Posts tagged All
Posts tagged All
I want to peel off a hundred-dollar billand slap it down on the counter.
You can pick out a dress. I’ll pick out a tie: polka-dots
spinning like disco balls. Darling, let’s go
two-stepping in the sawdust at the Broken Spoke.
Let’s live downtown and go clubbing.
God save hip-hop and famous mixed drinks.
Let’s live in a cardboard box. Let’s live
in a loft above Chelsea, barely human, talking about
the newest collection of Elizabeth Peyton,
her brilliant strokes, the wine and cheese.
You can go from one state to another and never
paint the same thing twice. In New Mexico
we could live by a creek and hang our laundry
on the line. Let’s get naked in the cold waters of Michigan.
Let’s get hitched in Nevada. Just you, me, and Elvis.
We could sell cheese curd in Wisconsin.
I could pay off my bills. You could strip
in some dive on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.
Let’s bite each other on the neck.
Oh, my sexy Transylvania!
We could be relationship counselors
for trannies in South Dakota.
It must be hard to have a woman living
inside you
when you’re watching cows chew
the frozen grass of December.
You are everywhere, sweet Carolinas.
You’re my boss, Tennessee, you honeysuckle.
Give us a kiss, Hawaii. Who says we’re not an empire? Fuck ’em,
they need Jesus. They need the Holy Ghost.
Right, Kansas? Kansas! My yellow brick road of intelligent design. We are not
monkeys. They’re all in prison, right Texas? Texas,
I was with you on the Fourth of July watching the sky undress
with my friends and we were Americans on America Day,
which is every day, coming home from work, drinking a beer
and waiting for the dark,
for the night, the rocket’s red glare, lying around
on a blanket in the backyard, a girl from your hometown
leaning against you, slipping
her slender foot in and out of a saltwater sandal. She’s wearing
cherry lip balm and taking Ecstasy.
Later you can taste it. The smooth wax along her mouth, her arms
stretched out in the grass and each narrow leaf of grass
like a separate lover, the horizon
of a summer tan rising above her low-cut jeans.
She looks different here than she did in her uniform, standing behind
the counter of the Coffee-Go, steaming milk,
rows of flavored syrup above her head: almond, blackberry, mint, vanilla.
This is the Fourth of July
and she looks like the end of summer. She’s a wind
moving through the trees. She’s the best thing
about high school assemblies. We are a country at war
and she’s passing a note to you in class, your book open
to the chapter on dissecting frogs. How to keep the brain intact
when removing it from the small skull. The note says
Why were you holding Clare’s hand after lunch?
We are a country at war but it’s not really happening
here. It is not Clare or her brother or all the bourbon
in Kentucky. On the Fourth of July
I walk out among the fallen
watermelon rinds, the corncobs, paper plates with chicken grease
being pushed by a little breeze
so they look like moons spun out of orbit.
I go inside. I turn the television on.
It’s playing the Civil War again. The Battle of Gettysburg
remembering itself on the football field
at Lincoln Memorial High. A rush of gray uniforms
poised on the scrimmage line. The poor sons of Alabama
wearing the uniforms of dead soldiers.
The North marching down
toward cotton revenue and Big Tobacco. The South starving,
fighting, often without shoes, the narrator explaining
how the muskets were loaded, fired, and then reloaded.
That’s a lot of time
to think about the person you’re killing.
That’s a lot of time to wish you were home.
Unless, of course, you were home
and your house was burning down. Out of the smoke
there’s always more smoke. There’s always the hacking apart and crying.
You can go from one Civil War to another
and still not be free. The man in charge of the antique cannon
has lit his shirt on fire. The man in charge
of the horse runs Ray’s Hardware on Tenth and Main.
He’s having a liquidation sale this weekend.
The show is over
in an hour. That includes commercials
and the slow I-won’t-kill-you pace
of the reenactment. This is how it happened,
the narrator is saying,
while his producer plays a Negro spiritual. It makes you weep.
The vocalist calling out to God. Oh Lord! Oh Lord my God, she’s singing,
have pity on our souls. You can go from one state
to another and pity will meet you at the Greyhound Station.
In the stands of the Lincoln Memorial football field
a little boy is eating cotton candy while the dead men rise up
from the twenty-yard line and walk toward their families. I love
the History Channel. It’s so foreign. The old reels of Germany
having the fascism bombed out of it. Kennedy waving
from the black sedan. It’s almost real. Boston grieving. Pulling its hair out.
You can take the Chinatown bus from Boston
to the Chinatown in New York City. You can go
from one shop window
with peeled ducks hanging by their ankles
to another shop window
with peeled ducks hanging by their ankles.
In Oregon you can go from one hundred-year-old evergreen
to another hundred-year-old evergreen and never turn around.
They’re everywhere, cut down
and loaded up, like paperbacks in bookstores.
My favorite bookstore is in Evanston, Illinois.
The owner is Polish and his daughter wore a wool skirt
that kept sliding up her legs
as she sat on the edge of his desk. God bless her
for it was cold outside and I was almost alone
but for my copy of The Idiot I carried with me everywhere.
You can go from one Russian novel to another
Russian novel and never have
borsht. You can go from one daughter to another
and eventually end up with your own. You can go from one
founding father to another and still have the same
America. The same Alaska. The same Baked Alaska
served on a silver plate in the same hotel
where the waitstaff are all South American.
