CXXVI
Le Voyage
i.
So such the infants immortalized in tan overturned applecart and some stamps
The universe over on the east girl this asia are your vast appetite.
Ah choo! Cue the newsboy. on the east my paint to the tune of Clara Barton lighting the lamps!
Old eyes do surrender and cue the newsboy on the tiny eastern seaboard
One morning. My criminal-minded father the cowboy arrived in a casket buckling the planks of my porch. The servant boy brought us a glass of water stamped out the flames
Drinking hisself silly fat man in a raccoon jacket and then. Stamps out the dreams of fishermen
And then a criminal mind packs us all into the Studebaker, swiftly Larry has me stamping. My tongue is broke,
Can’t kiss this letter. A long train rolls off the boat (I must be in Japan
Lesions, ticklish spots damn-stamping. What does she shave herself one country at a time until hungry
Stamping on houses, the horror of their cardboard kisses falling on and something more the Huns
As they overestimate the stars the trees ears eyes full in the yearning stamping one woman
Singing circles around Herodotus. Daughter and younger daughter running circles at least until there are perfumes
For nothing is changed unless you strangle it, beating up the old, sick they still deposit money into their bank accounts
In spite of space the stars stamping on and stamping on the light the sewers the lighthouse and stamps. Do you see these the embraced?
The ice where they slipped and died, these only the broken dishes Whodat these cutting open my rent check envelope.
Slowly I am wiping your lipstick off of my face.
Let’s go back to May when the real voyagers aren’t songs are soon see ya there only who haven’t left
From the parking lot. Light hearts, somebody’s singing blathering oats onto the ballroom,
Stamping but then their end, Parker’s been your friend and ever did they turn over the cartography? Tea time in the tent
And [why must you keep talking? no one else here is talking and] Saint Sebastian why do you always talk and hiss? All aboard!
Seize it all there where the days sire holding the phone out or some undress
And who opens the window again, aint he the one the only one who scribbled on the cannon
Stamps vast silver tea services, a check from your aunt money from the undressing
And don’t fewer prison guards pin his hands to the wall and never to the lemons!
ii.
We’s imitatin’ horror! Singing for my toupee a bowl of soup the lawn
And into their valise and their promises. Same as when in our summertime
Lake Beauregard or the prospect of death tied itself around our necks so and the prospect of death rolled
Like an angel. Having cried it all out she unlocked an empty room for us the yeti gone crazy
After only one pull at the slots change silver dollars spilling out everywhere. Oh but you had to see the place
And, if not stone agey enough neanderthal the cro-magnon held the door ajar and maybe even though it doesn’t mean a thing to you
Or that man, don’t leave the door ajar hope can’t be caught with a lariat around the foot like a yearling
Or Paul went trout fishing but his letters came back insufficient postage. Was I always tipsy when where I curtseyed before we danced. and out of my nose a five dollar gold coin
A handbook of knots and easterly a mattress for three but I can’t get down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon of our love anymore now that your mule has gone looking for the mice a wooden clock
One voice already leaping on my eyes on the bridge No music begins
One voice that still retains something of the Hun. Loving and eight ball. An Oglala Sioux cries
“In the bog…a battle stuck to my hands…a banner year” Hell. All it is is an egg cream school
Checking its pulse at a stop light. The drunks come out of the bars and get in their cars, the cops, vigilant
East in an unmarked El Dorado promise to dust them off.
Lemons or Jean Genet or the birth of the dressing room pay-off. The envelope, son or giddy
By the treasure trove, I gave birth to a cash register filled with rubies. Heading towards morning
Or the pavement again in love, the foots come down around the fireplace
Do we blame him for posting on trees the picture of a wooden-legged man
The bullfight in the parking lot the matador with the soft-pressed swan feather boots or the inventor of those damned Vikings?
Doesn’t lemon rip up the turf an old house wine disappears a blood-feud re-appears or Frère Jacque and we go to the sea?
Tel Aviv the old vagabond putting lint or the Virgin or feet stamp down squarely working
Dreams into her nose and ears. The bright air this afternoon on the subway there were three not two of them,
Son, or in sorcery the days cover Al Capone’s gaze, the belfry,
The stars and fish or the chandelier that illuminates a whorehouse.
iii.
Stunning boy day traders aging seventeen or more! Quieting wheat fields devoid of wheat no screaming or crying
We list on shoelaces your yew trees your horse tree pruners up comes the sea!
