastal winds that blow in for nights at a time like a wrecked ship the sequences of night and the learned go on thinking they are and why I cast my lot with these who listened to the sermon from Mound Bayou and wonder as I wonder how come some stars is dead and moving you see them slow and long and good so by so long amen before I write I wish to die I pray the night my soul to take epitaphs on the backsides of stones I go through the atmosphere I scethe inside the unopened melon and my lovers are fronded with sorrow and the water's full fill of the moment and breath under the eye shadow's quick mud I take on all comers I give you full warning I exist for the night's tight cinch I fioat around your envy like lord bullfrog waiting to be kissed I turn up at the dances very tormented and am ignored by the ones who went there for that sole purpose I'm stiff like the amused wilderness I write librettos on papersacks at the bootlegger's I wake up dark I scrub myself with the Lava of lonely music I hang around all day to say goodnight several times my corsage is alive a crashed truck of goats I lack nothing but you if you'd just give me another biscuit and a loft to lay my head I'd shut up I'd have your field plowed by noon I'd take care of your hogs and your daughter I only asked that one of you bring me cold water four times a day I ask you to put me to work and let me sleep I ask you to put me out of my misery that nigger over there shining shoes is Jesus Christ what about it he talks like a dancer who is a priest I bring extra ordinary news and so many fish I drink boat water and whisper to the lariat one of your daughters has the genitalia of a junta she comes here to save you from the rest like the rest I am read in the womb I liberate the night you made war on like so many children to tell you the truth she fucks like brown sugar and Indian summer she fucks over your sadness and the mining disasters Jimmy told me all about her she fiacks fearing no evil she holds up a lamb at midnight when she says bye-bye it is like a tongue job during benediction I say to you give alLyour money away give your poems to the ignorant only they will understand them find out why a pile of stones has an accent and you wonder about children and mediums burning pines in a field and you wonder your eye on the end of a twig and you know I know I will be read dead by these unborn who break the necks of the loaves who spit with the fish on the mountain they say I'm doomed to the hushed voyages with no immediate future that there are very many parakeets and poets asleep in their cages like ten thousand Americana Porlooks catching lightning with keypunchers and I walk around the worst accountant in America and glad of it because I know the thunder in the figures because I do not add books but read them because I use the encyclopedia instead of making one I go around with a wooden bowl begging for others I stroll through stands of timber and paragraphs you never heard of regularly old sailors with heart ailments and chinamen's marks they see that I go well into the black the landlubbing schoolteachers persistent police and local authorities who weren't born here are constantly telling me shape up or ship out when 1 nova every other year like a change of taste from turnips to seafood I tell them I have a sister I can live with she is half-blooded ritual and not really kin she lives in a shotgun shack made out of shells and when she gets the gypsy blues we are like double-yolk eggs she admitted me to the sorority of haybaling women milk maids who know how to clean fouled sparkplugs great great grandmothers of mystery turncoat soldiers robinhood planters and cocks of all walks they have never been across the state line and yet they shine in New York City the red hot vacuum I only glow like a wounded animal's ventricle a fish gill of watermelon moon 0 yes I was shanghaied by a lady pirate on a ship of night full crewed women I learned the ways of the cooktent and lovetent reading Aftersong from High Mountains 0 Sancta Simplicitas I looked up dresses and listened to the ingenuous in the old stores as their hair was set with hot irons and I was able to pass the sixth grade in the city I take a pick axe to the wooden coffins of the south so the Indians can have firewood so the dark soldiers of Fortune can have Foxholes I wonder through a time wandering where colored ladies have to climb trees to use the bathroom where they have to wait on their husbands like a million Odysseys who are trying to make out in Chicago they will be coming back one day we will be brothers again when they come back I won't be a slave to the house of I any longer I hitch my wagon and head on down the mud from each cabin I hear people saying come home and so I look to the nordi and the east and west and I wrote love letters in butter and buckshot and wine and lemon and fishblood and more mud wrote it I tell you with apple stems and cotter pins to the dead and unborn and am held in custody and contempt by the living and I wrote that too I study Lady Poverty's maps I want the same destination as Clare the same islands no one has seen I want the moon at the head of our bread and the sun at the foot ofour bed I want to be Free of the cells of my body and the words of mind I want to step on chains and wear serpents I want my soul to yodel a blue streak I want the illicit