The same cows sleeping in the same Wyoming with the same kids
getting drunk, shooting cans, peeing on the electric fence.
The same Main Street with the same True Value. The same
flags staggered between the streetlights
like marathon runners. I walked down that street in Tacoma, Washington,
with Jennifer when Jennifer had red hair and listened
to Broadway musicals. We smoked
cigarettes in the town square
below a statue of one soldier carrying another. The plaque
read Brothers in Arms. One soldier carrying another
in his arms. We were young and mean
and thought it was funny. You can go from one town square
to another and never fall in love.
Even in New Hampshire where people Live Free or Die.
What kind of life is that
when you’re on the road and the woman
next to you is hardly there, hardly speaking, her feet
on the dashboard like two very different promises.
How are you supposed to drive
under these conditions? Forget about the rain. Forget
about Vermont and the Green Mountain’s majesty.
Forget Ted Nugent. Forget Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Forget the swimming pools in California
because if she doesn’t love you
what chance have you got with LA?
In LA you don’t get to be lonely.
You get skin peels and mud masks.
You can go from one spa to another
and watch the same lemon slices of cucumber
pressed against the eyes of thirteen-year-old girls and seventy-year-old
women. You won’t see that in Minnesota.
Minnesota! Cover me up in a wool blanket
and put me to bed. Let me sleep.
Let me have the dream again
where Kenneth Koch walks through my mother’s house
looking for a leash. He’s taking my dog for a walk. The dog
is scratching at the front door and Kenneth is saying yes, yes, I’m coming.
You can hear him telling the dog that one broken heart
deserves a heart that has been differently broken.
I had that dream in New York City. Times Square
looks like America throwing up on itself.
I want to hold its hair back. I want to sit in the park
where my brother and I drank coffee and ate donuts from Dean & DeLuca.
We watched a man fly a little wooden airplane over the green benches.
We ate lunch at the Cedar Tavern.
The French fries I ordered were covered in pepper
like the poem Frank O’Hara wrote to Mayakovski, saying
I love you. I love you, but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist. The burger was bloody in the middle as if it wasn’t through living.
My first girlfriend refused to eat meat.
She said she wouldn’t be a tomb for another living creature.
But she privately cut herself on the arms
which confused both her parents.
Senior year she moved to Idaho. I miss her, my sweet potato.
You can go from one state to another
and still hate yourself. Hide in your room listening to The Cure, carving
little commas in your skin. You can go
to Arizona State and never leave your past behind. Arizona waiting
with open arms for the new blood. The great white hope
of tailgate parties and college football. Put me in, coach, I’m ready to play!
I’m ready for the lobster rolls of Maine
and the coeds of Maryland. In Maryland
I played miniature golf with a waitress from Denny’s.
I spent the winter sitting in her section, drinking Pepsi,
watching her hips hydroplane inside a green polyester skirt.
It was the year my Uncle Joe died. He was a G.I.
He was a G.I. Joe. A man who hid under the table
if a car backfired. He refused to eat rice.
He came back from Normandy
wanting ice cream. He had a friend from Arkansas
who ended up all over his uniform. An ear burned
into the helmet. He had a friend from Colorado
who got his hands cut off, slow, and forever. His pal
from New Jersey was thrown into the sky
like a human constellation of broken teeth. You can go
from one state to another and still feel pretty good about enlisting.
Joe lived in a trance. Love saved him.
He would scratch his wife’s name over and over into the tough leather
of his boots. Hidden below the view-line
of a foxhole, his knife drawn, the word Alice, written like a child
writes on the chalkboard. Alice, Alice,
like an antidote to death. Joe died in a hospital.
You can go from one pool of blood
to another and never see your own reflection.
Oh, Mississippi, I worry about your boys.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, are you half empty?
Washington, DC, the sons of senators
are sleeping between flannel sheets.
Darling, let’s go to Florida and sit
in the shade of an orange grove shack.
Let’s meet some Cubans and Jews. The world is so big.
Why stay up all night and only have ourselves to keep warm?
I’ve never been to West Virginia. What the hell
are West Virginians doing this weekend? Or Iowans? In Iowa
there’s a new Wal-Mart opening and I’m gonna shed some dimes.
We’ll take a bus there. A bus is a diplomat.
It throws us all together, our books,
hats, and umbrellas. I am never more human
than when I’m riding next to someone
who makes me shudder. If my body
touches his body who knows what will happen? Race issues
and cooties. The great unknown
coming home from work. You can go from one state to another
and still not know how to act. We are losing ourselves. We are somewhere
in Delaware. You are my Georgia peach. Your love
is like a field of buffalo when we still had buffalo and they looked like dark
rolling hills deep in North Dakota. America,
I’m in love with your imports and exports,
your embargoes and summits!
Let’s walk down to the river. Let’s bless the paper
boats and turn the whole thing into wine. We can sit quietly on a blanket,
watching the transcendentalists come and go, talking
of Henry David Thoreau. Take me to the river,
Ohio, put me in the water.
Missouri goes down to the river and drinks Vanilla Cokes.
Rhode Island goes down and prays for money.
Connecticut goes down and washes its clothes on the sandy bank.
We go down to the river and the moon
pulls up in its silver Cadillac.
America, let’s put our feet in the water! Let’s tie a rock
around our waist and jump in.
The moon is revving up. The river
is rolling by. Tom Petty is singing about a girl from Indiana
and I am buying you another drink. I am trying to take you home.

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Maya Angelou