In Montreal right now. paper cranes. we list your wealth of memories
Those blue eyes shop girls & some school girls those kisses old arounds us like the sea Asters bloomed or fallen around us and vapory and others. Reason
We take busses we I take you in my mouth stunning young going with no smoke trail to swallow I turn around and but there’s no more there it is you are
Made off, filling the whole crane the between us the in we or no prisons the fortresses
Pass out before we hit the pillows legs and arms joints gone to tissue paper
Your recollection you memories go off with the body of the horizon.
Tell me little teeth, what have you got to say for yourself?
iv.
“We have seen the new haircuts of the future
And today’s floating We’ve already seen today’s fur coat
Eating badly well little chocolates today and stepped into the cheeks the cloaks of all velvet and sub-zero architectural cave-ins
We we are softly and often. The wind hoards all young models and acquiescent mouths. yes, come hither.
The story of the legs was walking to the bank alone with question. The sea was all purple bruises
The story of the legs for days cities tell me point out that when the sun is sitting comfortably down
All young models ask into our liquor cabinets or once the garden started speaking
Back out of the water coming out the sky the spitting image of a singing alley cat.
Money pours into the city, more money, more long passageways longer days more lepers cooing
Always never none nothing held back now the Bering straits, others move closer along lines of latitude my sterile girl among the masses of the masses
For these eyes that see orange hazard signs I soften, disappear with legs or laundry.
And the day steps up with lead in his noodle the day draws kisses out from our their mouths
—Lagging behind us since a lightning blast adds old gentlemen the police force in quatrains.
Dear sir, old trees here in Spain may leap for their own pleasure with certain grace
But this depends on the gross profits receipts and how far can you get on ten cents, hardly, you’re heavy, engorged
Your branches want to see the sun even more than the president.
Angry Grandma steps up with day to the line Grand arbitrator Tree with more life than Liberace
Which tree is the president sleeping in? Your aunt pours We have We are thirsty at sunset
Cluelessly several chickens flamingos pour into their favourite album of Liberace’s
Brothers whose trousers and towers find boatswains fallen down at their feet all this, wind, the cowardly lion
We have waved good-bye to these days I love or trample
The shortened trombones, constellations cooking up light between us
These northern compadres openly acting their ages openly shouting at a jar of olives don’t the americans the IRS sing celebratory
Cutting open the straits watering cut flowers while bankers dream of ruin Them they
Some costumes that are as the eyes pouring milk on your address
Some women don’t lay their teeth and their ogling on elephant tits
And the day shuffles its wise men and Marlene Dietrich with a serpent’s caress.”
v.
(EF sings JB)
Pwease, Pwease, Pwease, Pwease
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Pwease, Pwease, Pwease
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Honey Pwease don’ go
Yeah, oh yeah, whoa
I wuv you so
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Baby you did me wong
now you done me wongYou k
Whoa, whoa, you done me wong
now you done me wongYou k
You know you done, done me wong
Whoa, whoa, oh yeah
Took my wuv and now you’we gone
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Pwease, Pwease, Pwease, Pwease, Pwease
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Pwease, Pwease, Pwease, Pwease, Pwease
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Honey Pwease don’ go
Whoa, oh yeah, Wowd
I wuv you so
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
I just wanna heah you say aye
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Honey Pwease don’ go
Oh, oh, yeah
I wuv you so
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Baby take my hand
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
I wanna be your wuving man, oh yeah
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Dawwing Pwease don’ go
Oh, yeah, oh
I wuv you so
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Pwease ... don’ go
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Pwease ... don’ go
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Honey Pwease don’ go
I wuv you so
Pwease, Pwease, don’ go
Pwease, Pwease
vi.
“Out of the cervix out of the soda fountain
A pour not open or working The main thing the money
We’ve got to see especially, a parakeet a pelican, and without this or having looked in the church key for them
We’re heading North, up to the ocean’s surface in the bathtub The farmer tints his wife’s story with an eggshell white.
At least look clearly at the knees of your enemies, at theirs, at the farmer his deathly salesmanship
His wife locked up in a sea cave where the cleaning lady an orangutang an organ player with sleeves rolled up and in the know. The know or swimming
But not laughing or sad or smelling bad and don’t they love you and won’t they go hungry for you
Long before you try and sing for your supper, drowning, a pail. I can wait for your urine sample
In an underwater cave in an underwater cave. in the bath and Russians swing in to steal my waffle.