interludes of the savagechrist like a clown and dream a lion and lute I want to hear the blues and ballads like two singers singing as one I see everything out of perspective for example the phoenix melting in my cave I want things to be revealed so I can stop bleeding or bleed some more I want to die like the fiower in the west wind I want to be a bird and a ship Forever I want these chants to lead you out of the darkness of the white water that runs between words I want to tip the scales in the favor of the children of goodness I want the knife to be an instrument of peace I want the quill to be able to fiy and the paper to go back to bark I want to point out directions to air and picture shows I want to eat tangerines and play the piano where you dream you have been with the Lord and a woman and alone I want to look at the body of Clare use) I want you to know these are Lady Poverty's maps I don't want you launching a boat in her maps you will drown I want this to be a strange direction to someplace unknown I want to reveal how much water there is between each word each island I want these maps to move like the stars like you want them to I want them to get you there follow me in the name of yourself and Lady Poverty's maps will take you to a picture show where the holy ghost will give you a ticket you will see moving pictures like dreams King Kong will be an archangel Dracula says Mass and Buster Keaton is a Faith healer you will come out of the darkness for the better this is a map that no one can follow it is a map I can't even read it tells the way to the show house of the spirit it makes boys become poets after so many poems it fioats over the water it is the only one on earth you sit up in the balcony and dream you are in a loft of a barn that lists like a ship you go wandering like fog a vessel of death a gospel ship you say goodbye Mama Covoe without spilling a tear brothers and sisters I tell you this when I hear the wind I bleed no lie you must forgive poor Francis down there by the water writing his poem because he is so melancholy and afraid one of his girl friends is pregnant for he knows not what he does neither did his namesake I let them read the minds of the earth so that they might know me I used them I have come here again into this poem as the Lord I have used these two boys but if you could only know the joy they have given me no matter their sins I love a sinner who knows who has sinned that is why I wish every one could see what little Francis the rich boy has been getting to what he's been stalking like a wolf I wish it was a moving picture him on the river and all as he says we could get something a cross I am glad I am doing the talking not Francis not my father not the holy ghost all of their styles must fiow into mine they will bring you pleasure and like lovers you will dissolve in me this is the voice of the Lord as surely as Matthew is I am speaking help me Mr. Rufus help through this child who is writing his little saga on account of his miserable loneliness his love of his own death like a brother and the bleeding Francis is whispering poems in his oar while he sleeps he goes on writing his name in the water his prayers to women and the living not knowing it will never be read although knowing he can go in peace because he will always be unknown at least that is what he thinks now but I am the Lord I tell you this is the only second coming you are going to get and he thinks he is writing his poem good going down his wrist like blood into the black feather but I have taken possession of him as if he were some musician playing his sleep but this is the sleep of the Lord of the dream of oblivion his brother knows the twin the Negro who he calls his death and Francis the saint knows and the wolf knows and the river does too but Francis does not know now but this is the Lord and I say unto you as I said unto you when Lawrence Gauge was alive I say I love you not in any strange way as the holy ghost would put it not as Saint Francis would feel it or Francis would write it or two would sense it I love you not like a father not like a brother I love you like a husband loves his woman 1 put all these thoughts about Clare in Francis' head he didn't think them up he read my mind I love her I love you we're going to lose these battles so we can walk on this ground I am the Lord listen let Francis go his way like a boat on the high seas let him say my brother sun sister moon so he will think he is in command the fool I don't know who he was but his name was Oakum he might a been dead already I know he as real cause the grave man come around saying he owed two dimes for two months he didn't pay he might a been somebody that changed in a dream every morning when I first woke up before I walked down the long line of tents like a sheik eating a morning peach in the delta before so many women dark and light come out from behind their flaps with tablespoons full of blackstrap and bitter water each one like a slow witch of knowledge liquid for my eyes and bowels I would think I knew Oaktun like the lay of the land folks they do change maybe it was a dream he did so many things he might a run a tonk a parlor a hotel a carnival a church a schoolhouse I couldn't get it straight you know what I mean sometimes I thought him and Vico and Sylvester was the same sometimes I thought the astronomer was a