Working in the hen house a lock filled with sweet wine, or lemons Listen I’ll smash your locks if you don’t give me that bloody telegram
Lafayette! What assassin ringing a doorbell and smoking or driving leaves me this note
The fish heading North under its own power disquieted the President in his socks
And leapt up to have more of us rinse our champagne out of the sink
Mostly realigning the wagging tongues on our left
Or everyone climbing the stairs slowly or glockenspiels or the last saint of the spring
Pauses in an unlit room with a feather. Under the train, the cat or I sever the light
In the unfinished clouds and the crime of it is her pettiforgeries looking to fill up a tea cosy
Or hanging above us. The Bavarians I’ve referred to or having come down from a vaporous heritage
And, fell through the floor in disrepair, my ceiling aint it like she was out of her jurisdiction
Screaming, donchaknow or sneezing and in comes the game warden again, under water, his hues:
‘O mine and some say nothing endlessly, o mine Montmartre, I the bathwater could be warmer’
And at least bath salts, or a decent mountain a day a seance that means something
In the Furies’ root cellar Foghorn Leghorn runs aground tripping on his rain hat or parks the Dodge by the dustbin
And hides out the immense puddle down his thigh is immense!
—The telephone is due East lit up in stages from within or the tern or a tin egg in a coin slot.”
vii.
Having seen her on the cell phone the Southern the blue silver Can she change a tire so we might get moving?!
She can lean on me or call me alone and at a baseball game the pitcher only yesterday I pushed open the door an oil baron
Yesterday, hers, tomorrow, or at the end of the day with shoes off We’re making out! Look! Write down what you imagine
To be where the water is The murderer is The dancing a desert our lunch hour aflame beside him
And why was he must he take off now? Won’t stay? If you’re too poor to stay, stay
Padre, open the window and climb down if need be the courtyard surrounds the building, and the author washes up and drinks a long draught from the fountain
Washing the soles of his boots and walks wet tracking into the house I owe you twenty dollars for looking around all night and night at the Kabuki theater
Off to work! At least Mount St. Helens is decorating is without dinner again
Like the young juniper tree lost wandered off into the dollar store where the apostles
And no one knew them, put them all into a suitcase, kicked the tires on a station wagon kicked a hole in a boat
And only all fruits the friar ate or he retained too much water or the refrigerator caught flames creeping up the dusted back It makes no sense to reel in the others,
Who knows if the plumb bob left the office with any of them a kiss
Then until he puts his foot through the monitor.
Is the lynch mob going to pour another bowl of cereal for the Railroad Baron? Is Spain Are acres spreading before us
Is the hydrofoil equipped with a quadruple-redundant or the same before we pour a bowl for the Great Wall? of China?
Leslie’s eyes are fixing fix the hole in the orange the eating the horseman and then open up the wind
The lynch mob doubles and encircles or strays an old hound Surely you meant me or my arms, my stars? Braying
With the courtesans joining in too loud a young passenger, she
Do you hear yourself? This voice, charming or and I remember it entertaining baying
Who was singing: “For ice cream! Do you want to eat it
In an empty lot? us and all of us stand smoking! Is it ice cream that keeps you on the verge of being a flower
The miracle, fruits Don’t you ever write your dog’s name at the end of letters to your family?
When you part the curtains the room lights up A lawnmower or grass the deuce the eight the cards spread out over the prairies
This afternoon seventeen afternoons The lock the key wake me when it’s time to go to bed.”
All currencies all monetary units are well known the lynch mob looks for water the well A ghost
We plow the stars, ours, over there lying on its back stroking your arms holding you down by your wrists Towards us
“Another lemonade and your dog is swimming in the tub with the toaster oven”
Then cellmates talking doesn’t the jade or the lynch mob bathes the sons of the philanthropist.
viii.
O Mort, old and vying captain, it’s time, lift up the anchor!
This country is irritating Mort! Let’s dress one another in our mother’s curtains!
If the sky tries to sell us or eat the sea aren’t we night or black like a crusty
Northern Sea dog you met on the gangway stuffing his pockets with silk flowers?
Each line knots itself around my neck your fish write mercury in my brain Piano forte
Hangs me from its clotheslines we want, my dead aunt and I a few fires to broil the cervix
To drown in the fountain drunk Heaven or Hell, who gives a fuck?
We’re fond of not knowing and keep digging in our empty pockets for the desert or the flood.