butler or a man who took ticket. you live in the mansions and you live in the shacks you live where the river crests like the moon you live and are reported missing for several months dancers and outlaws decide your life Oakum could a been the Prince of Wales he sang like a fish in a kingfisher's beak he could have been that English Negro who sold oranges in Florida the one that took Delius alligator hunting when he made up his tunes anyway he said my saga was like a levee he said they'd find it one day when I was dead I stowed away in the ship of death on the river of no return I saw my guardians walk away from knife fights and ask for a drink 1 was always in the are of things real as dreamt I saw my father come into the barge bars and smelting clubs with a buck deer over his shoulder I saw a dark man bring my father in over his gut shot and singing a duet I did so much without any notice the black monks would be at it for years I'm going to tell you this story nobody has done this before when she died I took her hair I fashioned a guitar which would break if you strummed it she raised the best hogs she died like mud someone is coming to tell my story it won't be long the willows on the banks are like John Milton's daughters I have a vision and pain in my guts I keep a distance from my suffering like a house in the country the wind takes my spit to the wild strawberry I inherit the dogwoods the love affairs of old unsettled to this day ruins of chimneys where rabbits go to die when evenings get snakebit in the moon's kudzu when cocksmen tuck tail and messages are taken across plantations by boys when the old ones drop dead in the courtyard and I dance with my Aunt when field hands tote two-bys and veal calves hold their blood like a dog holds a pup bastard black and tan when men go on writing books ruining the soil I boil the misery from my socks to strain corn whiskey I ricochet watermelon seeds and win neckties at the fair this is what I did to one of them I rode into the museum on a white horse at night when the guards were looking in their bosses' drawers and my saddlebags were leaking java and dust I lived on brown eggs and a bootstring and never liked Ike as the sun chewed its tongue like a yolk and the rainwater stood up like an enemy I got the holy ghost to pay Sylvester's light bill I got a summer job in the library where there were no boolu they were being moved like the poor folks there was a projector and a cold water fountain my dreams and galantry show you'll have to get me to tell you sometime I feel like a Beowulfiess child we buried the foot of the ladder six foot in the sand barr we got it olf a firetruck Coldblooded Margaret stole she was with us on this one like blackpatched Joan swim crosst the river to Arkansas when she tied her blouse in a knot I was making signals on the wall dreaming what Oakum said I was on one side the water and him another Baby Gauge was rowing a boat back and forth telling the news the bride walked out of the church and someone shot her I climbed the ladder right behind Coldblooded Margaret she smelled like butter in a skillet before you put the cornbread in her blindeye was white as batter I had a dream about her making Shish Kebab out of bullfrog and adam's apples she carried a lid jar of drinking water on a piece of yellow ski rope and wore a buckskin dress like a Creek she had a scar from her left ear plumb down to her bosom where her daddy tried to cut her throat when she was a baby she didn't have no colored blood so it didn't grown she let me put baby powder on her bosom and fanny after she bathed I'd dream she'd ride a tractor up in front of our place when nobody was home not even Jimmy and say the atom bomb was falling we better make hay while we can and we would I was crazy about her 1 use to smash my nails and tie my fingers to redbuds with fishing cord we hid in shacks when it rained with the snakes and spiders in the bales she carried a dried up minnow around in her compact and boy did she ever drink lemon juice straight out the bottle like it was wine at communion she put curry powder and ginger on her eggs even if they was fried she was strange like these women who modeled for painters she was ahead of me on the ladder and I was thinking about signals in the library and who Oakum was and who left us all the farm on Abraham's Knife it was Mr. Rufus's old place and neither state would claim it so we lived in no man's land like Straddlers a church house is rising in the delta everyone and no one is building it there is so much hammering at night the men work in the fields in the day they are all anonymous theirselves are spectacles like symbiotic nails and sorghum it was long ago they keep burning it down and they keep building it Oakum must have been the preacher as the night distills its musk like a stout mule I reach into the sweet bucket for the three cents about five of us was up on the ladder on the sand batr the wind was blowing Coldblooded Margaret kept saying I want the moon I want the boy with the peg leg was walking around the ladder in circles saying to himself y'all better come down we saw the barge with the widow go down um I live in the country where even the steam goes down I dreamed I was playing chess with Oakum in an abandoned fire tower then there was a mallard duck and it was a steeple then there was St. Elmo's fire and it was a crow's nest then it was a windmill and I had a camera but really we all got the malaria and our daily bread on the Abraham's Knife but I wasn't there or in the Library or the museum on horseback or in jail or the picture show or bed I was up on the ladder like the kid in Blake with a bucket we all were and the breeze swaying us with carbide lights on our heads in a dream or a moving picture you cover alot of ground the hours are trees and thick books the Russians wrote in the lofts when they watched the peasants dance I did go I did and Oakum came over the batr pit road in highwater time on the blue tractor like the moon a thirsty pirate sees on the western horizon backwards like a mirror where you dip minnows he must of been the preacher the people was waiting at the levee to be dipped and me a getting bit the last time I got baptized Coldblooded Margaret was on the top wrung I like the word W like the old english poets she had her list balled up and it was lightning to beat hell we wasn't scared there was twelve race of people living on the bend it was hoeing time and we needed lots of ice we made the run from the island to one or other of the states of a morning usually but this time it was evening Tang was driving the truck him and Jimmy and Charlie B. Lemon and 0.2. was talking but you had to read their lips through the back cap window if you was a wanting to know what all was said Abraham's knife was a big island with good land Mr. Rufus was kind to leave it all to us like he did lots of folks come back from Chicago and Harlem and out west when they got their share of the deed Tang said it better not be no communism or no notci living he said it better be like the Indians it was like a tribe on the Farm just like the tents on the levee camps were I use to dream when l was real little also that the tents were that way us sitting on Indian land and all everybody had red blood in them anyway the truck was hitting these big chug holes I mean the sawdust and tadpoles on the ice like cello music and the leaves like chinese writing it's good for the sun to be going down and going home Baby Gauge says to me on the bed of the truck ain't it nice to be going yea says I I'm going to eat tonight he says so is I I says tell me if this canvas ain't cold I will I says dust was on his face you evah see a man crushed by ice he asked me not that I recall neither have I he says wonder what it looks like it looks bad I can tell you that thought you said you never seen it I seen a lady dead like that where at right heah on this rivuh go on I did I tell you says he we was crossing the ferry just like awhile ago and a hundred pound block of ice slid out the back end of a truck onto the hood of her car went clean through the windshield and smushed her to death the two of us were like dead sailors about to be commended to the deep we had crossed the ferry and watched the no-fingered man at the wheel spit brown mule chewing tobacco into the water and seen the tame fish swallow it like medicine you take every morning for tired blood we went passed the schoolmistress's house and heard a symphony by Mahler we went passed the pilot's home and heard one by somebody else the wild horses were eating their oats from the hands of Melvin and Ray little did I know then what it is like to see a stable of racehorses burn our pockets were full of firecrackers we wanted tea to drink the farm camp was sleepy a notice about how neither state would claim responsibility for us was nailed onto the coke box which didn't work everyone lived to themselves and worked together an Italian man was clearing ofi: some the ditches and making a restaurant where you eat outside he said he was going to put up different colored bug lights and hire cajuns to soup up their boats like gondolas people would drive for miles to eat we couldn't get no electricity unless we had a business so we all voted that a cafe was the best idea what we couldn't raise we could catch or kill there was plenty of everything but the farming was hard Abraham's Knife wasn't always an island it was a bend in the beginning people use to hide out there and no one would come looking until they found out it was good land Oakum the preacher stole a dragline every night and worked he changed the course of things he changed the course of the river that's a fact one day it was fiowing one way and the next day it was changed forever nobody could do nothing about it here he come on the dragline the water fiowing around us on all sides just like he coming on the blue tractor now and baptized the first baby born there with a dirt bucket big as a bulldozer he could write his name with the claws on the bucket I forget how many yards of dirt it held he said it was a art to it it was an art to everything that's what Oakum did alright he carved us out an island and now they leave us alone not no state or nobody will claim us a natural Fact the foals unfold like two night suns we put the dark dead one in a cello case lined with red velvet I was in the outhouse like a shadow with the blue butterfiy it lit in my asshole and a moccasin died with a goose egg in its mouth Dark was riding along side of Oakum on the river road a dung beetle was rolling something down the dust it was a lump of buckshot with a cameo in it Oakum was down on his elbows and knees big butt in the air and Dark was playing the accordion telling him I bet you I bet you the sun glint oil" the chrome on the instrument a bird did the same thing it came and it went in Cherokee language I told about how the painters of Venice lived and worked on the bare library wall I had to take books to the place otherwise there would have been none I took the Paideia by Jaeger the astronomer gave it to me and Akutagawa Ryunosuke stories the lawn mower was running there was a canister with some part of some moving picture in another language I put it on when my fingers cramped Coldblooded Margaret wouldn't go into the forest when her period was nigh the panthers and wild dogs would get her they smelled her blood like blackberry cobbler I didn't have time to recount the whole legend one day the river went this way the next day that way there was going to be a duel it was to take place in a swamp some place not near here Jerry Lee Lewis sent a challenge to Fats Domino play till you drop invitations was sent out in the mail the only way we got to go was I took John Lee Hooker Potatoes Chantilly and ice mint tea every evening when he was playing at the local joint it was called Club Ebony I already told you howl could smell his thick feet Fats Domino arrived on a Trailways bus he pulled the rug out fi'om under Jerry Lee by starting 03' with Stranger In Paradise his eyes had seen too much he knew he like the rest of us would all die unrecorded as I held his head in my lap him dying like the last hot month us listening to the two sweating men duel at the church house pianos how long well I wouldn't say I have a grace if you get hungry let it lay the water was like a black rooster in an Ash or a pistol on your throat the stool was empty someone was praying must of been a buddy and a doe we are lonesome travelers drowned herself Miss Osiba say Pharaoh had him by the toe now I was on the train then going over the trestle and the water near about touching the tracks and the vagabonds and dancers and old priests of the night like Picasso drawing my picture with Charlie Chaplin when I was asleep my lap was wet from the fever of the old man's brow him telling me what to and not to feed his dogs and what beards needed replacing on his place and what to smell and see in the sky when the river was going to come up he said if I intended to keep reading the books for me to go through the lines with my mind like a finger reading a palm his dreams like a lagoon everything was glazed then painted with egg yolk so I did the fiowers hand hold by the knocker like an old friend death with hind legs like a racehorse and big league catcher who can shoot a silver dollar out the air the immemorial darkness crumbled like drop biscuits leaving prints in the stock pen a buzaard fiew over the bridge one night when it should a been roosting I saw it by the moon lord to god it was death and water in a jar with March fiowers when I swallowed these shoe tacks Oakum got them out my belly with a magnet and I dreamed Rufus saying easy with me goddamnit his voice in a boat and I was dreaming still the gnawed steps and worn thumbs and the shack going down the river like an ark full of sunup we had a regular continent where the blues got to coming down like just a little rain not these mean buzzards that made debris out of foot planks and woe have mercy in the sky of course I had leeches all over me but Oakrun burned them ofi' with his tolled smoke I would be standing there on the island with the Scandinavian mending his nets the one they called Gunnar Bull wanting to shut my eyes to the bloodsucking pain that died like a fiute marching over the hill the land like a wandering ship and moon a dolphin swimming away with a cottontail in its strange lips and I was thinking of the hour of the moan the hour purporting the wiseblood the hour seven like a quadroon and I tried spitting in my own circles of hell and I wore black on a mound and I wanted to tell as much as I could so I was silent women were mending a fence women were weeping it was like I was overheating things and they quit when they seen me and if they didn't see me then they left before I understood what they said but I knew so I went to school with crawdads in my pockets I carried a fish heart in a pix I had a bird on the end of my cane pole one morning all the cones in the end of the mud had their tips in the water there were sounds put the monk in a trance it was ordinary and inimitable hunting became epigraphy what was common was fabulous I wrote my death warrant like an opera based on a koan what I wanted to do was get invited and then not show up well I wanted to arrive and midnight and make you stay there until dawn I almost discovered the bioscope of the eat when that king tried to get a crop out of dragon teeth the alphabet grew and the soldiers took over so the beautiful images chewed us to death instead of sleeping in peace I come on to this that summer in the Library with no books when I was looking down into the projector it was like another dimension and I saw the star and I thought how it was all moving and how what it all means when it moves like how much black you really see in a movie and don't know it sight was over here and sound was over there the sequential is not causative natural and logical don't mean lineal I learned from the Chinaman when he danced every morning and his daughter give me the tattoos of intuition I read these books the astronomer give me the ones by Hume and Kant and then I knew I could fish where I wanted to goddamn the fish and the birds can still do things we ain't thought about yet and was doing them way back then the narrative no longer just contains it involves Nietzsche has said I mean Vico did when you understand you stop action like when Charlie Chaplin can walk funny because he learned to die like a swan from a ballerina and how you got to have a good reach even if you can't always get a hold you grab hold the rough lumber what you see and then you build a big church meeting place how you think Yeats done it he listened he said the visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world is no longer a dteam was that is why the stacks of books now is like the Tower of Babel the typewriter is a dull shovel when you need a plow the astronomer told me people composed graves cause they know there was already these to fit in the holes they dug he said people ought to plant crops and work and wait the use of the typewriter is a disease that aEects you for life he said and Vico said about James so I know now how in the beginning it was all like jazz you composed and performed at the same time but I ain't doing it that way I ain't doing it that way at all it's like a movie I done wrote the idea for and I'm following that it's like the blues you can't change like the Caves in Passage To India VICO said he saw it done in the early days he said it was all shot to hell now because there was too many texts and not enough themes I got melody in my left eye and harmony in the right I got 20-20 vision goddamn it they can get Charlie in these books I can get Stymie in too why hadn't they ever heard of The Count or Thomas Mann with the cold blood and warm blood I am Lord Byron Pierrot Metaphysical Melancholy Jimmy hit me with a switch untie him Charlie B. Lemon said I'm talking about the other Charlie goddamnit leave me alone I figured it out it come to me in a dream when they discovered the wheel they done the wrong thing with it like they do with alot of them discoveries they quit thinking too early all it was was a spool for a moom pitchu the black angel thinks he knows everything it is like an essence you can smell Plato stole my covers one night and told me in expected to become one of these madmen I'd have to get cold as fire he give me a dime to go to the show but I needed two bits for Baby Gauge and Melvin and I got kicked out for breaking a mirror under the rope in the lobby cause they give me a sack ofjawbreakers that really broke my jaw and I holleted out right in the middle of the water light a spume upon the ghostly paradigm of things that is the real world you don't say I dreamed there was ticks on me and there was I live on when I sleep I tell you what I will and don't ask me why death means nothing to me I think life is a dream and what you dream I live because none of you know what you want follow me because I'm not going anywhere I'll just bleed so the stars can have something dark to shine in look at my legs I am the Njinsky of dreams my new daddy is going to be CC. and he done what he done cause he was Miss Pavlova's best friend how else you think he done it the gesture is better than the period he said that because Oakum says how the Lord works his pole the way we think is like a movie Bergson was wrote down in some of the astronomet's calculations in his observatory Henri like Rousseau he said I was a boy who believed in intervals not connections and I do I really do look here once I had a white bird there was a girl from another county who called it Synesthesia the left side of my body was a cloud rain was my hair I dare you little son of a bitch don't let me down from where we was sitting we could see the water coming up just when we thought it was going to quit and it was going to go back down again but by damn if it didn't do what we thought it just kept coming up and the post man he come in a boat the next few days and he say I had a letter from Jimmy for you come all the way from the prison camp but a moccasin go in my bag 50's I couldn't deliver none of that mail I'm sho sorry it happened what I was going to do was one of two things fly me a kite in with a message tolling who to get even with to make confess or I was going to get Auntie to make him a pie with a file in it but I can't get started about none of that now cause there is more important things to tend to unless I die and I don't figure on doing none of that not just yet not even if I get electrocuted by the high wire but the electricity is off and I'll walk it all of this is magic against death all of this ends with to be continued I wave so long with a handkerchief to the horses on the range of my dreams every scene is sculptured from wood with splintered fingers like a monk who can only speak when he chews the fiesh of christ like a cloud piercing the moon when a whore rides by on a mule and the barge ballast shifts without notice I go by your house every evening listening to the carpenters adding on to your den to the plumbers routing your dew I lift my head into the eye of the storm several hours away like a dog on a porch I carry a papersack under my arm in it hard tack and clown clothes and black cape my shoulders are bad galleries where the blind only can hang their work instructions and warning on poison jars latinisms and neurosis of blue-lined notebook paper with 90 degree corners planted pines from the preserve struck by lightning and cellars with drops of water slow as dreams afternoons where the girl is left in the middle of the street thumbnails where the eyes are approached I offer you no supper the blind earth a dish of salt water something bleeding quietly on the table a neck-yoke and the hereabouts of those who will pass on with their only obituary the thunder Mrs. Gillespie saying durn gal of mine won't never come home and the durn young lady of hers taking off her slip in the sugar cane endless night with its bloodhounds and bibles barns giving way like old men's stout backs one lick with a sledge hatnmer on a pillow once in a blue moon leading a horse with a spade over my shoulder and the old foreboding a chinaman in a wicket wheelchair mourning his daughter on the docks the everlasting and eternal grace and salvation was the theme of Oakum's sermon except there wasn't nobody in the church house listening to it not a soul just some critters and there might be a heaven of animals I don't know there was barnfowl and fieldteams as well as deer and snakes and coons everybody else around his parts had already cleared out and gone to the levee or come to the island but I reckon most folks forgot about him seeing as how he didn't have no regular congregation all of the children were gathered together on the island and I was telling the story of Daphnis so they wouldn't be afraid of the water that was rising night and day it was sort of a play we was giving to take our mind off things the getup we was using was tow sacks and fiour sacks we made wreaths for our hair for a stage we used the fioor foundation of the house that got blowed away in the cyclone it was a good a stage as you'd ever need had a chimney and all the vines was kindly bad but it made it look reel had wired up an old juke box to play my records what was playing when me and Baby Gauge who was in my lap heard Oakum's voice coming across the fiooded land was Pavane Pour Uno Infante Defunte hyar Baby Gauge says somebody done forget to tell Deacon Oakum he better not be out there in the water what's that mean I says that mean we got to go get him afoe the rivet does they ain't no spare boats left says I they using them at the levee well we'll have to get one those gondolas the Italian fixed up for his eating place won't no pole reach bottom I says don't need no pole I'll got my team of ponies I got when the circus stopped here and died I could still remember the fiames near the water when he said that go head on and do the epilogue Baby Gauge says I finished it up real quick and just had time to put on another record 0 Great Mystery that was the name on the front of the album it wasn't the name of the music on the back I'll sing some of it like the record like Vico taught me O magnum mysterium et admirable sacramentum ut animatia viderent Dominum natum Jacentem in praesepio Domino audivi auditum tuum et timul consideravi opera tua et expavi in medici duorum animatium and then Soyez experts des oreilles et yeux ou autrement il vaudrait mieux vous taire et je vous que veux soyez soigneux de ne chante que vous n'avez s boire then it went Selig sind die Toten die in dem Herren sterben von nun an Mein Schifllein lief im wilden Meet geschlagen von Sturmwinden Das Segel war sehr zerrissen kein Ruder konnt ich finden and you know how he was and I don't really want to think about Vico and burying him like I did singing that tacky Lady of Spain I adore you and nailing that picture by Picasso on his box and the further we got from the island the less and less of the juke box you could hear and what you heard was Oakum dead drunk preaching to the varmints and the water almost high enough to lift his shack off the stilts and take it away with a peahen up in the steeple and the moon was like it was when we joined up with these Spanish revolutionists down south that's the way the black angel said it I didn't know if he was on the raft with me and l was reading his mind and the moom pitchus coming out his eyes or if he was reading what I was thinking but near bout synchronized it was and talking and all and then I figured I must be becoming dead and confessing my sins and he was seeing it and I had the power (((it was John Barrymore in Beloved Rogue))) absolutely absolutely absolutely Oakum was hollering like a waiter in a dive twirling a tray around on his finger don't get me wrong Oakum was smart he was just born with it he was strickly natural Baby Gauge say boy you bettuh start looking out ahead fah me get these eyes looking and the Requiem by Gabriel Faure got stuck and he was preaching hell or high water it was so dark when it passed the stars got mud on their boots Baby Gauge say listen it went like I thought I dreamed it would a few days after the water went down and me and Baby Gauge got Oakum out safe and the peahen went in the gondola with us and he ate two black bowls of tomato soup under the fill] moon and he come to the island and his mind got alright we stole a couple packs of firecrackers and rode olf on bicycles and got run-OH" the bridge by a man in a long pink convertible with his left back tire hanging off the side he had cold cream and Nestle's quick on his face and said he come down here to research and I shook my head at Baby Gauge he had the firecrackers in his mouth like I did when we met that one that got snake bit and he give us a ride in his big car into town for telling him stories and bought us all the banana splits we could eat and Baby Gauge said he didn't know what the hell he was doing but let him handle things and we was for sure going to become famous like you know who and by god we struck it lucky and hit it rich and it all was owing to bringing back Oakum that night when the water was up somebody out there must a heard what the fool in the pink convertible had to say about us and how Baby Gauge was a wanting us to get knowed like Huck and Tom and them was so he wrote me a letter saying he intended to make a moving picture out of what all I said and sent us both checks for an undisclosed amount and there was some more on the way and right now we is reaping the benefits of that sailing first class to the east Japan in particular on the luxury liner Giotto all we do is take sun on the upper deck gamble with people who don't talk english and listen to sweet music and lovers whisper and jump over the side and 50's we won't get into any trouble we is travelling what you call incognito all we do when we see one another is give one another the high sign yea well I knew somebody was going to make a movie out of it I ain't seen it yet they say they won't play it in the Unity States on account of it not being of questionable morality but they was going to show it in Paris and I figure I'll get to see it there hell Baby Gauge claims they is making it now he says a man with a camera follows him around said he ain't dreaming but I sho do like the sunlight under the blanket on this lounge and I'll have to tell you about my new friend I met him strolling the deck praying him and a Chinaman a baldheaded one in a orange robe I thought they was talking across at one another but they wasn't they was talking about a painter what you call Rousseau I met them that night but I didn't introduce myself until the next morning when we was all drinking tea and bloody marys and orange juice Baby Gauge he even disclosed himself he had a cigar and derby and sat down near a good looking lady from Tahiti he kept giving me the send off with his hand and I listened to the Chinaman who didn't say nothing like Harpo and the monk in the white robe who said his name was Thomas Merton he told me The Douanicr was the officer on duty for the customs of dreams his art remained in shadow like the dark part of the moon Thomas Merton who I called Father said Picasso gave a banquet for him the food did not arrive and so they drank the Spaniards wine and ate sardines until the painter arrived with his violin he played a waltz of his own composition and hot wax from a Chinese lantern dripped on his head like a caul and The Douanicr went to sleep and dreamed The Unpleasant Surprise and The Snake Charmer again and the scared bear recited the poem le malheur s'acharne contre ta progeniture tu petds tes enfants et tes femmes aussi et tu le te remarias avec que la pointure pour faire les tableaux enfants de ton esprit the monk in white looked off into the sea and the Chinaman snoozed and Baby Gauge smiled at his young lady and I thought about the big roll of paper for the supper table on Abraham's Knife and what all I drew on it before I went on the voyage on the Giotto and the sun was stuck in the sky like Deacon Oakum's legs in the mud when he held the peahen and I lay back on the lounge and watched a beautifirl girl catch her own badminton and the monk said how the painter went to the World's Fair and watched the balloonist ascend and the dolphins and sharks swam near the ship he said eventually the oil rots the canvas it is a process like something opening up in the earth and then closing again I guess he was talking about the man because armed guards were transporting the painting WAR by him and all the folks aboard was inspecting it it passes by frightening leaving behind despair tears and ruin everywhere the soft-spoken monk went on like a fiute he makes an art out of eluding us with his imagination as if he were a clairvoyant of what we dreamt he begins with the usual the very real and we conclude we are seeing ghosts acknowledging the gods we all fall prey to his form is like a snake under sway to a boy with music his serenity is an indefatigable shadow hovering over us as we sleep he was instinctually conscious of his hands like wings facing the stars his foreground was a horse drinking water faraway at night he inspected silence like a nude letting her get away with murder and love his visions were real observations his imagination formal his dreams determined his form like night follows day his power passes over under standing what he intends is left behind like a past full of strange music reality is his relief he gives the world a unity again I wish somebody would give me a light Baby Gauge said to the monk and Father Merton passed a wooden match to the Chinaman and I passed it to Baby Gauge and be lit his smoke and the girl threw it into the sea and he told me about the letter he wrote to his hometown mayor in behalf of himself how it said There Is the Effect of Moonlight very poetic and the first time he used the telephone he yelled the reason being so he said because my friend is so very far away and if you think I'm going to tell you what else I saw you're crazy as hell